I am too silent

I am silent. Too silent. Also I lack basic communication skills.

We go to the market in Africa to buy meat to freeze, enough for the next three months, because here it is cheap but on the islands, in the middle of the Atlantic, it can be expensive. Every stall sells, as well as beef and pork and chicken in regular cuts, pre-spiced stew meat in what looks like some sort of curry with mint. The flavour wafts up delicious and exotic. I don’t know what you are supposed to do with it but I am sure, cooked in any fashion and served with rice, it would be heavenly. I desperately want to get some to try. I ask HS. ‘No,’ he answers emphatically. And I don’t push the issue. I just shut up. We buy what he wants to buy. Nothing else. Also later at the grocery store. I am embarrassed by my response. I sulk. For the whole afternoon I am silent.

I want to stay in Ceuta for another day to walk across the border into Morocco to visit the first little village but HS’s plan is to go back to Europe the next day. We are not going to do anything in Europe except wait. He has, apparently, no desire to visit anywhere and I cannot figure out how to broach the subject of staying another day, so I say nothing, and we leave on his schedule, and my little town will never be visited by me, and all because I couldn’t manage to ask. I am way too silent.

Heading back to Gibraltar, it is, in my opinion, a fantastic sailing day. The sun is shining, the sky blue and the sea bluer, the wind blowing a steady 15 to 20  knots… who could ask for anything better? ‘We are too close to the wind,’ HS says, ‘we will have to motor.’ So we do. I sit there in shock. Motor? Really? He had said before that he didn’t like sailing and I hadn’t believed him. I guess it’s true. How could you not choose to sail on a day like today? Also, it would have been a perfect time for me to learn how to start the motor, start the nav computer, do the crossing. It would have been a perfect time for me to learn how to set the sails. It would have been a perfect time for a lot of things. But HS, by habit, did everything, did not even think to include me at all (when he sailed with his wife, he told me, they had clearly defined duties, she did all the cooking and he did all the sailing) and so as we motored I sat, silent, too silent, upset, but not sure, at all, how to appropriately express my disappointment in any of it, and, therefore, silent.

HS kicked his three previous crew off, Bam, Bam, Bam, for the littlest reasons; one wanted to use a hair dryer, the next wouldn’t eat onions, the third didn’t know enough about world politics to be a good conversationalist, and I, so desperate to sail on this, the boat of my dreams, came on board with the mindset that I would be willing to do exactly everything just how he wanted me to do, eat onions and all, in order to be allowed to crew for him… I knew the lay of the land, but, nonetheless, only a few weeks in, I find myself disgruntled. We eat, every single meal, exactly what he wants to eat, every suggestion of mine rejected, and I, so afraid of being voted off the boat if I don’t follow suit, act as if I am not hurt by my total lack of input into any decisions whatsoever including the trivial. I resent all this, by which I mean, mostly, my own behaviours. It is, I know, his boat, his trip, his life. I am the one who asked to be here, I knew the rules ahead of time, but I still resent them. And I deal with this through silence which doesn’t help at all.

I am not aggressive. I am not assertive. I am meek, mild, and submissive which leaves me, unfortunately, feeling weak and cowed. The little things I feel I have no right to complain about are starting to bug me and I am beginning to feel lost. I am getting old and feeling trapped in spaces I have been in too often before. These are lessons I ought to have learnt by now. I wonder how much of it is conditioning I got when I was a kid, ‘Your father – translate  ‘any man’ - is always to be respected’ and how much is just my nature. I wish I were on better terms with my sisters because this is the kind of thing that I would love to discuss with them.

I knew that HS was out of my league, that I would be overpowered by his personality, but I came anyway. I knew, ahead of time, that everything was going to have to be done his way, and I knew that I don’t like it when I get no input, but I came anyway. How can I possibly complain?

 The next day is greyer than ever. Outside it is overcast and raining and inside I am falling apart. HS cooked supper our first day back and then, when I said I’d cook the next day, he said he hadn’t liked anything I had cooked so far and that he would make supper again. So, he will do all the sailing and all the cooking? What will there be left for me to do? It is grey outside, and grey in my heart. I don’t know what he wants from me (he did advertise for crew) and don’t even know how to start asking this question. I don’t know what to do. So I am silent.

Part of the problem, I hope, is that we have been here a month and have not even started sailing yet. I am determined to stick it out at least until we have done our first leg, made it to the Canaries. Nick, our other crew, is due to arrive soon, and hopefully a third person will mix up the dynamics, also, the weather is looking up so we might actually leave. After the first leg I can always jump ship if I really feel that it would be a dismal and unproductive crossing, but I have to stay with the boat until that time. I have to. Hopefully at sea he will develop a watch schedule. If he does, if I feel I am doing something useful, then it might be worth staying. If it is a disaster, if he does almost everything and Nick takes over the rest and I am just totally useless, then, well, then it might make sense not to stay. To quit, however, after a month, yet before even the first full day at sea, seems ridiculous. I vow not to.

Later I lie in bed and listen to the wind howling, the halyards banging against the mast, the water washing the hull. My mind is in turmoil. I love being here. I do. It is just getting along with another person that is so difficult. And, I know, a lot of it is me. And, also, I have to admit, I really did set myself up for this one, going, again, on another person’s vacation where I knew, in advance, that I would have no input. I knew it. And I came anyway. What was I thinking? I, as usual, have put myself into a situation where I have little control, where someone else gets to dictate everything, and I am, as usual, so frustrated that I want to scream. AARGH. I don’t know if I will ever learn. I really really don’t know.

Yet, despite everything, I do like being here.

It is all a mess.

Festival of the sheep

Everything, as in EVERYTHING, in capitals and underlined 3 times, is closed in Tetouan, Morocco, during the Festival of the Sheep. I know this first hand. I went there and saw that it was so.

We are waiting for the wind to shift. We spent two weeks fixing up the boat during which time the winds were fantastic but now that we have finished all the work we cannot leave because the winds are horrible (40 knots right in our face) and so we hop back and forth across the strait and we wait.

I was going to walk across the border into Morocco and go to the closest little village but the tourist information agent convinced me to take a 30 minute taxi ride ($2) to the city. ‘Great market,’ she said, ‘fantastic shopping, excellent restaurants.’ Perhaps so, but not, for sure, today. Today, everything was shut, every single market stall, every single shop, every single café, everything. It was the festival of the sheep.

On the other hand, it was a great day to be a tourist in the city. Everyone was happy, cheerful, and talkative. I was beckoned aside. I was told about the Muslin celebration that remembers the time when Abraham, ordered by God to kill his son, obeyed, then found that God had substituted a sheep at the last moment. I was introduced to family members. I was given mint-tea to drink. I was encouraged to take photos. And, of course, sheep were being killed left, right, and center. Old men were dragging them out of cars and up alleyways into garages and front halls where they were slaughtered, their heads and feet cut off, and their fleeces pulled off in a single tubular piece, young boys were dispatched to carry the hides to the corner to be sold, teenagers gathered up the heads and feet and roasted them outdoors on metal skewers on makeshift BBQ’s, and young men strutted proudly around the city wearing blood covered aprons and wielding large knives and machetes. Girls and women, I have to assume, were indoors cooking all manner of wonders. Everyone had the day off work. Relatives from far and wide had returned home for the festival. Feasts were being prepared. Music blared. The air positively hummed with joy and the streets literally ran with blood.

Definitely another amazing day. Way more interesting than, for example, supply teaching.

(And I almost got a photo of myself with two wizards.)

Feeling like a Muggle

My first day in Tangier, Morocco I feel like a muggle. Seriously. All over the place grown men are walking about, doing business, you name it, wearing long robes with pointed hoods. Not all of them have the hoods up, of course, but many do. And the robes are in a wide variety of different materials and colours; I note one in white that really looks like fancy tablecloth material to me, another in pink velour, and dark teal with extensive gold brocade seems a popular option this year. The women too, of course, of all ages, even more extensively than the men, wear long robes, and these often have pointed hood too, though I feel their hoods are merely for decoration as most have their heads covered with a scarf. The men’s robes tend to be one solid colour, the women’s, wow, you imagine it, it exists. In many ways their outfits remind me of a child’s colouring book full of princess outfits, not because they look like ballroom dresses, the styles tend to be quite simple in fact, but because of the range of colours and patterns of the cloth they are cut from and the extensiveness of the tassels and embroidery and other extras. Oh, yes, and I can’t read a word of Arabic either, which also adds to the feeling of otherworldliness.

My goals for the first day are simple; visit a market, a church or museum, and eat some street food. Two out of three of these I succeed in commendably.

It is, by chance, Sunday, the biggest market day of the week. Not only are the locals selling all manner of goods; the classic market fruits and vegetables and meat and fish, the classic Moroccan brass and leather and rugs and jewelry, and also of course clothes and cigarettes and CDs and computer parts (used), but it is as well the day of the week that the Rif mountain women descend on the city in their odd outfits and outlandish hats with their fresh produce, mostly garlic and onions, and hand crafted goods, mostly woven items. As I wend my way towards, and then through, the old city I pass stalls with dried legumes piled high, or spices, or an assortment of dates, or richly scented fresh mint, or, best yet, strongly pungent olives in dozens of different varieties.

I start off simple with my local food objective getting a sample of the ubiquitous flat bread, about the size of a small pizza, which costs 1Dh or 10 cents. I think it is too big for me to eat the but rough whole wheat texture is quite compelling and as I wander along though the narrow twisting lanes of the old city, built on a hill and full of staircases, usually wide enough for two people to pass easily, I note many young boys playing chase up and the alleyways, goats seemingly roaming free, women doing laundry on washboards at public taps, and before I know it I have finished my bread.

I am heading for the Kabash, one of those amazing historic buildings that has lasted for generations built first as a church in what was then a Portuguese fort but turned later into a Muslin temple and currently serving as a museum. The medina, or old town, is predominantly occupied by what we in the west would consider very poor people but it became fashionable for foreign writers to live there at one point and now some houses are owned by wealthy foreigners or have been turned into tiny, but expensive, five star hotels. Often the walls are built out over the street a story or two up so the passageways turn literally into tunnels.

Eventually, having become lost on several occasions, I head back towards the main city’s modern core where countless bars and restaurants spill out onto the streets. I had been offered mint tea by one of the brass sellers in the old city and turned him down for fear of having to reciprocate his kindness by buying something I didn’t want, but here in the modern city, where everyone also seems to be drinking mint tea, I wander along until I notice someone who looks like they speak English sitting by themselves people watching, and I ask if I can join them. The tea is piping hot, comes in a tall glass glass with a generous helping of mint in it, is very sweet and tastes overwhelmingly of both tea and mint. Delicious.

I realize that I am not going to make it back to the boat by nearly the time I had said I would so stop in at a cyber café to send a quick e-mail to my captain (we do not have cell phones with us) only to be almost stumped by the keyboard totally covered in Arabic symbols. Yes, I definitely feel like a muggle.

Being a tourist is tiring so next I stop in a park to take a break, do some sketching, watch a group of boys out walking their sheep, listen to the eerie call to prayer being broadcast, at great volume, over scratchy loudspeakers… I accidently buy a huge baguette filled with lots of freshly grilled chicken, onions, and hot sauce, 10 Dh or 1$. At least tourists don’t have to starve!

Shortly afterwards, still on break and still eating, I think, as I sit by the fountain in one of the main squares, pick at a paper cone of hot curried chickpeas, 3 cents, and watch the world flow by, that with a good travel partner my life would be perfect. For me this has been an amazing day; all that was missing was someone to share it with. I guess that that’s why HS takes crew on, he would rather travel with someone than do so on his own. But what travelling includes for him I have not figured out yet. Three weeks in I am pretty sure we will get along well for the fall/winter but likely that will be all. He is continuing on to circumnavigate again but I am not sure, at this point, that, even given the chance, I would choose to continue on with him. His desire to come and explore the city was zero. He would not have wanted to walk nearly as far as I have roamed and I, despite the broken bones in my right foot, would not have sacrificed one step. I consider my various family members and friends, know several that would happily head off with me to see bits of the world. At the moment, however, I am feeling greedy, I like feeling like a muggle and I hope to do more of it, a lot more of it, I just need someone, almost perfect, to join me in my quest. Any takers?

Postcard from La Linea

1.      What Wikipedia says about Spain: first hominoids 1.2 million years ago; first humans 35 000 years ago; well- developed cultures during Neolithic and Bronze ages; settled and/or invaded and/or conquered and/or taken-over between the 9^th century BC and 15^th century AD by Phoenicians then Greeks then  Carthaginians then Romans then Germanic tribes then Visigoths then Magyars then Islamic Berbers and Moors then Christians; dominated the oceans, the European battlefield, became one of the largest world empires ever, and had a period of flourishing arts in the 16th and 17^th centuries; but things ran downhill from there.

2.      What HS says about Spain: several years ago there were endless cafés on the streets with chairs, tables, umbrellas, and old men gathering and drinking their coffee there in the mornings, workers eating long lunches, and young couples drinking wine and eating tapas in the evening but now, with 50% youth unemployment, families cannot afford to go out for coffee and the cafes cannot afford to stay open and the streets are barren with nary a table to be seen.

3.      What I saw as I walked around: paint peeling from apartment walls, businesses empty or up for rent or sale or bricked up, national flags flying but in tatters, deserted buildings in various states of disrepair, unfinished municipal projects, and empty streets and squares crying out for their former vitality.

Today I decided to do my bit for the economy and went to get my hair cut in Spanish. I could have gone to Gibraltar, where they speak very good English, complete with genuine sounding British accents, but I chose instead to go to La Linea, Spain. ‘Don’t you need an appointment?’ HS asked. ‘Doubt it,’ I replied, ‘the place we pass on the way to the grocery store is always empty.’

I stopped on the way at my favourite bakery and ordered a ‘pain au chocolate’, well, to be honest I ordered ‘one of those’ which, in fact, turned out in fact to have a totally delicious tuna salad filling inside it instead of chocolate, which made it, to me, all the more enjoyable. I like the randomness that lack of common language brings.

The hair salon was open, large, modern looking, had spotlessly clean with gleaming white floors, black chairs and accessories, and teal neon lighting. There were six employees there but no other customers. I asked how much it would cost to get my hair cut and thought the answer was 17 Euros, though feared it might have been 70, and decided to go for it, hope the answer was 17, and enjoy the experience a lot just in case it turned out that I was wrong and the answer was indeed 70. (I hadn’t pre-researched the approximate cost for a haircut.) The place looked very spiffy, which had me a bit worried. The girl who washed and cut my hair was very cheerful, and, as expected, spoke excellent Spanish - and could even do a wee bit of miming as is ‘do you want it trimmed around the ears?’. She asked a lot of questions to which I nodded and smiled in response. At one point we had a conversation in which I thought she said, ‘All done, how is it?’ to which I replied, ‘Perfect, thank you!’ but I must have missed something in the exchange because it led to more snipping. The bill, when it came, was 7 Euros. I also hadn’t pre-researched expected tipping behaviour, but I paid with a 10 Euro bill, didn’t accept any change, and think we were both very happy with the transaction.

Tomorrow I will be in Morocco, which might, just possibly, make this all seem very tame. 

Chop wood carry water

I wake up in the morning, having slept very well, and turn over. I ache everywhere. My right arm is particularly sore. And my left knee seems seriously bruised. I am not used to waking up in this condition. What was I doing yesterday? I roll back over. Bad decision. More aches surface. As my consciousness slowly returns I remember. I was scrubbing the boat yesterday. Getting the rust off.

HS has a list of chores that need doing before we leave. It is a long list and it is ordered with the most difficult and/or critical chores first and the easiest or least important chores at the end. This is very logical. For a few days, however, it left me with little to do because I couldn’t help with the chores at the top of the list. One day, however, because I was bored (and also because they were very dirty) I took an hour or two and scrubbed off the cushions in the cockpit, our sundeck equivalent, where we sit out each evening to have a beer and gather with neighbours. ‘I know, I know,’ I said to HS as he watched me critically, ‘on your list of chores this is at the very bottom and isn’t scheduled to be done for days…’ but I guess that got him thinking because ever since I have been busy. 

It is as if he has folded the list in half, and we are both working away at it from opposite ends, he still continues to work on the important tricky chores, by which I really mean the technological and or mechanical ones, but he given me the easiest, and most labour intensive ones, to do alongside him. I like it. It has been an interesting week in a very ‘chop wood, carry water’ kind of way.

I spent a day, a whole day, sewing on a new leather wheel cover. Each hole, of which there were literally hundreds, had to be punctured, and then a needle had to be pushed through the leather with a palm, a sort of thimble attached to a leather strap which you wear on your hand, a tool which I’m sure Captain Cook’s sailors all owned, and then the thread had to be both pulled through and pulled tight. (See photo. HS meanwhile was working on the touch screen again. See other photo.) I think I put more holes in the leather than in my thumbs, but I didn’t actually count.

Yesterday HS was installing a new very expensive membrane in the water maker, and, as I said, I was scrubbing rust of the boat. ‘Laundry detergent sort of helps,’ HS said, ‘or maybe Vim.’ Laundry detergent didn’t do much to help and we had no Vim. I took a break in the middle of the afternoon and walked to the grocery store to get some Vim but I knew I was only postponing the job. Elbow grease gets rust off. Lots of it. I know. From experience now. And it makes your muscles sore the next day. Especially those in your right arm. (My knee, now that was my own fault, boats are, very roughly, raindrop shaped, they come to a point at the bow, or front, so the bow is further away from the dock. I was reaching out, way out, and scrubbing the bow when a gust pushed the boat a few inches even further out. For a while I hung there, hands on the lip of the deck and feet on the dock, but I knew I couldn’t hang forever, and so, eventually, I made a leap for the boat, bashed my knee against it, and fell in the water. I changed and went back to scrubbing. The other side of the bow is, if you look very closely, not quite as clean.)

Today I spent the day cleaning the inside of the boat; sweeping and vacuuming and mopping the floors, washing down walls, etc.. The boat is not very big but it needed a LOT of cleaning. Some bits seemed not to have been cleaned for years. As I was attacking the back of one door, covered in years of dust and grime, I glanced up and saw HS. I could hear his silent comment, ‘I don’t usually clean there’, and he could hear my silent response, ‘I see that’, and he managed not to say anything. Now the boat is sparkling inside and out. Both my husband and youngest son would be amazed. I don’t think I ever cleaned my house as well as I have cleaned the boat. Somehow, because I don’t have to, it is far more enjoyable. After cleaning I helped HS put up the bimini, install a new furling line, splice some new docking lines… Each day is different. Each job is new. Some, perhaps, take longer than I would like, and many would not be fun if I were doing them for days on end, but so far I have no complaints.

Floors on a boat, by the way, are odd, compared to say, in a house. If there is even two inches of space under the floor boards then there is a cupboard there, and hence some sort of locker opening, and, also, cracks around the edges where dust can collect. Cleaning floors on a boat is also odd, compared to say, in a house. ‘Use lots of water,’ HS told me, ‘the extra just drips down into the bilge.’

I also get to do the odd jobs, biking for example, across the border into Gibraltar, flashing my passport at the guard without stopping, but then waiting a couple minutes for a plane to land before crossing the airstrip, just to get another rope. It is amazing how much rope, which is always called line, is needed on a boat.

We usually work till about six, then sit in the cockpit and have a beer, then cook and eat, then chill, then fall into our bunks around 10. I know that tomorrow HS will be installing a newly arrived circuit board for the nav computer (one of five that we have on board) but I’m not sure what my assigned chore will be. I like it that way. I feel sort of like I am living in a commune. We are communal. We are a (very small) community. Tonight, again, I will sleep well.

I get to do something usefull

After several days in a row when it seemed there was nothing for me to do we have started rigging. Well, HS has started rigging. But I get to help. I am actually doing something useful. Yes!

 

We are replacing the stays, the wires that run from the deck up to the middle or the top of the mast and hold it steady. There are LOTS of them and on a good day we can replace one or two. I love it. The work goes sort of like this; we undo one of the stays from the deck, I haul HS up to the top of the mast, he undoes it there and I lower it down, I lower him down, we take the fittings off the old wire and put them on the new one, I haul him back up the mast, he attaches it to the top of the mast, I lower him down, and we reattach the bottom to the deck. Easy peasy right? Yes. Usually. Though little problems do occur now and again. Nonetheless, it can take a whole day to do one stay, it can take three days to do one stay, and, although I hear that five o’clock is quitting time, I have never actually seen that happen!

Attached are two photos; one of HS part way up the main mast working on a stay with the mizzen mast in the background (in which my role is not non-existent as I both hauled him up and am also responsible for making sure he doesn't fall and go splat) and one of me and the gib hanging out together in the parking lot (in which I am lying on one corner of the sail to show how big it is). (We had to take the gib off the fore-stay before we could replace it.)

I’ve only been here a week. And except for motoring to Gibraltar (which is less than a mile away) we have not been anywhere yet. But I love it. I really really like living outdoors. It is evening at the moment and I am on deck, the breeze ruffling my hair, a salt tang gentle and unobtrusive, the tap tap tapping of various wires and lines knocking against masts music to my ears, the gulls serenading me… I like that I get up in the morning and can see sky – or heavy mist depending on the day – through the open hatch above me and know that I will spend the day outdoors. I like that I patter along wooden finger docks with fish galore in the water all around as I head, well, anywhere. I like the pace of life on a boat; waking up when you are ready, walking to get fresh baguette for breakfast, working until a job is done, interrupting for a beer when someone stops by... I like that we don’t have schedules, or cell phones, or even reliable internet. I like that the boat owner who is docked beside us commented today on how boat owners are never rich in the traditional sense (because boats, and parts, cost so much) (because they are often too busy sailing to hold down a permanent job) but that they are ‘rich in spirit’. I like that our neighbours along the dock come from many walks of life, speak many different languages, and have many different agendas and itineraries, but always have time to stop and chat, always have time to lend a hand, and always have a smile and a story to share. I like that I was outside all day today and will be outside all day tomorrow. I like that my work involves manual labour and that my hands are grimy by the end of the day and that I am learning both about basic tools and specialized parts and that what gets done gets done and what does not get done is put on the list for tomorrow. I like that I have a small bunk and only the few personal possessions that I carried here in my backpack. I like that the sound of the waves washing against the boat lulls me to sleep at night. I have only been here a week, and, who knows, after we actually start sailing I may decide I hate the life, but, for now, for today, I am happy, rich in spirit if you will. And that is enough.

I walk up the rock

The rock (of Gibraltar) dominates our landscape. It’s impossibly steep cliff is just there, all the time. So today, after checking thoroughly that there was nothing useful I could do - HS is on his third day of trying to fix the navigational computer – a job I can’t help with - I took the afternoon off and walked up it.

I stopped half way up and took a couple photos.

The first one is of one of the apes that are everywhere on the rock. They live there, in caves, and can often been seen sunning themselves on the tops of houses, walls, and towers.

The second one is of the view out over the bay. You can see several interesting things from this second one. You can see two countries. To the north, the top of the photo, is Spain. The town of La Linea and the marnia we are currently staying at are there visible in the photo. To the south, the bottom of the photo, is Gibraltar. Part of the town, also called Gibraltar, and the marina we stayed at there are visible too. Gibraltar is a British overseas territory but is also its own country (I think), and is tiny. It is composed, entirely, of a rock and a town clinging to the base of the rock and several marinas and an airport. That’s it. To get into the country you have to go through customs with your passport then drive, or bike, or walk, across the airport runway (you can see this in the photo) and when a plane is due to land they stop traffic for a few minutes. Note the three playing fields beside the runway. They are placed here because this is the only flat land in the whole country!!

The temperature here is lovely at the moment, mid-twenties during the day and mid-teens during the night, not too hot for working during the day and perfect for sleeping at night. It was, nonetheless, a pretty warm walk up to the top of the rock. From the top you could see a whole whack of Spain to the north and the hills of darkest Africa rising to the south just across the strait.

I cheated and took the cable car back down, walked home along the street of shops aimed at cruise ship shoppers, and cooked chili for supper. The nav computer still isn’t working but I think HS has diagnosed the problem so he is going to order new parts off e-bay and tomorrow we are going to start rigging. 

The boat sails off without me

It is ALL alien. Using the toilet, getting hot water to do dishes, putting down the drawbridge to get to the dock… even the most mundane of chores are multi-step processes and are different and complicated. I am barely coping and we are still, effectively, on land. What happens when we go to sea and there are a thousand more tasks that I will need to know how to do? I don’t want to think about it.

(Here she is, resplendent in her Canadian colours, docked in Spain. Note Canadian flag flying and rock of Gibraltar in background.)

There are a few things I can do, I few things I might possibly be able to learn to do, and many many things I cannot and likely will not ever be able to do.

But to start my story I have to back up a couple of days…

It was our first day in Spain, The Boat was on the hard. We had an appointment to have her lifted into the water by crane at 6. I had spent several hours on manual labour and HS had done a myriad of complicated jobs. Finally everything seemed ready to go. ‘I’ll just start the engine,’ he said, ‘then we’ll go for lunch’. Oooh. Talk about famous last words. Four long hot hours later the engine had not yet started. HS had spent most of the afternoon down in the bowels of the boat. Every tool known to man and several more besides were spread out on the floor. One loose wire had been found, one new connection had been jury rigged, but the problem, the reason the engine was not starting, had not been diagnosed. I had not been able to help. (And we had not had lunch, which makes no difference to me, but, I am to learn in the coming days, makes HS cranky.)

I pointed out that it was almost six, wondered aloud if we ought to start getting ready to have her put in the water, only got a growl in response, and then, suddenly, several things happened at once; the engine started, the workmen were ready to put the boat in the water, the marina called and insisted on being paid immediately - I guess some boats get in the water and skip off - and, as he rode away out of sight in the small motor boat sent by the office to pick him up, he shouted last minute instructions about closing a sea cock before the boat was lowered into the water so that it didn’t fill and flood. We had both been here all day, and now, two minutes before the big put in, I am on my own. Akkk. I didn’t want this responsibility.

Fifteen minutes later the boat was in the water, it had not flooded, HS was back, the engine was running smoothly, and we were headed to our slip in the marina. 

Then came a couple of docking disasters...

Docking Disaster #1: In which it was a two minute motor to our slip and HS went slowly on purpose so I had time to get the docking lines and fenders set but I messed up and HS had to circle three times in tight quarters with wind and current pushing the boat all over the place and the your-engine-is-overheating-alarm beeping before we made it into the slip. It was a total fiasco and it was all my fault.

Docking Disaster #2:  In which we left the slip and headed off (from Spain) to another marina (in a different country). Well, HS and the boat did. I was left on the dock as it backed out away and was gone. (Hence the title to this entry.) Again, all my fault. I was totally mortified.

Docking Disaster #3:  In which the marina we arrived at required us to dock stern-to and I quipped, ‘Good thing you can sail this boat on your own,’ trying to make light of my previous unfortunate docking experiences and he replied, ‘Actually, getting this boat into a slip stern-to is one place where I really need your help.’ (Oh No!) I get him to explain the technique three times. I don’t want to discuss the result.

In short, I am currently shaken and uncertain, intimidated and overwhelmed. This boat is a LOT bigger than mine, it has a lot more ‘stuff’ by which I mean electronic equipment and dodads and thingamabobs. ‘Why does your mind just shut down when you see technology?’ my son asked me the other day. I didn’t have a response. ‘You’re gonna have to learn not to be like that,’ he said. Yes. So true. Especially here.

I sanded and painted. I cleaned the head and galley (bathroom and kitchen) to within an ounce of their life. I even offered to swab the decks. But I have done just about everything I know how to do. There are a million jobs left and I really can’t even help with any of them. A new fridge motor needs installing, the nav computer needs re-wiring, a touch screen somewhere isn’t working, the list goes on. These I cannot do, cannot even help with. I asked today if I could help by handing tools to HS as he did one of his long list of jobs but, on a boat, there is usually not even really enough room for the one person who is doing the work let alone for another person to get in the way.

I know that we have a new leather wheel cover that needs sewing on. I know that we have new docking lines that need splicing. These seemed to me minor chores but a finicky time consuming ones, ones however I could possibly do, but when I offered I was turned down. HS has bigger problems at the moment, some AIS software (the program that shows, on our chart, where the surrounding boats are) is not working for no reason and he has spent three days troubleshooting it now without success. There are some things he could teach me to do but, for most of them, like putting on a new wheel cover, it would take him longer to show me than just to do them himself, and he is starting to get stressed about getting everything done before he wants to go. Like the engine, which was supposed to start in a couple minutes and took several hours, every job seems to take longer than scheduled.

I would like to be more useful but am out of my depth.

HS had a talk with me today about how, at sea, everyone has to be able to depend on the others for their very lives. I hope he was speaking hypothetically, not for example, referring to my great success at helping him dock. I am not sure, if I were him, if I would keep me on as crew. I am not sure, at the moment, when he actually leaves, if he will take me with him, or, if, instead, the boat will sail off without me.

Red is the colour of love

The Boat is on the hard, this means she is sitting on a metal cradle in the middle of a boat parking lot. We borrow a ladder and put it against her. I climb up, and, yes, give her a quick kiss before boarding. We are going to put her in the water at the end of the evening but there are several chores to be done first.

The first job HS gives me is to sand down that part of her hull that will be below the waterline once she is in the water. This is done from the ground with a sanding block and a bucket of water. The paint is flaking off in some spots and rust shows through in others; all of this needs to be eliminated. (My second job will be to re-paint this same part of her.) “Sanding will take you about two hours,” HS says. I dip the sanding block into the water and scratch tentatively at a small section. He watches critically. “I don’t want you to be gentle,” he instructs. My imagination goes wild. Nevertheless I decide that this is an easy job and I am determined to do it well, start off on the right foot so to speak. I get my sanding block wet and tackle the task more aggressively. Eventually my arm is tired from merely reaching up above my head and my wrist is sore from the work it is doing. I look at my watch; exactly two minutes have passed since I started. I carry on.

Sanding is, I quickly realize, a very messy job. This part of the boat is covered with old anti-fouling paint, and, for some reason, when you attack it with a wet sanding block, though it has been there for months, many of which were spent in the water, the paint immediately dissolves in the water and everything gets red. The sanding block gets red, the water in the bucket gets red, rivulets of red run down the edge of the boat below the section you and working on, and red paint splashes in all directions. I try at first to avoid being splattered by the old paint but soon realize the futility of this and accept that to do the job well I will get dirty. 

After half an hour I have found a comfortable rhythm involving dipping my block into the water with my right hand, squeezing it out, running both my eyes and my left hand over the boats surface to check for irregularities, and then assertively laying into any sections that are lacking in perfection. This is not a gentle caressing of my boat’s skin, it is a forceful full on massage. I can tell she likes it though, can almost hear her purring her delight. I had wanted to get to know her skin, well, I am getting to know it. Dip, squeeze, check, scrub, and then scrub harder.

   

I am sure that red is the colour of love. I glance at down at my arms now almost completely dyed, almost as red as the bottom of the boat itself. I have totally red hands, red drips running down from both my wrists to my elbows, am covered from head to toe in spots of red. I consider the possibility that we have been in a great battle and I am covered in blood as if I were a knight in shining armour and she the dragon I have vanquished. But I have not conquered her, there is no victory, certainly I have not, despite my vigorous sanding, hurt her, in fact quite the opposite. I consider the traditional blooding of huntsmen following their first successful kill, this seems more appropriate, but again, not a perfect metaphor. I wonder if instead of blood this red is happiness, as in a Chinese bride’s outfit.

Red is the colour of love (think roses) also the colour associated with sin and sensuality (think red light district), it is the colour of celebration and ceremony (red letter days and red carpets), it is the colour too of anger (to see red) and war (Mars) and warnings (red flags). It is the colour of evil. The devil is red.

But this red she has coated me with symbolizes both blood and love, of that I am sure. I sand on. Dip, squeeze, check, scrub, and then scrub harder. It is work but I like it. I like touching her. I like that I can see clearly my effort resulting in the exfoliation of her skin. I like that we are both changing each other, her skin is getting softer from the constant sanding but so is mine. I like the colour red, its many connotations. I like that it is our first time together and she is bleeding.

I finish the second side and walk around her slowly looking for spots I have missed. I get HS to cast his eye again and am embarrassed by the comments he makes. I had thought I was done, but no, I see that I am not. He is very good at giving constructive criticism without being critical. I caress her again with my eyes trying to see her through his. I dip, squeeze, check, scrub, and then scrub harder.  Eventually I know that I have finished and sure enough when I climb the ladder he is stirring a can of paint which he hands to me. “Painting will take you about two hours,” he says, and I descend the ladder again holding the open can of paint in on hand and a brush in the other. I had thought that sanding was a dirty job, little did I know, painting leaves spots that will not come out, not only on me but on my shirt, and shorts, and on the only pair of shoes I have brought with me for the four months I intend to stay. I totally enjoy painting her, having another excuse to inspect each inch of her bottom, getting a chance to leave my mark on her….

HS is working on the through hulls, installing a new depth sounder and a hull speed gauge. He is sometimes inside the boat, sometimes down below with me. Very slowly the mist is burnt off by the sun and the impossibly steep slope of the rock of Gibraltar appears across the bay. Cruise ships are visible in the distance and tankers. Africa too. My arms ache, my fingernails are so dirty I know they will never get clean, I am worried already that the next job I will be given will be harder, too hard, that very soon HS will realize I am here under false pretenses and send me home. But I don’t care. For today I am happy. And that is enough. Red is definitely the colour of love. 

From one set of hills to another

I am leaving today. I wake up in the morning in my lovely familiar bed with a short simple list of lovely familiar chores to do during the day. It is to be such a calm and relaxed day that I start off by biking down to the river and sitting there as the mist slowly and seductively rises and reveals the hills on the other side. Why am I leaving, I wonder, this place I love so much, as some ducks swim by and the swirls of mist positively dance with joy as a ray of sunshine hits them and an elderly woman I don’t know but who knows my mother comes to sit on the bench with me and tells me she is considering moving to live in Markham nearer her children because she is getting too old to do the drive to visit them, but, she laments, where would she go for her morning walks then, how could she possible find a place as beautiful as this, why would she want to leave?

Flip. I am driving with my husband. I had so anticipated two hours in a car with him, had so many things to talk to him about. We were married for ten years, have been separated for three, and might be considering reconciliation upon my return. I had known that someone else would be with us too but had not realized how completely that would deter me from having the conversations I had hoped to have. We are silent in the car as it speeds down the highway.

Flip. I spend a whole day with my oldest son. We walk a gazillion miles round the city getting a new hat some extra lip block a wheel for his bicycle and laughing laughing all the way. He is so like my father, his grandfather, in both what he laughs at and the way he laughs – something else catches his fancy and his chin dips down and he is convulsed with silent chortles and I am so happy to be here with him.

Flip. We go out for brunch with a couple of his friends. I have nothing to say to them. How will I survive, I wonder, months with a stranger, who is taking me along so there is someone to talk to him, when I cannot think of anything to say to my son’s friends during a single meal.

Flip. I catch the bus, in the rain, and head across to the far side of the city. It is the shortest section of my trip in both miles and time but marks the midpoint between known and unknown.

Flip. HS and two of his kids drive the two hours to the next city to drop us off at the airport. One of them is gregarious, outgoing, and extroverted, like his father... the other as silent as me.

Flip. We wait to check in, check in, wait to pass security, pass security, wait to fly, fly, wait to collect our luggage, wait to pass customs, wait to start the whole process over for the next flight….

Flip. We both like window seats so instead of sitting beside one another HS is in the seat in front of me. He likes, he says, to be able to sleep, not be bothered by anyone, I like to gaze out the window with awe at the free amazing real-time non-virtual google earth show passing below. He is chatting amiably and animatedly to the woman beside him. I have not said a word to the person beside me but am marvelling at how every arable inch of land in northern Spain has crops growing on it and at how many people must be involved directly and indirectly with farming it.

Flip. The rock of Gibraltar, literally shrouded in mist and mystery, comes visible in the distance from the plane window and as we fly closer I am almost physically sick with the thought that my camera is packed inaccessibly somewhere deep in my luggage.

Flip. We land, walk across the border into Spain, find our hotel, shower, and stop to take a breath in that order. Our hotel is, conveniently, right beside the marina. “Look,” he says, “there she is!” I can’t, of course, tell which boat he is pointing to but take a picture anyway. Behind the boats, across the strait, the hills of darkest Africa rise up.

Tomorrow we have a long list of scary and unfamiliar chores to do, we will paint on anti-fouling, do something to some through hulls, put the boat in the water, test her systems. Tomorrow night we will sleep on her. I might get up and go for a walk the morning after that, there may be mist rising from in front of the hills, ducks might swim by (and perhaps dolphins too!) but a woman who knows my mother is unlikely to come and sit beside me and I will not have time with one of my kids to look forward to. I look at the snap shot I took earlier from the hotel balcony. We have been out for a walk in the interim and now I too can identify which of the masts belongs to The Boat. She has red sail covers and it seems as if a shard of light is shining just on her. I take it as a good omen. Bring it on world, here I come!