On the days we must be mad...

... (because what would a blog look like all full of pristine beaches, turquoise seas and rum punches?!)

 2 am as we lay panting in our tiny mosquito occupied chow-zone of a cabin in the stifling heat, not a breath of wind, sweat trickling down our necks and pooling on the dampened pillows beneath us, the random slapping of limbs breaks the relative silence of the dull hum of a useless fan. I thought ‘this couldn’t get worse’. (Note to self – never say those words, even in your head).

After weeks of prepping for our friend’s visitors in perfect Bahamian weather, they have arrived. And since then the whole climate’s gone for a ‘sh*t’.

They brought booze!

The visitors on arrival day

2:30 am the distant rumbles of thunder have caught up with us two lonely little catamarans in Cherokee Point, the vulnerable bay, exposed to all the oncoming fun and games. The sky lights up to the brightness of day in shocking zaps and we are up.

It’s like a colossal game of electrified ten pin bowling right over our heads and everywhere around us. The lesser gods are on a bender and they are at the lanes, drunken and disorderly. The ball rumbles along above us, barreling through the great black clouds and then the crescendo – a teeth clenching, boat-shattering smash as the thunderous ball hits the pins. Over and over again, as I wince and squeal. JW has turned off the main power to the boat, knowing we are at the mercy of these lesser gods as to whether we’ll take a direct hit and potentially lose all the electronics on board. 

They are obviously in the mood to have some fun with us. They’ve stirred up the ocean as well, so the boat spins and bobs madly in this rain drenched mayhem.

I retreat inside, brushing aside the mosquitos who are just as frightened I’m sure. They’ve taken such a back seat as the bad guys, they might as well retreat completely and come back with their blood sucking intentions another day.

And here I sit – making sure not to hold on to anything metallic just in case – and I focus on JW’s silhouette in the door, lit up like a photo negative in the lightning show. I know he is worried, and that the soul crushing feeling of being helpless in a situation furrows his brow.  I squeeze my eyes closed after each bolt snaps down from the clouds and see the jagged designs behind my eyelids over and over.

The truth is that we are in the vicinity of some serious danger. Boats are lightning attraction devices with their tall masts, and we’ve come to a bay where there is nothing around us but surface rocks, beach sand and a tiny settlement of one story homes nearby. So we are IT if it comes down to the wire. Worst case scenario the lightning passes through the boat, leaving a gaping hole below the water line and we sink. Total loss.

I think of the storms we’ve slept through on land, the light and noise a mere inconvenience with the secure feeling of insulated and sturdy walls protecting us. Out here it’s all raw and real. We have no mosquito nets, we have no lightning protection. It’s yang to the ying of the paradise we live in. It’s the other side of the coin. It’s real and it’s 5am and we’ve been up for hours.

As I rub my red sore eyes I realise this lifestyle has no middle ground. There is no ‘mildly amusing’ or ‘slightly annoying’ in our vocabulary. It’s all ‘OMG!’ or ‘WTF!’ Extreme beauty, extreme fun, extreme danger. Big joy, big problems.

On the boat next to us, a family has flown thousands of miles to see what we see. Experience what we call normal life. This is their vacation. They swat at mosquitos, wince at the storms and hopefully will experience some of the big joys over the next few days.

As the storm passes, the game has moved on and left us with some big winds and big seas. That means ‘anchor watch’ (to keep an eye that we don’t drag into the rocks behind us), so no sleeping yet. Until the sun rises and the benign morning negates the heightened fears of the night and promises a new day of extreme beauty and yet another adventure. Zzzzzzzz

 

The drama of daily life - Glad we're home!

This is not a post about suburbia. It’s not about months of overeating and staring at CNN, frying brain cells while waiting the inevitable weeks and months for a back injury to heal.  

It’s not about visits with family, everything-you-could-ever-want availability shopping, barbeques in the backyard or long hot showers and in-house laundry…

How quickly it all falls back into place. The sweating. The water conservation, the mold. The rain in the hatches, the portable generator grunting and chugging away, the forests that have grown under the boat, making it more an ecosystem than a moving vessel...

What our propellers looked like on our arrival

We’ve only been back onboard a few days but the usual routine proves itself to have stood the test of time.

Sundowners every second night with new friends that last until way past ‘cruisers midnight’ have proved the social side of our lifestyle hasn’t waned either (as is discernible from the evidence, I mean photos below). We’ve been invited over to yet another boat tonight to meet some more cruising friends and try a new island rum…

A rum squall evening, full swing

However just when you think life on a boat is all about predictability, your dinghy about throws you and your crew overboard.

Well not exactly.

As the laundry pile did not disappear during our absence, we had to face the monster a couple days in. We headed to shore in the dinghy, weighted down with garbage bags and an overflowing laundry bag, in between the rain squalls.

DJW, our new ‘captain in training’, JW’s son, was at the ‘helm’. As soon as we got started, the wind and waves decided to give us a seawater shower and we were getting soaked. JW suggested that DJW move to the other side of the dingy, so as ‘not to get so wet’. Ha!

He also suggested DJW let go of the throttle, which resulted in the dinghy swinging us wildly in circles in the choppy waters. The balance was gone; water came flooding in from the front of the boat where I was perched, holding on for dear life. Ah, to have had an aerial view. It would have been quite a sight. Me with bulging eyes, crouched in disbelief, DJW flailing from side to side, barely balancing, and our captain laughing so hard he was red in the face.

The dinghy wanted us all overboard, spinning in increasingly tighter and wobblier circles, but DJW jumped back into place and managed to get us under control again. We resumed our forward motion, the boat steadied, the water stopped flowing by the bucketful. However, our laundry bag was now a 100lb salt water weight, sloshing around between our feet. 

Our captain in training was sopping head to toe, and had to change into some of his dirty but less soaking clothes right there at the dinghy dock by the laundry. I heaved the sopping back to the Laundromat, leaving my salt water trail. I ignored the disapproving look from the proprietress as she chomped a pile of fried rice, watching our laundry bag leak water all over the floor, and simply dumped that problem onto them. 

Lighter yet still salty and wet, we started the dinghy again and headed to the garbage drop off area, and to do some shopping. But the dinghy spluttered and farted and then the motor just died. That’s when JW lifted the fuel tank and exclaimed,

“There’s no fuel in here!”.

Well what do you know. We’d run out of gas. We started paddling. Luckily we were not far from the fuel dock. We made it but then had to buy 2 stroke oil right there and mix it into the tank directly. It was a bit messy, adding blue grease to the salt water we were covered in. But then the dinghy worked! And so it was that we survived that harrowing adventure to do laundry and dump garbage. But just barely.

Since then things have gone quite smoothly, except yesterday morning when our dinghy refused to budge as we tried to lower her into the water. The ropes on the pulley system were twisted and completely jammed.

I ended up balanced precariously out on the hanging dinghy while my men used a block and tackle set up, hanging from the boom to maneuver me. And we did get it all sorted out.

Predictable? Well you can count on the sea to be blue but beyond that, as soon as you think things are too routine, too comfortable, the cruising life throws you a dinghy drama or something far worse. It’s nothing like the suburbs here, but we call it home!