Some Days You Watch The Show, Some Days You Are The Show

As I reported in my last blog, we eventually did leave Abaco.

On an early morning breeze we sailed out of the Bight of Old Robinson and through the Little Harbour cut to islands unknown.

The voyage was not a memorable one (always a good thing) and we coasted into the Royal Island Harbour by early evening. We toasted ourselves on our escape from the nirvana of the Abacos.

The next day we explored the ruins of the W.P. Stewart compound. As we walked the paved roads, sat at the bar of the main house, and admired (and tried to pry up) the beautiful ceramic tiles throughout the buildings, we tried to imagine how somebody managed to build all of this back in the 1930’s. Then we wondered how they managed to leave it all behind. Sadly we some of the last ones to walk it’s paths. Helicopters were already circling above, their occupants planning their grand ideas for this beautiful island.

The next night was the capn’s birthday. As usual, we had already made the acquaintance of several other boaters. There was no way this popular anchorage was going to be a “nekkid” one so we were playing it nice.

So, let the games begin. In our case, you can take the boat away from the party or you can take the party with you. At some point during the party, the birthday boy thought the wind generator was making too much noise. So he decided to stop it. No, he didn’t use the handy-dandy safety cord. Why mess with the middle man? No, instead he went straight to the source and grabbed, or tried to grab, a blade. The offended blade took a big old boat chomp (all those little toes stubs and head bumps are piddly little boat bites) and kept on spinning. Leaving something barely identifiable dangling from his hand.

Now don’t get to excited, it wasn’t as bad as it looked, we hoped. After cleaning up the blood, we wrapped up the shredded digit and partied on. We weren’t going to scare our guests off that easily. You can’t let a little thing like a severed thumb ruin a good party. If only there would have been a Wendy’s around.

The next morning the cap’n dragged me out of my bunk and thrust a needle and thread into my clammy shaky hands. Without the aid of liquid courage on my part but a healthy shot of lidocaine for the cap’n (when we’re not sailing and drinking this is what we do for a living. Scarey, huh?) I think I did a pretty darn good job of darning his thumb. He still has it.

One day for recovery from the surgery and the birthday party and we were off to Spanish Wells, which is dry (kinda). Thank goodness! We were ready for some rest and recovery.

"Honey, do I need to make ready for sea?"

“Nah,” comes the capn’s ready reply, “I can see it from here.”

Although we can see the entrance to Spanish Wells once we leave Royal Island’s harbour the cap’n goes ahead and hooks the GPS up to the computer so we can make sure the boat knows where it’s going.

Soon we can see the entrance markers. However, unbeknownst to us we are actually looking at the second entrance marker. We missed the first one while we were watching the little boat thing follow the mythical, and in this case, inaccurate path on the computer. But now that we are using our spare, secondary navigational aids, our eyes, we see that not only did we miss the first marker but as usual we’re on the wrong side of it. We crank the helm sharply to the left. We’re just feet from the channel when we hear that familiar “Thud” and all forward progress stops. You guessed it. We’re aground. Again. http://firstmatemary.blogspot.com/2008/09/hitting-rock-bottom.html We wiggle and waggle our butt end but as usual we can’t climb off that undersea mountain.

“Not to worry,” says the cap’n. “Tides coming in, it’ll float us off in no time.”

Of course, we haven’t escaped the notice the attention of the dozens of boats coasting up and down the channel that is right off our nose.

The radio crackles to life.

“Captain Ignoramus on the fat-bottomed sailboat on the obvious wrong side of the obvious channel, are you aground?”

Hey, who’s calling who an Ignoramus. Obviously, he can’t recognize the obvious either.

“Do you need a tug” comes the inquiry.

“No thanks,” the cap’n replies, “We’ll just wait until the tide comes in.”

An undignified snort comes from the other end of the airwaves and I’m pretty sure we hear guffaws in the background.

“Ahem, Captain you’ll be waiting quite awhile then. Tides going out”

About this time we start to notice a noticeable lean to port.

That damn computer! It had gotten the tide tables wrong….again. It had to be the computer’s fault, it couldn’t be some lingering sluggish (or downright dead) synapses from the birthday party or the previous year and a half in Abaco.

At least we were fortunate that Spanish Wells had a tow boat. What we didn’t know that the tow boat was in all actuality it’s ferry boat. And, of course, it was full of locals and tourists that were more than eager to delay their travel to help a vessel in distress.

And take pictures….

And videos…

Videos with audio.

Oh, Boy! Aren’t we lucky!

We thought we had reached the heights of our humiliation. If we only knew. It was about to get worse and worser.

The little tugboat that thought he could….couldn’t. No matter how hard he huffed and puffed. And passengers on the stern clicking and recording and asking us to smile were really starting to piss me off.

And of course, all the experts on all things of sailing nature were holding a symposium and buzzing around us in their dinghy’s like gnats. Rubbing their whiskers and espousing wisdom.

“Looks like your stuck.”

Duh!

“If you’d just gone on the other side of those markers u da been fine.”

Double Duh!

We even met up with our old friend Rick , from s/v Callaloo, who we hadn’t seen since we left Titusville two years ago. (A First Mate's Rule of the Road #256: Just like when you go to the grocery store without make-up, hoping you won't run into anyone you know...you will. And when you do something stupid on a boat and hope that no one you know will be there...they will.)


“What ya’ll been up to?”

“Uh, Rick, this really isn’t a good time for us. Can we catch up with you and Connie later?”

By this time one of the members of the dinghy council made the motion that we attach a line to the mast and pull her over. A vote was taken and the “Ayes” had it. I think they were just excited by the fact that although they had heard of this being done, none of them had ever seen it. Now, they were going to be a part of sailing history. And they had the pictures to prove it.

So a line was attached to our topping lift and one of the sturdier little boats took it and began to pull Agur’s Wish over as the tug/ferry boat tugged us toward the channel.

Slowly and surely, inch by inch Agur’s Wish slid her ass down the mountain and into the channel.

Cheers erupt and glasses are raised.

Problem over!

You think?

Now that the show is over, the passengers of the ferry/tug boat are eager to be about their way but…..the cap’n can’t get the line untied. So he hollers at me to go below and get a knife. (Why does he never wear that leatherman I got him?)

I go below to total devastation. Silverware on the floor, books in a heap….That’s probably what happened to that damn bell we’ve never been able to find.

I’m rooting around in the mess trying to find a sharp implement when I hear someone yell,

“Hey, you idiots, someone needs to be driving the boat!”

Okay, he didn’t actually say idiot but we knew who he was talking about.

I popped my head up the companionway to see that our boat was now free and headed right for the breakwater. The cap’n is still on the bow and giving me the evil eye. I surmised pretty quickly that I was the idiot that was supposed to be driving the boat .

We didn’t hit the breakwater. It was the only thing that went right that day. A little while later we were secure on our mooring and the cabin was put back to rights.

And Boy Oh Boy, did we need a drink!

P.S. You know there's always a P.S. We were moored next to the artist of the map of Spanish Wells along with his beautiful wife and young daughter. Spanish Wells is a very special place and I'll have more to say about it.

Since we have cleaned off the boat I am anxious to go through our old pics and the ones we have on the old computer and hopefully add them to my blog. That way I can quit stealing from others.

Our New Home Port: Lake Dillon Colorado

We launched her today without incidence. And we've come up with a name. Since we live up Mosquito Gulch her names gonna be "SKEETER", of course.

I Lied

Sorry guys, I lied. I didn't get the new blog done, but almost. We're launching our new "little" yacht today at Lake Dillon. Say some prayers that I can actually back the trailer down the ramp in a somewhat straight manner and that the mast doesn't topple over after we step and rig it. All new experience for us. As I said we're going backwards. Our motto is start out big and go small. Hmm..actually that is my own personal physical strategy. Day 5 of no carbs, no caffeine, and, horror of horrors, no booze. It's getting ugly around here!

Once again, I digress. I'm taking suggestions for names for the new boat. And I think we should paint the hull red, the cap'n doesn't.

I saw a white boat and I want to paint it red.

Miracle Bread on the Mountain

I've been afraid to try the Artisan Bread in 5 minutes recipe http://firstmatemary.blogspot.com/2009/03/artisan-bread-in-five-minutes-master.html way up here at 10,600 ft. but then I decided, "What the heck? It's only flour and yeast." After a lot of tweaking I finally got it.

If anybody else is crazy enough to live up here in the nosebleed section here's what I did different from the original recipe.

I used cold tap water for the dough (my tap water is really cold)
I halved the yeast to 2 1/4 tsp.
I added an additional teaspoon of salt.
I let it rise for 5 hrs and then punched it down and put it in the refrig overnight.

The first time I tried it I baked the bread at a lower temperature but it turned out gummy even with extra baking time. The next time I baked it at the temp in the recipe and it was perfect.

I did cinnamon rolls/sticky buns this morning and they were wonderful the cap'n said. I wouldn't know because I'm not eating my experiments because I'm on my perpetual diet that doesn't work. It's difficult but like David Carradine, I'm into self-torture. I lived on a boat didn't I?

I won't give the cinnamon roll recipe away because if I ever write a book I'd like to make some money and not have somebody put what's in it on the internet for everybody to read for free but.....use what ever cinnamon roll/sticky bun recipe you have but use your already made dough. Put your topping in your baking pan, Tear off a hunk of the dough, roll it out, fill it, roll it up and cut your rolls. Put them in the pan and let them rise for an hour and bake. It's so easy and fast!

Okay, now back to boating business. I promise I will have the blog about our very eventful trip to Spanish Wells on here by tonight. And we're going to try to launch our new "yacht" tomorrow. So I'll have lots to say about that but I'll probably be traumatized for a day or two.

Hazard to Navigation

We are in the midst of hauling, packing and throwing away 12 years of living on Agur's Wish. It is poignant but also very rewarding to look back and know we lived all of this. Found this old article for all of you that said we never left the Abacos.

The voices on the VHF were foreign to us. Their melodious tones exotic. Who did they belong to? We were thrilled and excited but also a little afraid. We were in a foreign land for the first time and although the voices were strange to us, in fact we were the strangers. What would we find here. There was so much we didn’t know.
That was over a year ago and we’ve discovered it’s not actually docklines that you keep you tied to one place, it’s heartlines. This unwillingness to leave our friends and loved ones and the comfort of the familiar doesn’t just happen before you start cruising, it can happen at the beginning, in the middle, and finally at the end.

We cleared into the Abacos December 24, 2003. Almost a year and a half later we were still there. What happened? You might say a sort of metamorphosis took place. We came in as cruisers and at first we bonded only with other cruisers. We visited each other’s boats and shared happy hours that lasted long past the happy hour. We traveled in bands to the bars, the grocery stores and the laundry mats. We were our own community and other than to spend a little money we didn’t really have to interact with the local community.

After a few weeks we gathered to plan the next leg of our journey south. Our first going away party was in February of 2004 when a friend of ours who was a former cruiser and now was a local took us out for lunch. Steve had already fallen into the same trap we were about to find ourselves caught in and I think we can lay most of the fault at his door. We had met Steve and his former girlfriend while waiting out a storm on the ICW in North Carolina. As I remember, they were headed to the Virgin Islands. Imagine our surprise when we cruised into the Abacos five years later and heard their boat’s call sign, “Who Cares”, on the VHF. It seems they had sailed in and never left. They had become locals and they knew lots of other locals. Most importantly they knew the right kind of locals, the ones who own bars and the ones who patronize bars and they were happy to introduce us to them, for a dollar apiece. Obviously, Steve didn't value their friendship that much.

I had always told the captain that when I retired I wanted to be like Norm on the TV show Cheers and find a place where everybody knew my name. It looked as if I’d found it. We stepped out of our circle of cruising friends and rubbed elbows with the locals and when our cruising friends moved on, we stayed put.

Through out that spring and summer new waves of cruisers washed into the Abacos and we took them under our wing. They were in awe of our impressive stores of knowledge such as where to go for “two-fer” happy hours and who had the best free appetizers. But they all managed to move on while we stayed put.

About this time we were getting a little bored with just partying all the time (hard to believe, but true) so we began to look for something else to fill our time. Opportunities to volunteer abound in the islands. Whether it’s manning the desk at a museum or library or picking up a paintbrush or hammer at one of the schools or churches, if you let someone know you’re willing, they will put you to work. Volunteering opened up a whole new branch of people for us to get attached to.

Probably, the event that was most instrumental to us growing a reef on our hull, was when the captain volunteered to help anchor the Abaco Cruiser’s Net. Many cruising communities have cruising nets but, thanks to Patty Toler the organizer of the Abaco Cruisers Net almost fifteen years ago and the head honcho in charge, the Abaco Cruisers Net is one of the best organized and most entertaining ones around. It has been the model on which many other nets have been based. In Abacos, the net is the foundation of the day for most cruisers and many locals.

I remember way back when we first arrived, the Abaco Cruiser’s Net “anchor-people” held a sort of fascination for us and our band of cruisers. We all wanted to put faces to those voices that ruled our world every morning. Now Jeff had joined this brotherhood of "rich and famous radio personalties" and our lives in the Abacos were forever changed. You must keep in mind that most cruisers have limited media access so we’re pretty desperate for entertainment(Keep in mind, I wrote this back in the dark ages of 2004). Dinghys would pull along side our boat, usually when we were in our skivvies, and say they just wanted meet the man behind the voice. They usually regretted it. Restaurant and bar owners that advertised on the net treated us with a little more respect than when we were just sailor-trash bar bums there to gobble up their free appetizers, although we really hadn’t changed all that much. We still could never get a free drink, though and they still sat us in the corner of the dining room if we were wearing our cleanest dirty shirts. Once again, we were becoming more and more enmeshed.

Then the forces of nature turned against us. Summer had crept up on us bringing hurricane season with it. We were supposed to be so much further down the islands. We convinced ourselves that it was better this way. At least we knew people and we had resources. So again we stayed put.

The summer wave of cruisers came in and we welcomed them but they were an established pack and we weren’t able to infiltrate their ranks very deeply. That was okay because we were getting tired and we had our own pack. When they moved on and we waved good-bye it was with a weary relieved feeling that we shared with the locals. “Ahh! We’ve finally got the place to ourselves.” The population of boaters fell to a brave or perhaps foolhardy few.

Then Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne blew in and our brave little band of boats banded together to secure ourselves and our boats. We went to shelters or the homes of kind strangers and friends. We weathered the storms but emerged to find our adopted community ravaged. It was time to repay a part of the debt we owed.

November rolled around and more familiar voices returned to the radio. Our cruising friends were coming back. We couldn’t leave now. So, again we stayed put.

By now nobody believed we would actually leave and we were the butt of more than a few jokes. Of course, the attendance at our going-away parties didn’t drop off. Cruisers love any reason to party. And there’s always a reason. Christmas, New Years, Superbowl, Groundhog Day, Whit Monday, Full Moons and we stayed for each of them again.

Finally our cruising friends were already planning their return trips to the states when we decided we had to go. We couldn’t wait around another year for them to return. So one early morning, without fanfare, we slipped away.
And now….
The voices on the VHF are foreign to us. Their melodious tones exotic. Who do they belong to? We’re thrilled and excited but also a little afraid.


P.S. I think this is somewhat appropo for what our future holds

P.P.S. In full reporter's honesty, we only stayed away for 6 weeks. We were in rehab in Spanish Wells just to let our livers recover (Spanish Wells is dry but you can dinghy across the harbour to the liquor store and we heard there is a lady there that sells it out her back door) and when the propagation was good we could call into the cruisers net just to let them know we were safe and still around.

Agur's Wish Homesick Blues

It is snowing here in Colorado tonight and I am thinking I should be in Abaco. I should be swaying on the hook on Agur’s Wish in Hope Town Harbour tonight. Not just because it’s warm there and it sure as heck isn‘t warm here tonight.. No, I should be spending the last few of Agur’s Wish’s nights in Abaco with her, she might need me. She’ll be leaving the place she has called home for more than five years in a few days and I’ve been there, and I’ve done that.

I know she’s going to miss that gorgeous gin clear water.

I know she’s going to miss the sound of laughter in her cockpit.

I know she’s going to miss her friends at the dock.

I know she’ll miss friends stopping by just to say “Hi”

I know she’ll miss seeing old friends come into the harbour.

I know she’ll miss seeing new friends come into the harbour.

I wonder if she’ll miss that grass skirt we let her wear.

I know she’ll miss the hum of a lone predawn fishing boat cutting across the harbour heading to the sea.

I know she’ll miss the hues of morning racing each other across the sky.

I know she’ll miss the voice of the island as it goes about it’s work day.

I know she’ll miss the peal of church bells at the noon hour.

I know she’ll miss watching the colors chase the sun into the water at sunset.

I know she’ll miss the evening’s song and laughter.

I know she’ll miss the quick fall of dark.

I know she’s going to miss that shining beacon flashing through the night.

I know she’ll miss a sky so full of stars you can’t make out the black of night.

I know she’ll miss the bump of the turtle’s shell and the slap of the stingray’s wing as they glide beneath her.

I know she’ll miss the gleeful play of dolphins all around her.

I know she’ll miss that perfume of salt, sand, beauty, strength, grace and abundant joy.

Man, is she ever going to miss all those smiles.

I know she’ll miss the watchful eyes that looked over her when we couldn’t.

I wonder if she misses us and worries about how we’re doing.

I know she’s weeping tonight.

Fair Winds and Calm Seas, Agur‘s Wish,

I’ll see you in Annapolis.

P.S. Once again, I wish I made this stuff up. This ain’t a fairy tale, it really is out there, go out and live it. So why are we giving this up? My first response tonight? “Beats the hell out of me!“ Second response…Who says we are? Just a new chapter for both us and Agur’s Wish. As the cap’n will tell you, I reread my favorite books over and over and over again. And you know what? She is still ours. I hope I’m just adding more characters.

The Family Car: The Diabolical Dinghy

I have another confession to make. I swear I haven’t made so many confessions since I graduated from the Sisters of Perpetual Punishment High School.

I can’t drive the dinghy!

No, that’s not quite right.

I WON’T DRIVE THE DINGHY!

I used to drive it. When she was brand new, I ferried our guests and Stanley, the killer bichon, to and fro from the dock and beach…all by myself.

Then she began to get fickle. She’d take you to the beach without complaint but then she’d refuse to leave. She’d start up without a whimper while tied to the side of the boat and wait until you were exactly half-way between the boat and your destination to sputter and die. You learned to rely on the kindness of strangers to get you home. You know it’s bad when you start giving a holler out to the anchorage to put the other boats on alert every time you want to leave the boat.

The straw that broke this admiral’s back came when we were clearing into beautiful Walker’s Cay, Abaco, Bahamas. She’d been acting even more temperamental than usual and refused to start unless you gave her a hard and swift kick in the gas. At which time she would roar off uncontrollably in every direction until you got her under control.

I was calmly sitting in the dinghy which was tied to the dock while the cap‘n was ashore clearing us in through Customs and Immigration.. At the time I believed I would be immediately extradited back to the U. S. if I so much as set foot on land before the cap’n got us cleared in, and it had taken us way too long to get here to risk that. Since then I have found that this practice varies from island to island (let me clarify that the law does not vary) and many times the officials don’t care…unless you get caught. Are we clear on this?

Before the Hurricanes of ‘04. Walker’s Cay was a beautiful resort area with the fishing boats moving in and out while the locals and tourists strolled about or sat talking with each other on the benches that lined the waterfront. I was busy minding my own business and pinching myself that we had finally “arrived” when suddenly a fishing boat decides he wants my spot on the dock. He was a lot bigger than me and let’s just say he wasn’t leaving any room for discussion. He assumes I can drive this dinghy…well, I’ll show him!

I deftly untie the painter and begin to glide smoothly under the dock to the space on the other side. Of course, I haven’t started the boat, I’m doing this by grabbing on to anything I can. I make it successfully to the other side and just as I’m reaching for the painter to tie her to the other side of the dock, the fingers on my other hand lose their tenuous grip on the barnacles encrusting the pilings (if you’ve read my earlier blog “The Shoes I’ve Lost and The Places I’ve Been, you know I have an affection for barnacles, including the cap’n.) and starts to drift lazily across the harbour. Lazily or not it is headed right for those aforementioned fishing boats.

I pray to the goddesses of carburetors, fuel injectors or whatever else could be the culprit to show some mercy, and give me a smooth start but they must have needed a good laugh that day.

I do everything right. I squeeze the bulb until it’s firm just like the cap’n showed me. He even made me practice multiple times, on and off the dinghy. I pull the lawnmower starter thing….sputter…sputter….silence. I give it a little more gas….splutter. …splutter….silence.

I give it a Lot More Gas.

VRROOM!

I jam it into forward. It rears back and we’re out of the gate. I’m hanging on to the painter for dear life. This pony is headed for the finish line. The only problem is the finish line is the dock. I’ve now caught the attention of the fishing boats at the dock and they are hurriedly untying their lines. The benchwarmers are jumping up running for safety.

The dock looms. I duck my head. Round and round the pilings I go. You think Kentucky Derby jockey Calvin Burel can weave in and out of tight spots, you should have seen me. Somehow I shoot through the other side with my head still intact…so I decide to use it. Why don’t I pull that nifty little safety bracelet thing the cap’n makes me wrap around my wrist, for good reason it seems. I pull, the key disengages from the switch…sputter…sputter…silence.

Yee-Haw!

So there’s the reason I wouldn’t drive the dinghy. But this year I’ve decided to face my fears and confront my demons and get back in the saddle again.

Fair Warning and I’ll give a holler out to you anytime I attempt to leave the boat.

Post Script: May 10, 2009
I did drive the dinghy this season. Only because the cap’n managed to have it both running and steering all in the same season. I will admit I didn’t drive it as often as I should have, I’m lazy and I kind of like being chauffeured. Our last day on the boat, I took the cap’n out for a last harbour cruise. He decided he kind of liked being chauffeured too. Good thing I didn’t let him get used to it.

Now the practical non-fun part of the blog. Just a few tips.

Tip 1: Get you dinghy engine serviced every year. Seem like a no-brainer, huh? The problem we were having was from varnish that had set up in our gasoline. It seems gasoline likes to clump like mascara if it sits to long. Plus we all know how kind the boating environment is to all moving parts, so keep ‘em greased.

Tip 2: Do make yourself drive the dinghy. It will give you so much more independence and enjoyment. You won’t have to listen to the cap’n grumble when he has to roll out of the cockpit to take you to the early morning yoga or pilates class or just a solitary walk on the beach. You may say this is another no-brainer, but there are a lot of admirals like me that spend years being chauffeured around and you can bet it was because of one bad incidence. For those admirals, get back in the saddle!

For those of you that have managed to read all this way. We bought another sailboat! More about that later.

Dinghy Drift Hope Town