When your home is your boat

Rainbow coloured bottles of nail polish lie on their sides in the cabin, rolling around like bright felled soldiers in anguish.

Elsewhere in the front cabin, onion skins cover the surfaces like a vegetable confetti from a wild party. The onions themselves lie around the floor and bed like drunkards on the morning after. Plastic wine glasses line the hallway.

Across in the other hull the carnage is also evident.  In the tiny head (washroom), bottles of shampoo, hurled from their high shelf perch, lie bleeding sticky bubbly pink into the drain.

It’s been a rough day at sea. Everything has been tossed and slammed and kicked around by some grudge filled side-on waves. But Shiloh has survived. Despite the casualties around the cabins, Shiloh has excelled. Despite the all consuming groans of wood on fiberglass inside, she showed a brave face. She sailed today, all day, fast and furious. Like a dance with the wind, she came up to meet each wave, each gust of wind, and she pushed forward, she sailed. Beautifully.

Unlike her inhabitants, the awkward bulls in the china shop, grasping each surface as we passed, trying to keep our composure, our balance against the wishes of the forces around us.

It was our first sail after my trip to Canada, and it was a baptism by fire in many ways. It reacquainted me with all the good and the bad that is sailing life. Once we reached the lee of Great Abaco Island, nine long hours after leaving the shores of Nassau, the waves were tamed, the wind eased off and the conditions were much more pleasant for us ‘inhabitants’. Shiloh on the other hand, preferred the challenge of a big sea and a beam reach.

A day before our little journey, we’d played host to some ladies from Canada. A day on a boat. It was a detour for them, from a short holiday to Atlantis. For us it was a chance to imagine what it might be like to charter the boat. It was exhilarating, it was fun to be host. Champagne and OJ with snacks, a short trip to a pretty little island out of the hectic Nassau port for snorkeling and swimming. 

It was so different from the reality of our day to day life on the boat. I’ve got a lot of respect for our friends who charter for weeks at a time. Mike and Muffy on Extasea and Mike and Rebecca who did the same on One Love for two years. When your maritime home, with all it’s inherent problems (engine issues, limited water supply, incessant mold growth, limited power etc etc), becomes the hotel for 6 or 8 people for a week full time, that must be intense. Meals, snacks, drinks, towels, entertainment. Full time! Hats off to the charterers.

For us the sacrifices are far more abstract. When you’ve made the choice to ‘live the dream’ you make some other choices by default. When your first grand baby is born, you are thousands of miles away. Maybe without phone or internet. Maybe you are facing storms or just big waves. You are preoccupied. Your life is moving along on a very different path.

When your boy graduates from the relative security of college and his last faction of childhood, you can fly across a continent for only a short time to see him through, to watch him take off. But then you must return to the sea, because you know that he has his own life to live and you still have yours. Your sails are still full and they are blowing you once again, somewhere else.

But us cruisers are still parents. We still ache and worry for them. We still look at a photo of them with baby fat and glistening innocent eyes, and tears well in our salty eyes. We might be on a thousand mile journey to an uninhabited island in a vast ocean, or fighting a rusty washing machine in some city in the developing world, but we will never leave the first path we travelled. The path of never ending love for our children.

We are just different. We crave adventure to a fault. We don’t mind hand pumping our toilets. We conserve water so we can go for an extra week without visiting a city. And we get excited when our boat sails. No engines. All sails up. That feeling when the wind works with you and the power in the silence. Even if it means cleaning the aftermath in the cabins later.

Beaches Breezes and Fox Town Feeds Us

We’re in Fox Town only there are no foxes here, neither the animal or urban dictionary type.

Fox Town has a population of just over 200 people. It has a church (of course), and a restaurant/town bar called Da Valley with it’s own dock. And one table.

Next door there is a Shell station which consists of two ancient pumps next to the road. No building, no shelter per say. But the fuel hose reaches all the way down to the dock to serve the few local speed boats.

There is no bank or ATM for 60 miles.

There are three stores. These are not stores in the traditional sense. There are no signboards or overhead fluorescent lights. Each store is the front room of a house with one domestic fridge and two or three hand crafted wooden shelves displaying whatever they have. 

Yesterday we arrived and scrambled to shore to shop!  Between the three stores we were able to get one sweet potato (last one in town!), a dozen eggs, two tomatoes, a green pepper that was only half rotting, and a head of lettuce. A head of lettuce!

No cabbage or fresh milk or salami or dark chocolate (haha!!), or anything much else for that matter. Judy of Da Valley, drives the 80 miles down to Marsh Harbour randomly, and comes back with items to sell in the shops. No one can tell what day or week she might go. 

Judy of Da Valley

Unless you are a desperate clan of cruisers who arrive on the verge of scurvy, having spent the better part of two weeks without a fresh vegetable, and who beg, I mean inquire, as to when she would go next and would she entertain the idea of taking our shopping lists. It’s either that or sail two days through some tricky shallows and come all the way back…

And as it goes, Judy said yes!!! So we wait until Monday when she will go and bring us some food. And hence we find ourselves anchored in Fox Town on a Sunday. Nothing is open but the church, so there’s no point going to shore.

Since the local fishermen feed the black tip sharks in this bay, there will be no swimming either. 

We have been spoiled by walks and leisurely swims on beaches and nightly braais (barbecues) on said beaches for the past two weeks. 

We visited Allen's Pensacola Cay which has bushes and beaches and a Hilton sign painted on a shack. It has a few trails that lead to huge trees, littered with boater's names and dates of visiting. Those who'd come before us. And so we set to making our own sign to leave a legacy of plastic beads and good vibes. While our friends and family afar worked at desks, we worked on our sign and we hung it with pride.

And then that task was completed and the beaches had all been walked and inhaled and photographed. 

We haven’t been to an island with more than 6 people as it’s population. It’s been refreshing and special and peaceful.

But we crave a bit of civilization after a while. And even a burger. Last night at Da Valley we sat at the one table and gasped and moaned in gastronomic ecstacy as we gobbled down burgers and fries. And yes, they are NOT on our diet but every rule has been thrown out the window as we emerge from the beachy wilderness into the cosmopolitan metropolis of Fox Town.

Fun times with friends at Da Valley

Today, with no agenda, we’ll probably take the dinghies out in search of a deserted beach…

Life aboard - day 1,100

My captain is on the foredeck on his knees, giving mouth to mouth to a giant blow up canoe. I’m in the galley with soapy hands, scrubbing the breakfast dishes, smiling at the spectacle.

It’s a Saturday morning but it could just as easily be any day. Morning is slipping into afternoon. Hours ago we decided we’d ‘get those canoes out’ and go for a paddle in this idyllic setting. And as it goes, ‘getting out those canoes’ morphed into half a day of digging, dismantling, climbing into tight, hot, extremely awkward spaces and rearranging everything from bicycles to big rubber fenders and bags of winter clothes. Deep down in the bowels of our boat. I faired well, coming out of it with spots of bike grease and only a few bruises.

Now we’re on the water, managed to get into the canoes without capsizing which in my book is an accomplishment. If we stop now I’ll still be happy. But no, we follow our buddies, 4 floating canoes, through the anchored boats and toward the mangroves ahead. I’m soaked minutes in, maybe I don’t quite get this rhythm with the oars, but each time I lift and dip I get a shower…

Nevertheless I am out here, doing this cool, exercise-eey type thing, in touch with nature and all that. We need a photo! “John! Take a picture!” Captain is prepared. Gets the waterproof camera out of the canoe’s dry compartment. And… and… oh shit. Battery is dead. So no pictures then. No proof I actually did this.

And then Al who’s in the lead, shouts back that he’s aground. Its low tide and if we want to go across to the beach – way over there – we’ll have to get out and pull our vessels through this shallow patch. Ok I think, no problem.

Wrong. Problem! As my oars touch ground instead of clear water and I step out to pull, my feet sink into a sludge stew of hot mud, rough long sea grass and chunks of mysterious under water monsters. I have no idea what each step will bring my feet in contact with. I could kill myself for forgetting my shoes. I want to go back. I’m fine with it. I’ve seen lots of beaches. I’ve had my exercise.

But no, everyone insists we carry on, and apparently my groans and yelps are amusing.

I’m the third one through this swamp nightmare. The others are ahead and behind me and I have no choice. And then, just as I’m getting to the end of it, where I can see smooth, clean sandy bottom ahead, I take a step and my foot sinks deep in the mud, right onto an evil spiked sea urchin, and I scream – loud – jumping forward, onto yet another one! This time I jump right into my canoe. I don’t care, I’ll spend the day beached right here in the safety of my canoe!

Captain can hardly stop laughing as he comes through and tugs me along, clung to my canoe, two feet further and we are out of it. I had no lasting injuries - except my dignity – so we carried on, got to the beach and walked through the glorious powder sand, around to the ocean side. Found some warm pools to lounge in between the rough rocks and reconsidered how rough my life was.

Now it’s evening, having survived the day. We have an early supper and head over to the Alley Cats for a pre-‘beach-bonfire-full-moon-party’ drink. Elsewhere it’s Easter weekend. Children will be searching for eggs and adults will be gathering to feast. Many will be in church. We will be on the beach, fending off biting no-see-um bugs, sipping local rum, meeting fellow cruisers over the flickering light of the bonfire. Easter will be a far off concept.

We will watch the rising of the blood red moon, in a clear sky, from Manjack Cay in the Bahamas. Today our home, tomorrow a wonderful memory. 

 

The Devil made me do it - surviving paradise

All the bravado of the day before has vanished along with the weather prediction of calm seas, low winds and clear skies.

We are about to navigate The Devil’s Backbone – an aptly named 8 mile route along the northern coast of Eleuthera. 

Eleuthera, the island that got it’s name from the 70 Eleutherian puritans, first from England and then Bermuda, who crashed into this set of reefs in 1609 and colonized the little island, living in a huge cave for years along the Devil’s Backbone, where they lost the ship and all supplies.

We had met this community 400 years later, the same 5 families whose names can be traced back directly, on the tiny island of Spanish Wells. 2 miles long. Populated now by 1500 people, mostly white even here in the middle of the Bahamas. Mostly church going folk whose accent can apparently also be traced back to their forefathers. We were intrigued by this little place where the all ages school loses it’s male pupils at the age of 14 when they join the tradition of lobster fishermen, making between $80,000 and $350,000 annually. 

We marveled at how the pristine beachfront is unoccupied. No beach bars, no hotels, no holiday making at all. This community are ‘god-fearing’ and simple. But they have money. Lots of it. The largest exporter of seafood in the Bahamas. And it is quaint. The Pinders own everything. And Bandit will rent you a mooring ball. But we’d been there for days now. Time for a change.

We want to visit the exclusive Harbour Island – land of the rich and famous. The island where mega yachts are routinely brought through by hired local captains like Bandit with lifetime’s worth of knowledge about the coral obstacle course along this treacherous path.

“I hope you’ve got a pilot to lead you through!” we heard from many well meaning friends and boaters as we sipped well poured rum-n’-cokes at Happy Hour (at the Shipdeck – the island’s only true bar) the night before. Ha! Us? No problem, we can do this.

Turns out the bravery was somewhat rum induced and even more misdirected.

When we woke the next morning, the sky was riddled with clouds. Hmmm. That means low visibility. Or rather it means you can’t see the coral heads under water that could shred the bottom of your boat to pieces.

Then we decided to carry on with the plan anyway. And tried to lift the anchor. It’s something we’ve done probably 1000 times. But not today. It wasn’t budging. Something was stuck on it. Holding it down. It was a sign. But we ignored that too and spent the better part of 30 minutes fighting with the engines and dragging Shiloh around in circles as the chain groaned and fought back, making us lurch forward and threatening to tug the windlass right out of the boat. And then suddenly we had won this particular battle, and the chain came up, and we were off.

With all our electronics charged up and ready, we headed out of the safety of the bay and out around the corner. Within minutes we realised that our two chart plotters (the non verbal GPS mainstays of modern boating navigation) did not agree. One of them would have us sailing along a carefully mapped out line through the dangers, while the other showed that if we followed that path, we’d be on top of the coral heads.

Which to trust? Can’t see anything in the water. And then the small non-threatening clouds gathered together and halfway along became a freak storm. The skies along the coast were deep fuzzy grey. The ocean responded as she does, waves rising to meet the shore. And there we were in the middle of this ominous dance, but a fly in the soup, about to be swatted away.

We were a few feet away from the waves that broke with thundering vigour, onto the rocks and what lie ahead was a stretch of this devilish spine that would have us only feet from the actual shore. With possibly inaccurate charts to guide us. And a storm overhead.

And so, halfway up the spine we made the most last minute, boat jerking decision to veer away, through a clear patch outward, to the ocean.

And there we were, two catamarans escaping the Devil, motoring against the coming waves, our buddy boat doing a disappearing act between the massive swells.

And we stayed like this, enduring the extra 10 miles or two hours of ocean sailing that would take us out and around Harbour Island.

Alley Cat fought and caught a huge fish. A strange grey creature that was subdued while the boats undulated along. At least we would have fish for supper!

We would just come through the inlet below the island. Fillet the fish there. Go for Happy Hour somewhere… No problem.

Only what happens after a storm? The surge through a narrow inlet is agitated. It wants more. It throws white foamy waves through the break in the rocks. And we chose then to approach.

I could see it, just a mile away through the violent waves at the mouth, it was calm turquoise shallow water. It beckoned. So tranquil in there!

But the reality as we approached was that as each mounting wave grabbed us, Shiloh was lifted at the back, high! – we slid down the wave at 10 knots and fell into the lull between. And again! Meanwhile on both sides of us the waves crashed onto rocks, threatening to smash them to pieces. 

But the rocks survived, and as we came down our 10^th surfing wave we found we’d also survived. Dumped into a big flat basin of blue. Clear clear water and sunshine everywhere. The storm? Gone. No trace.

We motored in awe to an approved anchorage and Alley filleted his fish. Two hours later we were on a dock.

“What a day!” we said.

“Well at least we’ve got a fresh gorgeous fish fillet for supper!” we said.

And then we asked the fishermen and the locals.

Turns out the mysterious fish was an Amberjack. At worst it is poisonous. Best case scenario they carry worms and the dreaded disease Ciguatera. Hmmm.

So, fillets overboard then.

By that time we needed a drink. And so apparently did the couples who are chartering Moonraker, a 165 ft mega yacht for $217,000 a week. We nodded across the tables in a friendly display of ‘cheers!’.

As we choked on the food prices on the menu, in this town of the rich and richer, we decided to share a basket of sweet potatoes. Maybe they had caviar.

When we realised that each of our rum drinks cost more than a whole bottle of Bahamian rum we concluded that one pays for hobnobbing…

We went home with no fish to eat. But we’d survived another day in paradise.

Turquoise is a state of mind

The silence is golden. Well it’s pure turquoise actually, pierced only by the tiny far off songs of birds. The boat is still. The air is still. It’s Saturday morning in an unnamed bay on the lee shore of Eleuthera. Shiloh’s anchor is perched and dug in only slightly on a huge undersea rock. For now it’s holding and all is calm.

Yesterday we arrived here and familiarized ourselves with the unyielding inhospitable coral dotted shale that poses as soft sand. In squalls we tried and tried to drop anchor but found it only bounced and dragged along the surface. At the end of our patience the anchor suddenly held. Hard. I dived the clear cool water to confirm it was in. Barely. We prayed for low winds.

We’ve got that. Sweat trickles down my temples. It’s 9 am.

Last night we navigated the rocky unwelcoming shore, leaping up on green slime,  pants wet, shoes thrown ashore, while the boys tried to keep the dinghy from being chewed by the rocks from below. Then they tied it out and waded in. A cruiser’s arrival to the party.

Up the hill at the Buttonwood Reserve, we met the wedding party and the blow up doll from the previous night’s stag. Given our own box of wine and red solo cups, started the night off right.

Music, languages from around the world. Noise. After a golf cart ride across the private undeveloped lands and a visit to the ocean side we arrived back and joined the school bus. Lots more noise.

As we danced in the streets and digested chicken and rice (welcome back to the islands!), I pondered what it meant to be here. From Miami it’s been a two week journey. Ten hour sailing days broken by days of engine repair and frustration, grocery shopping, laundry and a bit of rest. It’s typical. Makes a quick flight sound like a piece of cake. 

Engine repairs in exotic places

Chub Cay Club - a stop en route

The exotic places...

Finding a beer at a local bar - Chub Cay

But this is not a ‘trip’. Not in that ‘get-away-or-to-an-event’ kind of way.

Last night we were explaining our ‘lifestyle’ to some American landlubbers holidaying at the fish fry. They were very curious and animated and said they’d love to do the same ‘one day’. Then as they left us they said “Enjoy your trip!”. Oh well. It’s difficult to find a point of reference. What we do is odd. It doesn’t fit in a box. It doesn’t follow the prescribed life of work - get paid – get a well deserved holiday – go back to work. We’ve been out here three years now. When will our ‘trip’ become something else?

It’s true that it’s very difficult to make plans. This wedding has been a destination, a deadline looming for weeks and because the weather is our master and commander, we are helpless in a way land lubbers couldn’t possibly understand. We are now less than 200 miles from Miami but it has taken two full weeks and with that life experiences, good and bad.

But we are back in the Bahamas. And that means turquoise. And that makes me happy.

Current Cut - pushing against 5 knots of current through a narrow cut -and THIS view

Did I mention turquoise?

Tomorrow we will be at a barefoot wedding on the beach. We will sleep on clear water and count the coral heads below us under the full moon. We might wake to gale force winds and have to reanchor in the dark, in rain, after arriving back from an all day party. These things are sobering and at all times possible. But mornings like this make it all worthwhile.

The silence is golden. No city sounds, no rush to be anywhere. No slush and sleet and soul sucking cold. As the sweat trickles down my spine. Turquoise. YES.

Paradigm shifts and ocean drifts

Stopping for a coffee at any time in any place; pushing through the capitalist octopus of limbs inside, reaching the registers and the underpaid baristas, contrived terminology, over-priced products of Starbucks and it’s imitators.

Fresh milk.

$9.99 a day rental cars

Cars.

Friendly efficient waiters at restaurants

Restaurants.

$1 stores

Stores.

These are some of the things I will miss when we set sail and leave the USA behind us. It’s a count down now in days. A simple 40 mile crossing to Bimini, but a paradigm shift in many ways.

For the past six months we have been observing, indulging, following, frolicking, partying to the tune of America’s drummers. We have sacrificed swimming, snorkeling, solitude for all of this. Glamour, glut, buy-one-get-one.

It’s so easy, being from such a country, to fall into the routine of surplus and safety. Where all your needs will be met. Where you can demand what you want and have the right to receive it. If I’d never ventured away, I’d probably question why anyone would ever want to leave that. But we have, and so we are now members of the global wanderers, maritime squatters, compelled in some way to keep moving, even when there is so much we’d be leaving behind. So much to do, so much to buy. So much of everything really.

But we’ve spent all our money now. We have new TVs, full freezers, matching towel sets. It’s time to go. Back to the quiet beaches and jaw dropping sunsets that mark the days and nights of life in the Bahamas and beyond. Back to the parts of the world where the US coast guard and Towboat US will not be waiting around every corner to help. Where we must judge the weather and maintain our engines and take care of ourselves.

Time to pack away the thick denims and heavy soled shoes. My toes long for cool sand and the hunter in me longs to find sea shells instead of bargains now.

The oil and the filters have been changed and the boat survived. Oil smudges notwithstanding.

Our charts are up-to-date and will hopefully keep us from running aground in the Bahama shallows.

The sails are in tact. The chain has perhaps another year before it will crumble into a rusty pile of salt induced oblivion.

So, no reasons left not to leave.

We’ve visited all the friends, pet the manatees, seen the alligators, partied in the coolest places, and danced to ‘Troprock’ with the Parrotheads. 

This year we need to find some new horizons. Maybe we will head to the Western Caribbean. To Belize, and further. To the San Blas islands where there are no shops nor electricity. No cities or governments. It's been fun in America but it's time for dinghy rides that don't lead to Publix and pubs. Time to close the door on consumer choices and fashion trends. Time for salty hair and sandy bedsheets. To places where mystery and nature are in charge and not Mr. Starbucks...It's time to float and be free. Time to cast off the lines and leave these beaches behind.

To borrow from one of the Troprock icons Jack Mosley, a toast, whatever happens, and wherever we end up:

“to small boats on big oceans, and dreams you can’t drown”.

Not All Who Wander make it to Key West - but they should!

I’m biting my lip as the drilling noise whirs angrily, Grover the blue muppet flies reassuringly overhead, his matted blue fur and superhero cape a reminder not to take anything too seriously. The streets outside are crawling with strange parcel laden pink pudgy creatures who have been corraled off a monstrous ship. 

This is Duval Street, Key West, the cruise ships have arrived and I am lying on a black leather couch in Southernmost Tattoo, voluntarily being subjected to skin piercing needles.

I’ve succumbed to the Key West Fever. This is the land of body ink. And live bands. And happy holiday makers in various stages of drunkenness, doing the ‘Duval crawl’. This place is alive, it hums. The locals are hippies and vagabonds and beautiful square pegs that gloriously don’t fit anywhere else.

In Key West even basic transportation has flair. From the pink taxi service to the three wheel motorcycles and the throngs and throngs of decorated bicycles. Key Westers get around in style. And economically.

This place can be expensive. A basic one bedroom apartment rents for over $2000 a month. Holiday rentals cost that per week. The houses, between the palms, bouganvilla and massive Banyan trees that line the old town streets, can run between $700k and $6 million to buy. 

Yet the jobs around here are all of the minimum wage variety. There are also gravel parking lots and derelict boats where you can live for free. And they do. Key West has the largest per capita homeless population in the states. But it’s also got great soup kitchens and a great climate.

So it’s a mix of the eccentric with money and tattoos, homeless squatters with tattoos, Harley gangs with tattoos, musicians and bartenders with tattoos, boaters with tattoos and of course the tourists. Even they have a lot of tattoos. This place is inked.

There are pirates and transvestites and too many dogs in strollers to count. Only in Key West could you find a cat, chilled enough to ride the town in a baby carriage as well.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any weirder, there are the chickens. Hundreds of thousands of chickens. Red roosters crowing at all hours on every street corner, chickens causing traffic jams, pet chickens and chicken art. Everywhere. It’s just a thing here and you gotta love it or Key West just ain’t for you.

And these are the ‘normal’ days. Key Westers really like to let their 'love lights shine' through on special occasions. They host an annual Pet Masquerade where animals are dyed many colours and dressed up like pirates and sharks and transvestite pirate sharks and anything else you could imagine and far beyond that.

Their Fantasy Fest each October is apparently something you have to witness to believe. Everyone parades the streets dressed in not much more than body paint and the usual drinking and debauchery gets way way way out of hand. Sounds like such fun!!!

We were here for New Years Eve, where a massive sparkling stiletto shoe, housing an equally sparkling drag queen is ceremoniously lowered into the crowds at midnight. 

Anything goes. And I can’t get enough of it. 

Every day, we head off the boats, leaving them bobbing out in the anchorage, to discover a new corner of this quirky place. From the street performer in tall yellow cat socks who trains cats to jump through hoops, to the ‘warrior of the streets’, a wiry leather skinned man on a bicycle with all his worldly belongings and signature face paint, on every block you see something. You will never be bored here.

Key West is Mile Zero, the southernmost point of America, the beginning of the US1. Depending on how you view it, Key West is the very bottom or the pinnacle of what America can be. It’s the Conch Republic. Laid back, accepting, fun centric, open minded, artistically inspiring. Here, you can paint a chicken on a coconut or paint a naked body or get a tattoo. And we do!