Excerpts
The next tanker blew its whistle, immediately changed course and headed directly for us. It was so close that, if we doubled back and the tanker returned to its original course, we would have had no chance, so I chose the full throttle straight ahead option. For the longest time I stared mesmerized at the red and green running lights getting bigger and bigger. Seeing both meant the tanker was heading straight for us. Finally, the red went out and the wall of steel slid by less than 100 yards from our stern.
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Barnacles have to be one of the more intelligent of living things. I am amazed that a barnacle spore, drifting in the middle of the Pacific, and suddenly seeing a fiberglass hull whipping past, can realize, “This looks like a pretty good place to me. I think I’ll grab hold.” If the ones at the stern of the boat are bright, consider the Einsteins at the bow! That amazement didn’t stop me turning the lot into fish food-nature can be wonderful on another boat.
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We were once again in “drop the anchor, drop your clothes” territory. There is no doubt that we have seen more male genitalia waving in the breeze than has a locker room attendant at the YMCA. The phenomena appears to be nationality related, the Germans clearly points ahead, with the French hard on their heels, and the Swedes hanging behind. On the female side, the statistics are very similar at the bottom end, while topless honors bounce between French, and Germans.
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A robed Arab on a camel, with rifle and sword, followed us for a very long time obviously fascinated by Carole. He was there every time we turned around. Eventually he left, probably to go count his camel herd, so as to make a proper offer for Carole.
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Carole: But I wanted to see it from the land! Santorini was one of the places Laurie promised to take me if I would sail with him. So what if there were no suitable anchorages or marinas. He promised! He suffered, boy did he suffer.
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The other yachts tried to tie up to the town quay, about half a mile from us. There were so many of them that they were often two or three deep. Still they seemed to prefer the smell and wash and noise, for the doubtful benefit of paying for the night, and the facility of being able to crawl over other boats to get to shore. We dinghied casually up to our restaurant of choice, tied up next to our table, ate and drank, then indulged in an after-dinner stroll past the chaos of tangled lines and anchors, and the sound of grinding fiberglass, before returning to our peaceful abode. As the King of Siam was wont to say, “Is a puzzlement.”
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The sight of the dorado we just hooked, swimming above our heads in the clear Pacific swell that was always approaching our stern, never ceased to awe us. These swells, even minus fish, were mesmerizing. Smoothly they would loom over our stern, then equally smoothly lift us to the top and drop us into the next trough. Widely separated, the motion was easy and the ride exhilarating.
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Carole: Laurie was at the bow getting ready to drop the anchor and I was driving the boat, when I noticed two huge cockroaches crawling on the cushions. A really dangerous situation, a pitch black night, surrounded by coral, and all I could concentrate on were those black horrors crawling near me. Our first cockroaches – were they mating?
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The best show in town was the chicken seller. His little stall was surrounded by banked cages of chickens. He would select one, pluck it, gut it, and chop it into quarters so quickly that the legs were still kicking as they were hung on hooks. I am unsure, after long and close observation, as to whether he actually killed the chicken beforehand, or left it to the procedure. A return trip to Aden will need to be made to clear up this controversy.
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We went through with about eight knots behind us, hitting the dizzying speed of 14 knots over the bottom. Carole was oblivious, snapping pictures of the rocks blurring past, and calling out to me to look at particularly pretty formations. I, shell-shocked by the rock fangs zooming past, inches from the hull, and with about as much control of direction as a skier going over a cliff, was noticeably reticent.
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Dinner was a four-foot diameter platter, lined with pancake-like sour bread, covered with heaps of various local dishes, all meat. Correct procedure was to tear off a piece of bread and scoop up some food with it, all with the right hand of course, as the left is reserved for more intimate cleaning functions. Left-handed me had some etiquette problems.
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Ryan (10): A great meal, best ever. Most of the meat was goats. Mum kind of picked at the bread.
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Carole loved it, as she could enter and leave the water from “Dolphin Spirit.” She has no problems falling out of a dinghy, but getting back in occasionally strains our joint resources.
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Driving in Italy was made very simple by the excellent road sign systems and road maps. On the maps, blue roads are freeways, red are first class, and yellow and white are the lesser quality roads. Scenic roads have a green shading. Signs are also consistent, country wide. Directions to freeways are green, to first class roads, blue, and to other classes, white. Therefore, to get to a blue road, you follow the green signs, and to get to a red road, follow the blue signs-what could be simpler. Most of the scenic roads are yellow or white, so to get to a green road, follow the white signs. Local sights, such as temples, are indicated by brown signs. Do not be color-blind driving in Italy.
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The local Coast Guard rolled up to ask us to fill in a form, and to tell us to move off our comfortable wall to a berth farther in. I pointed out that we were too long and too deep to do so; we would be gone in the morning, and wouldn’t he like to stamp our pretty passports. Consigning us, and our passports, to some private hell, the official consulted long and hard with his superiors, and finally decided we could stay where we were, no charge, as we weren’t where we should be. We loved his logic, even though our passports remained stampless, and we now had no record of entering Italy.
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Of course we went aground, got off with difficulty, and decided (Carole demanded) to anchor and wait for the tide to come in. In finding an anchoring place, we went aground again, got off again, and finally anchored. To give Carole her due, she never said, “I told you so!” but the pressure to do so was almost unbearable. I had no excuse, but I was tired, frustrated by the dinghy support situation, needing to prove my manhood for the day, stubborn, and generally not in the mood to be told I couldn’t take my baby where I wanted to.
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One of the fallacies of cruising is you have all the time in the world to do things. Certainly there is more time to spend in each place than is available to land-based mortals, but key schedules, mainly weather and season-related, have to be kept. For example, you cannot enter the South Pacific before the end of the cyclone season in March, and you must be out, in Australia, New Zealand, or north of the equator, by early November. That leaves only seven months to cover French Polynesia, Cook Islands, Tonga, and Fiji, all at less than six knots. Stay too long in one place, and you have to hurry through another. The main problem is that it gets better as you go west, something that is hard to appreciate when lolling in Bora Bora lagoon.