Little Harbor was the furthest point south that we will reach. Since August 19, 2007 we have logged 3,154 nautical miles and we are discovering that this journey is far more than a round trip from Maine to the Bahamas via Nova Scotia. This trip seems to be turning out to be the transit from becoming to being, the matriculation from making it to leaving it.

It is vividly making clear where we are in the life span. Recall those experiences in Vero Beach where we met the young couple, their two little kids, a Newfoundland and cat on a new, old boat they had just acquired, their confidence and foolishness and energy of youth on the move, juxtaposed with grocery shopping among the shuffling elderly in various states of disrepair cautiously maneuvering the aisles of the supermarket. We feel vigorous and healthy, but stay put more, sail less, sleep longer, creak a little getting out of bed. No doubt about what third or quarter of life we are in. Our future is clearly the supermarket of growing limitations.

It is disclosing the depth of metaphor. The instructors are Milton, Melville, Homer, Thoreau, the authors of the Bible and their critics, with time to sit at their knees and not be graded. The classroom is this daily intimacy with nature. The exercise is time to witness without blinders. The fruit is humility of truth. Recall the monarch butterflies that crossed our paths from Nova Scotia to the Delaware that revealed the wonders of tenacity, innocence, endurance, destination, beauty, cycles and seasons all captured in seeing, truly seeing their skipping through the air.

Living aboard Journey is revealing the value of living simply. These few square feet of living space, two feet of closets, only valued essential tools on board, our required stewardship of water, fuel and food reveal the liberation of Thoreau’s and Jesus’ economies. We now talk a lot about “destuffication” and simplification.

This journey has also changed our perspective of where we want to arrive. We will head for the safe harbor of Teel Cove, but we are beginning to see a more lasting goal for this time of transit. We hope that it will help us learn to live to the end of life in peace and grace enabled by the humility from seeing all of life, the sunsets and the shuffles. I hope we make it and will be able to stay there when we arrive.

Dinghy Drift

Jeff is one of the irrepressible anchors of the Abaco Cruisers Net from his boat Agur’s Wish in Hope Town and he organized last Monday a dinghy drift. You raft your dinghy with others at a point up wind in the harbor and drift where the wind will take you.. You bring along something to drink and something to nibble on to pass around from boat to boat. The hat would also be passed to collect money to send Abaco kids to an upcoming Special Olympics in Nassau.

Twenty four dinghies holding 67 people showed-up and gave over $600. Amazingly this huge raft of inflatables would drift through the moored boats not touching any. As we reached shore, three or four on the outside would crank up their outboards and push the whole mass of boats and people back up wind. We sang sea shanties, and met funky, funny people. It’s a hoot.

Special Needs Engine and Captain

Last Wednesday we sailed from Hope Town to Man-O-War to meet with Darrin, a highly recommended mechanic from Edwin’s Boat Yard. I remain hyper sensitive to our special needs engine and it seems that the rhythmic thump as the prop turns was getting noisier. I was wondering if the engine was getting out of alignment. One troublesome symptom was the engine would shake slightly if you let the shaft free wheel when sailing, the shaft’s turning powered by the spinning propeller acting like a waterwheel. Then a few weeks ago we had a scare. I went below while under power and noticed oil on the cabin sole. It’s the kind of thing that jolts you into quick action, sort of like the first sounds of your child at night coming down with the stomach flu. M. shuts down the engine and sets sail while I field strip the companion way ladder, the panel holding the fire extinguisher, and engine cowling galley drawer unit in that order and in seconds, to reveal our needy friend.

The rubber plug that stops up one of the oil fill openings on the engine had vibrated out, allowing oil to spurt all over the engine compartment, including through the cracks where the cowling fits and onto the cabin sole. The bulk of the mess had dripped into the bilge. I used tongs to fish the plug out of the oil spill, replaced it, added oil, and secured the plug with a wire tie which I should have done long ago, all in choppy, two to three foot seas. We restarted and we motored on into Marsh Harbor to clean up. Funny, that had never happened before, I worried. Could it be hyper engine vibration, or as M. thinks could it be much more benign, but equally irksome, hyper husband?

In the weeks that passed I would listen and worry until a doctor visit became essential. Darrin was reassuring that our engine is fine and I’m nuts. We went on a sea trial. He listened under power, under sail, at idle, at full RPM, felt and turned the shaft and then explained. The rhythmic noise was the result of a two bladed prop which is never as balanced as a three bladed prop. The movement of the engine when the prop freewheels is due to the two bladed prop, built-in, soft engine mounts, short shaft, and the flexibility of the recently installed shaft seal. He made sense and I’m relieved, but I do wonder about a new, rumbling sound that happens when…..

While waiting for carry-out at the only carry-out on Man-O-War, we ran into Nancy and Lauri. Nancy is delivered by Lauri in their Albury outboard each Thursday morning to the Hope Town Writer’s Circle where we had met. M. and I later walked to the north end of the Cay and heard someone hailing us. Stopped, went back and Nancy, Lauri and two young fellows were on their garage top deck, that serves as a widows walk, watching the approach of a Mystic Seaport square rigger and a newly built schooner. Nancy and Lauri have retired full-time to Man-O-War. Through the writers circle gatherings, lunches following and our conversations we’ve learned that Nancy was volunteer head of Rotary International’s international polio efforts and a stunt pilot, Lauri an internist, or as he put it an adult pediatrician, and hospital administrator in Cleveland. Their house is perched on a limestone ridge, 27 feet above sea level just past the narrows on Man-O-War which gives them views of the Sea of Abaco and the Atlantic. Hurricane Floyd hit them from both sides with water running under the house, but it survived without major damage. Their deck, like the deck on our shore shack in Maine, is seemingly suspended over the sea.

We left Man-O-War early Thursday on a brisk, jib-only beam reach back to Hope Town in time to make a session of the Writer’s Circle which has been noted before: lovely people expressing them selves deeply, getting encouragement and useful criticism. Several spend summers in Maine and we’ll work on constituting a group there. Lunch follows at the Harbors Edge restaurant. I alert M. via walkie-talkie and she dinghies into the restaurant and ties up five feet from the table to join us for lunch. We linger well into the afternoon.

Prep Time

Two weeks from today Steffi and Charlie arrive and its time for more maintenance. A mail order this morning of a standby toilet repair kit and a few other items are headed their way to in turn come our way. Took apart and cleaned the head to keep it limping along until parts can be replaced (why are sewer and garbage-related activities always my jobs?) while M. did laundry at Lighthouse Marina (why is that always her job?). Our list of to dos includes a coat of varnish, clean up the topsides and transom from six months of accumulation and scuffs, polish metal, lubricate the winches and windless, and make lists for supplies when we get to Marsh Harbor. Not many chores and we will likely have time for a bit more cruising on the Sea of Abaco before heading north.