Chapter 11: Day 7
Without a Sea Leg to Stand On
It seemed as if I was caught in some kind of science fiction stasis field, albeit a stasis field that was in constant motion. The day just seemed to happen, yet nothing was really happening. The waters were rough, but the Pina Coladas were great. Still, nothing could explain the mysterious disappearance of about half my bottle of single malt.
Dear Diary,
Where the hell am I???
Oh. Sorry. Forgot.
Or, so started the day. There we were, out in the middle of the ocean, or far enough away from any real, populated land (with air conditioning and indoor plumbing) that we might as well have been out in the middle of nowhere.
Our day's assignment was to sail over to Cat Cay, and do ... I don't know, ... something. Diving. There was going to be some diving somewhere, and we were going to raft the boats again, and the other two boats were going to meet us. Or something.
Some of that happened and some of it didn't. The main thing that didn't happen was that we never met up with the other two boats. The main things that did happen were that we tried to do all that other stuff, even though it sounded like a great way to get seasick.
Oh yeah. In case you haven't noticed, I haven't talked much about the actual mechanics of sailing yet. I have a bunch of good reasons for that:
- Because I've been trying to block it out of my memory.
- Because I managed to get all the way through the trip without quite having to learn how to do any of that sailing stuff.
- Because we hadn't been doing that much actual sailing.
- Because I figured it'd be a good idea to save it for a boring part of the narrative.
Hey, seems like a great time to talk about sailing now, eh?
On our first day, Cap'n Judy characterized a sailboat as being sort of like a really fancy camper. I've heard other seasoned sailors characterize a sailboat as a hole in the water that you pour money into. I tried to keep those characterizations in mind for most of the trip, but they didn't quite hold together, so I'll take a slightly different approach.
The first thing you notice about a sailboat is that it's long, skinny, sits in a bunch of water, rocks around a lot, and gets everything inside soaking wet. The newer sailboats that we were on were all made of fiberglass (or something sufficiently injection molded looking). They have the hulls, which are the parts that directly contact the water, the decks, which are the parts on top that exist solely to provide a place to put the hatches, and they have the hatches, which exist solely to leak water on everything inside.
If you've ever been inside a sailboat, you'll see that it's a marvel of space efficiency. Every single cubic inch of space down below is utilized, falling into one of the following categories:
- Living space for humans.
- Storage space.
- Space for the machinery of the boat.
- Space for large pools of bilge water.
Or, any combination of the above. In fact, everything below decks ultimately serves as storage space for bilge water. It is one of the most delightfully pervasive features of sailing.
Up, above deck, just towards the rear of the boat, is a recessed area called the "cockpit." It has a set of water-soaked seat cushions on top of storage lockers (containing more bilge water), an ice chest full of beer, a big steering wheel, and a chair from which Cap'n Judy shouts obscenities (and orders) at everyone.
Around the perimeter of the deck is usually a narrow walkway that's always tilted towards the outside of the boat, and surrounding that is a flimsy railing that'll never stop anyone from falling into the water. On our particular boat, there were also two bodies lying in the walkway -- Tom's on the starboard side (sailing speak for "right"), and mine on the port side (sailing speak for "left").
Surrounding the railing is the "emergency exit." Finding the emergency exit on a sailboat turns out to be the easiest thing in the world, and consists of two simple steps:
- Get above deck.
- Hurl your body towards anything that doesn't look like sailboat.
The abundance of emergency exits is just one of the many feats of engineering genius that you'll find on a sailboat. Unfortunately, you'll also find that availing yourself of one of those emergency exits generally creates more problems than it solves. It is also the only way to get anything any more wet than it'd get below deck.
A sailboat also always has at least one big flagpole in the middle of the deck, except that sailing people always have funny names for everything, so it's called a "mast." You hoist big sails on the mast. Sails look like big sheets, except that you don't want to call them sheets, because "sheet" is what you call some of the ropes.
That's the other thing. When you get on a sailboat, the first thing you notice is that it has ropes on it -- lots of ropes -- all over the place. It's just that they're called everything but "rope." There are sheets, lines, halyards and even chains, but there aren't any ropes, even though ropes are about the only thing you can see.
With this interesting usage of the language in mind, I'll give a quick glossary of some more of my favorite sailing terms:
Forecastle, pronounced "Folk-sell," or as I refer to it, "that goddam sopping wet hell-hole of a V-Berth." The part of the ship where it's the least dry and hardest to sleep.
Mainsail, pronounced "Maine-sell" - The big sail in the middle of the boat that Cap'n Judy never thinks is reefed properly.
Reef, as in "reefing the mainsail" - Taking excessive amounts of verbal abuse from Cap'n Judy while getting your brains beat senseless by a flapping sail.
Genoa Sail, pronounced "Jib" - The triangular sail in front that you spend all your time winching around.
Mizzenmast - I don't know what it is, but the word sounds cool.
Mizzen sail - The thing on the Nueva Vida that got torn.
Main Salon - The place below decks just above where most of the bilge water collects.
Aft berth - The really nice bedroom that was reserved for, but never used by the Clairmont brothers.
Wind Triangle - A navigational graphic aid. It represents three points: where you're starting from, where you want to end up, and where you're supposed to aim to compensate for the wind. Realism in navigation would make this a "wind quadrangle," adding the fourth point, which is the entirely unexpected place you'll really end up.
Loran - An extremely complex and sensitive piece of electronic navigational equipment which insisted that we were in the southern hemisphere for most of the trip.
GPS - An even more extremely complex and sensitive piece of electronic equipment, which utilizing a set of military satellites, could reliably pinpoint Georgia's location at any time as being in the bar.
VHF - A medium power two-way radio system which serves as the primary maritime means for Cap'ns Judy and Yakov to argue with each other.
Bilge pump - A complex electromechanical system, residing in the most inaccessible part of the bottom of the boat which serves the simultaneous functions of not quite ridding the boat of bilge water, and really pissing Cap'n Judy off.
This, of course, isn't a full list, but it does represent most of the terms that I remember from my trip. Perhaps I'd have remembered more if I spent more time being awake.
Here's what we did on this fine day:
We sailed (through rough waters) to someplace called Cat Cay. I think. Wherever it was, it was out in the middle of nowhere.
A bunch of people tried going diving near some big rocks, except the water was too rough. Robert somehow managed to get trapped a hundred feet away on the Nueva Vida, forced to wear his snorkeling mask for several hours instead of his eyeglasses.
We sailed through more rough waters to someplace else. Dollar Harbor, I think, where we didn't meet the Vanessa Rose and Bold Response.
We rafted the boats together, cooked separate dinners and threw food at each other.
We all crowded into the main salon on the Nueva Vida and tried to play a sailing trivia game. Unfortunately, it was our boat vs. their boat, and they didn't tell us that the reason they were winning was because we were asking them questions from the part of the book that was intended for ages 1 through 5. What was even more embarrassing was the number of those questions that they missed.
Cap'n Judy mixed up some killer good Pina Coladas.
Somehow, half the contents of my bottle of Glenmorangie single malt scotch disappeared.
We all went to bed, and I had nightmares of being deserted on a sailboat parked out in the middle of nowhere. Ok, so maybe I wasn't dreaming, either.
Even still, it was a pretty good day. We got to see more areas of the Bahamas that convinced me that I should have hung around Freeport or Bimini instead. On the other hand, being out in the middle of nowhere meant that we didn't have to listen to Chas at all. And, we got to see Judy and Yakov get into some really first class bickering contests. Best yet, we did things that sounded like what you'd expect to do on a sailing vacation.
The crews of the Vanessa Rose and Bold Response took a slightly different approach to the day. They heard on the radio that some cruddy weather was headed towards the area, so they sailed back to Miami, and spent the night partying. I suppose this could be documented elsewhere under the title "Chas does Miami," but fortunately, I wasn't there.
I think we got the better deal. While I was being lulled to sleep by ten foot swells smashing the boat around, Georgia and her crowd were having to contend with a bunch of clunky old expensive bar hopping around the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale area. Some sailing vacation, huh?.
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