05.31.08
Bahama Banks
05.27.08
That’s that then.
We listed the Beastie and the calls began coming in. A couple from Seattle who had circumnavigated on an identical boat many years ago. They had sold their Baba to get a bigger boat and had regretted it ever since. “The worst day of my wife’s life was when we sold that boat”.
A guy from Greece who was ready to move her over there until he ran into the ridiculous new EU regulations. Several from the Northeast, New York to Maine. None of whom had the money.
The economy was in free fall and the boating market is the canary in the coal mine. The canary just died.
Most of the boats here at the dock are for sale. They are not moving. Some have been on the market over a year.
Around about caller number nine we heard from Mike. From Sarasota on the other side of this flat peninsula. He had been reading about and dreaming of Baba 30’s for years. He’d never seen one in the flesh and made an appointment to come and see her the next weekend.
He was smitten and set up a haul out and survey. They went well. We eventually got her back in the water and then we waited, for three agonizing weeks, for Mike to get insurance. The uncertainty was really beginning to weigh on us by the time the money finally showed up.
At last it was real and we didn’t know how we felt about it, still don’t, probably never will. A sailing boat can be such an emotionally loaded thing. It’s a vessel in more ways than one. On one hand it’s just a means of transport that keeps you from getting wet. On the other it is the repository of your dreams. It embodies freedom and potential. It is the most romantic way to move around. As we were beginning to despair of finding a place to live in St Augustine a cottage appeared on a leafy downtown street. Tiny and affordable, surrounded by banana and gigantic bird of paradise trees . For days we woke up in a panic when it rained thinking; “portlights!”. For weeks I would reach up to grab the molding I used to turn myself over with in the forward berth, it wasn’t there. Sleeping is still difficult without the movement and the sound of the current working on the hull. It is very quiet and still.
We miss the boat and we are relieved to have sold her. Living on a boat is an extreme way to exist, equally rewarding and tiring. The good times and achievements are unapproachable in normal life. The bad times are worse and more frightening than anything that can happen on land.
A year and a half ago we knew nothing about this world and we jumped in. Today we have stepped back out and we know. What do we know? We know what it is to ’sail away’. We can step onto any boat and are capable of taking her from one place to another. We know a lot more about ourselves than we did before and we have more faith in ourselves. We feel we could do just about anything. So what’s next?
Floating around.
Time flies when your bent double, folded into corners learning to love the drone of the heat gun and the aroma of peeling layers of ancient varnish and other mystery crap apparently applied by the bucket method by a previous and less careful owner of your beloved and now intimately familiar vessel.
The Beastie is possessed of an old soul belying her mere thirty years. I know her pretty well having spent the past five months slaving away restoring all of her exterior Teak. It seems less and less of a good idea to part with her. We must, however, accept the situation as it is and move on to our next adventures.
Sharron’s motion sickness / vertigo is insurmountable.
Some of these pictures will be out there soon luring her next crew aboard for her next round of adventure and it is a real comfort to know that while we stroll off with our memories she will still be out there, the better for our care and work, still doing her thing.
Meanwhile St Augustine is not such a bad place to be. It’s as close to the Old World as you can get in the new one.
Sharron is ripping through her TEFL course, muttering discontent if she gets a ninety eight instead of a hundred on a test, and I’m still full time fixing up the Beastie, attending to all those things that weren’t necessary for us to travel. She’s enjoying the attention and nobody seems able to pass her on the dock without a comment like ‘Wow, nice boat what is she?’. One guy asked if we had bought her new, I thought I could feel her puff up with pride under my feet at that.
As the Beastie floats around at the dock tugging impatiently at her lines we have been floating around our heads some ideas of what we can do next to minimize the anticlimax. “Follow that” says life. Well, we’re done with sailing but not with life.
Croatia looks good, or Italy or Montenegro or Corsica or
Sicilia. Hell, they’re only about five passages away as the Beastie flies.
