Survival 151

How did two 80+ year old nuns end up sitting in their lawn chairs, wearing their bathing suits and drinking Kalik at Baker’s Bay?

Now remember, what happens in Abaco stays in Abaco. No calls to the Vatican, please.

I am about to share with you my most valued advice. A treasured piece of advice I share with only my closest confidants. It is………………………………………………..

How to throw a great party in the islands.

What?

You say you’ve heard that all you have to do is make an announcement on the radio and people will come from islands unseen just to party.

Damn! Somebody must have leaked my secret.

The cap’n and I had been hiding out at Baker’s Bay for about 3 weeks and were running dangerously low on the essentials of life like coconut rum, anejo rum, spiced rum, dark rum, light rum and just plain old rum. We were contemplating doing something desperate like pulling up anchor and heading to civilization and I was looking forward to putting some clothes on when the cap’n came up with one of his brilliant ideas.

“Let’s have a party!”

“Honey, remember how we just discussed the fact that we don’t have any booze. Can you tell me how many bottles of booze I’m holding up?” I patiently ask my obviously sun-addled cap’n.

“Uh…, Zero?” guesses my proud cap’n.

“Exactly!” I sneer. “Which is exactly why we can’t have a friggin’ party!”

The cap’n waggles his finger at me and raises a diabolical eyebrow.

"Just watch."

He picks up the VHF mike and makes our distress call.

“Party at Baker’s Bay at sunset.”

Later that afternoon I’m dessicating in the cockpit and contemplating which finger I’m going to prick to suck life-saving sustenance from. The capn’s finger, of course. His blood has gotta be at least 90 proof. I’m licking my cracked peeling lips when a mirage appears on the horizon. White billowy, puffy things shimmering on the waves. I lift my weak skeletal arms and give out a pitiful croak.

“What the hell?” “They’re real!”

I jump up and holler down at the cap’n.

“Put some clothes on, for Chrissake!”

We’re saved.

An hour later there are close to 40 dinghies pulled up on shore. There is live karaoke, thanks to our best friend Tom on sv Becky Thatcher, there is meat sizzling on the grill and best of all there is rum.

Glorious, makes-life-worth-living, rum!

And that is how two 80+ year old nuns ended up in their lawn chairs, wearing their bathing suits and drinking Kaliks at Baker’s Bay.

Mary and the Cap’n got thirsty.

P.S. We weren't sure if the cap'n was channeling his inner Elvis in the lower pic or if he was having some sort of seizure. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

P.P.S. These pics are stolen from the website of Patrick on Synchronicity. I'll make you get in touch somehow, Pat.

Paradise Lost

“Memories are the playground of the mind.”
(From a fortune cookie given to me by a very special someone.)

From the log of Agur’s Wish:

January 6, 2004

As we approach the deserted beach we spy structures peeking through and, occasionally, towering above the dense foliage. We pull up to the abandoned dock. Alongside are the remains of pens that we imagine used to house winsome sea creatures forced into captivity for the pleasure of the inhabitants of this deserted stretch of island. Legend has it that one of these charming creatures escaped after being abandoned and left in the pens to die after the former occupants disappeared and never returned. Now locals tell how on sunlit days they catch glimpses of her and her offspring frolicking in the sparkling turquoise water that is their rightful home.

We creep our way into the dense jungle. The tall casuarinas filter the sunlight into shadows and their needles muffle our footsteps on the well worn path. The only sounds are the calls of the birds and insects and the roar of the ocean crashing on a beach we have yet to discover.

“Wow!” the cap’n whispers.

Before us is a huge amphitheater built with rough hewn logs. What did they use it for? Ancient rituals? Human sacrifices?

As we continue along the paths we come upon more ruins. Large open air structures perhaps used for communal meals and celebrations. A large tower that may have been used to spy approaching enemies or to send signals to neighboring islands. Rusting modes of transportation including a cart on a rail that might have been used to transport the weaker members of the tribe.

Eating and cooking utensils are strewn about. It looks as if they left in the middle of a big party. Where did they go. What happened to them?



“We could just settle here.” says the cap’n. “We could live off the sea and the land like Brooke Shields and Chris What-ever-his-name is in Blue Lagoon. We’d never have to put a stitch on!”

I actually consider it for a moment…until I swat my 457th no see-um.

And always that distant roaring ocean is calling us. We look for a break in the verdant overgrowth that will allow us access to this elusive beach but can find none.

We head back to the beach to see if we can find a path there. We come across two more settlements. These are small and rudimentary. Obviously camps for transient tribes in search of shelter and sustenance for a short time on their voyage to somewhere else. Each has left his mark. Their homelands are far-flung and their destinations unknown.

Finally we come upon another path. We wind our way through mangroves and past a tree adorned with an array of moldering footwear.

Finally we reach.

Endless beach and ocean greet us.

A beach that is unblemished except for what the ocean has cast upon her shores.

We are full-up with the wonder of that majestic ocean. She made this island and the reefs that protect it. She and her creatures are the only true stewards of this place.

But for awhile we’ll make it ours.


We were very blessed to have called that place our own for a time. Of course, we shared it with a lot of people who also thought of it as their own. Times change though. And now that place is just a fabled memory for those of us that loved it.

Remember though, even if we can’t call it ours anymore, we still have the responsibility to act as stewards to it and places like it.

Yes, there are still magical places out there.

NOW GO OUT AND MAKE SOME MEMORIES!

P.S. Jumping off my soapbox now. Can anybody guess where in the world Agur’s Wish was on January 6, 2004?

Later On

And back to my true vocation in life. The one for which I don’t get paid.

Now where were we?

“Cinnabar, Cinnabar,” a sultry voice beckons across the airways. And so our day begins in Spanish Wells, Eleuthera, Bahamas.

We jump off the back of our boat and walk to shore to take Stanley, the killer bichon for his morning rounds. No, we haven’t become so sanctified that we can now walk on water, we’ve only been here a couple of weeks, after all. Nope, it is just that tide is way out and as you know we’ve been there before (Somedays you watch the show. Somedays you are the show). However this time we are not alarmed since we are tied safely to a mooring and aren’t trying to slog our way through the mud in our usual means of navigation. We just have to walk sideways on the boat until the tide comes back in. Why don’t we move to another mooring in deeper water? Maybe later on. We kind of like being able to walk to shore.

Later on in the morning, Bradley Newbold, aka “Cinnabar” and the owner of the mooring we are tied to, stops by to say “Hello” and deliver a fresh baked loaf of Bahamian bread from his wife of the sultry voice.

Bradley said his wife was encouraging him to retire. Bradley is the other side of 80 so I assume his wife is of a like age. They must be living right in Spanish Wells. Bradley was also our pilot through the Devil’s Backbone when we finally decided to leave. Devil’s Backbone is a series of coral heads and reefs that is as bad as it sounds. And since I’ve detailed in several blogs, the magnetism that “skinny” water holds for us, we thought we’d save ourselves the mortification and repairs for once.

Later on we’ll wonder into town and head to “Teen Planet” our favorite lunch spot. The name reflects the fare of burgers, pizza, and, best of all, the first tacos we’ve found in the Bahamas. Not quite what you consider authentic Bahamian food? After awhile you get tired of eating grouper fingers, fried conch, and yes, even lobster. (Don’t hate me!) And let’s just say, Spanish Wells is not quite like the rest of the Bahamas. It is authentically unique.

The regulars at the Teen Planet include us in their idle island gossip as if we know who they were talking about. Why not? We’ve been there for all of two weeks.

Upstairs from Teen Planet is a theater where we attended a live, I swear to God, a real country music concert. It was a novel experience for us. It was the first time we’d ever listened to country music without the benefit of beer. The music was actually very good but it was lacking a crucial component for us. If I didn’t mention it before, Spanish Wells is dry. No beach bars, no tiki huts, no icy sweet umbrella drinks sweating in your hands. It was whispered to us though that there was a lady that sold it out her back door or you can dinghy across to another island that has a liquor store, or you can catch the ferry/towboat that makes regular stops there. You knew there had to be a way if the cap’n and I stayed there for 6 weeks.

Later on we wonder through the town down to the park by the bridge. It has a beautiful pristine pink sand beach, but best of all it has public bathrooms with showers. As we stroll the lanes lined with tidy houses and well kept yards, the locals call out greetings and wave as they whiz by in their cars of golf carts. Why not? As I said we’d been there two weeks.

Later on we make tracks for Tom and Jean’s for the nightly cocktail gathering and meanwhile I’ll browse for any new books that might have been dropped off at their book exchange that is housed in the living room of their house. Tom and Jean are former boaters (actually, they still have a boat moored out in the mooring field) that pulled in and fell in love with the place. This is a well known hazard to navigation. They now open their home to wayward sailors and other souls for nightly rounds of prohibited libations and ribald chat.

Later on we wind our way back down to the waterfront which is lined with groups of locals sitting and chatting in the twilight. They murmur goodnight as we pass by.

Later on we’ll loose Agur’s Wish from the mooring and sail over to ‘Briland (Harbour Island) and hang out with Mick and Cher.

Later on…..

As I’ve said before, I don’t make this stuff up!

Spanish Wells, Eleuthera, Bahamas

SCUM ALERT!
I was receiving some really weird comments so I've had to add the word verification for comments. Hopefully, the creep can't read or it's been an automated response. Please don't let this stop you from commenting, I love to hear from you.

Sorry for Neglecting You

I am back in the land of work, busy ridding Great Bend, KS of appendixes, gallbladders and uteruses (or uterii). This is what I did for 20 yrs. before I moved onboard a boat. And no it is not just like riding a freakin' bike. Anyway, I'm ready for a little comic relief too, so when I quit having nightmares about dropping the baby during a C-section I'll be back blogging.

"Skeeter" Gets Swatted By Mother Nature

This picture was taken early in the day. The grandkid now swears he's never going sailing again! The morning of "Skeeter's maiden voyage started out benign enough, as a matter of fact it was downright boring. We'd raise the sails get a few good puffs of wind then the wind would disappear and we'd start the motor, then the wind would pick up and we'd raise the sails, then the wind would...Oh hell, you know the routine. We tucked into a few little crannies and let the grandkid swim and grinned like idiots when we grounded the boat and pushed her off by ourselves.

Pookah hailed us on the VHF and welcomed us to High Country sailing while we lamented the lack of Mother Nature's natural propulsion source that day.

"Just wait," replied Pookah, a little ominously I thought.

We didn't have to wait long.

Pretty soon a frisky little wind started to build and we raised the sails again and Skeeter was galloping along. Then...right when we were coming about...

BAM!

The wind decided it didn't want us to come about and whipped the lines out of our hands and into the water. The boom slammed and the grandkid screamed, or maybe that was me. Skeeter tried to rid itself of its contents but we held on tight

Boats aren't supposed to do that! Bad Boat! My old boat never did that! My old boat displaced 39,000 pounds and that was without all of our crap on it.

Just like the early part of the day, the wind died, we started the engine and we limped back to the mooring field where of course the wind picked back up as we tried to pick up our mooring.

Okay, Mother Nature had put us firmly back in our place. So what if we'd sailed a big sailboat on a big ocean, she could still kick our ass if she wanted too.

I wanted to echo the grandkid's declaration to never go sailing again, but I'd said it too many times before.

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

I Want To Be 5 Again

My editor (the cap’n) says I’m way past my deadline. I keep reminding him I don’t get paid for writing this blog and he’s not my editor.

I’ve had the privilege of spending the last week with my 5 year old grandson, Landon. Poor Landon, he doesn’t have one of those grandmas that packs him up to Disney World. Nope, she drags him to Great Bend, Kansas to keep her company while the cap’n works. Not exactly the inspiration for a kid’s dream vacation.

But you know what? He doesn’t seem to mind. Life is fun for him wherever he is. I’m envious. I want to be 5 again.

I want to:

Turn on cartoons when I wake-up and laugh first thing in the morning.

Have my biggest decision of the day be whether I have Captain Crunch or Frosted Flakes for breakfast.

Think that Kraft Mac-and-Cheese is way better than any gourmet meal without worrying about what it’s doing to my arteries or waistline.

Spend hours performing magnificently goofy jumps into a swimming pool without worrying about what anyone watching might think.

Spend hours running back and forth kicking a soccer ball without getting winded or having my knees hurt.

Run away shrieking and screaming when the lion roars at the zoo.

Make a flag out of a stick and be my own parade marching down the street.

Love rain because that’s where mud comes from.

Consider everyone I meet a potential friend.

Read “Curious George” at bedtime and laugh last thing at night.

Dream dreams that make me smile while I’m sleeping.

I want to be 5 again!

My editor said this wasn’t funny, so I stuck my tongue out at him!

New Casa in Chelem, Yucatan, Mexico

Hola!
I thought I'd share some photos of our new adventure. It will be up for rent or we'll swap time in other beautiful places (I guess we better wait until we close next month though). The Yucatan is one of the safest states in Mexico and there are tons of expats down there. Within the two blocks of our house there are 8 American owners, 4 of them are Texans. I'm not so sure that's a good thing. Just kidding. One couple is from the capn's hometown of Sherman, TX. We used to say we did boat work in exotic locations, now I guess I'll do housework instead. By the way, rentals down there are very reasonable as is the cost of living. Come visit us!

To All My Listeners In Radioland: VHF Etiquette

Foreword: I know a few of you know that the cap’n and I have made a difficult decision and have decided to put Agur’s Wish up for sale. It’s time for a new adventure. Thanks to those of you that wrote and ask that I continue the blog since I was wondering if I would be a pertinent voice for fellow First Mates if I no longer had a boat. But I decided I have 12 years of boat experiences I still want to write, bitch, laugh and cry about, and as long as the cap’n will have me, I’ll always be his First Mate on whatever voyage we choose. Now back to the business at hand. Oh, I have to mention that the cap’n is already trying to talk all of our new neighbors down Mexico into buying radios and starting a net.

Rule#1 Don’t Read the Mail!

If you’re new to the cruising life, you’re probably asking,

“How the hell do I even get my mail?”

I’m not referring to the traditional form of mail. What I’m referring to is the practice of listening to a boat hail another boat on a hailing channel and then you, with your twitchy little fingers, turn the dial or mash the little button to follow their traffic just so you know “what’s going on”. Okay, I admit I’m guilty of this on occasion. Hell, if I’m really bored, I’ll eavesdrop on people I don’t even know or care about. (I do it in restaurants all the time). I guess what I’m trying to tell you is, everybody does it, go ahead and do it but you need to get really good at acting like you don’t.

Some people are brazen, there was one boater I knew who would break into discussions about plans in which the boater wasn’t included and would ask if there was room for one more. I would say he had balls, but he was a she. Be warned! This is a big no-no and just about sounds the death knoll for any future cruising social life. Some groups of boats establish secret channels and when they want to have “private” conversations they just request that the other boat go to the secret channel.

This is a real VHF conversation:

“Agurmeister’s Wish, Agurmeister’s Wish, this is vessel Who Cares.”

“Who Cares, Agur’s Wish here. Channel 74, Steve?”

“Everybody hear that, we’re going up to Channel 74. Channel 74, everybody got that?”



Up on Channel 74...

“Who Cares this is Agur’s Wish”

“Who Cares here. Is everybody else here?”

Multiple clicks of the mikes lets us know our audience is listening.

“Hey, Who Cares how that medicine I gave you working?”

“Huh?” Who Cares replied, a little slow on the uptake.

“Is that drip starting to clear up?”

“Yeah, but it still burns like hell,” Who Cares replies, in the game now.

That’s when the cap’n made me get off the radio.

A few words of warning…Don’t say anything that you don’t want anyone overhearing. The VHF radio is a lot like a party line and people are listening.

If you decide to read the mail, prepare to get your feelings hurt--you might hear something you don’t want to hear, like your best friends are having sundowners on their boat and you’re not invited. When you run into them later you’ll have to wipe that hangdog look off of your face and act like you don’t know that they’ve ostracized you even though they know you know. Confused yet?

Rule #2 Don’t Become the Radio Police

You don’t need to attend an academy and no uniform or badge is required. All you need is a “need” to control traffic on the radio..

Everyone recognizes VHF channel 16 as the official hailing channel and for the most part it is respected. Every once in awhile an over excited fisherman or an over-served tourist will forget and has to be gently reminded to move their traffic to another channel. This is really no big problem and rarely happens on channel 16.

It’s when other channels are designated as spare calling channels that the problems start to occur. Don’t get me wrong, the practice of establishing spare calling channels is a great idea. It takes the load of social calling off of 16 and frees it up for businesses and emergencies. I’ve been in areas where there was no spare calling channel set up and channel 16 was a nightmare to try to get a call through on.

So what’s the problem?

These unofficial calling channels sometimes become a little bit like small unincorporated rural towns. They don’t have a mayor, a city council, or law enforcement so a self-chosen few appoint themselves to be all three.

Here is a common scenario on VHF channel 68, which is the spare calling channel in the Abacos…

The radio has been dead silent all day when all of a sudden…

“Desperately Clewless, Desperately Clewless calling vessel Severely Tackless”

“Severely Tackless back to Desperately Clewless”

“Severely Tackless, Admiral Clueless and I were wondering what you guys had planned for tonight?”

About this time you start hearing the desperate clicking of about a half-dozen distant mikes. Finally, one of them wins the contest and an authoritative voice booms across the radio waves.

“Gentlemen, please be advised that channel 68 is a hailing channel in the Abacos. Please move your traffic to another channel.”

The problem I have with this is, not only was Tackless not given the opportunity to tactfully remind his accomplice, Clewless, that they needed to switch channels but now I’ll have to get off my lazy derriere to read the mail. If they’d just been allowed to chat a little longer I could have decided whether it was worth it to get up and change the channel. So all you Barnie Fife’s out there, show some restraint and put the bullet back in the shirt pocket. Is there some sort of reward ceremony out there at the end of the year for the one that gets the most collars?

Rule #3 Don’t Dial Drunk

My Dad used to say his telephone bill always rose in accordance to his liquor bill.

If you feel a binge coming on, do everybody a favor and dismantle the radio in such a way that you will not be able to figure out how to put it back together again after you’ve had a couple.

If you choose to ignore this advice, you will be the only one within radio distance that doesn’t realize you are drunk, slurring, and completely unreadable, in other words, doing your best Foster Brooks imitation probably on one of the main hailing channels.

…And don’t be surprised when the whole anchorage shows up at your boat the next day for the cocktail part you forgot you invited them to.


Rule #4 Your Radio Has An Off Switch, Use It!

If you are not entertained or are totally disgusted by drunks who can’t find their boat or are just feeling lonely in the wee hours of the morning, turn your radio off before you go to bed. Unless you are an emergency responder or there is really horrible weather you really don’t need to leave it on. Unless, of course, you can’t sleep at night from worrying that somebody might be conversing on an unofficial hailing channel and you won’t be there to advise them to move their traffic.

Rule#5 The Easiest and Most Important Rule

I already said and I’ll say it again. Do not say anything on the radio that you don’t want everyone to know. No matter what channel you are on, even those sacred secret channels.

First Mate Mary is clear.

Eileen Quinn Music: Friends

Hi guys I have found a link to the song that always makes me cry "Friends". This site lets you listen to a lot of her music but you'll want to get the CD's so you can listen to her in those secluded anchorages. Ahh...I'm missing my friends.

http://www.stumbleaudio.com/#quinn4/12

Ooh, and look I found the "Anchoring Dance" too, which I think causes more aborted cruises than anything else. There's actually a real dance which Eileen's husband does with great rhythm.

http://www.stumbleaudio.com/#quinn/1

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes Master Recipe: Boule Recipe

I love to bake bread and most of all I love to eat fresh bread, but I have always struggled with getting it to rise on the boat and the mess it makes on the boat. Here is a simple, no-knead, almost no mess basic bread recipe from the book Artison Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I'm providing the basic and white bread recipe but I really encourage you to buy the book and yes, you can find it down there in the Amazon section of my page. Of course, I downloaded it to my Kindle, but I've found the Kindle is not ideal for this something about using my sticky fingers to turn the page doesn't seem like a good idea. You won't believe the number of recipes you can make from this simple process using different flours and slightly different techniques. The real challenge will be seeing if this works when I get home to 10,600 feet in CO. I'll keep you posted.

The 5 minutes a day title is kind of misleading because it does not include the "resting" and baking times.

I'm going to try to post a link to a video showing the authors of the book going through this process at the bottom of this blog. Keep your fingers crossed.

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Basic Boule Dough Recipe

(Artisan Free-Form Bread)

Makes 4 1 lb loaves. The recipe is easily doubled or halved

You can store this dough up to 14 days in your refrigerator in a plastic lidded (non-airtight) container

3 cups of lukewarm water
1 ½ Tablespoons of granulated yeast (1 ½ packets)
1 ½ Tablespoons kosher or other course salt
6 ½ cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour, measured with the scoop-and-sweep method (scoop your measuring cup into flour and sweep off excess with a knife with out pressing or compressing the flour into the cup)

1. Warm the water slightly: about 100 F.

2. Add yeast and salt to the water in a 5 qt bowl or preferably in a resealable, lidded (not airtight plastic container. Don’t worry about getting it all to dissolve.

3. Mix in the flour all at once with a wooden spoon until the mixture is uniform. Don’t knead.

4. Cover with a well fitting, non-airtight lid (I place plastic wrap over the bowl without sealing it). Allow the mixture to rise at room temp until it begins to collapse, approximately 2 hrs. Longer rising times up to 5 hours will not harm the results.

5. You can use the dough at this point, but it is extremely wet and sticky. It is better to refrigerate if for 3 hours, or even better, overnight to make it easier to work with (it’s still very sticky compared to other bread dough)

On Baking Day…

5. The gluten cloak: Don’t knead, just “cloak” and shape a loaf in 30 to 60 seconds. Here’s how. First, prepare a pizza peel (I use any flat thing I have, right now I’m using a piece of tile, you could try a cookie sheet) by sprinkling it liberally with cornmeal ( I can’t find cornmeal right now so I’m using flour but the bread does not slide off easily on to the baking stone) to prevent your loaf from sticking to it when you slide it into the oven.

Sprinkle the surface of your refrigerated dough liberally with flour. Pull up and cut off a 1 lb (grapefruit size) piece of dough, using a serrated knife. Hold the mass of dough in your hands and add more flour as needed so it won’t stick to your hands. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go. Most of the dusting flour will fall off; it’s not intended to be incorporated into the dough. The bottom of the loaf may appear to be a collection of bunched ends but they will smooth out when baking. This entire process should take no more than 30-60 seconds. (I actually don’t get how to do this part, I just kind of roll it around in my hands adding a little more flour until it’s not as sticky and shapeable.)

At the bottom of the article there is a link to a video of this process.

6. Place the shaped ball on the cornmeal-covered pizza peel or other flat thing. Allow the loaf to rest on the peel for about 40 minutes (it doesn’t need to be covered). Depending on the age of the dough, you may not see much rise during this period; more rising will occur during baking.

7. Twenty minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 450 F, with a baking stone placed on the lowest rack (I’m using a ceramic tile until I can get back to the land of available baking stones). Place an empty broiler tray, or any shallow pan that will hold a cup of water, on any other shelf that won’t interfere with the rising bread.

8. Dust and slash: dust the top of the loaf liberally with flour which will allow the slashing knife to pass without sticking. Slash a ¼ inch-deep cross into the top using a serrated bread knife.

9. Baking with steam: After a 20-minute preheat, you’re ready to bake, even though your oven thermometer won’t yet be up to full temperature. With a quick forward jerking motion of the wrist, slide the loaf off the pizza peel onto the preheated baking stone. (Using flour, I have to more-like scrape the loaf off onto the stone/tile and then hurriedly reshape it on the hot baking stone/tile) Quickly but carefully pour about 1 cup of hot tap water into the broiler tray and close the oven door to trap the steam. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is nicely browned and firm to the touch.

10. Allow to cool completely, preferable on a wire cooling rack, for the best flavor, texture and slicing.



Crusty White Sandwich Loaf

Makes one loaf

1 ½ pounds (cantaloupe-size portion) Boule dough
Neutral-tasting oil for greasing loaf pan
* You must use a nonstick pan; they work well but still require a light greasing. Wet dough, the kind in this recipe, sticks horribly to traditional pans.1. Dust the surface of the refrigerated dough with flour and cut off a 1 ½ lb portion. Dust with more flour and quickly shape into a ball as described above.

2. Lightly grease a 9x4x3 inch non-stick loaf pan with a neutral-flavored oil.

3. Elongate the ball into an oval and drop it into the prepared pan. You want to fill the pan slightly more than half full.

4. Allow the dough to rest for 1 hour and 40 minutes (or just 40 minutes if you’re using fresh, unrefrigerated dough). Dust with flour and slash the top crust lengthwise.

5. Twenty minutes before baking time, preheat the oven to 450 F with an empty broiler pan on any shelf that won’t interfere with the rising bread. A baking stone is not essential when using a loaf pan; if you omit the baking pan you can shorten the preheat to 5 minutes.

6. Place the loaf on a rack near the center of the oven. Pour 1 cup of hot tap water into the broiler tray and quickly close the oven door. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until brown and firm.

7. Remove the loaf from the pan and allow to cool completely on a rack before slicing.

Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce3k5uRkEPI>Artisan Bread Making

Boat Etiquette 101: Clothing Optional Anchorages

Imagine your cap’n and you are anchored in a secluded bay, there’s no one around for miles and you’re doing the Brooke Shields and Chris What-ever-his-name-was Blue Lagoon thing. You haven’t put a stitch on for days and you’re starting to get a little sore on your tender parts. (From sunburn, you perverts). You just came up the companionway with two more cold ones when you spy something on the horizon.

“What the hell is that?”

“It kinda looks like a boat,” the cap’n replies.

Dismay starts creeping in…

“Surely they aren’t coming in here.”

“There’s plenty of room. We’ll probably never even see them.” the cap’n offers magnanimously.

An hour later the crew of the other boat wave and holler out greetings as you scramble to put on clothes. They pass by so close you’re afraid they are going to ask if you happen to have some “Grey Poupon”.

Your horror grows as you watch the first mate move to the bow and commence doing the “Anchoring Dance”*. You don’t even have to get out the binoculars to watch them.

There goes the neighborhood!

I have been asked to share some rules of cruising etiquette with you newbies and you not so newbies who should know better. Just consider me the Miss Manners of the cruising world. The scenario above is the subject that comes up most often on the irksome scale. It seems that most capn’s didn’t really want to go explore the world when they convinced you to move aboard a boat, they just wanted to get you naked.

Rule # 1:

If you sail in to a secluded anchorage and there is another boat there, give them their space. Believe me, they are not going to be enthusiastic about an impromptu raft-up. By all means go and meet them but have the decency to respect their indecency by giving them a shout out on the radio or waiting until they go into the beach, if they have clothes on. If you fail to heed this advice, we….uh, I mean they can’t be held responsible for what you’ll encounter. And believe me again, it ain’t always pretty.

And for God’s sake stow the binoculars, or at least use some stealth when using them. There is nothing more embarrassing than to be caught spying through your binoculars to find a pair (binoculars, you pervs) staring back at you.

Rule #2:

On the flip side. Know when to keep your clothes on. You’re members of a community now and not some charterer who’s jumping naked off the Willy T with a cap’n you’ve never seen before in front of people you’ll never seen again. (Those were the days!). The locals of most islands are very religious and conservative, and besides that there are cameras everywhere and do you really want little Johnny Googling his grandmother and seeing that?

If you’re in a harbour and within viewing distance of restaurants or boats keep your clothes on. And please don’t engage in questionable calisthenics on your catamaran’s trampoline. The men are gonna love you and the women gonna hate you. It causes unnecessary tension and eyestrain.

A bathing suit is fine on the boat and beach but cover up when going to town. If you don’t look good in a bathing suit it’s bad enough and if you look good, again…the men are gonna love you and the women gonna hate you.

That being said, if I had the goods I’d be strutting them to heaven and back.


P.S. When I started this article I was gonna write one article about all of the etiquette issues cruisers encounter but I found there was just too much to say. Ya’ll know how wordy I get. It must be the southern in me, his name is Jack Daniels. Just joshin’ ya! Wink wink nod nod. Anywho, this has become a series of smack downs, the next one being about the radio.

* I want to give credit to Eileen Quinn for the term the Anchoring Dance which I stole from one of her CD’s that I own. She has provided us with a lot of laughs and a few tears through the years with her music. I have links to two of her CD’s that have this song on them way down yonder in the Amazon area of this site. And yes I do get a little money if you buy through me, but not enough to buy you a beer in the Bahamas. If you’ve never heard her song “Friends” your missing the anthem about what cruising is all about.

Leaving On A Jet Plane: Medical Emergency

Hi all!
I’m sorry that I’ve been delinquent in posting but I have a really good excuse. About a month ago, I jetted the Cap’n out of here on a turbo-prop to West Palm Beach.

It started out as a normal day with the cap’n not feeling too good which we just attributed to the fun the night before. Throughout the day he felt worse and worse, I didn’t learn until later when he confessed it to the doctors that he’d been having tightness in his chest for 10 days. I finally convince him that we call BASRA (Bahamas Sea and Rescue Association) http://www.basra.org/. This is a totally volunteer organization that receives no funding from the government that needs and deserves your support. You never know if your going to be next one calling them so here is their website, if you’d like to assure that they are there for you. I am not implying that they won’t help you if you don’t donate, they help everyone in need, but like everybody in these trying financial times they need your support. This story is easier told by saying things we were fortunate in doing or having and things we wish would have had in place or done differently.

We were lucky that we were in a familiar harbour with established friends and contacts available. We were able to hand Stanley, the killer bichon, off immediately to trusted friends, Phyllis and Neil on Chapter X . I had never even considered what I would have done with a pet in the case of an emergency like this. I had barely hung up the mike from calling BASRA before a dock friend, Mads was there with assistance and an offer of a defibrillator from his boat (thank God we didn’t need it) and within minutes a member of BASRA, Chris Prewitt, whose sailboat was moored right behind us was knocking on the hull to transport us to the main dock where the boat that would transfer us to Marsh Harbour was waiting. We were fortunate they were already responding to another emergency and were at the ready. I thank God that we were not at some uninhabited cay with no one around.

It was unfortunate that we did not have an emergency bag ready just in case this should happen. Even so, I thought I did pretty well, throwing in passports, all the cash we had, (including the money our friends on Exit Strategy had given us to relay to their mooring ball owner since they were leaving for a few days), our wallets, checkbook, cell phones (but no chargers) and 3 pairs of underwear apiece. The cap’n managed to throw in a couple of packs of cigarettes. Unfortunately, I forgot extra clothes (that was solved by a scarey, creepy public bus ride to a Dollar store 5 days later. Who but sailor trash goes to a Dollar Store to shop in West Palm Beach?), cruising permit, which caused us to have to buy round-trip airline tickets when we were lucky enough to fly back to the boat. And scariest of all I forgot my make-up and toiletries. After we got back, our friends Amy and Pete, from Double Vision told us they always keep a ditch bag ready, even though they no longer live on a boat, great idea for everyone.

We were fortunate that we had established friends in Marsh Harbour who met us at the clinic and helped hold me up. Chris and Tara from OII (Out Island Internet) stood by and made Cola runs for me and used their own personal cell phones to call our family to let them know what was going on because my fingers wouldn’t work to dial and they also started to arrange a charter for us out. In the end this was unnecessary because the doctor said the cap’n would require a Medevac. Brenda from Tupps Wine and Liquors, who was worried about losing her most loyal customer (just kidding, Brenda). She gave us immeasurable support and even told me I looked great even though I knew different. And to our magical friend Patti Toler who did things that I’m sure we’re not even aware, plus she loaned me a hairbrush and some lipstick.

We were fortunate that Dr. Schwerna and his staff were on duty that night. Under their hands the cap’n became stable and I became less afraid. The emergency staff at West Palm Beach were very impressed with his treatment. We are thankful to Dr. Boyce for loaning a necessary medication from his private clinic and for his staff for bringing it over on what was now becoming a late evening.

We were unfortunate, that we did not have Medevac insurance. In fact, I have actively pooh-poohed it on several message boards, saying , “Who would want to wait 8 hrs. for a Medjet to arrive when you could charter a plane in minutes. . There was no way I would have been comfortable flying alone with the cap’n on a charter that night. He required medications and constant attention, and while a charter might be okay for a fracture, it was not appropriate for this situation.

We were fortunate that we had enough credit on our credit card to pay for the evacuation ($8,400.00 plus change) because it is required upfront. I don’t know what they do if you don’t have the money to pay. I strongly suggest you sign up with http://www.medjetassist.com/ or http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/ or another like service. The plane was Beech B-1900 with two pilots, a doctor and two EMT/nurses. They also arranged transport by ambulance to the hospital. The eerie thing is I had just asked the cap’n during our last flight over that I wonder what they do in reference to customs and immigration when you are flown in on a medical emergency. Now I know. In our case, we first had to land in Fort Lauderdale to clear in because West Palm’s customs had shut down. I was right about waiting for a jet for 8 hours, it was now the wee hours of the morning and the ordeal had started about 3:00 pm. All of us except the patient and one nurse disembarked from the plane and walked across the tarmac to the immigration office. As always there was no hurry and another Medevac plane was clearing in at the same time. There was some problem with the manifest and no one seemed to be concerned that my cap’n was having chest pains out on the tarmac. We finally cleared and then the nurse that had remained with the cap’n had to go in and clear. I was able to present the capn’s documentation for him. Finally, we were back in the air on the way to WPB.

We were fortunate that we had changed our international medical insurance (which required us to be out of the US for 6 months of the year) before we got back on the boat this year. When I couldn’t find other things to keep me up nights worrying, I worried about this requirement since we hadn’t been able to fulfill it last year due to my dad’s illness. Turns out I was right to worry.

We were fortunate for the good care at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach. We were fortunate that the cap’n did not have an MI (heart attack) but an arrythmia that was able to be treated with meds and a change in lifestyle. We were fortunate that the docs insisted on a heart cath because we were coming back over here and they didn’t want a repeat perfomance. We were fortunate that the heart cath showed no damage and that it, according to the doctor, “looked a hell of a lot better than it deserved to” given the capn’s lifestyle. After the capn had been off cigs and rum for a week., we were fortunate that there were still a few nurses willing to take care of him.

We were fortunate to have the support of our friends who called or sent flowers when we were in the hospital and when we returned to Hope Town , several of whom were on the dock to greet us with applause and hugs.

Yesterday, we were fortunate to volunteer at the Hope Town Fire and Rescue Fair, http://www.hopetownfirerescue.com/ who shares its funds and people with BASRA.

We are very thankful to The Great Navigator upstairs for a wake-up kick in the head. I can’t brag that our new leaf has remained completely turned over. I myself, as some of you know, have never been a poster child for moderation and the cap’n is my worthy counterpart, but be reassured we are trying and will keep on trying. Believe me, it's harder than it looks.

Sorry, The Great Navigator does not have a website...

So go on up to high power now, if you feel like it, and keep us in your prayers

Boat Best Friends: Pets on Boats

I'm woosing (?) out again and pasting an email that was sent to me from a very good friend who lost her best friend about a month ago. The email happened to be very timely because some other friends on the boat "Second Look" lost their mate "Mandy" last week. I keep trying to think of a better term than "lost" but none of them fit. And after all, maybe lost is the most appropriate term since we hope we will find them again someday. Thanks Patti, Matriarch of the Abaco Cruiser's Net.

This explains why I forward jokes:

A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead.

He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.

After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight.

When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother-of-pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold. He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side.

When he was close enough, he called out, "Excuse me, where are we?"

"This is Heaven, sir," the man answered.

"Wow! Would you happen to have some water?" the man asked.

"Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up."

The man gestured, and the gate began to open.

"Can my friend," gesturing toward his dog, "come in, too?" the traveler asked.

"I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets."

The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going with his dog.

After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence.
As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.

"Excuse me!" he called to the man. "Do you have any water?"
"Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there, come on in."
"How about my friend here?" the traveler gestured to the dog.

"There should be a bowl by the pump."

They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it.

The traveler filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog.

When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree.

"What do you call this place?" the traveler asked.

"This is Heaven," he answered.

"Well, that's confusing," the traveler said. "The man down the road said that was Heaven, too."

"Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's hell."

"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?"

"No, we're just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind."

Soooo...

Sometimes, we wonder why friends keep forwarding jokes to us without writing a word.
Maybe this will explain.
When you are very busy, but still want to keep in touch, guess what you do? You forward jokes.
When you have nothing to say, but still want to keep contact, you forward jokes.

When you have something to say, but don't know what, and don't know how, you forward jokes.
Also to let you know that you are still remembered, you are still important, you are still loved, you are still cared for, guess what you get?

..... A forwarded joke.
So, next time if you get a joke, don't think that you've been sent just another forwarded joke, but that you've been thought of today, and your friend on the other end of your computer wanted to send you a smile.

You are all welcome @ my water bowl anytime

I have a lot of things ping-ponging around in this old noggin of mine right now. We went to Mexico to explore an alternative winter residence and found the most gorgeous house at an obscenely low price (compared to the Bahamas)and then we came back home to our friends and an unbelievable 50th birthday party for our friend Doris on "Exit Strategy" and the next day met up with one of our best friend couples, Janet and Gary of "LeeAnn" and we are wearing ourselves out trying to decide. House or Friends? In today's economic climate I think I'd rather invest in friends. I'd love to hear from friends that gave up boating to see what they think. Norm and Ami?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Boat for sale

No it's not mine, but we have extended our visit here in Mehico for a couple of extra days just to look at additional winter accomodations. Notice I said additional, not alternative. I just can't get away from the tortillas and frioles and cheap beer.

Some friends of ours have turned into CLOD (Cruisers Living On Dirt)and are looking to give away their boat to a good owner. JUST KIDDING! Whooee! I bet Pat blew some blood vessels on that one. Some of you might have sailed with Pat (Paco) and Dori over the years, if you have you won't forget them. They are now selling Sol Y Mar. They are the only owners and I can vouch that you won't find a better maintained boat. I know she just got new batteries, like last week and they are now in Bequia waiting for a window to bring her to the states. Anyway here is the link for all the info. Hey Paco, do I get a finder's fee?

http://www.sailboatlistings.com/view/11648
It seems blogger no hablas English. It keeps saying,"No se encuentra el blog que busca" so let me know if you guys can't link to the site. And hey swab, bring me another Mohito.

Hi guys,
I've jumped ship! But just temporarily. We are taking a short vacation from the boat to visit Jeff's brother in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. We have been having a blast exploring Mexico and I can't wait to tell you about it. If you think there is no more undiscovered beachfront in the Western Hemisphere, you're wrong. We found a place with gorgeous untouched beachfront on the gulf and they are only using it to to beach their fishing boats. Can you believe it? The locals kept asking us how we found the place, at least that's what I think they were saying. We were the only non-Spanish speakers in the whole village.

But before I blog about our trip, one of my new readers, Mike from Ohio, wants to know how we (I'm including the rest of you first mates and captains in this)jumped the hurdles to go cruising. One of his questions is about health insurance and since, as our fellow cruisers in the Abacos know, we had to Med-evac the cap'n out a couple of weeks ago to West Palm for an all-expensive, no frills stay at the elite Good Sam hospital, I have a few suggestions. And I hope we get some suggestions from others. Thanks for getting me back on track, Mike. When I started this blog the purpose was to answer and get suggestions from other first mates but my readers appear to be shy. Now keep in mind, I know quite a few of them and they're not shy at all. I still want to know how to keep my dishrags from stinking to high heaven since I can't just throw them in the wash machine if any of you have a suggestion.

Hopefully, I'll be back chewing your ear off on Monday.

P.S. We really need to import good tortillas to the Bahamas.

All Creatures Great and Icky! : Boat Critters

We arrived back on our boat after our Christmas vacation in the land of paychecks. Agur’s Wish was pulling gently at her docklines and all looked to be well. We extracted our key from the top secret hiding place that everybody on the dock and quite a few people in the settlement are aware of, just in case someone needs to save her from sinking or burning to the waterline. Or, God forbid, there might be a real emergency like a shortage of rum, in which case the residents of the dock and town know we have enough emergency rations of rum to “float” a small island nation for the foreseeable future.

We descended the companionway into the gloom of the shrouded boat. As we uncovered the hatches, we gasped in horror. Strewn about the boat were remnants of cigarettes chewed down to the filters. The strings of fake plastic limes and lemons that I had hanging in the galley had multiple bite marks in them.

The cap’n and I looked at each other. Which one of our nicotine fiend, tequila deprived, lime-sucking dockmates was to blame? It could be anyone of them.

“I smell a rat!”

Yeppers, in our absence a transient hobo-type critter of the rodent kind had set up camp and was now plotting to hold me prisoner on my own boat. Think Nicole Kidman in the movie “Dead Calm” or Melanie Griffith in “Pacific Heights”. This intruder was hell bent on incessantly teasing, taunting and torturing me.

There was the night I was laying on the settee reading a book, listening to Stanley, the killer bichon, chomping away at his dinner in the galley. But wait a darn minute, Stanley was laying right beside me. That’s what I call teasing and taunting.

Trapping a rodent phobic, incurable insomniac with frequent nocturnal urinary urges in her bunk all night….that’s what I call torture.

Luckily, the cap’n wasn’t as easily cowed and he set to work setting a trap. Later on that night, let’s just say, our uninvited guest found himself in a sticky situation. The cap’n gave him the old “heave-ho”.

And now Mickey, the Mouse, sleeps with the fishes.

Although no worthy first-mate, except me, would lay claim to having such commodious quarters for the formerly described unwanted guest, rodents are actually your common, garden-variety type of vermin that might be found on your boat. Now let’s talk about some of the more exotic varieties that may take up lodging.

I was introduced to one such creature on a bright sunny afternoon while I was diligently cleaning the cockpit and the cap’n was diligently throwing back lethal adult beverages at the Jib Room at the Marsh Harbour Marina..

I was busily scrubbing away, whistling a happy tune when I happened to open a cockpit locker. Staring back at me from the depth of the locker were two bulging yellow eyes.(I swear he had yellow eyes). A viperine (look it up, as Sister Irene used to say) tongue darted at me. There squatting atop the debris was a big, fat, slimy, day-glo lime-green frog.

“Rrrribbett”, it said.

“Eek!” said I, as I slammed the lid and awaited the cap’ns return from his arduous duties on shore.

Once again the cap’n gave the old “heave-ho” and the culprit swam merrily to shore.

Unfortunately, now my fear of opening the cockpit lockers is akin to my fear of highway rest stops. You see, for some reason every time I go into a highway rest stop I fear that I am going to see an amputated body part floating in the toilet. I try to not even look in the toilet. I have no idea where this gruesome irrational fear came from. Believe me, I’ve never seen an amputated body part floating in a toilet. Maybe I’m a little bit crazy. Normal people don’t think about things like that at rest stops. Do you? Ha! Ha! I bet you will now. Gotcha! Anyway, that explains the sorry state of my cockpit lockers.

Both of the previous experiences pale in comparison to what happened to our friends on the s/v Just Dreaming. This happened a couple of years ago and I wrote about it on some of the cruising boards, so if you’ve already read it I apologize. This is what happened.

We received an interesting vessel in distress call to us via VHF yesterday afternoon. I don't know why they thought we could help them with the nature of their distress except it happened to be one of those rare days when the water in Marsh Harbor was clear enough to see the interesting array of nature on our bottomsides.

It seems that the admiral of the distressed boat had been diligently (Ah-ha, a fellow member of the diligent cleaner club) scrubbing the head when she noticed what she thought was algae poking out from under the rim. She immediately armed herself with toilet brush for the attack and the enemy beat a hasty retreat. She decided to flush the area for more traces of enemy insurgents and sure enough more little legs poked through.

Dispersing with the usual regimen of interrogation she went straight to the torture stage and started gingerly tearing off limbs. When the captain and admiral had torn off a respectable amount limbs without gaining any useful intelligence they decided to call us. They now had their own little P.Y.N. (pinch your nose) camp set up in the intake of their head and they had removed all means for their prisoner's escape. You think the Abu Gahraib (sp?) scandal caused a stink.

My captain had indulged in his usual breakfast of Kalik's followed by a nutritious brunch of Rum-N-Ade’s and for some reason couldn't come up with a solution. I muttered, "You suck." My captain replied, "I besh your parshon!" I replied, "Tell him to disconnect his intake hose and apply suction." Sure enough, after just a few seconds of militia strength ShopVac to intake hose and the enemy lay legless and quivering on the floor.

A 3-4 inch slimey Jabba the Hud squid in his last throes. Of course, my captain took all the credit for the successful mission.

So, if some dark, .dark night you find yourself on the throne trickling and you feel something tickling....... Sorry Denny and Diane this one's going 'round the world wide web.

Whatever You Want To Put In It Pop-overs

I took these over to sundowners on JilliQ the other night and was told that I have to put the recipe in my blog and in return Jill will add her made-in-the-pie-plate pie crust recipe. Jill, you are within dinghy distance now and I can come over and wring it out of you. Actually, the pop-overs start with a basic cream cheese pastry that is very easy to work with and you can do anything you want with it. First the pastry recipe (Not for the lite-hearted diet types)

Cream Cheese Pastry

1 8oz. pkg of softened cream cheese
1 cup of softened butter
2 cups of flour
1/2 tsp salt

1. In large bowl cream together cream cheese and butter

2. Slowly add in sifted together flour and salt.

3. Shape into two balls, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 3 hours.

4. Roll out to desired thickness (1/4 inch or so for me) cut with desired size of round cutter (I use a Guana Grabbers cup which is about 3 inches diameter).

5. Fill pastry round with about a tablespoon of filling (sample fillings down below) if your using the Grabber cup, fold over and seal edges. Crimp sealed edges with a fork.

6. Place pop-overs on greased cookie sheet and bake at 400F until nice and golden brown. In my oven you never can tell how long this is going to take and I'm still usually crouched down next to the oven beast with flashlight in hand 15 minutes after happy hour has started. I also usually have to turn them over to brown them on both sides. So do them the day before and reheat.

Fillings I have used:

Italian:

Slosh some olive oil in a frying pan and heat, drink a glass of red wine, add a brick of cream cheese, drink a glass of red wine, add chopped onion, green pepper, pepperoni,mushrooms, or whatever you have, and drink a glass of red wine. Heat until the mixture and you are toasted and bubbly.

Mexican:
Same as above except use hamburger and Sangria.

*This pastry also makes a delicious quiche pastry. I have used it for mini-quiches by lining regular sized muffin pans with the pastry dough and filling with an egg mixture of eggs (duh), heavy cream (or whatever dairy product you have onboard), scallions, shrimp, asparagus, and swiss cheese. Just bake until pastry is brown and egg mixture is set. Yummy! And can be frozen and reheated later.

Bon Apetite! Slosh! Slosh!