Odds and ends

Our visit with Margaret and John last week was all too brief. We had time to celebrate our 30th anniversary of friendship, review children and grandchildren, talk about church and theology, lament the damage to America by the current administration, make three day-sails, walk the beach, snorkel a bit, and eat some good meals. We sailed with them from Marsh Harbor to Hope Town, Hope Town to Great Guana Cay and back, and then from Hope Town to Marsh Harbor from where they departed on an early plane so John in his role as selectman or the town of Shelburn, MA could present that night his planning committee’s work on zoning. Journey spent one night at Mangoes Marina where Ray, the dock master, once again tutored us in getting in and out of these tricky piling slips. This time when backing out we managed to squeeze the inflatable dinghy between Journey and a piling, turning it into a fender. No harm but more humiliation. Ray is so cool he doesn’t even smirk.

Cold Fronts

Patty, the 20-year primo volunteer, weather reader and spirit behind the Abaco Cruisers Net heard daily on VHF channel 68, predicts that the cold front that will pass over us this week will be our last. Patty said it’s the time of year when fronts weaken and trade winds begin to settle in out of the east to southeast. Winds will build to 25 to 30 out of the northeast today, some squalls are likely, and most surprisingly the coolest weather so far is forecast with a high of 71 on Wednesday and a low of 61. It’s the same front that brought a blizzard to M.’s mother in South Dakota last week. It also prompted Garrison Kielor on Prairie Home Companion to include in his monologue this weekend a gleeful bit about snowbirds driving home from Phoenix, getting caught in a blizzard just as they arrived back in Minnesota and having to feed carryout from a “Christian Chinese restaurant” to a bear out of hibernation disoriented by the April storm.

Weather is more important around here than weather. It is the prime rationalization for all of these nomads to drive themselves and gear at a snails pace from the white latitudes. It is warm, blue, puffy, easy, barefoot, shorts, sleep under sheets weather. You can get drunk on it. It will numb thoughts of work, homes, churches, family and friends left behind, until there’s an e-mail, a conversation, a news item that snaps you to sobering guilt for your binge of not minding the people and places and issues you deeply care about. Trips on the wagon are short. All it takes is a walk down a sand path bordered by bougainvillea to fall off into this time and place and moment and that’s a good thing at least for awhile.

Bottom Cleaning

The knot meter was showing half of the speed that the GPS was showing of speed over ground. It is a little paddle wheel at the end of cylinder that goes through a hole in the boat that you can pull out and clean. That didn’t solve the problem and we suspected marine growth around it on the hull could be the cause of it’s off reading.

We anchored in the Sea of Abaco off of Guana Cay for lunch with Margaret and John, dove off the boat, scrubbed round the knot meter and that fixed it, but noted that Journey’s bottom was turning into a reef. No barnacles, but plenty of plant life and what appeared to be little sea anemones that have soft brown tentacles growing in little round islands over most of the hull.

I had debated getting certified in scuba diving to do this job, but too much time and money for something I might do once. Also debated whether to hire someone until a conversation with Don, a physician on a Nonsuch near us, said why spend the money. “Snorkel on the boat, do it over a couple of days. It will be a great test of your cardiovascular health.” Don’s a psychiatrist.

On Friday and Saturday last week we anchored Journey outside of Hope Town Harbor and scrubbed the bottom. Some veteran cruisers had alerted us to heavy duty 3M scratch pads that are white, red and black marking three grades of coarseness. When you have to use black, they told us, you need to pull and reapply anti-fouling paint. We started with white and finished with red. It’s not fun. Buoyancy forces you to kick constantly, your head and back keep bumping against the hull, it’s disorienting to be on your back under water, scrubbing the part of the hull that dips in and under the boat. You get a lot of salt water in your mouth, and you have to retain enough air to clear the snorkel when you surface and you’re constantly fighting current. But Philipe and Jacque got a lot of exercise and satisfaction in getting the job done and saved a few bucks to boot. Our hearts are fine.

Other Duties

Other boat duties are part of each day. We live here so there are household chores of cleaning, cooking, and dishwashing, but all done compactly. The galley is about 20 square feet. The stove is two-burner, the refrigerator is about the size of an ice chest and as about as convenient to dig through to find the jar of olives as to find a quarter inch nut in a box of screws, nails and bolts. The head (bathroom) is three feet by three feet, including the toilet, sink and shower. The good thing is that every time you shower, the entire bathroom gets washed down and thus must get wiped down. We assiduously alternate who takes the last shower, because that’s whose turn it is to mop up.

It is hard to judge which is more fun, bottom cleaning or bilge cleaning. Bacteria love warmth and without attention you can quickly create a bog in the inch or so of bilge water that inevitably lies in the darkness and depths of the boat’s interior. When she rocks a belch of swamp gas rises. With the cabin sole boards up perhaps a gorilla could reach the bottom of the bilge. We, correct that, I lay flat on the floor, grip tongs that grip a sponge, spray in Simple Green, pour in a couple of gallons of fresh water, a quarter cup of bleach, wash it all around and pump it out. Clean as a spring breeze for about five days.

Garbage from the galley trash can is transferred to a larger plastic bag which is stored in the port cockpit locker to ferment, which it does rapidly in the heat. In Hope Town you can dinghy your garbage to a collection point on Monday, Wednesday and Friday between 8:30 and 9:30. You don’t forget to do it. Correction, I don’t forget to do it. On land or sea it seems to be my job and other guys’ jobs. Several times fellows have stopped by with their dinghies filled with trash bags and offering to take ours ashore for us. They kind of take my fun away.

We regularly check oil, fresh water intake to the engine, and battery status and have learned that it’s more efficient to run the battery capacity down 20 to 30 percent before recharging with the engine alternator. Metal and fiberglass are polished from time to time. The cockpit is the patio and shore dirt collection station and needs to be swept and sloshed out regularly.

We dust, vacuum and wipe down the salon every few days. It is our living room, dinning room, den and guest room in an area about eight by ten feet. Its floor area is only three by eight feet. Our daughter M. passed onto us several years ago a car vacuum that works like a charm and we can clean the salon well in about 15 minutes.

Laundry gets done at marinas where they charge $4 a load for washing, $4 to dry. Bahamian prices. We don’t have too much because you don’t need to wear too much, only a couple of loads a week unless we have guests.

I read another book about cruising from Nova Scotia to the Bahamas via the ICW who quotes a fellow living simply like we’ve self imposed on ourselves who says: “’ I’m rich…..I’ve got time and I’ve got choices. That’s what rich is.’” (Sailing Away from Winter, Silver Donald Cameron, p. 46.) Living lean we feel rich. Duties are light and quickly done and the rest of our days are spent taking life in deep breaths.

The other morning, an elderly man named Allen asked if he could join us on the overstuffed sofa and chairs at the coffee shop. He’s been coming to Hope Town since the 1960’s when there were “no phones, no electricity and none of the houses were painted.” His neighbors in Toledo were executives with Owens Illinois that was then harvesting pine on Great Abaco Island and asked him and his wife to join them on the company plane for a visit. He eventually bought property and has been coming ever since.

Allen’s house is not far from two new big houses perched on the dune for views of both the Sea of Abaco and the Atlantic and he told us that in one of them none of the windows opened. This is the international headquarters of fresh air. Allen says they build these places, rarely visit and in a few years sell them to make money and move on. They are nearly all Americans building these whopper-style houses, sealed off from the history, culture, and environment of the place.

Later that day we took our two-and-one-half mile road and beach walk and came upon a fly fisherman casting in the surf who was eager to show us his catch. He said the natives don’t know what it is and they don’t know what the other fish are that he catches. He showed us the barbells under its mouth, the curve of its jaw and speculated what it might be, a species from warmer climes moving in.

More about that cold front. Troubadour is moored next to us and we played Bananagrams with Ed and Nancy the night before us. When we dinghied the fifty yards back to Journey about 10 o’clock (April 15) it was blowing a gale and it blew hard all night. Ed told me when he stopped by to pick up my garbage (responsibility taken away yet once again) that he saw 38 knots in the middle of the night. Another fellow reported over 40. It’s going to diminish. We’ll leave Hope Town for a few days and sail south together and continue with our duties, listening, looking, talking, laughing, thinking, planning for the crossing back to the US and hopefully implanting some of the lessons of this journey into our souls.