New Years and warm tears

This morning when I woke, there was a magical transition going on between night and day. A handover from darkness to light. The full moon, weary from his long night shift, sat at the water’s edge, sagging ever so slightly, ready to slip in. And when he slipped away so quietly, the sun called my attention to the other side of the sky, bringing up the new day. I felt a tingle, the privilege of the early riser, to witness something grand and divine that happens every day.

Of course I was not awake of my own accord, in normal circumstances I think it’s obscene and unnatural to be up before the sun! But this morning my mother left the building. Or the boat to be more accurate. We barreled along to shore in the dinghy with her luggage in tow, and handed her over into a pink car, and a tired looking cabbie who was getting off night shift. She has begun the day long journey on buses and planes, back to the bitter cold of home.

A few days ago I stood by a shuttle bus, choking back the inevitable hot tears as we also said goodbye to my son.

These are the realities of living ‘somewhere else’. We live hundreds and at times thousands of miles from family, but the moments we have together are special. They are held together in a finite number of days, a holiday, a visit. They can be calculated on a calendar but not in our hearts. There is no earthly definition for that kind of love. 

And love it, we did. Great holiday. We’ve been living on Shiloh for three years and finally at least some of the family have seen our home and experienced a snapshot of our lifestyle. I really hope it was fun. I know we’re not going to create any converts in my land lubbing family, but at least they had fun. No seasickness, no problems with the quirks of boat life (limited water supply, must dinghy to shore, wakes from boats, side on swells). Go family! 

We’ve made it down to Key West and it’s the kind of place everyone loves. You just gotta. It’s a milestone as the Southernmost (is that even a word?) point in America. Of course as we cycled around the town yesterday we saw the Southernmost café, the Southernmost bar, the Southernmost hotel and even the Southernmost beach hotel. So everyone is milking that for what it’s worth. Key West has a million restaurants, bars, café’s, drag shows, beaches, busker shows, and people. It’s the people. Weird and wonderful sums it up. Everyone should come here at least once. Preferably during their FantasyFest!

It’s the end of a season, of a lot of bucket list visits under our keels, and a finale with family. Couldn’t have asked for a more amazing 2014.

And 2015 is a blank canvas with so many adventures to be written. We have graduations and new babies in the family and in the meantime, sailing adventures to places and countries new and old.

So my tears today are joyful though sad. We’ve chosen a life far away, a life of new and scary and exciting and fun, but a life without mom and boy nearby. A life where my niece and nephew grow in leaps and bounds in our absence. Where babies are born and life goes on ‘at home’.

We’ve untied the bow lines and left the sight of our shores and I don’t regret it for a second, but when I have the chance to see my Mom’s green eyes light up, hold my boy tight, hear their laughter, those precious memories fill me up and I cherish them, I see them in every sunset and sunrise we are away.

A lifetime in a year - lessons in doing without and gaining so much more

The things I’ve learned in one year:

I can live without toasters – if we really need some dried crispy bread, we can throw it under the broiler for a few seconds on each side… sigh too much work. So as I said, I can live without toast. Plus, there's french toast which involves a frying pan and butter... I can DO that!

I can live without a microwave – though reheating leftovers is more of a challenge and more incentive to eat everything on the first night!

I can live without long hot showers – this just makes me appreciate any visit to a marina or trip to visit family. Not sure I could live without a long hot shower FOREVER….

I can live without ironed clothes – if someone hadn’t ironed our clothes for us in Ghana, I’d have discovered this much earlier. Ironing is NOT an essential in my life! Bring on the wrinkles and creases.

I can live without high-heeled shoes – I could barely walk in these on land, now imagine wobbling and crawling in and out of a moving dinghy onto a moving boat or a non-moving jetty. That spells broken ankle. I’ll take flip flops any day. Wouldn’t mind if I never saw a close-toed shoe of any description again in my life. Plus since I spend lots of time on beaches and boats, I can wear my sole-less bead shoes!

I can live without cable TV – provided I can download some good movies from time to time using a good wifi, for those rare quiet evenings on board.

I can live without air-conditioning in 32 degree weather and 90 percent humidity – this is only because I have no choice. But let me tell you, I gasp with pleasure on every shopping trip when we step inside a crisp cool store… ahhhhhh

I love games! – we’ve become hooked on playing a domino game called Mexican Train. I could gather a group every day and play and play. I lose every game which might be why I need to keep playing. Statistically I’d have to win at least once if I kept playing, right? We’ve also been doing a weekly trivia quiz which I love, even though the prize is a bottle of toxic rum punch – made with 70 proof blindness-inducing pure alcohol. Yikes

I need to learn how to provision – It’s impossible for me to hit the grocery store less than twice a week. I can’t imagine buying kilos of rice or flour at once. I buy the small size of everything and wonder why the hell I did that when I wake up to an empty coffee jar and I’m floating out in a bay, that’s a dinghy and bus ride away from any store…

Cruising is a real lifestyle. All around me are people who don’t work in the classical sense – as in, they do not get paid – but whose days are filled from morning to night with chores, jobs, projects. But the upsides are infinite. They travel, they party, they try new things. They sacrifice and compromise on stuff. Things. Irrelevant really, in the big scheme of things. They swim with turtles and sting rays and lie in hammocks under swaying palm trees any day of the week. They might have had no sleep on an overnight passage or a windy, stormy night in the anchorage, but by morning they’ve arrived in a new bay or wake up to a bright warm sunshine.

You DO NOT need a lot of money to be a cruiser. There are boats out here that cost anywhere from USD$20,000 to $2,000,000. People live on budgets of USD$500 to $5,000 a month!!!

What you need to become a cruiser is a leap of faith, a willingness to ‘let go’ – of things and of the everyday ties of family and friends. You need to love freedom and adventure and a few challenges around every corner. The lifestyle gives you lots of pleasure and a fair helping of frustration. Oh, and lots of rum. In the Caribbean that is.

You must not be a planner, as every plan we have, from when to do laundry, to which country to travel to next and when, CHANGES. On a whim. Or during a chat with other cruisers over a game of Mexican Train and a rum punch.

But contrary to what my blog would have you believe, you do NOT have to be an extrovert or big socializer. In fact, many cruisers keep completely to themselves. Some prefer the lapping of the waves to the company of boisterous boaties, and that is perfectly acceptable. Some of us partiers appreciate the down days too!

I never knew how important the weather could be. To be a cruiser, you must be obsessed with the weather. Or at least it helps. Cruisers discuss storms and wind and tropical waves daily. Many times a day. 

We look at this site... alot.

 But if the weather is right, you can find yourself on the full moon, in the evening, rafted up in your dinghy, with 6 or more others, with snacks and drinks, drifting through the anchorage, cajoling the boats as you go, and marveling at the bright glowing orb in the sky. It beats sitting in front of reruns on cable TV, I’ve realised. 

There's the full moon! Just right of the beer...

It’s better than coming home after a stressful day in an office, with recirculated air, feelin frustrated and stagnated… even if you do get caught in the rain or soaked in salt water on your little journey.

I’ve realized I’m in exactly the right spot, even if that spot moves constantly, and knowing there are a million spots to anchor that could take us the rest of our days to discover, I’m in!!!!! 

One of our favourite uninhabited anchorages - Anse La Roche, Carriacou

A little bump and grind with a single captain

As we sat on the warm sand, squinting against the setting sun, a perfect day coming to a peaceful close, the last catamaran before sunset was arriving in the reef protected Tobago Cays.

View from the beach in the channel - Tobago Cays

 We watched with amusement and a few sharp gasps, as the captain pulled the charter boat in quite close to the beach and rocky underwater reefs, and glided by the few anchored boats.

The Dutch speedo clad elderly guy on a small old monohull was not amused by the cowboy moves, and his gestures didn’t leave any doubt. Well, this catamaran, by now identified by it’s French flag, was not about to anchor right there. So, he pulled forward, and edged closer and closer to Shiloh.

My amusement dissolved into anger and worry pretty quickly and I turned to my captain to complain.

“He can’t stay there?! Is he dropping anchor?! No way! He’s like RIGHT beside us!”

We both remember our earlier experience in this very anchorage a few months back, where we awoke in the night to find our boat caught in a strange current pool, spinning in unnerving circles. I reminded JW of this, and how it would be more than slightly unnerving, should it happen with another 15 ton catamaran within arm’s reach of us.

As usual, my captain calmed my ragged nerves. Meanwhile, our perfect guest sat grinning, mounding a belly out of sand and patting the Buddha shaped hill. She by now, knows all about our banter.

Moments later, the passengers of the offending cat, pile into an ill-equipt little dinghy in their matching ‘60^th Birthday’ t-shirts, and the tiny, wiry little captain hops aboard, only to discover the dinghy motor dead. Luckily they were anchored a few feet from the beach, as they eventually had to row across, all manual style.

They beached, and lumbered out, one by one. The little captain heaved his dinghy onto the sand and headed directly for us.

In the glaring sun,we made out his small features, a match for his little frame, as he spoke; in broken English he told us he was a paid charter captain, he had come from Martinique, he lived like a monk in his little cabin and might be looking for a little action. In the night. We could only laugh.

JW asked him what the Dutch guy had said to him as he slid past and he only shrugged,

“I don’t know, he was somehow angry”.

Then he excused himself to meet Romeo, a local on the beach to organise supper for the guests, who were gathered by now, downing champagne from the bottle.

We got back to the boat, my anger waning after meeting the strange little captain, but went to sleep with one eye open. From our cabin porthole, his boat loomed too close, the hull blocking our view of the beach. And we slept.

The last photo at dusk, of our too close neighbor

 At 12 JW leaned over me to look out and within seconds he had leapt over me and was up the stairs. In that instant I knew this was going to be ‘one of those nights’.

Up on deck we stood in that alternate universe, moonlit, bright grey light, boats swirling, sailing back and forth across the channel on their anchor chains.

Our neighbor was up, all lights on, engines revving up. He’d realised he was practically on the beach and still moving in unpredictable directions.

He was so close to us, not fully in control, and the proximity of these two huge fiberglass beasts had me hopping.

“Hols, bring the torch” (flashlight for us North Americans) I hopped, dashed, adrenaline pulsing.

“What now? What is he going to do? What is he doing? Is he on the reef? Is he lifting anchor?!” These came out of my mouth in frantic stream. No answers came and that was fine. I just needed to express my concern and mounting panic.

We could only watch and stand ready. Ready for what?

Seconds later, with full engines, he plowed through the water directly toward Shiloh. My eyes, like saucers, trying to will him away by their very size. OMG!

“What is he doing?!!!!”

“Holdsworth, calm down. Get the fenders.”

I knew that command was not a good sign.

The French cat swung just past us into the channel, but his anchor chain was still in the water. JW headed to the front of the boat to watch him closely, while I scratched around in the front hatch for the fenders.

I looked up once, only to see his lights and that ominous white hull, moving not away but toward us. JW called out to him to reverse. Nothing. Something was wrong or he hadn’t heard.

As I struggled on my knees with the pile of junk that held our fenders captive below, my butt high in the air, I felt the crack thud.

Oh my God! He hit us!!!!!!!

My mind swam with visions of Shiloh’s front cabin filling with gushing seawater, as the ugly crack groaned against the force.

I finally got a fender free and threw it at JW who was trying to push away the other boat and wedge the fender between us. I was simply incredulous. Full of fear and rage. How could he have anchored right there?! Why didn’t we stop him earlier?

Finally, with captain and a couple of the male passengers on deck, they managed to maneuver away. Still, the boat hovered, and Shiloh moved around as well, with these strange currents.

JW peered over our side with the flashlight. No damage!

But then the captain called over, so calmly, politely:

“Excuse me, my friend, I’m sorry, but can you lift your anchor? It seems ours is caught in your chain”.

WHAT?! He cannot be serious. This sent my mind into another tyrade of hideous possible outcomes. Tangled chains means boats getting even closer and bumping inevitable. Disaster.

I ran down into the perfect guest’s cabin where our anchor windlass trip is, and found her awake, peering out at the action of the night. Not the type of action our captain had expected.

I quickly explained our dilemma and she followed me up to witness the fun and games.

For an eternity thereafter (or most likely 15 minutes), we stood with fenders in hand, engines on and ready, pacing back and forth on deck, watching this boat move in snaking circles around us, trying to get his tangled anchor chain up. I held my breath for more than half of those adrenaline soaked minutes.

And as the chain grinded and jerked, the noise finally came, followed by his visible anchor. He was free, and he had not been caught on Shiloh. For that instant I was filled with joy. I actually jumped up and pumped my hands in the air, giving him a victory symbol across the water. He nodded, pleased with himself, and headed out of the channel, to safer waters – where he should have anchored in the first place.

I looked around as we were propelled back and forth in the channel, now free to move, and noticed the lights were on in all our neighbors’ boats. No one slept as they watched powerless how mother nature toyed and played with them. By morning the channel was calm, we floated in a regular wind pattern, anchor in tact. Ready for another day in paradise.

A few days later, over one of Black Boy’s famous rum punches at Salt Water Bay’s gorgeous beach, a local captain explained that the tides do this for three days before and after every full moon. Over the years he had seen many boats smash and tangle in that very channel during those few days.

It had been a coincidence that we’d been there once before, and it had been sheer luck that we didn’t have more than a harmless bump with our neighboring clueless captain.