Hello everyone.
I’m in a cozy spot. I mean that in many ways. I’m in the best part of my life; living the life I love. I’m on a boat that’s my home, my adventure escape capsule, and the warehouse of all my stuff. I’m on a comfortable settee with a soft pillow behind my head and a keyboard in my lap; a softer cool breeze blowing in from the hatch overhead is quite welcome.
I have the glow of accomplishment and discovery that comes from a day that began with adventure, had just enough work to fend off guilt, and a natural occurrence that resembles magic on my way home here tonight. Here I am at the end of a picture perfect day, nibbling a piece of chocolate, and writing to you.
Last night I slept well. There was a nice breeze coming in the hatch over the v-berth, as tonight, and just enough boat motion to make it comfortable, (I tend to be restless when it’s to still). I awoke in my normal way, to the sound of Nicky and her baby, Lucky Luke, fishing around my boat. The distinctive splash, pop, and whoosh of dolphins breaching to breath is one of my favorite sounds. The western bulkhead of the morning was painted orange with the early sunlight slanting in from the opposite port light. A gull was calling someplace distant.
I named Nicky for her nicked up aft section of her dorsal fin. I later learned and observed that almost all adult dolphins have this characteristic in this thin and easily damaged part of their bodies. I named Luke after a French comic book character, also because my little sister Nicky’s son is named Luke. So while I was anthropomorphizing my *** off, I went ahead and named the other adult, that usually keeps company with this pair, Mark, after my brother in law. I have no idea if they are a family or not or even if Lucky Luke is maybe not Lucky Lucy. I just wanted to name them and it seemed natural to do it that way. I like to think they come around here because they know I love them…. I’m sure it has more to do with some quirk of the way my boat reflects sonar or attracts bait fish or some other “normal” explanation. I am the only full time live aboard in this anchorage though, so perhaps this is why. Sometimes they
follow my dink and swim under it making a fluke wake first on one side and then the other… do they want me to play? Is the dink making good hunting for them?
I got up and turned on my little inverter to grind beans. I wish I had an old timey hand crank job but it would probably take up too much space. Space is a never ending challenge onboard a small cruising boat… space, power, and fresh water. I’m in the process of building and installing the machines that will make her as self sufficient as possible. For lights and for running the coffee grinder I get my power from the sun. I record it during the day, with a 100 watt solar panel, and I play it back at night. I made three cups of strong café filtre. As I was having my first cup, and the eastern horizon was moving down, I noticed that the wind had died and the water had gone flat. I had no obligations for the early morning, and so I decided to take a turn at a new hobby… Geo-caching. Rather than explain what it is here, I’ll just go ahead and tell what I did. I’ll cross post this to the geo-caching site bbs as well so I don’t want to bore people more than necessary.
I’ve had things ready to go for weeks, just waiting for the right conditions. I had my sketch chart of the area, (traced from a nautical chart), some notes about the site copied from the net, some trading items.
I filled my thermal travel mug with strong java, climbed into the hot rod dink and motored off slowly toward the intercoastal waterway.
Once in the main channel of the water way I twisted the throttle and sped up to twenty miles per hour. This is not fast by modern transportation standards, but it is fast for a dink, and when you are moving along, inches from the water’s surface, it’s a nice thrill. My target was a Tupperware container filled with trinkets, and secreted under a half dead, half live tree, on a small spoils island in the Indian River Lagoon. Three miles away, but still what I would consider my back yard, this island lays a few hundred meters from the main channel. As I approached it, I slowed to idle speed and turned west towards a clearing and what looked like a good boat landing site. It was deep enough to motor almost to the shore, and I poled myself the remaining couple of meters to beach on some dredged up coral rocks. The interior of the island was more open than I had expected. There were no birds to poop on me, or mosquitoes to bite me, as reported by previous cache hunters. In fact, I was having such a merry time boony stomping, that I did not try to seriously look for the cache until I had explored the island a little. There were mostly casuarina trees and I have always loved the way they smell. Something about them always reminds me of southern France. I spent some time digging rocks from under the wrong tree and when I found it was a dead end, I looked for the clue of an old plank, (a recurring theme in my adventures by the way), and easily found the cache.
My initial thought was, “hey!, this is real!”. I left a note in the log but as so often happens with me, I could not remember the date! Please, next person to visit, fill in the 11th for me where I logged an entry. I also used the disposable camera to take my self-portrait, from arms length. I may have used the last picture there; I’m not too sure. I removed the Main lobster pin and put in some purple crystals.
It is a nice spot and I enjoyed reading the initial log entry and the log entries of other geo-cachers. I took my time rummaging the contents of the cache. When I returned to the dink, I found that it was swamped. Several passing powerboat wakes had been the culprits. Oh well. That’s why god made bleach bottles, so we could cut the bottoms out of them for bailers.
I was sponging the remaining water from the bilge as I idled out away from the island when I decided to sound around for an anchorage deep enough to accommodate the mother ship. I putted along, using the oar to gauge the depth, looking for the 4.5 foot line. It was too close to the main channel for consideration on the west side so I continued to the east side which seemed promising. I saw some pelicans fishing in a way they only do when there are masses of schooled fish. They flap their wings like mad while paddling with their big feet, eventually they are in a pre-flight headlong run-flap on the surface, and just as they get air born, they pick off a small fish near the surface by dipping their bill in. They must have tremendous neck muscles to stop themselves dead from headlong flight. I love watching pelicans fly and fish this way and there were dolphins in the area. Sometimes the dolphins join in the fun by herding the schooled fish into a ball, and then taking turns dashing in to get a fish. If they did not work as a team, they would disperse the fish by rushing in at once. I’ve seen Nicky ball up fish like this for Luke. I don’t know if she is just showing him or if he is eating fish. Do baby dolphins nurse? For how long? Any way I stopped the motor to watch, listen, and just be “out there” for a while.
I heard them before I saw them. They present less above the water than dolphins do, and less often, but they surely are mammals and I happen to know that they nurse their young. Mermaids! West Indian Manatees to be more precise. Big old sea cows and I was so so glad that I was practicing caution all day by idling speed outside the main deep channel. There were two groups of them out there. A pair of females, each with a young one were nearest the dink and very very close by. As I said, I heard them breathing before I saw them. They were obligingly coming towards the dink. Their breathing is gentler than the dolphins - less urgent. The other group was too far off to really tell much about. I did get a good look at a flipper as one rolled up, and another look at the distinctive beaver tail of another.
After watching the manatees for about 30 minutes I putted carefully back out to the channel and motored on back here.
At Robert’s waterfront, I tied the dingy up. Robert has perhaps the last piece of wild land along Indian River Drive in Sebastian. They have cleared the lot next to him. There is a little creek running through it and a stand of tall bamboo at the sidewalk end. The mullet swim up into a pool near this stand of bamboo and on a full moon night you can dream you are in an Etcher version of a Japanese garden watching the coy. There are tall palms and oaks along with enough underbrush to make the short hike interesting. I have the path down in memory so I can do it even on moonless nights. Its step step step, duck, step step turn, step over, step step turn, step over… And I’m crossing the street and back into the “sheeples” reality.
A different set of schemas takes over my psyche as I “check both ways”. Urban mode. The next task at hand, after breakfast, was to free a reptile. I love and respect nature but I have to tell you… I don’t like poison snakes. My normal impulse is to wipe them out. Well, being a good citizen of the planet sometimes means subverting those impulses and doing something else. In this case, I had an Eastern Coral snake in a plastic tub to deal with. I had nearly stepped on him a few days earlier while crossing Robert’s lawn. A rattlesnake bite put me in the hospital in New Mexico once for a week, so it was something I did not enter into lightly. Also letting it just go its way in the yard was not an option due to Robert’s young daughter playing there. That morning a bee that had gotten into my hat while I rode the rice rocket to the doughnut shop had already stung me… (you didn’t think I lived on tofu did you?), so I was already not having a good day. Nothing makes a noise like a bee. When you get one in your helmet or hat while riding a motorcycle, the impulse you have to overcome, is to not crash the motorcycle to get to the bee. One calmly checks for following traffic in the mirror, puts on the turn signal, eases the bike over to the side and gets to a full stop. That’s when I was stung on the head of course. Oh well. Where was I? So I had this eastern coral snake who needed a new home, far from 3 year old Katrina’s play yard. I ended up turning him loose way out in the country, on a back road where there was neither orange orchard nor housing development. I was surprised at how hard it was to find such a patch here near Florida’s coast.
My next task of the day was to sort out the things on my trailer into stuff that goes to the dump, stuff that Robert wants, and stuff that goes to the boat or will be refurbished for sale. I thought I could do this all in the afternoon but it turned out to be more difficult. I am trying to overcome the impulse to gather “things”. The sheeple herders would have us believe that acquisition of “things” is the purpose of life. Oh well.
The horizon came back up. I had pizza with Robert as we watched a special on TV about poisonous snakes. Ironically, there was a coral snake on it and discussion as to how to tell the difference between a coral and king snake. Forget all that “red next to yellow” malarkey and just remember that the coral has a black tipped nose. I was surprised at how he had totally vanished in the fallen leaves and grass in a flash.
I made my way thru the dark woods at the waters edge. Now reversing my pattern, step step step, duck… The moon was behind me, it’s a Ramadan moon tonight, I reflected briefly on my time in Riyadh during Ramadan that seems like a century ago, I was such a different person then. God please don’t make me go back to that awful place.
I was back in adventure/nature mode buy the time I reached the dink. The tide was out so I did my Humphrey Bogart in the African Queen imitation. Dragging the dink out of the flats and into the shallows I was shuffling along, (sting rays you know), and whistling the piano tune from the movie “To have and have not”, and thinking of Lauren Bachal’s line, “you know how to whistle Steve… you just put your lips together and blow…” when I saw the magic.
A blue glowing blob angling off in a zig zag pattern in the water. I stopped and it was a few moments before I realized what I had seen. I must have scared a fish, which bolted and moving rapidly thru the water, fired off the phosphorescence in the plankton there. Sure enough, when I got in the dink I noticed a high degree of this phenomenon while poling out to deep enough water to put down the outboard motor. I saw dozens of these fish light up the water for me and I poled and then paddled way farther than I needed to. On the way motoring here the dink appeared to be pushed along on an aqua blue flame. Once aboard the boat, I watched over the side the incredible number of blue flashes and streaks in a light show that I can only compare to flying at high altitude over lightning storms at night.
So maybe there are many fish around the boat all the time? Is that why Nicky likes me?
Now I’ve shared my day with you. It’s an act of completion to top off the experience for me.
Fair Winds ~~~~~~_/) ~~~~~~~
George
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