A bite of Bequia

April 11, 2012

"Hello beautiful lady! Taste my mango?"

A bit forward aren't we?

I love Bequia. I want to drop anchor and stay for awhile, swim to the beach where they were blasting old Michael Jackson ("Don't matter if you're black or white...") and new dance tunes late into last night. I want to walk down the main street and peruse the bead bracelets and coconut art. I want to hang out at the vegetable market with Jean Claude and the rest of the rastas. I want to sip a coffee at the bakery overlooking the gas station and watch the locals greet one another with song and prayer. I want to let mango juice drip down my arm as I tear orange flesh off the seed with my teeth and wash my body in the clear blue sea lapping up against fishing boats, ferries, and an assortment of jerry jugged sailboats. I want to walk into the hills and find seashelled beaches on the windward side, finding calcified treasures and dried bouquets of seaweed. I want to eavesdrop on the fisherman speaking their patois and signaling with conch shell bellows at the dock. I want to feel the land beneath my feet and smell the earth warming with the rising sun. I want to rock to sleep in the cockpit of my own tiny boat.

"Taste my mango!" I tell Jean Claude I'll take four of his beautiful fruits. I ask for salad and he points to the man with the stall next to him. The competition is stiff at the Bequia fresh market. I try to make my way around the small, chicken-wire-for-windows building, spreading my allotted EC dollars to as many as possible. I am not bargaining, I am not pitting the sellers against one another to strike a deal as I should. I don't have the time. I need to get back to the boat with my bag of melting ice cubes and split open a pumpkin, grate some ginger, chop some coriander for today's lunch. I admire peppers and pineapple, I point to buttery yellow grapefruit and green oblong melons. Aubergines (I love that word for eggplant) purple and plump drop into my bag.

Limes! Always a dire need for limes on the boat. A rum and tonic wouldn't be the same without a chunk floating next to the precious ice. The fresh mahi with pineapple salsa wouldn't be as bright. The bananas on the morning fruit platter wouldn't keep as long. Two bags of green globes sit next to bright red tomatoes and local carrots.

I savor my time at the vegetable and fruit market. This is what I want to be doing: talking with people, inhaling the smells of fruit and fish and salt and herb, getting onto land and exploring, if just for a few minutes, another culture.

"OK beautiful lady, you come back to see me, alright?"

You don't even know, Jean Claude, how much I want to.
But on my own boat, my own time, my own money (gulp- there will be bargaining then- $10 US for two red peppers? No way!)

This is just a taste, like a nibble of bright juicy mango with a squirt of lime...

Bequia and the art of cruising

April 11, 2012

Garfield

April 9, 2012

The palms of my hand were covered with rusty salt and mud. They gripped the winch handle shoved into the windlass and lefty loosey the anchor chain paid out at alarming speed into the 30 meters below. Righty tighty it clanked to a stop at 35 meters of chain. Not enough to hold a boat in regular circumstances but the stern was to be tied off to the decrepit dock leftover from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie here in Walalibou Bay, St. Vincent. The oxidized metal remnants allowed us to use the anchor like a grappling hook instead of the usual procedure (anchor flukes dug into the sand with plenty of chain on the ground to keep the anchor (and boat) in place). I continued to pay out the chain as we reversed toward the dock.
"Hey. Hey! Hello!"
A man in a colorful wooden skiff rowed up to the port bow.
"Hello! My name is Garfield. I get you papaya, mango, coconut!"
"Hi Garfield. You'll have to wait a sec. I need to finish anchoring."
"Yeah, no problem. You're fine," he said, referring to the anchor. "Relax."
His comment irked me a little. Anchoring is one of those things that is pretty basic but if not done well, your ass is on the beach or the boat is bumping up against that rusty dock or other anchored boats. So it is not something I take lightly. And then there's that whole people telling me what to do thing that I sometimes have a problem with...
He approached the bow and stood up, hands gripping the toerail of our boat.
"I've got some fruit. There are lots of guys here. You come to me, Garfield. OK?"
"OK Garfield. I need to finish my job here and then we can get fruit."
"OK, you need papaya? Mango?"
"Yes but I need to finish up here then we can talk." I was getting frustrated with his persistence.
In the Caribbean sailors call them Boat Boys. I have a problem with this. They are usually not boys. They are men vying for business in villages that rely on passing yachts to supplement their fishing or farming incomes. The amount some guys spend on fuel to come and meet a yacht a miles away from the harbor must negate much of what they get for helping to pick up a mooring ball or stern line. They offer fruit and inland excursions to waterfalls and sulfur springs. They will take your garbage bags to land. They offer other things that tourists want when they come to St. Vincent, Rastafarian land.
But they are not boys. They are Afro-Caribbean men trying to make a living.

Sometimes desperately.

Garfield appeared at midships on port, hanging onto the side and asking me to give him a plastic bag for fruit. The owner of the yacht was talking to a guy we bought goods from the last time we were anchored here. He was on the starboard side.
"I was the first guy. She talked to me first! Give me plastic bags!" Garfield yelled. I told him I'd like to see the fruit first as I had a cabin full of green mangoes and needed ripe ones. The owner tried to give a little business to each guy but Garfield was having none of it; he wanted to be the sole fruit purveyor. He kept insisting I promised him the business, which I inadvertently did by asking what he had available, putting me in an awkward position.
Garfield's desperate aggression rattled me. I don't like being yelled at or pressured into buying sight unseen but I also knew that this might be the only money Garfield would make that evening. In the end I let the owner divvy up the orders as it was his money that was going to be spent.
I was still shaken from all the yelling when I set a plate of fresh dorado sashimi onto the cockpit table as the two Boat Guys were rowing their separate ways. I brought up cocktails in crystal glasses and looked to the land where the houses were crude cement or wooden shacks in a jungle of green trees and towering palms. Kids played in the shallow water. A goat tied to a palm tree bleated incessantly. The smell of smoke from burning fields or rubbish drifted over the million dollar yacht.

Garfield delivered bags of mangos, guavas, and a large papaya. Overpriced of course, but what is overpriced to a rich man? "They see this boat as a mobile ATM," the owner had said at the last anchorage. He wasn't saying it contemptuously or haughtily, he was just stating what seemed to him a fact. He was a player in the game, he knew he was being overcharged (compared to the markets in town) for fish and fruit, but he also saw it as a way of helping the local economy. Circulating a few extra Eastern Caribbean dollars around the islands.
I don't own the boat, I just work on it.
But I still feel strange about the term Boat Boys, about the aggressive salesmanship, about the history of these islands, and the fact that I am visiting them on a million dollar vessel. Down here in the Caribbean every hill and plantation has a story, has blood and tears deep within the soil. Many of these islanders are descendants of slaves brought to the Caribbean against their will and forced to work the land. Sugarcane plantations run by rich slave owning men once dominated the economy. Now the moneymaker is tourism (and drugs) and dependent on (relatively) rich folks, many from the former colonizing countries. Is any job a good job or is there another way for these islands to be self-sufficient? Is tourism such a bad thing? How else could guys like Garfield survive? Or is subsistence farming better than being dependent on yachts for money and stores for food- like the Rastas live on the north end of the island?

It cannot be solved in a paragraph, a book, a discussion over frosty pina coladas on an artificial white sand beach. I know that. But the look in Garfield's eyes, the desperation floored me, still floors me, as the eyes of poverty does anywhere.

Garfield got paid for his service. We got bags full of fresh delicious local fruit. Commerce continues between rich and poor, black and white, yachtsmen and boatMen.

Home is where the water is

April 6, 2012

Awkward divisions of color cover on my body. My arms are reddish brown up to my shoulders, the fine blond hair still slightly salty from today's sail. The ever changing border where my T-shirt sleeves of various lengths reside or are rolled up is a little lighter but then fierce red where the sunscreen failed to adhere. (OK, I missed that spot. OK, I didn't put sunscreen on at all that day. Well, only to my face. Yes, I know I'm going to look like a shriveled raisin when I'm old. But I'll be old and Vitamin D-ed up and happy telling my sailing stories to whomever will listen. "Back when there were fish in the ocean..." I'll begin, my sun spotted wrinkly hands cupping a mason jar of whiskey...)
There is a clear line between the screaming pink of those now blistering shoulders and the pale skin of my upper back.
There is a circle of freckled auburn around my neck cascading down onto a constellation of varied pigment on my sternum.
My legs are tan up to my shorts line. I work on a boat so I am rarely bikini-only bound. Which brings us to the situation of my sallow torso. When the salty sweaty clothes come off it looks as though I have on one of those 1920s bathing costumes. The only time I don those tiny strips of fabric without tan botching clothes is when I am sneaking a dip into the water. Usually it is when the guests are off exploring land (sigh) or have taken the dinghy to some cove around the rocky bluff to check out a beach bar (double sigh) but sometimes my only chance is when they are smack dab in the middle of my path to the ladder overboard. They are in the cockpit with the cocktails I just served them. I try to be inconspicuous but when you are the only girl on a boat with five men, well, even those of us in our mid-30s with awkward tans and a little extra junk in the trunk (damn being in the galley and sampling everything all day!) get attention. But I manage the stares, climb down the ladder, tie my sarong to the lifelines, and ease myself into the cool clear salvation lapping at the hull of the boat. My cells rejoice with being home again. The water that covers the earth, that makes up most of our bodies. I ground myself without dirt under my feet (or 90 feet below my hovering body in this case). Weight, dirty toilets, getting older, the dinner menu, exhaustion, what's happening in San Diego, fingerprints on the varnish, the future: They don't matter right now.

I am simply floating in home.
Awkward tan lines and all.

Creature comforts

April 6, 2012

A tiny crab greeted me this morning. He clung to the boarding ladder and waddled sideways on the teak rung when I poked him with my wet finger. My morning swim perked me up more than my two cuppers of tea ever could but when it culminated in two beady little eyes staring up at me from a tiny, nearly translucent crustacean? I just stared back with a grin and wondered what his little eyes were seeing. If I made his morning just as he had made mine? I stopped poking the little guy and looked down into the water. Sometimes schools of fish congregate under the boat or you can see the sandy or rocky bottom. Or eel grass sways in the current. Once or twice I've thought I've seen large shadows flash below. I try not to think on such things as my emotional wounds from watching Jaws when I was way too young still split open and fester when I am alone in the water, especially at night. Scuba diving with reef or nurse sharks, not a problem. I absolutely love being in the middle of swarming vortex of fins and teeth. They are amazingly graceful and couldn't give two hoots about me. It's the whole on the surface thing that freaks me out. Kind of like stepping on seaweed when wading out into the ocean or sinking into river mud- you just don't know what lurks down there. I do know there are sharks around. Tigers and bulls so I hear. The kind that are a little nuts and pretty aggressive. They sometimes eat people. I just choose to think they avoid the area when I'm swimming around the boat.

At the fish market we picked up some fresh local mahi for dinner. I marinated it in ginger, lemongrass, garlic, and coconut oil and served it up this evening with a lovely wild rice blend next to local green beans and carrots sautéed with garlic and butter. So fish on a plate, you lost your golden scales but picked up a nice buttery brown hue in my pan.

On the motor down to pick up the guests and spend the night below the towering Pitons, we saw the ultimate sea creature. Well, the captain spotted it just off the bow and yelled down the hatch for me. I couldn't hear what he was saying as my music was blasting (thanks music giving friends!) as I wiped down the entire boat with the ubiquitous vinegar and water solution, made beds, restocked the cooler, reorganized the packed fridge locker, sweated my balls off. I ran up on deck and he yelled and pointed, "Whale!" I watched as the humpback spewed mist into the air and arched his dark gray back. We slowly motored past as he rippled the surface with his movements. Then! Then? He made me into a whistling, clapping, smiling fool as he arced his body one last time and raised his white patterned flukes into the air as he dove. It was like getting a high five from your most adored. I whooped and hollered back hoping he would resurface but was happy with the send off.

I picked up my cleaning rag and set back to work but smiled and whistled and sang aloud for my whale the rest of the afternoon.

You're either a plate shitter or you're not

March 26, 2012

Screams from the water propel me out of the galley onto the deck. The glare of the sun against the white topsides forces me to squint. I can't see him. He screams again. It's coming from next to the boat. "Shit! Shit!" he screams. Sharks? Did he cut himself on the prop? He is cramping up? "Are you OK?' I yell down, leaning over the lifelines to see him. "There are shit stains coming from these through-hulls! Shit stains! Yours not mine!" I look at the kid that Ole Yeller down in the water has been working with this winter and he says under his breath, "That's because we don't shit onto paper plates in the cockpit, hanging off the steering wheel with our pants down. It's a sight to see." He laughs but is totally serious. I am thankful this maneuver wasn't demonstrated on my watch.
This guy shits on a plate. No wonder he's been deeming his paper plates "good enough for another use" after each meal.
No fucking way.
Of course this doesn't surprise me as I have become accustomed to seeing various gatorade and juice bottles full of piss. I thought it was because we were on a starboard tack for the delivery south and Ole Yeller didn't want to use the port side crew head because it doesn't flush very well uphill. But no. He continued to use the bottles when we reached St. Lucia.
Now, I have to come clean. I have done my fair share of peeing in bottles and crapping in plastic bags in the middle of the night. I admit it. This was on my own boat years ago when J and I got to New York with a much used and much-in-need-of-repairs boat. Gitane's plumbing wasn't functioning, poor girl, and living without a water tank and toilet during a winter in Jersey City... it's a challenge. Even if the head had been working pumping shit into the Hudson is pretty illegal. Besides, the marina water was frozen all around us so it would have just sat under the hull until Spring. Yum.
So on those nights when it was in the 20s and a 2am trip to the head required pants, boots, and a heavy coat, well, screw that. So into a bucket it all went.

But this is different. I am working on a multi-million dollar yacht. Ole Yeller is the caretaker and therefore thinks that every time he avoids using the head he increases the lifespan of every gasket and pump in the line. (And avoids shit stains on the hull, of course) He may be right. But to me that is like keeping the plastic covers on furniture or having a favorite set of china that you never use so none of it will ever break. So no one sits in the family room on pristine couches and dust collects on robin blue teacups. What's the point?
A boat is meant to be used to get you places, to relax upon, to make yourself at home within. Guests need to crap in the toilets. And use the sinks and the showers. They come dripping down the companionway and leave salt and sand in their wake. They drop things like phones and swimming masks and bottles of wine onto the cabin sole and sometimes it leaves a mark in the varnished teak and holly. Someone opens a hatch during a sail and a bunk gets soaked and stained with saltwater that never really comes out of the thick fibers of the mattress. Lines and cushions get sun damage along with the sunburned guests (and um crew) and need to be replaced.
A boat is meant to be used well, enjoyed, worn in, maintained until it gives out.
If it ever does.

Like love.
Like friends.
Like life.

Shit on a paper plate to avoid the messiness of dealing with a something that is meant for exactly that purpose?
Seems like a messier option to me.
Especially if you miss.

My reward

March 26, 2012

It takes my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the darkness. I have been down below since night fall: appetizers, cocktails, clearing, washing, prepping dinner, cooking, serving, clearing, washing, serving tea and dessert, clearing, washing. I wonder how parents do it three times a day like this.
Minus the cocktail hour of course.
Or multiply cocktail hour by several glasses of wine for mommy and daddy.
I am not so lucky to have a chilled glass of white in my right hand as I stir with the left.
I am sober at the helm of the galley, sweating over propane, the stove gimbling when I'd rather it not. My hair sticks to my face and my counter space decreases with clutter and crumbs as the courses march on.
I am pacing the eight feet of my domain opening the fridge locker and climbing onto the counter to grab a bag of basil in the far reaches of the coolness. I want to climb in and take a nap. But there are rum cocktails to be made and a literal fish to fry! I slide to the aft end of the galley and chip some ice off a huge block with an awl. I move aside the frozen bread and slightly defrosting (shit!) shrimp and grab the tonic. Cut a lime wedge, add some rum, a splash of quinine-y goodness, scurry it up to the smoke infused cockpit. Bob Marley is blaring, telling me every thing is going to be alright.
Thanks Bob.
Dinner is simmering, I am still sweating, setting the table for four. The smells of wine, butter, and garlic permeate the boat. Hints of basil and warming bread dance with the former and murmurs of the guests trying to guess what is on the menu waft through the galley.
Cooking, serving, washing.
They turn up the music after dinner and tea and cookies and chocolate. They bet what that Yellow Mellow song by Donovan is about. The loser has to serve the other one breakfast in the morning and answer Yes Sir to every request. The funny part is that I will be the one cooking the breakfast and handing it off to the "loser." The funnier part is that I am absolutely sure that at some point in my past this would have offended me and set me off into a flurry of anti-subservient thoughts complete with self-recitation of SAT scores and GPAs and fantasies about throwing hot liquids into the face of said "Sir." Do I have less pride now? No, I just know who I am a little bit better. Whether I'm getting my PhD or serving up eggs over easy, either someone gets me or they don't and wondering about their judgement gets me nowhere. So I smile at their game and wipe dry the last glass. (let's see if this positive attitude can hold out another six weeks!)

The breeze dries my salty sweaty hair and I breathe in the surprisingly cool Caribbean night air. I nibble on a piece of dark chocolate and allow my eyes to relax into the dimness. There are lights of houses on the hills and a flashing buoy off the port stern. There's Orion posturing again for Venus and Jupiter as he runs from that (serious) dog. He's surrounded by points of light I forgot existed outside of the islands, on the ocean.
But the water is the most magical: Fireflies and bass drum beats of light flicker and voluminously glow beneath the swaying stern.
Bioluminescence. Phosphorescence. Fireflies and drum beats.
Call it what you will, the light show in the water is my mesmerizing reward for a hard days work. I try to predict where the next flicker will show up but the traces from the last still linger in my brain and all I can do is unfocus my eyes and take all of it in.
I guess sometimes you need to soften your view to see all the magic surrounding you.

My day is over as I climb into my bunk, my last glance before closing my eyes at stars through the deck hatch, but the fireflies have all night to shine.