We got up this morning and motored our way
back to svOrion’s home harbor in Manuel Reef.
We had a simple day ahead, or so it seemed. The plan was to motor in to the harbor, tether
the boat to its designated slip, toss our bags on shore, a few loads of
laundry into the marina’s laundry mat, and as it finished, the cycle in the dryer, we would all take a real and luxuriously hot shower, before heading to the airport.
Once again, bringing the boat in to its slip
offered Mark a chance to hone his piloting skills and the kids and I the chance
to use every deckhand skill we’d practiced before setting sail—and, as it ended up, a few we
never practiced, nor anticipated. Parking would prove a
dubious affair which would leave a captain cursing, a deckhand stranded on the dock, another jumping ship into the murky disgusting bay, and two females
woman-handling fenders like an old fashioned video game of pong.
The slip where the Orion belongs is narrow--narrow being a generous word. And the marina itself lies in such shallow
waters that bringing your boat into the dock should be yet another extreme sport
featured in the X-Games. Red Bull
sponsorship should be awarded to any salty captain that can successfully do this
while staving off 20 knot crosswinds and not hitting any neighboring boats--or the dock for that matter. Unlike the massive and intimidating dock in St. Thomas' Charlotte Amalie where parallel parking is the norm, this small local dock requires boats to be BACKED IN to its
narrow little slip. The procedure which roughly resembles wiggling ones heft into a girdle after
you’ve hit a buffet.
The way in is as narrow as a small alley. On the starboard side where you will be backing in there are boats closely clustered together. And off to the Port side, the sand rises into a shallow shelf that sits just .2 feet from the surface (yes, that was
“point-two”).
Mark’s job was to motor in
the constricted waterway past his slip, turn on a dime around his mooring buoy,
then carefully back the boat into the dock without hitting the sailboats on
either side. The boys were at the bow of
the boat with the hook ready to grab the mooring ball’s loop. Our first and significant problem arose when they
couldn’t find the loop because there wasn't one there.
In a perfect sequence, there’s really only about ten seconds to grab the loop with the hook
and thread the port and starboard lines through in order to successfully tie the boat securely in the
front to the buoy. Otherwise, in this case, we ran the risk of drifting
through our slip and into the boats on either side. Which is exactly what we began to do because
there was no loop to thread our lines though.
When our first attempt to leash ourselves to the mooring ball was thwarted by the marina's disrepair, Chloe and I proceeded to ward off the boats to our side with the fenders
like a game of pong on its most slowest and most beginner setting. In a controlled effort to keep the boat from
swinging any wider like a dashboard hula girl, Sev jumped onto the doc from the
aft of the boat to secure a line. The
result was stranding Sev on the doc as Mark decided the best thing to do was to motor
back out into the wide bay and try again. As we pulled away from the dock, it was sort of sad to see our comrade on dry land as we motored back out
for a re-do. Especially since it meant we had just lost a very helpful and needed deckhand.
As we did so, the hook
Connor was using fell overboard and started to drift into the mangroves. This hook was essential to a successful
operation “Land-ho”. The
water was murky and strewn with green algae which became spludgelike kryptonite, dulling the keen reflexes of our normally fearless deckhand Connor who would have normally lept into the water and recovered the hook. On this errand he
hesitated, probably out of fear of contracting some incurable rash. But without that hook Mark’s chances of
acquiring that Red Bull Sponsorship and our getting safely docked was
doomed.
Connor gave me a look, as close to cussing I’ve
ever seen the boy, then, in an attempt to insulate himself from the mire, he deftly untied the sea kayak and sent it into the
water. Unfortunately it overturned as he
did so. With this he shot another look
of exasperation. And if this little drama had been drawn for the cartoon network,
the top of Connor's head would have been sketched exploding off with steam coming from his ears. I was certain Connor would make the sign of the
cross before throwing himself into the repulsive bog, but he did not. With tightly squished eyes and downturned clenched mouth he submitted to his fate. In he
went and as fast as he could manage he swam to the mired hook, snatched it and quickly perched himself safely in the kayak. There he proceeded to paddle, sludged slightly in green, and made his way to the defunct mooring ball and waited for the boats return.
As
Mark motored out of the narrow sea lane, the starboard side of the boat ran aground in the .2 feet of
water. Luckily aground in our case meant a soft
sandy bed, and not a boat damaging reef, but nonetheless we were aground.
Mark said something unintelligible and then used the two engines to
wiggle us off the sandy bed.
Sev, still
at the dock was watching his fellow crew, Connor in the kayak, Chloe and I on
deck, and Mark swinging the boat. There Sev remained, frustrated and unable to help (although maybe he was laughing at us).
Once we made it to deeper waters, Mark ever so slowly made a
u-turn and headed back to the narrow alley to approach our mooring ball where Connor,
with hook stowed onto his plastic vessel, was waiting for us, ready to thread
our mooring lines through a makeshift eye he would jury-rig by knotting the
slime covered rope at the ball.
I am happy to report that our second try was met with precision
success. Connor skillfully looped the
two bow lines through his improvised eye, tossed them to me up on the deck
where I quickly secured them to the cleats. This gave us tension and a strait lineup to allow Mark to slowly back
the boat to the dock where Sev stood.
Connor wasted no time getting himself to the dock and out of the fray
before I made it to the stern. I tossed
more lines to the dockside but Connor was so winded he missed all three of my throws. Sev pushed him aside
and caught the lines on his first try. Today was Connor's turn to arrive back at the boat thoroughly exhausted.
At last
we were perfectly situated on the doc and Mark was able to stop the engines for
the last time.
When taking any sailing class you learn this
grave fact: that there are two types of
sailors: ones that have run aground and ones that haven’t YET run aground. Before arriving on the dock Mark was a member of the latter group and 10 minutes before our sailing adventure ended he officially joined
the club of the former.
With that we thought the drama was over…but
there would be more. Although not
without a nice calming lull in the form of a nice pay shower and two loads of
laundry at the marina.
After the docking fiasco, Connor above all, was most looking forward to a shower. Washing away the crusty layers of sailors
grime was like taking a mud slicked truck to a coin operated car wash. A two-week layer
of salt, sand, and petrified SPF swirled down the shower drain and soothed the tension of our recent docking drama.
There is nothing like a hot fresh water shower from a luxuriously fixed showerhead bolted to the wall to ease your reluctance to come back to
shore.
Little did we know our calm nerves were about
to live on the edge once again. This time
it would be in the form of a taxi ride to the airport.
Freshly showered and bellies full of burgers
and Roti’s, we called for a cab to head to the airport. Compared to the nerve-wracking fiasco hours
before at the dock, our next wild adventure appeared innocuous at first, arriving in the
form of a nice Toyota Land Cruiser and a tiny island man who would drive us to
the airport on the other side of the island.
Our soft-spoken Jamaican driver stood no
taller than Chloe. His big white toothy
grin creased his face as he greeted us and crammed all our bags and dive gear
into the back. Mark took the roomy spot up front, which left the four of us to burrow tightly into the back seat. Each of us a bit envious of Mark's room spot, though our envy would only last momentarily. The old man climbed into the drivers seat,
barely tall enough to see over the steering wheel and we headed out.
The curious thing about this British Island
is that while driving on the left is the rule, the cars are distinctly American
built with the steering wheel situated on the left as well. That allows the front passenger to sit on the
bustling side of the car nearest the center line of the road.
Mistakenly, we didn’t take the incident that occurred a mere ten
seconds into our ride as a ominous sign of things to come. As we departed the marina parking lot a car
was jetting into the entrance and had no plans of slowing or using his side of
the road. Our driver’s turtle-like
reflexes under-reacting to the near miss should have forewarned us.
We drove on and discovered he was a friendly chatterbox who continued
talking unaffected despite the near collision, only pausing to remark that the
offending car and its driver seemed to be in an rush—a modus-operendi our
island driver had never found himself in.
“Rushed he must be. Silly it is.” He said.
The kids
promptly nicknamed him “Yoda”. Though I
thought he was strait from the pages of Eat, Pray, Love—as if Katut, the
medicine man had been reincarnated as an island taxi driver.
We drove on unaware that the reining theme of
our ride to the airport would be white knuckles, shallow breathing, and silent prayers. At a snails pace we threaded through the
coastal traffic past trinket shops and hordes of crispy red cruise ship passengers. All the while, our driver happily conversing with Mark up
in the front street with one hand on the wheel and the other making sweeping
gestures as he talked.
Then, like the gradual progression of light
that comes as if a dimmer switch is being turned to full brightness, our driver got
an idea. He then merged unhurriedly onto
a steep side street.
“A better way this is. Much faster we will go and
prettier it is.” he pronounced.
The Land Cruiser banked sharply onto a narrow
unkept road that arched high into the hillside.
Using the line divide more like crosshairs in a gun scope, instead of a separation of life and death as it was designed to be, we climbed
the hillside like mountaineers seeking a lofty precipice. All the while, Yoda continued his friendly
conversation with one arm gesturing and pointing and the other carelessly
perched upon the wheel. Most of the time
his gaze was turned in Mark’s direction, looking ahead only when a car
careening towards us would come into his peripheral view.
The road was an abbreviated version and missing in parts,
hemmed by a crude rusty guardrail that seemed stitched by an unsteady hand. As we climbed up using the centerline as a
tether, cars would occasionally and alarmingly appear around blind corners
rushing towards us. Yoda would slowly
align himself in the proper lane seconds before oncoming cars rushed passed
then resume the center as if using it to read brail. This happened repeatedly but Yoda was
unconcerned. No matter how harried it got, he never paused the
conversation nor his hand motions.
Mark,
perched on the right and precariously close to the rushing oncoming traffic
lifted his right hand and placed it on grab handle. I was sitting just behind him on the right as
well and quickly made sure my door was locked so as to insure I wouldn’t fly
out of the car and into the center lane during the jerking wild turns that ensued. This was not our first fray on wild untamed
roads so we took it in stride. The kids however, unaccustomed
to 3rd world roads, had
become wide eyed and unnerved. Severin put his palms together in prayer-like
fashion, Connor began hugging tightly to his backpack, and Chloe did both.
Our driver could barely see over the dash,
though he wasn’t often looking in that direction anyway. Most of the time he was turned in Mark’s
direction engaged in idle chatter.
I began laughing at the kids and got my phone out to document their crazed reactions.
As Yoda promised, the view at the top was
striking. Through the open widow, the
ocean and sand glistened down below. But what
struck the kids most was that it was waaaaay be-low and the kids didn’t want to
look.
Now that we had reached the top
they realized we would now be descending steeply down the other side. It was another harrowing ten minutes as we
veered down the steep hill dodging traffic that suddenly appeared around sharp
corners. Along the way, two cars,
impatient with our unhurried decent passed us on a blind corner. This sent the kids to Devcon 1.
Notice only ONE HAND on the wheel
Roads aren't that wide
With two harrowing adventures in a single day, one on land and one at sea, we were happy to arrive at the airport intact. Our kind driver “Yoda”,
unaware that his teenaged passengers had desecrated his backset with copious amounts of
nervous sweat, gave us a cheerful send off then went on his way.
So much for the
refreshing shower at the marina.
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