Chapter 8: Day 4, Leg 2
Tom's Day of Chunder
This was it. I was inescapably Outside for the second time that week. Sitting on the deck, holding the railing, dangling my feet over the edge, I could see an infinite expanse of ocean and sky in all directions. There was a cool breeze pushing our boat towards Bimini at a properly leisurely pace. Tom was quietly moaning, the rest of the guys were sailing the boat, and I was just sitting there, wondering how the ocean got to be that clear and that blue. I began to realize that my life wouldn't be significantly diminished if I spent even more time sitting there.
Somehow, I'd started enjoying myself, and I was terrified that someone would notice.
This was another day that I was awakened. This time, it wasn't to make breakfast. This time it was to eat breakfast, and secure everything in preparation for our setting sail for Bimini. Ditto on my previously stated attitude towards being awakened before noon. Waking me up to eat breakfast is just about as productive as reminding me to throw up. Knowing that we were about to set sail meant that I knew better than to eat. It also meant that I knew to take tons of Dramamine.
Tom, on the other hand, had decided that if he just got pretty sick after taking Dramamine and going out on rough seas, it'd take extra work to get really sick on milder seas. So, he ate a huge breakfast and refused any anti-sea sickness medicine. In other words, he was making damned sure that he was going to have one hell of a good day.
The other thing he did was actually very nice. He decided that it'd be best to prepare lunch before setting sail, so that no one would have to go below decks and puke their guts out during lunchtime while we were at sea. So, he pulled all the lunch fixings together and put them in one spot in the fridge. I really appreciated this, because Bob and I were the ones assigned to prepare lunch.
We got all ready to go, with a slight delay to make sure the weather would be favorable, then motored on out of the marina. As we left the protected waters of the Xanadu's Marina, Tom started his stopwatch to obtain the official time it was to take him to start vomiting after we hit the ocean. The final time was just about 24 minutes even, at which time Tom assumed his position on the starboard side of the boat and commenced his day long hurl.
At about the same time, I assumed my position, sitting with my legs hanging over the port side of the boat. I wasn't feeling ill as Tom was, but I knew that if I stayed there, I wasn't going to start feeling ill, either.
Tom and I maintained station on our respective sides of the boat for so long that they ceased being referred to as "port" and "starboard," taking the names "Dawn" and "Tom" instead. Tom, of course, was sicker than a dog, and I was just fat, dumb and happy, watching the world go by.
Now, if you'd told me that sitting on the edge of a sail boat, watching a huge expanse of featureless ocean go by was fun, I'd have told you you're crazy. If you'd told me that I'd think it was fun, I'd have told you that it was outside, therefore doubly crazy. In fact, I'd have considered the entire act to be slightly more boring and miserable than watching paint dry.
Well, maybe I've been unfair to drying paint, and ought to try it sometime, because I came to realize that sitting on the side of a sailboat on a clear day (with relatively calm waters), watching a huge expanse of nothingness go by is one of the most amazingly wonderful experiences I've come to know, surpassed only by sitting (totally blotto) up in the dome car of a train.
I sat there from about 9:30 (when we left) until sometime in mid-afternoon, when I decided that I'd rather sit in the cockpit than share the rail with a bunch of fish blood. See, shortly after we'd set sail, Cap'n Judy had set up a fishing rod at the rear of the boat, and unbeknownst to the rest of us, she was embroiled in a fish-off to the death with Cap'n Yakov on the Nueva Vida. Sometime mid-afternoon (due largely to Tom's contributions), the fish started biting.
The first one was a very pissed looking barracuda. I don't know much about fish, but I do know to steer a wide berth around pissed looking barracudas. Judy made the decision to let it go, but no one was really too anxious to be the one to pull the hook out of its mouth.
The second fish was a 10 pound King Mackerel. It took Paul a considerable amount of time to reel that fish in, and it took Judy a considerable amount of time to brag about it over the radio to Yakov. When they finally hauled it onto the deck, I learned a fishing technique that I'd never seen before.
I didn't know this before, but merely ripping a fish's mouth apart with a hook, then pulling it out of the water doesn't really kill a fish (or at least, not too quickly). As a result, the fish was flopping around like, well, like a 10 pound King Mackerel on the deck of a boat. (It's funny how that metaphor works out.) Cap'n Judy ordered one of the crew to pour some rum in its gills, and doing so had that fish out of commission in no time.
A few of us let go of low whistles, and commented on how that must be a pretty pleasant and painless way to die. The rum drinkers on the boat corrected us, telling us it was a horrible way to die; we'd used white rum.
That was the high point of the fishing. After that, there was another pissed looking barracuda, and a smaller mackerel. In the end, we had two fish to show for our efforts, and the ocean had two sorely irritated looking barracudas with freshly ventilated mouths. We also had the port side of our boat covered in fish blood.
All that fishing slowed us down. So did steering around a freighter that had decided to engage in a little sailboat hunting. Evidently, those guys who pilot the really big ships get a kick out of watching sailboats skitter all around the ocean. This one had us in his sights no matter where we went.
You'd think that we'd have had fish for dinner, but we didn't. Georgia thought that we were going to have T-Bone steaks for dinner, mainly because her menu said we would, but we didn't have those either. Since the Clairmonts had jumped ship to become adjunct crew members of the Vanessa Rose, we only had six people aboard, two of whom were vegetarians, and one of whom really didn't like steak that much. On top of that, no one was that crazy about the cooking assignments.
This was when Bob Ericson showed his usefulness in the best way he knew: he ran below decks and started cooking up some pasta. This was pretty wonderful in two ways. First, it was a dinner that appealed to everyone on board, and second, he was the only one who was absolutely confident of being able to cook below decks without orally augmenting the food.
It was also wonderful for me, since it was the first time in several months that I smelled the intoxicating aroma of onions and garlic being sautéed in olive oil. This single event may well have been responsible for me dropping any hostility I felt towards Bob, were it not for the fact that he and I were getting so much enjoyment out of feeling hostility toward each other that neither of us was willing to give it up that easily.
Lest this sound like a total gourmet dinner, I should point out that we were roughing it, meaning that the sauce was based on a jar of Ragu, and the pasta itself was that boxed ziti-like stuff that has a shelf life of at least two ice ages. But, since we were roughing it, the Dinty Moore phenomenon took hold, and the entire dinner was totally delicious.
We got to our appointed meeting place way late. I don't know exactly where it was, except for some point off the coast of the north end of the island. The other three boats were already there waiting for us, with Georgia very proud that she'd piloted the Vanessa Rose to the meeting place first.
There's something really "back to the earth" about driving up to within a couple hundred feet off the coast of some sparsely populated Caribbean island, and settling down for the night. One of the main features of this is that by the time the sun sets, there really isn't a whole lot to do, other than go to bed. That's pretty much how the day ended for me.
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