Pancakes not passports: southern hospitality for the maritime squatters

The captain’s lounge is an oasis. A sparsely furnished, brightly lit, air-conditioned haven, beyond which lies the wasteland of a boatyard.

Dust swirls down boat lined corridors in the furthest corners, where sailing dreams come to die. Up in the front where boats are in various stages of repair, muddy puddles create an obstacle course in the rough loose stone surface. Everything is a hazard. Multi-coloured extension cords criss-cross the ground like snakes playing Twister. Chemicals, paint fumes and fiberglass dust fill the stagnant humid air, mosquitos move in gangs, hiding in dark places and emerging as the sun sets. 

Our friend AlleyCat working on a new project in the yard

The only safe way to breathe in a boatyard!

Shiloh is here for some healing – replacement of her essential systems after the epic lightning strike. It takes time. There are insurance companies to deal with, surveyors, quotes, delays… For the crew it is not a pleasant visit. Nothing nice about clambering up and down a lean-to ladder to hobble across the yard for a shower or a pee. No fridge, no cooking in the mayhem of tools and wood shavings and the electronic graveyard strewn across all surfaces. By 7pm it’s 36 degrees celcius in the boat.

Shiloh's current mayhem

And this doesn't even consider the humidex factor!!!

But we are lucky. We are staying in a hotel by night. We can escape this industrial, miserable boat hospital and pretend we are tourists in St Augustine. Here to enjoy the history and the culture.

And culture we found. But not the type St Augustine hoped we’d find, with their upcoming 450^th year celebrations and connections to the king of Spain.

No, we found the meth ravaged pancake eaters and fall-down-drunk biker chicks of ‘Debby’s’. We just can't get our heads around it, but pancakes for supper? It's a thing. Actually it's a thaaaaang.

It’s attached to the hotel and after a long day ‘in the yard’ we couldn’t be bothered to venture further. Our friendly waitress seated us in a torn up forest green vinyl booth and presented us with menus. JW noted the hole in his seat and the cheap prices and asked me if this was perhaps a government subsidized place, “like a soup kitchen maybe?”

He ordered something smothered in pudding-brown gravy, with scoops of distinctly institutional looking mashed potato.  

I made the quintessential mistake in a restaurant where syrup is the condiment of choice… I ordered the healthy option. I was informed that salmon could only be ordered medium well due to health concerns. I should have known. A sad plate of fishy sawdust arrived with little rocky pebbles that passed for brown rice and a few barely formed, mushy broccoli florets.

But the food paled in comparison to the clientele and our waitress who endeared herself to us right away. Must have been JW’s accent. Exotic as it is…

In her lilting syrupy drawl, she told us her name – her mother so loved the southern belles. ‘Crimson O’Mara’ inserted between regular first and last names. JW asked if her passport had all those names on it, to which she grinned from ear to ear and exclaimed,

“Passport?! I ain’t so privileged to have a passport! Ain’t never been outta Florida!” For us maritime squatters who move fluidly through borders, it's unfathomable.

Crimson O’Mara with the beautiful green eyes and brown jagged teeth then shared with us her basic life story. Pregnant at 15, which led to 3 more of the same, so that now at 30 years old she is the mother of 4. Works 2 jobs, lives in a tiny 2 bdrm apartment with hubby, kids AND her mama. Mama gets $500 a month as pension and spends $300 of that on a storage unit. Mama has ‘champagne tastes and beer pockets’ though and once bought a block of brie cheese! Crimson was so angry she (insert drawl) “threw it clear across the room!”

She was real, raw, sliced open and served with grits. She was the stuff of fiction yet here she was in the flesh – red polyester uniform, hair net and all. When we were leaving she said she enjoyed us. I couldn’t tell her how much we cherished her. She was at once our entertainment, and she tugged at our heartstrings with her vulnerability.

Back at the hotel the next morning “housekeeping!” rang out in a low husky voice. Immediately after that, two scrawny sickly pale guys, backward caps and sagging pants, burst in the door. All bushy eyebrowed and surly scowls, they scurried back out as quickly. We weren’t being robbed, though even after a few days of meeting our housekeeping crew in the mornings, I’m convinced the hotel is part of some ex-convict rehabilitation program.

We’ve changed hotels now, and restaurants too. But the Americans we meet are the same. From the Walmartians and Home Depot greeters to the fellow sailors and boatyard staff, they are all open and genuine, helpful and kind.We were even invited to speak (at a bar of course!) about our recent lightning strike by the local cruising sailors.

JW giving his talk on lightning

We are entertained despite our predicament. We are overfed if not well fed. We are missing life at sea but we are living a whole new and unexpected adventure.

They say a hurricane is coming now. We will cross all our fingers and toes that it swings offshore, but we may find ourselves amongst our new Floridian family, watching it hit from the windows of our temporary oasis.

The Rat, the Thief and the Police

There was no way of knowing when I woke yesterday morning, sitting in the cockpit with coffee in hand, that somewhere around midnight I’d be in the front seat of a police cruiser, filling out a victim’s report.

No way of guessing at all that while we strolled the sunny, family-clad beaches of Daytona in the afternoon, stopping for frosty draft beers, that somewhere near our anchorage roamed an unstable, criminal, high on drugs, whose life would soon clash with ours.

While we watched from below as ‘junior captain’ and ‘Al of Alley Cat’ were projected into the air on a massive human sling shot, screaming as they were flung above buildings and back down again in stomach churning seconds, the meth addict, beads of sweat on his clammy brow, was desperately climbing along the docks from boat to boat, back at the Halifax Harbor Marina in search of something to help him secure his next hit. 

Suspecting nothing, we sat in Hog Heaven as darkness fell across Daytona, licking gooey barbecue sauce fingers after gobbling up the most melt-in-your-mouth, fall-off-the-bone baby back ribs. Meanwhile a criminal had been reported, identified and chased from the marina to the next lot where he had stolen the wallet of a hobie cat sailor. Two police cars sped through the city streets, lights flashing, sirens blaring.

Across the city, we strolled again, the curio shops enticing us with brightly dressed mannequins all red, white and blue for the upcoming July 4^th, their lights and cool air calling us in as we digested our delicious supper and headed toward the parking lot. My phone lay dormant in my bag, numerous unread messages on my facebook account from an officer of the Daytona Police Force, telling a tale we wouldn’t have believed had we read it…  

But we didn’t, as it were, and as we arrived back to Shiloh in the dark I was distracted by a four legged critter, a rodent actually, specifically a RAT - that had swum from shore and managed to pull himself up onto our sugar scoop (back step). No way of knowing he was not the first intruder of the night. He scurried back and forth, shocked by my high pitched scream and desperate to escape. Eventually he made the huge jumps up the steps and disappeared somewhere on board.

We all clambered aboard, a dinghy oar in hand, ready to whack-a-rat but immediately it became apparent something else was not right. Our key was missing from it’s hiding place. The engine kill switches were pulled out and the ignition keys which we never remove were hanging down. Then we started to notice other things, like the steering wheel which was set at 90 degrees – when we always leave it centered. And then there were the numerous muddy footprints around the cockpit.

The rat became the least of our worries as we then knew someone had been on board and had tampered with the engines. And since we hadn’t dragged, we knew it was not a helpful Samaritan… ‘Junior captain’ volunteered to climb inside through his cabin hatch (since we had no keys for the front door), and check if the intruder was still onboard. He swept the place and declared that we were alone.

Once inside we noticed the most mysterious thing of all. Our nav table, laden with ipads and computers, had been cleaned off and all the gadgets set aside – not stolen! Someone had rummaged through our papers and had left a few on top. But nothing was missing.

Scratching our heads we figured we should call someone and report this, since our keys were gone and the intruder would know where to come back! We called the coast guard who called the police.

An hour later it was well past midnight and we were on shore, surrounded by police cars and a jovial group of officers who began to explain what had happened in our absence.

The ‘suspect’ had apparently been cornered after stealing someone’s wallet and he had jumped into the mud brown waters, heading straight toward Shiloh.

Once aboard he seemed to find our keys pretty quickly – time to change that hiding place! He had started the engines and tried to take off with the boat. Only in his drugged out state and most likely exhaustion from the long swim, he failed to realise he would need to get the anchor up. But the windlass trip was off and the anchor was buried in thick black mud…

Meanwhile the shore police had called the boat police and soon Shiloh was hosting a bunch of guys with guns in uniform along with a violent criminal. Fun times! And we missed it all.

The police had tried to find some way of contacting us and had gone through the documents hoping to find a phone number. Instead they found our boat cards with my blog url and they’d gone to my facebook page. So by the time we met, they knew all about our journey and how unimpressed we’d been with Titusville and Cocoa!!

They asked us to press charges and explained that the suspect was a repeat offender who would be charged with the attempted theft of our vessel. I’m suspecting this will be a serious charge.

They assured us we didn’t have to ‘stick around’ to testify or anything in person but that we would be contacted by the district attorney. We filled out the victim’s statement report and were given a case number.

And then we chatted about the nice towns further north where one of the officers was about to take his annual holiday. We got his business card and said we hoped to meet him up there on the water somewhere. We pet his German trained dog and headed back, exhausted and a bit in shock, to Shiloh.

Out of all this, what we are left with is a sincere appreciation and respect for the intelligence and initiative of the law enforcement. From our arrival in the US where customs and immigration officials came down to a fuel dock to meet us and check us in, to the level of professionalism of the officers last night, I have to say we are pleasantly surprised and grateful.

It’s not every police force that would have tried finding us through facebook or a blog! Not many officers who would have returned to the scene on the hour until they found us arriving back – eager to hand us back our keys and assure us that though something awful had happened, they had it under control.

______

And somewhere this morning in a dim cell sits a suspect. Salt caked clothes and perhaps a few bruises from his last attempt to resist arrest, coming down hard from his last high for a while. He’s got a lot to think about. He’s being charged with trying to steal our boat. Our lives crossed paths in such a violent and tragic way and yet we will never know him or his story. An American story.

Meanwhile we can only hope the rat fell overboard. We head onward, winding our way up the narrow channel that is the ICW, flanked on both sides with homes and boats, trailer parks and stretches of marsh and bush. 

We look forward to more American stories, hopefully positive ones, and despite their efficiency, less dealings with the authorities.