Chapter 10: Day 6, Leg 3 (for some)
The Great Bimini Rift
The room was rocking, swaying and lurching all around me. I had one foot braced against the wall, and was hanging onto the back of Robert's chair, but I still felt like the next wave was going to knock me out of my seat. I couldn't figure out how the waitress could balance all that stuff on her arms, and manage not to drop any of it, especially with the restaurant rocking around like that.
Mostly, I just wanted to get off the island and back to the boat, where things were more stable. Then again, everything's relative, and stability really wasn't on the menu for the day.
Gee, the day started calmly enough. Those of us who weren't inclined to be hung over rose in decent enough spirits. The rest had the previous evening's spirits to deal with. All of us were in good enough moods, though, which is probably the key feature that differentiated the morning from the rest of the day.
My day started with breakfast at Cap'n Bob's and the realization that I was still having real problems with dry ground. The problem was probably related to the fact that as far as I could tell, the boat no longer moved around, but that everything else in the world did. As usual, the restaurant was heeled over about thirty degrees, again requiring me to brace my foot against the wall to keep myself upright.
Honestly, with the room rocking around like that, I just couldn't figure out how all those other people were managing to eat greasy breakfast food. All I managed was a large Goombay Punch. I really wasn't sure which was making me feel more queasy: the way the ground was rocking, or the idea that we were going to leave Bimini and go sailing. Either way, eating just didn't seem compatible with esophageal stability.
If we were leaving, though, I had some very important last minute errands to run. For starters, the ship's stores were running dangerously low on Coca Cola, and the thought of a few days at sea without any Coca Cola was unbearable. Shoot. Might as well leave without any food or water, too. Thus, my errands started with the procurement of a half a case of one of life's essentials, and ended with a six-pack of Goombay Punch and a sweatshirt depicting all the outdoorsy activities you'd never catch me dead taking part in.
When I got back to the boat, I found that a major controversy had developed. It turned out that Admiral Georgia, and most everyone else from the Vanessa Rose and Bold Response were thinking that the ideal plans for the day would be to stay in town for another night of roof surfing at the Angler. That would have worked out quite nicely, except that most of the people on the Nueva Vida and Sea Galls wanted to continue with the original plans to go sailing. From the sounds of things, there was a distinct possibility that there'd be a mutiny, with the latter two boats striking out on their own.
Ok, it wasn't most of the people on those two boats who wanted to go, because as soon as there was the merest suggestion that there might be such a split, people started jumping ship from the Sea Galls so fast that it was hard to keep the boat from squirting out of the water due to the sudden loss in weight. The Clairmont brothers were the first to go. Then, Tom fell into an awful state of waffling indecision that had him standing with one foot on the boat and the other on the pier like some kind of maritime wishbone.
It wasn't just the crew of the Sea Galls, either. Colleen hopped off the Nueva Vida at the first sign of trouble, and there was grumbling from some of the rest of the crew.
Still, most of the people left over on the two boats wanted to go sailing. Well, ok, most of the people left on the Sea Galls were seriously undecided. Well, all right, everyone on the Sea Galls was more or less willing to go sailing if that's what everyone else wanted to do, but wouldn't have minded staying in port at all.
Just the same, all of the people on the Nueva Vida, excepting Colleen, really had their hearts set on going sailing. Or, at least most of them did. Sort of.
Two. It was two people on the Nueva Vida who wanted to go sailing, and the rest of us on both boats were willing to go along. More or less. At least the ones left over. Still, in the name of keeping somebody happy (and it certainly didn't seem to be Georgia who was being kept happy at this point), we were all willing to play along. Except for Tom, who was still straddling the railing, hoping some higher power would make a wish and put him out of his indecision.
There were enough people jumping ship from our two boats that the Vanessa Rose was starting to sit pretty low in the water. It was a bit surprising that it could even stay afloat with all its new hangers-on, and all the stuff they brought with them. Probably for this reason, Georgia had Kathy volunteer to move over to the Nueva Vida for the rest of the cruise. In this spirit, Kathy joined the crew of that boat, shooting people the sort of glances that could sink us all. And, Tom eventually decided to stick with his boat... with reservations.
I suppose in retrospect, it might seem a bit odd that two boats worth of people decided to participate in an open mutiny when only two people on one boat really had their hearts set on going. All right, not just in retrospect; "odd" is how it felt at the time, too. Then again, two people can be awful damn persuasive, and that got one boatload to go. The heartfelt goo-goo "Ooh, pookie, I'm going to miss you so much" looks that were exchanged by the two captains pretty much explains the other boat.
So, it was with this spirit of conflict that saw our two boats pulling out of Bimini. The crew of the Vanessa Rose saw us off with a proper "21-finger salute," and the crew of the Bold Response hailed us with cries of "Bring back some pizza!" We'd made plans to meet up next to some Cay or another on the following evening, but as fate would have it, we never saw each other again for the rest of the cruise.
Well, the way I looked at it was that none of us had had a really good hurl in days, and after all, the whole point of our vacation was to be thoroughly miserable out in the middle of nowhere. After all, you can get stinking drunk and go roof surfing anywhere, right? Even still, it was with a tear in my eye that I bade a fond farewell to indoor plumbing. And, when our relationship was still so young!
The sail out to wherever it was we were going was quite uneventful, which did seem to fail to deliver on the promise of misery, but no one complained, anyway. The first stop was at a partially submerged shipwreck, sitting on a sandbar out in the middle of nowhere. Robert had a great time snorkeling around the wreck, and picking up the staff infection that would be his most lasting souvenir of the trip.
After the ship wreck, we motored over to Honeymoon Beach at Gun Cay (someone with a map may be able to make sense of this). Honeymoon Beach is a really picturesque sort of cove on one end of the Cay which, according to Cap'n Judy, is uniquely situated to pick up the worst possible weather that the area has to offer. Somehow, we managed to have quite lovely weather, despite this reputation. We rafted the boats together and settled down for the evening.
For not having any bars to get drunk in, we had quite a nice time out in the middle of nowhere. For starters, with the Admiral out of sight, and with the crews of the boats slightly reconfigured, we set fire to the crew cooking and watch duty rosters, once and for all. In the mean time, Cap'n Judy and her beau Yakov went off in search of lobsters, and returned with two of those, plus a real live Conch.
Tom, Ron and Trevor found that conch handy as bait when they decided to try to catch something else edible. They caught a squirrel fish (using conch meat as bait) after Judy showed us how to clean a conch. (Yep, that woman's got her priorities straight: first, she killed it, then she cut its penis off, and gave the conch penis to the guys as their first piece of bait. It worked.) Tom had been feeling far too well that day to provide his normal source of bait for the fish, so they resorted to using bits of the conch and chunks of hamburger meat that'd gone bad. It never was clear to anyone whether that rancid hamburger was attracting the fish or just scaring them off.
Sometime during this mess, someone actually had the presence of mind to cook some dinner for us. All thirteen of us (everyone from both boats) sat in the cockpit of the Sea Galls, and shared dinner and potty humor. Afterwards, Tom, Dot and Ron decided it'd be great fun to build a bonfire over on the beach. What the heck? Tom hadn't spewed in over a day, nor had he broken a dinghy recently. So, the three of them piled into one of the dinghies and headed for the beach while the rest of us pretty much ignored them.
I later heard that the rest of the cruise was still in Bimini, having one hell of a good time. This good time was not without its negative consequences, however. Unbeknownst to us, Craig Clairmont and Christian Brady were in the process of fusing into a single swaggering, obnoxious entity known as "Chas."
By the way, this will probably prove to be one of the most lasting ways to identify any participant of Sail 93: just walk up to someone and in the most affectedly grandiose voice you can muster say "Hi. I'm Chas." If the other person responds with an unhesitatingly apoplectic "Will you shut the f___ up with that Chas bullshit?", you'll know that you've stumbled into a Sail 93 crew member.
On reflection, I suppose it's too bad that the thirteen of us missed all that fun back in Bimini. On the other hand, we had a heck of a good time ourselves, and it was still a couple of days before we had to meet Chas. What better way to end a day?
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