A Sail of Two Idiots (9 page)

Okay then. Take this job and shove … Actually it was more like take this job and keep my space open because I may be back.

Before I left Arizona for Florida, I arranged to have our remaining bills paid via online banking, I canceled whatever mailings I could and rerouted the rest to friends or family willing to accept the stuff for us, I got Shaka all his shots and completed the necessary paperwork, and I did some final home and landscape maintenance—with scissors and knives since Michael had taken all the tools.

I also sold my car, which was one of the most depressing things I had to do. I had an ancient Miata, which I loved. I actually cried when the new owner shifted gears and revved off down the street.

The only thing left to do was pack, grab the cat, lock the door, mooch a ride to the airport, say good-bye to my friends, and hop on the flight that would whisk me toward a new awakening.

T
he anticipation! I had an interesting flight with Shaka, who had never been on a plane and was unhappily announcing our arrival all the way to the waiting area. I couldn't help but laugh when I saw Michael grinning there. We barely recognized each other because we had both lost so much weight—he because he had been working his butt off for three months and me because I couldn't cook and my chef had moved to Florida without me.

He was giddy to show me the boat (and to get someone to help him with it, of course). In spite of my excitement, I was anxious and silent all the way to the marina. I cannot explain how bizarre it felt to walk up to a dock and see a 37-foot-long, 23-foot-wide, 9-ton catamaran, realizing that this is my new home, my new transportation, my new life. Were we crazy? Maybe, but it sure was exhilarating.

The timing was good because our broker pals returned a week later to reclaim their slip. Then they helped us anchor in Biscayne Bay because, of course, we didn't know how to set an anchor. It was such a different experience to just be floating out there like a … like a … well, like a boat!

With many of the larger tasks out of the way and about a week left before leaving Florida, we decided to change the name of the boat. Many sailors warn you that this is bad luck. Should you decide to pursue this folly anyway, you are advised to do some weird rituals or risk the wrath of the sea gods. Not the superstitious types, we didn't listen (hmmm, I think I've just had an epiphany).

We changed the boat name to
Jacumba
. (
Accepting Donations
was in the running but was too long, although it would have been more apropos.)

Jacumba
is a town in California, and we had always liked the name. We had figured we'd give that name to our next kitty cat, but, well, this boat
was
a “cat,” wasn't it?

I decided to look up the meaning, thinking it surely had one, and incredibly found that it meant “hut by the water” in San Diegos Indian. How cool was that? Maybe the kismet of the name itself would cancel out the fact that we hadn't completed the aforementioned name-changing rituals: we hadn't spun the boat in three circles and hadn't run it backward and forward 10 times, all while sprinting
around the deck with nothing on but our anchor tattoos while flying our quarantine flag at half mast. Note: Said rituals vary.

Speaking of kitty cats, Shaka was doing amazingly well, much to our relief. He'd always been scared of engines (the car engine, for example), so I wasn't sure how he would handle the loud wind generators, the outboard on the dinghy, and the two main engines, but he adapted as though he'd been a boat cat his whole life. Good kitty!

Now that we were at anchor, we discovered a number of things wrong with the outboard on the dinghy (another problem of a sitting boat). Our main transportation on and off the big boat was a 12-foot inflatable dinghy with a fiberglass bottom. Our 9.9 horsepower outboard powered us when it felt so inclined. Although we had oars, we weren't close to the marina and spent more time going in circles and yelling at each other than going where we wanted to go. Tip: Some people carry an extra dinghy motor; if you've got the space for it, it's not a bad idea.

Late one afternoon when we were relaxing after a long day's work, we saw a woman floating away in a dinghy that was clearly having engine trouble. We weren't sure we would be rescuing her if our engine died too and we floated into oblivion together, but we figured we'd give it a shot. Michael headed after her while I stayed on
Jacumba
and close to the VHF in case I needed to summon help.

After confirming that he was indeed dealing with a damsel in distress, he grabbed the towline (sometimes called a painter) of her dinghy and presumably headed to the woman's floating abode. About 10 minutes later, he was still towing the other dinghy but in the other direction. Another 10 minutes and they were passing me again, both pulling madly at their dinghy motor cords. Of course, the sun was setting.

Michael finally managed to get our dinghy outboard going and then they disappeared again. When he eventually made it back to our boat (alone), he said the woman had taken a while to remember where the yacht she was crewing on had “parked.” See, anyone can be an airhead.

When we weren't bringing bad luck upon ourselves or saving others from their own misfortune, we were buying every spare part we could think of, hoping we had covered everything. We wanted to make sure we could make all the outstanding repairs necessary, wherever we ended up. The clock was ticking.

We also shopped endlessly for groceries and general sundries. We filled every nook and cranny on the boat with stuff we liked and were afraid we'd never find elsewhere.

With our credit cards maxed out and our boat full to the brim, it was time to go. But where? We thought about heading to Georgia so we could keep working on the boat, but we were told we couldn't live aboard there (we've since heard otherwise) and didn't want to go any farther up the Intracoastal Waterway and
away
from the Caribbean. Winter was coming! We decided to head for the Bahamas. Why not?

W
ahoo! We were going to the Bahamas—it's better there (or so they say). Well, we were going to the Bahamas
after
we found someone to take us there. Based on a recommendation from our surveyor, we ended up with Captain Tim, a down-to-earth old salt and a vegetarian like us (or willing to be while he was on our boat). We didn't double-check his credentials, but he was recommended, asked the right price, and was available.

First we had to figure out exactly where in the Bahamas we were going. We needed to stay close to the United States so we could deal with home-sale issues. After reading Bahamas cruising guides, we decided that the Abacos (the most northern in the chain of islands known as the Bahamas) might be a good place to settle in. Green Turtle sounded promising as a long-term anchorage and became our final destination. Our captain had also done this route before, which made us all happy.

Aiming for reasonable five- to six-hour days after the first long haul, Captain Tim chose the following route: Miami northeast to West End, at the west end of Grand Bahama Island (98 miles); northeast to Great Sale Cay (40 miles); east to Allans-Pensacola Cay (38 miles); and finally 25 miles southeast for the final hop to Green Turtle Cay. The whole trip would take three days. Three days to go 201 miles? Where's my Miata! Well, it was certainly enough time to learn the ropes, so to speak, or at least some of them, which was the point, wasn't it?

We set a date to start out, November 5, and prepared to sail to our first stop, West End, Grand Bahama Island. I got busy studying the chartplotter (the electronic version of paper charts) and other electronics. I'm the computer geek in the family, so I automatically took on the task of electronically plotting the course and figuring out how all the navigation equipment worked. The only way we could pull off this sailing thing without lessons would be with the electronics: autopilot, radar, wind reader (anemometer), depth sounder, and chartplotter. Think about it. We could “sail” without ever putting the sails up as long as we understood these essentials. All set!

Sunday, November 5, 2006: Off we go! Oh, wait, here comes a weather system. No go. Nor would it be until three days later. We obtained this bad news via NOAA weather broadcasts on our VHF radio (Wx channels) and were being advised by both Captain Tim and Stephen, who was in the nearby marina on
Siyaya
on the same make of boat as ours. We also had a small battery-powered single-sideband
radio (SSB) that let us listen to Chris Parker, a meteorologist specializing in weather for boaters in the southern Florida to Caribbean areas. All said stay put, so we did.

Ah, yes, more time to work on the boat.

Before we could leave, we had to fill our two diesel tanks, about 90 gallons each. We didn't know how to dock (Captain Tim wasn't on the boat yet, and we were tired of bothering our friends on
Siyaya
), so when we discovered a way to get fueled mid-float, we couldn't resist. We just stayed put while a tanker pulled up next to us in the harbor, tied off to us (rubber fenders are your friend), threw out some hoses, and filled our tanks. Now we knew how those military planes felt getting fueled in midair. It was cool, until the fuel overflowed into our anchor bin. As with a car, there is a specific place on a boat to insert the hose to prevent this, but we wanted to filter the fuel with a cone made for that purpose. So we opened the actual fuel tanks, located in the anchor locker, to make the filtering easier and the fueling faster. So fast, we spilled. We then cleaned the chain, the ropes, and the fiberglass. Now we were ready.