Saturday, April 2, 2011

The Man Boat


Living on Strolla had always been a bit primitive, but when Becca left us, life aboard ship devolved into is most basic masculine form.  All prior restraint was now gone.  None of us had been wearing underwear for quite some time by this point but, now Mark gave up on clothing all together.  Most mornings after that, the only thing he wore during his morning calisthenics were a pair of sunglasses.  
 
Throughout the trip, Nate had proudly claimed to have not once put on sunscreen.  His badly sun-damaged back had turned the color and texture of old leather.  It now blistered and peeled constantly.  Without Becca to help, he took to scraping the dead skin from his back with a 3.5 ft machete he'd bought in the Dominican Republic.  The blade was deeply rusted from the damp salt air and the boat was quickly filled with Nate's rusty brown shavings.  

Most notably, all of us gave up on using dishes.  We were tired of cleaning them.  The established routine aboard Strolla had always been to wash dirty dishes in a bucket of sea water out in the cockpit.  The clean dishes were then brought into the cabin for a quick, freshwater rinse in the sink to get the salt off.  This method dramatically conserved our fresh water stores and got us at least another week between fill ups.  However, depending on where we'd anchored for the night and the cleanliness of the harbor water there, it was at times questionable if this system actually made the dishes cleaner.
 
With Becca no longer there to hold the line, the pots remained dirty on the stove top and the "snippings" from previous meal became the base for the next, like sourdough bread.  Our personal bowls and silverware went into the sink the first day out of St. Lucia so that they didn't fly across the cabin while we were underway.  There they stayed, wet and slimy, catching the gray water from each hand wash or strained canned goods.  We now ate off our bodies, hands, thighs, and lap. 

If sea and weather conditions were right, and the meal was big enough to require the extra space, we lay flat on our backs and ate off our stomachs.  This had the added advantage of allowing the belly button to be used to hold dipping sauces and seasonings.  Cleanup was simple.  We just rolled our bare, browned bodies over the side like sea elephants.  There we floated beside the boat motionlessly, and the little fishes of these tropical waters swam over and did the cleaning for us.  Truly a tropical paradise.




(Leaving St. Lucia)



(Mark enjoying big swells coming through the cut on our way out of St. Lucia)
 

(Stormy skies and following winds)
(Strolla running downwind)
(Mark poses at the bow)

(Perfect sailing)


We continued south.  The wind was strong and steady and unfailingly from the east.  It was the kind of wind that trade routes could be established with and empires built by.  I almost stopped tuning in to weather reports altogether.  The only variation were the occasional rain squalls that were pushed through by those winds.  They swept across the sea and over Strolla, cleaning the sails and rinsing away the accumulated salt from the deck.  It was a welcome change and a brief relief from the tropical sun and heat.  When they passed, they left rainbows in their wake.  No cause for concern.  Hurricane season was still months away. 
 
The ocean swells pushed up by this wind were as big as any we'd seen on the trip so far.   But, these open ocean rollers were spaced out and taking us on the beam, not the bow.  They made Strolla sway rhythmically, pleasantly.  It was nothing like the steep, closely stacked chop we'd battled our way into crossing the Gulf stream or the Mona Passage.  Those waves had swirled around us jarring and punishing, shattering our momentum into a series of sickening lurches.  Here, no one got sea sick and Strolla flew across the waves.