Graceful turtle RIP

Lazy jazz wafts through the thick humid air, the immense bearded lady in her stained apron sits in front of me, frowning at her Blackberry. Beads of sweat trickle down her chins into the orange t-shirt that stretches beyond it’s capabilities, around her dense shining skin. She is on a break from the steaming kitchen, like me she is basking in what little breeze teases as it flutters by.

I’m at the Lazy Turtle, a French run pizzeria on the tiny island of Carricou. I’m the only one here, using the free and fast Internet. Pastel painted wooden chairs are lined up in rows at the empty tables, awaiting this evening’s crowd of cruisers and holiday makers. Fresh coconuts are on offer - the seller's sharp machete slicing through the hard shell, spilling the fresh, sweet juice and handing the ready made cup to eager hands and lips. The season has begun, the hurricanes are hopefully all gone and the tourists are coming back.

Today is our last day in this bay. There are many ‘lasts’ lately, but this lifestyle has taught me to never say never. We might be back, we might not leave. Something might need fixing on the boat; we might be invited to another social event. Life is fluid.

Life is relaxed. The laid back beats are backed by the surf, lapping the beach below me. A crowd of divers has just arrived next door, eager to head off to the reefs, alive with coral and multi coloured fish.

The islands are paradise.

But there is another side, as with everything. Even paradise has an ugly underbelly.

As much as we cruisers pass through these places with rich cultures and customs, there are things that happen that we find difficult to accept. Hard to witness. Things that have happened for centuries that rub us with the coarse sand of cultural difference. Of taboo. Our righteous backbone stands straight up and urges us to do something.

Many areas in the islands have been designated as marine reserves, protecting the wildlife that is in danger of extinction; that is so precious to those of us who have not grown up with this exotic flora and fauna at our fingertips.

However, not everyone sees these animals as sacred, precious, as cows in India.

Once when I was living in Ghana I showed my local friends a photo I’d taken in Houston Texas, of an advert for taking photos of your pet with Santa Claus. This concept was absurd, frivolous, bizarre. It was cultural. Dogs and cats are not considered members of the family in Ghana. In some areas, cats are a savoured delicacy. They are food.

It’s with this understanding that we try to accept what we saw the other day on a stroll through town.

The other side of paradise is that conservationism is not universal. Turtles to some are food.

And we try to compute this, when remembering our days of swimming alongside these gentle, valiant creatures in the Tobago Cays, marveling at their grace and swiftness in the water.

We try to view the islands with a sense of balance. Of good and bad, light and darkness. We walk on, but our knees are a bit weak. Something tugs at us, something feels not right with the universe. There are so many questions, but no good answers.

Some days are harder than others to face.

Family Vacation - part 2

I’m ravenously downloading movies using the high speed Internet at Secret Harbour marina. I’ve got a cappuccino in hand and an afternoon of relaxation ahead, after the busy weeks we’ve had.

We might currently be stranded here, in this bay, while Shiloh sits on anchor around the corner at Hog island. Our dinghy motor is not behaving, stopped spitting water and instead gasped out a lot of smoke as we arrived here a while ago. Not sure she’ll make it back as it seems we have a clogged filter/impeller. But that is another story, for another day. I’m confident it will pan out into a blog post in the next few days.

For now, I’m looking back on the week that was, with our enthusiastic guests onboard, and lots of fun and games with mother nature out at sea.

We arrived in Tobago Cays through a washing machine of waves and were finally able to make good on our promise to JW’s neice, that she would swim with turtles. She devoured every minute of what the aqua wonderland had to offer and we barely saw her little face without a snorkel suctioned to it. She collected shells, marveled at the iguanas and played with starfish.

Swimming with the turtles

 As for her big brother, he named himself dinghy captain from day one, and if he was not pranking us with mayday calls on the two way radio, he was buzzing around on the rubber speed machine, or taxiing us around. Dad, the avid fisherman tried his best and caught a few small ones but the big dorados and albacore tunas evaded us. 

 Luckily there was local rum to soothe the disappointment. Mom took some well deserved moments of quiet reading time and joined in for some great snorkeling as well. Basically a fun time was had by all.

On the other hand, captain JW and I faced some weather phenomenon that led to at least a couple of sleepless nights. On the first, I awoke in our normally protected anchorage in the Cays, to find Shiloh facing away from the anchor and getting dangerously close to the beach. I woke JW and we observed the swirling pool we found the boat in. The current was pushing us toward the wind and the result was a spinning boat. We upped the anchor and let it settle just outside the strange area, but alas we were almost touching the stony reef behind us and at midnight we tried anchoring again. This time we moved a bit further into the channel and fought the current for a while until we gave up and went back down to bed.

When we left the Cays and checked out of St. Vincent and the Grenadines at Union Island, we decided to skip checking in at Carriacou and find a desolate bay for the night, before heading straight back to Grenada. We rounded the southern tip of Carriacou and found White Island, a gorgeous sand bank lined with palm trees, but as we came closer, it became obvious that the waves were far to rough to anchor. Just behind, there was a small island called Saline, with a slightly more protected bay, and we decided to check it out before heading further south to Isle de Ronde. A French catamaran was out there in the waves with us, and they headed in right in front of us. There was room for a boat and a half in the tiny bay, but it was calmer. As we decided whether to move on or stay the night, our fisherman realised his eager line had caught something big alright – our propeller! So, we had to hold still in the swell, now realising how close we were to the reefs, while he dived down to get it all untangled. The boat moved further out into the waves and he struggled, coming up looking like a punk rocker with our blue anti-fouling paint all over his head. He had also gotten a few scrapes from the increasing barnacle population under the boat, and we decided we should get back into the relative protection of the bay and anchor so he could work at it properly.

So, with one engine we motored toward the French Cat and dropped anchor in the clear shallow water, falling back in crystal blue water, mindful of the coral, and rocks that lined the beach and the edge of the island behind us.

A view of Shiloh from the Saline Island beach, dinghy captain in the foreground, French Cat further ahead

 The fishing line was removed and we all agreed the island was too quaint to leave. We explored the water, finding a wealth of bright coloured fish below the surface. And along the beach, an old fort, an abandoned wooden cottage, the marked grave of Patrick John who died in 1959, surrounded by conch shells, and a tipped over sign saying NO TRESPASSING.

Patrick John's tombstone

 We retreated to the boat, but JW kept looking back at that reef, so close. He rigged up a system to mark the danger point in the water, something involving a lifejacket, a waterproof light and a rope with a big rock attached. The whole thing was eventually abandoned and we had a relaxed drink and supper and headed to bed early. The plan was that the two men would get up early and we’d start back toward Grenada at 5 am.

But as it goes, the wind picked up considerably about 11pm, and JW was up, monitoring. Our anchor drag alarm is not a precise tool, and it would warn us we had moved about the time we would be upon the reef. And so it was that JW stayed up the whole night, as the wind beat us harshly.

The anchor did hold though, and luckily it was the same for the French Cat in front of us, or we’d have had them upon us in seconds as well.

I guess JW was tired of watching and upped anchor at 4am. We then faced a mean current and slamming side-on waves for a good 2.5 hours. I lie awake in the cabin below, wasting my chance to sleep in, with the violent slapping Shiloh was enduring.

I emerged at 7am as we were reaching the top tip of Grenada and one sight of my captain pulled at my heartstrings. He was beyond exhausted.

He asked me to take over at the helm (now that we were in calm seas, protected in the lee of the island), and stumbled by me to get an hour or two of sleep.

A little while later his sis came up from her cabin with a dry mouth full of toothpaste and managed to explain that there was no water. But we had done so well with water conservation?! Everyone had barely showered?! But we checked a few taps and indeed it was dry.

Turns out the shower pipe at the back of the boat had burst and we’d lost over 300 litres of water, directly into our bilges. So, Shiloh made the final leg of the trip waterlogged, and with a crew of morning breath.

And somewhere around 10am we woke our captain and made a smooth entry to Port Louis marina, pulled up alongside, desperate for hot showers, a swim in the pool and some cool cocktails.

And by the next morning our guests had gone, and we made loose plans to do this again. Then we set to the task of cleaning. Luckily the mountains of salty towels and sheets were laundered by the marina and we pumped out all the water.

By 5pm we’d done everything and collapsed into the pool.

Are we ready for chartering? I decided if we ever did it, we’d only offer one week a month, the other three would be for turn over and recooperation!

Water water everywhere...

  What kind of person would complain about temporary bowel problems when they are sitting in paradise? Crystal clear waters, swimming pool blue, navy patches in the distance, fluffy clouds in the robin’s egg blue sky beyond. Turtles bob up and down past the boat, along with elegant sting rays, smoothly cutting through the water with their black slick cape wings.

 Well yesterday was a write off. There I lay, in a wooden cabin, turquoise bedsheets no substitute for what beckoned through the cabin window. Watching old episodes of House at noon as the sun swapped with tiny rain squalls through the hatch above my head.

I couldn’t move more than a few feet from the head (toilet).

Last night, as JW and I both leapt up and headed to a head each, we figured we better deduce the cause of our suffering.

Boat life involves a lot of conservation and compromise. One of the taken for granted amenities is water. Not the endless ocean around us, but the safe potable kind.

A few bays ago, (well bays and days ago) in a place aptly called Saline Bay, we found a cheap source of water to fill our jugs. Precisely it was free. An abandoned dock had a hose and water pressure. We couldn’t believe our luck. We hauled all our 20 and 25 litre jugs back and forth a few times and replenished our onboard tank.

But then we realised that it was somewhat contaminated. It tasted a bit salty. We decided to use it only for washing bodies, clothes, dishes.

And then days went by, and in the Tobago Cays, an uninhabited paradise that is also a nature reserve, where you must store your rubbish bags onboard and really dig into your stored foods (had you provisioned properly), we forgot the golden water rule.

I was making tea, coffee, boiling noodles and potatoes all in the contaminated water.

And then it all caught up to me. And then JW.

So a day of cream crackers, flat coke, gingerale, teaspoons of honey, plain yogurt (all suggestions courtesy of Google results), and we’re both up and ready once more.

Ready to acknowledge both how fragile we are as humans, and how lucky we are as individuals. Lucky to be experiencing a little patch of this earth that has kept it’s beauty intact. Where flounder fish with both eyes on one side of their bodies, line the white sand, a testament to evolution, and iguanas prowl the little islands, their armour reminiscent of prehistoric ages.

 Where the children today have decided to make floating rafts on the beach with only natural materials, and there is not a television or video game in sight or mind.

I am off to witness turtles with their kaleidoscope shells, snacking on bits of seagrass on the shallow seabed and then gliding swiftly up for air, unbothered by the clunky goggled swimmers around them. 

 I will handwash the laundry and dump our disturbingly accumulating garbage bags another day, in another place.

And I will respect the water in all it’s forms and acknowledge what it does for us every day.