Chapter 6: Day 2, Leg 1
And Nothing Firm to Stand On
Sitting in the bar of what appeared to be an expensive tourist hotel, working on a good case of "stinking drunk," it was hard to believe that only a few hours before, I'd been cooped up on a little boat full of sick people, covered from head to toe in white pasty goo, hopelessly trapped in a horizon to horizon expanse of Outside, hoping against all hope to see some sign of civilization again. Of course, those things were precisely what gave the task of getting stinking drunk so much urgency.
With so many ostentatiously tangible pieces of decadent Inside all around me, my life was once again gaining some focus. I felt centered, and somewhat content. Georgia ordered another round.
Robert and I were nominally supposed to get up around midnight to start our watch. We didn't anticipate any problems with this, because while both of us were successful in getting some sleep, we were also jarred awake every ten minutes or so by the crashing of the boat.
I got up just before midnight, and noted how well the Dramamine was working, because I was feeling merely furious at over how the boat was bashing around, rather that just being so sick that I wanted to die. No hint of feeling sick at all, and the only thing I wanted to hurl was Georgia (overboard), for getting me into this mess in the first place.
Everyone was in fairly good spirits (or pretended to be) and most were awake. I was told that the people on the first watch wanted to extend their watch because theirs had started so late. In reality, they were all looking pretty green around the gills and looked none too anxious at the prospect of going below. In any case, Robert and I were reassigned to start our shift at 3:00 AM, and those normally assigned that shift (Bob Ericson and Craig Clairmont) would have the fortune of not having to sit watch that morning.
Even still, I decided to go outside and see what was going on. What I found was pretty representative of what I was feeling down there in that V-Berth. The waves were slamming against the boat (or the boat was slamming into the waves), rocking it on all possible axes. All around us, I could see the lights of all the other ships on the water, mostly freighters and huge cruise-liners, all of whom appeared to be heading right for us.
The other really entertaining thing I found was Tom, kneeling over the edge of the deck, demonstrating his Full Gullet Power Hurl to the rest of the crew. I would have to say that Tom's technique is the best I've ever seen, and his endurance is unsurpassed. He didn't even slow down for the half hour or so that I watched. I didn't want to stick around for too long, else I'd catch a whiff of that butyric acid and find myself responding in kind.
I went back below, informed Robert that we weren't on until 3:00, and tried to get back to sleep. I was more or less successful. The only problem was that the waterbed fantasy ploy was starting to wear a little thin, and it was getting hotter than hell. I spent most of those next three hours alternating between fitful sleep and sweaty awakedness, contemplating the fact that feeling hot and muggy is one of the first signs of nausea.
I got up at around 3:00 to see if they were ready for Robert and me to take over. I was still feeling fine (aside from being hot and sweaty and miserably wet), but there was a growing pit in my stomach that was telling me that it would be a really good time to start my watch. This was not to be, though, as Bob and Craig decided to do us a big "favor" and serve their watch on schedule, just so Robert and I wouldn't have to interrupt our sleep.
Right. I interpreted that to mean that neither wanted to spend any time below deck. I don't think I felt so great about this, and for good reason. It turned out that Robert and I were the only two people to spend the entire night (or at least 90% of it) in a V-Berth, which probably put us at the top of the list for that night's Chunder Containment Crew.
Tom, on the other hand, had been lashed to the deck, and was laying on his side with his face hanging over one edge of the boat with a still uninterrupted stream of yak flowing strong.
With that, I headed below deck to try to catch a few more Zs. Or, judging from the way the boat was rocking, I was going to catch a few more ZzZzZzZzzZs. It was then that I discovered a really interesting effect of Dramamine, namely that while it does prevent me from getting nauseous, it doesn't necessarily cancel any other ill side effects of motion sickness. I'd gotten back to the V-Berth, and opened my mouth to explain to Robert that our shift was cancelled again, and suddenly found a couple of mouthfuls of semi-digested hot dog and mustard charging up from the depths of my esophagus.
I managed to gasp everything back down before it hit my uvula, and tried as best I could to nonchalantly run up to the deck and announce that I'd decided to take some fresh air. Noting that this left two people below deck (Robert sleeping, and Judy, talking on the radio), and that the other five above deck looked about as green as I did, I realized that this bravado of mine was both unconvincing and unnecessary.
It took about fifteen minutes before I felt stable enough to head back below deck. On my way, Judy suggested that since it'd stopped raining, I could open the hatch in our berth to let in some cooler fresh air. Sounded like a good idea to me, so I did. Of course, it was just cooler air, or more precisely, slightly cooler than hotter than hell, and I still felt like the only thing standing between me and a nasty case of nausea was a tiny little Dramamine substitute pill I'd taken several hours ago.
Robert and I were eventually awakened around 6:00 AM by two events. The first was a bucketful of water that splashed in through the now-open hatch. No, it wasn't raining anymore, but when you're in the middle of a rough ocean, there isn't any shortage of water. The second event was the appearance of a green faced individual at the doorway to the berth (I forget who it was), informing us that our watch had just started.
I sat up, felt those hot dogs charging back up my throat, and decided that standing watch (or any activity above deck) was an excellent idea. Enough of the Dramamine had worn off that I was starting to feel the effects that I'd been missing all night long. I ran up above deck, and in an assertively meek voice, declared "It's time for me to steer now." Now, anyone who knows me at all knows that I generally want to have nothing to do with steering a boat. Fortunately no one on the boat (other than Robert) knew me well enough to realize that my request was just my bravado trying to beat a case of sea sickness into submission, and trying to look cool at the same time. Actually, everyone knew that, but it's the sort of self delusion that I like to entertain myself with.
By now, the crew had the sails up, which I took as a bit of reassurance, because it meant that the boat was really tipped over to the one side, just like it seemed to be. This also meant that I could discard the notion that my inner ears had silently abandoned me in the middle of the night. They were just on strike instead.
The watch went pretty uneventfully, assuming that you don't consider getting wildly off course in several directions at once to be an event. Judy and Gary both attempted to give me directions on watching the compass and steering accordingly, but for some reason, something was wedged in my brain, preventing me from fully comprehending the directions. So, we spent a bunch of time with me steering wildly in the wrong direction, and wondering why we were getting even further off course.
For a while, I attempted to try to navigate VFR, and just fix on some point on the horizon (during one of the rare moments that the compass needle swung through the proper course setting), and steer towards that. That's when I discovered that in the middle of the ocean with a big mess of nothing in all directions, there's nothing on the horizon to focus on, except for the horizon.
I eventually got it all figured out, and settled into a routine of PIO as I wildly overcorrected every course deviation. Still, the overall mean of my heading was more or less the direction we were supposed to be headed, so it wasn't that bad. Sensing my success, Judy came back over and gave me the same set of directions that I didn't understand the first two times, and I went back to steering in the wrong direction again.
After about an hour of this wild meandering, my stomach was more or less settled, and Robert emerged from below deck, looking properly green. I suggested that he take the helm, repeating the directions that I heard and misunderstood so many times, then retired to my self appointed permanent post of "rail meat" for the rest of that day's journey.
Robert, semi interested in learning more about the workings of a sail boat (or at least interested in distracting himself from feeling sick), asked the more experienced crew members to demonstrate some really stupid things you could do on a sailboat, and Bob and Gary were all too happy to oblige.
That was pretty entertaining, but as the morning wore on, a pall cast over the spirits of the crew when we realized that it was almost time for breakfast. A quick look around the boat revealed a diverse collection of pale complexions and a dearth of enthusiasm for doing anything to upset the uneasy truces we'd all made with our digestive systems.
Then, we considered the people assigned to cook breakfast: Gary Clairmont, who looked none too enthusiastic, and Tom, who was still in mid-hurl. Assuming consensus, we all declared (in a most grandiose fashion) that we weren't hungry, and as a gift, we'd let the cooking crew off the hook this time. I never did figure out who was more relieved: those who didn't have to cook, or those who didn't have to eat. Either way, it ultimately boiled down to the same long term goal: those who didn't have to puke.
Sometime mid-morning, things all took a turn for the better. More or less. I mean, the sun did come out, which doesn't quite fit my definition for things getting better, but I did put some sunblock on. Now, to me, sunblock is a serious proposition because I really hate being in the sun. That's partly because after fifteen minutes of direct exposure to sunlight, I begin to smell like bacon frying, and after 30 minutes, I smell like bacon burning (and look slightly worse). Because of this, sunblock is an absolute necessity.
Unfortunately, I hate sunblock almost as much as I hate the sun itself. For starters, it has the overall consistency of mayonnaise (my least favorite food). Needless to say, the thought of slathering mayonnaise all over my body just doesn't appeal to me. Therefore, if I'm going to stoop to sliming my body like this, I'm going to make damn sure that the stuff works.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't even consider a sunblock unless it had an SPF of at least three digits. This time, knowing that I'd be subjecting myself to really heavy-duty sun, I went whole hog and got myself a drum of "Thermonuclear Terminator 2000 Sunblock." Unlike all those other wimpy sunblocks (like SPF 45) that merely attempt to glue a layer of ultraviolet opaque goo to your body, "TT 2000" works on the principle that the best defense is a good offense. It does this by enveloping you in a thick, bioluminescent glob that's so offensively disgusting looking that it just intimidates the sun into shining somewhere else.
And, it worked, with the added benefit that no one else onboard got near enough to me to ask me to do anything.
You know, sitting on a boat, out in the middle of the Caribbean, with the sun shining bright, sunblock on overdrive, with a mild wind, and waves gently pounding against the side of the boat, isn't such a bad way of spending a morning. In fact, it was a wonderful way to spend the morning.
I don't know why, because there was almost nothing to look at, and with a borderline case of nausea hanging around, daring me to go below deck, there really wasn't a hell of a lot to do, either. Even still, I was struck by the fact that I just couldn't think of anything I'd rather do that morning. Maybe it was delirium left over from the previous night. Whatever the reason, I decided to just stay there and watch the morning go by.
By this time, two of the other boats (Nueva Vida and Bold Response) were just specs, barely visible on the horizon, and Vanessa Rose was just nowhere to be seen. Land wasn't visible for quite a while, and even when the Grand Bahama Island did come into view, it really wasn't much to look at. There weren't many birds, either, so about all there was to look at was a lot of sky, a lot of ocean, a lot of waves, and the occasional school of flying fish. I even thought I saw a dolphin jump out of the water once.
Up until now, a lot of the vacation had been a long series of discomforts and irritations. Yes, there were times on the van that were sublime, but those moments were few, and when you think about it, being cooped up in a van during a never-ending rain storm isn't really that much fun. Neither are trying to sleep below deck while the boat is lurching, and your stomach is threatening to or eating cold, greasy, rained on pizza while trying to load too much stuff into a too small boat.
We got into Freeport sometime around 1:00-2:00 PM, or to be more precise, moored at the Xanadu Hotel, which from all appearances is at least three miles away from anywhere. Everyone wanted to go ashore for a while, but these things don't come so easily. More than anyone, I wanted to go ashore. For starters, I was all backed up, sphincter to esophagus, and I was ready to go.
A few years ago, Robert and I went on a train trip across Canada, and while we had a first class sleeper room, we found that the bathrooms were so small that you had to assume the operative position before entering the room. Entering in the wrong orientation would leave you with a problem, as there wasn't enough room in one of those bathrooms to turn around. Thinking back on this, I guess I miss bathrooms that spacious because while the bathrooms on the boat were better equipped than those on the train (the boat's even had showers), they were even smaller than the train's, requiring you to plan your entire day around going to the bathroom.
Taking this, and my earlier pledge (not to use the bathroom on the boat if I could at all help it) into consideration, the only things I had on my mind when we got into port were:
- Using a real bathroom
- Having a real shower
- Going to the bathroom again, just for fun
Unfortunately, things just don't work that way in real life. I'd gone below deck, trying to accelerate the passage of time (if nothing else) by sleeping through anything that could obstruct my journey to the promised land, but there was just too damned much to do before anyone could get off the boat. Or, too much not to do.
I woke up to the sound of people discussing the raising of a yellow quarantine flag. Evidently, you have to do that to inform anyone who cares that you've just arrived, and that no one can board or leave the boat until you clear customs.
Clearing customs meant filling out lots of paperwork. Most of it was Judy's job to fill out, but each of us got to agonize over a special form of our own, asking every conceivable personal detail imaginable, and providing about a third of the space necessary to give an honest answer. And aside from the paperwork, there were other considerations: Craig didn't have a passport, Paul had a gun, and Craig filled his form out wrong (or at least in a manner inconsistent with his driver's license).
Georgia solved these problems, and any other problems that any of the other boats presented, by using the same no-nonsense direct approach that she uses to solve any problem: She bribed the crap out of just about every official on the island, and bought every permit and pass they were selling, just to make sure that every possible government ministry's pockets were lined.
This probably explains why all the officials and hotel employees treated us so nicely. Since the forms had taken so long to fill out, and since finding all those officials to bribe had also taken so long, it was about an hour before any of us could get off our boats. I was so happy when the time came to get off the boat, that I took off in full sprint towards the hotel building with a hotel employee in tow. He was so pleased at his recent windfall that not only was he happy to show me to anyplace I wanted to go, he even offered to help me relieve myself.
Without going into any more details, let's just say that everything went fine. I found my restroom, then found a bunch of my fellow travelers waiting in the hotel lobby for a key to a "courtesy room" where we could all take showers. They gave us a key, and we all trooped over to the other building that housed the courtesy room, stopping on the way to buy some fruit punch rum drinks. I noticed that Bob had his drink (served in a 16oz cup) finished before we got out of the elevator.
We may have been the first ones to arrive in the courtesy room, but we were soon joined by a steady stream of the rest of the people from the other boats in our group. We all sat in that room (a regular sized hotel room) wherever we could find space, and the guys watched some football game on the room's TV. The reception was so bad that no one could make out what teams were playing, or what the score was, but guys like football so much that this didn't really affect their appreciation for the game in any way.
With all my problems properly eliminated, and with all the mayonnaise freshly washed off, I went back to the boat and got some of the first real sleep I was to have since the Thursday before I left. Of course, even when I'm sleeping, the making of legends continues unabated.
Most of the legendary activity took place on the Vanessa Rose, where Kathleen, fresh back from her shower, nearly had her hair devoured by a man eating hair dryer gone berserk. It took three men on that boat to wrestle the hair dryer to the ground and beat it into submission. It took three other people to cut all her hair out of the dryer. Now, I can't verify this, but rumor has it that Georgia bribed the local constabulary into throwing that hairdryer into jail, with no hope of formal charges being filed before the end of the year.
And, I was constantly awakened by the only thing we ever heard from the Bold Response, parked next door, which was their shouts (in British accents, appropriate for threats) of "Give us all your Pizza!"
With all of us parked neatly next to each other, we implemented one of the first variances from the officially sanctioned menu, which was to forget whatever we were supposed to be eating that night, and cook the swordfish instead (before it went bad). And, we were going to do so as one large group.
Because Bob was the big gourmet chef on board, and because he was assigned the cooking detail for the Sea Gals that night, he got the job of marinating the swordfish steaks, and Robert got the job of grilling them. Bob did a damn fine job, too, although he'll never know it, because he was so blotto that he passed out sometime just before the grilling commenced.
It was a pretty cool scene, too. Georgia, with her spinnaker fixation, had spread a spinnaker out on the lawn across from the piers, and we all sat on the sail and ate our food. Or, in boring travelogue prose, good times and good spirits were had by all, except for Kathleen, who just didn't care for swordfish.
All that was left to be done with the evening was to gather everyone up (except for Bob, who was out for the remainder of the night), troop over to the hotel's bar, and take the place over so that we could all make unselfconscious fools of ourselves. And I'd have to say that we did a damn good job of it, too. At first, everyone thought we were cute. Then, they thought we were pains in the backside. After that, we had the place to ourselves.
We were screaming and hooting and hollering and singing and dancing and shrieking and making all sorts of noises. Whenever Kathleen turned her back on her drink, someone stuffed a dollar bill into it. She was well on her way to quite a respectable collection of rum soaked $1 bills, when she had her little accident.
No one really knows exactly what happened, but one moment, she was dancing the night away, and the next moment, she was on the floor with a broken foot. Worse yet, while she was nursing the broken foot, someone walked off with her rum soaked dollar bills.
This didn't stop some of the others from having fun, though. While I wasn't personal witness to any of this, the partying evidently went on until some obscene hours of the night. I just went back to the boat and went to bed after I saw Kathleen in all that pain. It was enough for one day.
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