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Red Eyes and bird brains I suppose another name for dumb blonde could be birdbrain. I can say that, I'm blonde, and I've heard the endless repertoire of "dumb blonde" jokes over the years. Well now it's my turn. The poor creature that I'm about to condemn to idiocy, IS the leggy chick variety, but not of the human species. And not even female. I'm talking rooster—one scatter brained, mixed up bird. My story about this bird even relates to sailing. Sort of. The day that we arrived in Costa Rica to continue our boating odyssey toward the Panama Canal, Karl and I had just come off a red eye all-nighter flight from Los Angeles to San Jose. Friends picked us up at the airport and drove us the few hours to their beach house at Playa del Coco. Andanté was sort of double-parked in their front yard—of the bay, that is. Because we arrived at midnight, these folks were kind enough to let us crash in their guest bed on the screened-in porch, before dinghying our two duffels, three boxes, and assorted carryons out to the boat. We were looking forward to a good rest before returning to Andanté and the obligatory demands of un-boxing, organizing, and cleaning. As nights can be in tropical Costa Rica, this one was hot, sticky, and buggy. First, a run-away brave-the-beach-winds mosquito found our fresh, fleshy bodies and started an all night smorgasbord. Second, we'd forgotten just how hot the tropics could feel after wearing Ugg fur-lined boots and shivering for the past 7 weeks. (Yes, don't laugh. Even places like San Diego can be cold. A recent hailstorm there blanketed the streets in ice.) Third, the once romantic crashing surf became thunderous and annoying. Again, and again, rhythmic rounds of pounding: In—out. In—out. And then IT started: more noise. A different direction. Unnatural; and frankly, weird. Wrong time. Wrong place. The noise came from a bird—but not a parrot, and not of the tropical variety. The unmistakable cock-a-doodle-do of a rooster started just after midnight. A rooster! A rooster on the beach in Costa Rica. Don't roosters crow to herald the dawn of a new day? Aren't they the mascot of farm life, more predictable than any alarm clock to get the household up and ready for the fields? Don't they symbolize taskmaster of the day? Oh no. This Costa Rican rooster was taskmaster of the night—and he was one crazy, confused, loony tune bird. What did he think he was—the neighborhood dog? Perhaps he competed with the neighborhood dogs. He didn't just crow once, or twice, or even three times. He crowed on the hour, every hour, all night long. A night filled with buzzing, biting, crashing, sweating, and crowing. It was only a short, teeny, intermittent nap. I'd rather be shopping; or would I? We survived the crazy crooner. The next day we organized, cleaned, and even rested. Within a handful of days, we were ready to provision for the next leg of our travels. Buying groceries and stuff should be really easy, a no-brainer, no big deal. Right? Wrong. We're sailing, remember? Nothing is ever easy on a boat, with a boat, about a boat, around a boat. Not cooking, not sleeping, not eating, not cleaning, nor repairing. Nope. That simple task of purchasing consumables and daily necessities isn't easy either. Most people either walk to the store; or they go to their garage or carport or parking space, turn the key, and drive to the store. They get out of their car, walk into the store, grab the cart, shop, buy, drive home, unload the groceries, and put them away. Here's how it worked on a boat—our boat—in Playa del Coco, Costa Rica during early February. (You'd better get comfortable.) First, conscientious, considerate Karl spent an hour or so readying the dinghy—kind of like taking the car out of the garage. He untied that little inflatable boat (all 120 pounds of it), moved it from the deck and after great effort, managed to get this cadaver-like object over the side of Andanté, and down into the water. Using its attached rope (or line, called a painter), he led it to the back, or stern, where the outboard motor is secured. We're fortunate to have a Nova Lift on board; sort of a small gallows for the outboard. It strangles the engine and holds it in place with nylon strap around its neck and belly while tied to a metal pole. A rope threaded through this hollow metal pole attaches to a winch (wait! winch—not wench) and with special maneuvering hoists the little 70 pound outboard motor over the side of the boat onto the dinghy transom's motor mount—thus preventing hernias, heart attacks, or worse: such as dropping the outboard motor to the bottom of the bay. At this point, I serve as official motor-mount assistant. I run the WINCH.
In perfect counterpoint, Karl and I managed to lower the motor onto the stern of the little inflatable boat. We then secured Andanté—you know, like locking your house up. Yeah, right: We closed 12 windows and 4 hatches; located the soft cooler, backpacks, rubber dry-bag, outboard motor start line, sunglasses, credit cards, hats, water bottles, boat key, AND ourselves, gathered the garbage, locked the companionway door, climbed over the side of the bouncing boat and down into the at times uncooperative-and-headstrong moving dinghy. Time out. You may be wondering, "Forget all this nonsense. Why didn't you just step off the boat onto the dock, walk through the beautiful yacht club marina to the front entrance and hail a cab?" Sounds great; would have been great if there WAS a beautiful marina, heck, ANY marina. I'd have gone for a dock. Rocks. Anything stationary to get me ashore! But when you're anchored in the middle of the bay, you have to figure out a way to get yourself not only to shore but also to the nearest grocery store. So far into our story we've: 1) Untied the dinghy; 2) Moved the impossibly heavy dinghy from the bow into the water on the starboard side of the boat ; 3) Led the precocious dinghy aft; 4) Lowered and placed the outboard motor on the little inflatable dinghy; 5) Gathered necessary stuff; 6) Locked the boat; 7) And crawled into the dinghy. OK. Next, we tootled along to shore. Whoa, not that easy. What about weather, atmosphere, ambiance? All good stories need ambiance. I'll bet as you read this sailing saga, you're imagining that Karl and I headed off into flat seas, sunlit clear blue skies, hot, balmy breezes. Not quite. Picture sun. Yes, hot—oh yes—90-something sizzling degrees of sun. Then picture balmy—clammy is more like it. Breezes you bet. Try 35+ knots of wind. If you're not into knots, just imagine 40-mile an hour wind! Movie-set-stirring-up-a-storm gusting wind. So here we were, trying to keep the dinghy IN the water and ourselves OUT of the water, heading toward the beach. Once near the sand, we jumped out of the little boat (later, I'll tell you about the time I FELL out of the dinghy). Karl pulled and I pushed all of the nearly 200 pounds up onto the beach. Yes, we even have a set of dinghy wheels. It's still like trying to push your car up a hill with the brake on. We tied up the dinghy (Andante Jr. I like to affectionately call it, since it's as sassy as a teenager) to a nearby chunk of cement. I'd venture tying up the dinghy is like tying up one's horse before entering a saloon—and at this point in the process, you may consider needing a drink! No, it hasn't come to that. We first stopped at the garbage depot and deposited our bags into the trash containers. Then we walked to the supermarcado, only a few blocks away. It's actually a grown up store. It even offers a few choices—such as bread. We found two mini loaves of bread that would rival any multi-grain version in the States. Finally, having exhausted our list we headed to the check out counter and realized that we had accumulated nearly a hundred pounds of groceries at $100+ with no wheels for carrying it and no cash or Costa Rican Colones to pay for it. We hadn't been to a bank yet; there aren't any in Playa del Coco. Praise the Lord for shopping carts and credit cards! The store handles both. In a few minutes we pushed our edibles and necessities over the rock lined, rutted road to our infamous dinghy. Now, reverse everything previously written, and that was the return trip to Andanté. Exception being, we had to keep everything we just purchased INSIDE the dinghy. Recall that there were 35 knots of winds blowing. We managed to sufficiently corral our new provisions on the floor of the dinghy, and by the time we returned, accounted for everything. We then began the unloading process.
We developed a fine-tuned assembly line of two; Karl the chief handler, passed bags up from the dinghy. I got a free workout as chief bag gopher. The mountain of layered bags, aptly designed to keep the contents from flying away, gradually dwindled as all the stuff made it from deck to the cockpit floor. We next transitioned to the Stairmaster portion of Becky's workout. Note: exercise equipment is not needed on a sailboat, unless your boat happens to be over 85 feet long and you have a paid crew to pamper you. Since we have neither, the aerobics continued. Four steep wooden steps lead from our doorway (companionway) to the main salon and galley. I made that trip from cockpit down to galley and back up again, at least a dozen times. Leg toning for the price of groceries! The next logical sequence should have been to put everything away and get on with the day. However, one detail I failed to mention about the supermarcado was the fact that it is open-aired. Tropically correct. All the shelves, all goods, every itsy-bitsy thing in that store is continually exposed to the local dust and grit and grime, which is compounded by the daily burning of the sugar cane fields. And having lived on Maui for years, I can attest to the fact that the residual caused by cane burning is like sticky dark glue. So a half-inch of that dust, grit, and gluey, gooey grime coated everything that we bought and brought into our boat-home. Once these new, but dirty, products were aboard, I had the pleasure of using hard-earned, desalinated, boat-made water to scrub and wipe each article purchased, before stowing it all away. In the mean time, Karl went through the gyrations of returning the dinghy to its resting place on the bow, and the motor to its gallows. There you have it. Step by step, dinghy by dinghy, the dang story of buying groceries while living on a boat, at anchor. Nothing but dessert—a piece of cake. Care to join us? Brown Boobies If you scrolled down to read the brown booby story before reading anything else, shame on you. Brown boobies are a species of birds common to the Pacific coasts of Mexico and Central America. In other words, they're all over the place. They may possess the gift of flying but, at least for one certain brown booby, not the gift of intelligence. We'll call this bird Barney the Brown Booby. And this is actually a fish story, but not a tall tale. One day, as we often do, Karl put out the fishing pole aft of the boat with a lure about the size of fish that we caught and ate in Michigan. This lure was big, and blue, and beautiful. Squiggly too. We'd forgotten about it, until, looking aft, I saw a flock of birds—brown boobies—passing overhead. A flock, minus one. That one was Barney and he had his eyes on dinner. Old Barney began swooping and diving and diving and swooping toward our wake. As I watched, I thought, old Barney had spotted a fish. Until I realized the distance between that fish and the back of our boat never changed. In fact, that fish was attached TO the back of our boat, and was in fact, the big, blue, beautiful and squiggly lure the size of keepers back in Michigan. I hollered for Karl to reel in the line and ultimately disappoint Barney. Sorry buddy. No dinner for you, no dinner for us. That's where I absolutely draw the line. I refuse to cook Brown Boobies for dinner. That one got away. |
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