Ships Boats Sails And Racers

The old Honda shop on Southard Street is the headquarters of Race Week this January in Key West, so underneath the old "Kawasaki" and "Honda" signs there are big turquoise Qs, the emblem of the sponsoring company, Quantum sails. Apparently racing sailboats on the Southern Ocean Racing Conference is a Big Deal, and even though I spent decades living in and messing about with cruising sailboats racing leaves me cold.

To my way of thinking there is something totally deranged about taking the slowest means of locomotion ever invented and then trying to race it in contests of speed over the water. Mix in the variables of weather, which is a big variable, tides, measurable but awkward, waves which are usually a product of the other two, and racing seems even more pointless. Then of course there are the crews and like any hiring process getting humans to power the boat is made extra difficult when you need particular skills but don't want to pay for them.

There is a common misconception that boat ownership is particularly expensive. It used to be when boats were made of wood, ropes were real manila hemp and sails of Egyptian cotton. Take those natural products, dunk them in saltwater under a burning sun and stress the hell out of them and they won't last long! But this is the 21st century and modern sailboats are made of indestructible fiberglass. It's so long lasting you can see the power of glass-reinforced-plastic, to use its proper name, as you drive to Key West. Storage lots, mangrove lined coves and small bays are all filled with dreams deferred, toys forgotten which will never rot or disintegrate. It's such a problem the county pays hundreds of thousands to remove abandoned boats, and they hardly make a dent. Each piece of plastic, each hull, has an owner and the owner may be dead or in the mountains of Montana pursuing a new lifestyle and the county has to file paper to remove someone's dead boat. Nothing is simple certainly not boat removal, much though land bound citizens wish it were, and the abandoned hulls bob, their fittings rot slowly and finally they sink into the mud or weeds. Modern boating.

Yet sailing fascinates. Perhaps it's the image of the big triangular sails of our childhood imaginations as we read of the great River Nile. You can see it, brown desert air, pyramids and palms and those slow feluccas chasing wisps of air as they work their way up the Cradle of Civilization.

I loved sailing not least because it was the first place in my life I had someone who showed me the path. My sailing instructor was an intuitive sailor who taught me to understand rather than just learn. On the other hand I hate sailing too. It's the most frustrating way to travel as you fight time and exhaustion and waves to get where you are going. Then you arrive and you are automatically home. Drop the anchor, fold the sails, light the stove and you are in the womb, no passing traffic, no neighbors, no "No Parking" signs. It's primal.

To use a boat as a home is a romantic notion, but it can also be a hard headed practical one if you choose yo make your life in overpriced coastal communities as I have. A boat as a toy is a lot of money. You can buy a lifetime supply of motorcycles for the price of a small boat. But as a home, a plastic boat with plastic ropes and plastic sails is a deal, if you can stand living in a watery RV park, don't need a garden and are happy to make boats your life. Vacation? Go sailing...A weekend trip?...Go sailing. And that obsessive nature of boating pushed me away for the past decade or more. Once I have some new skill figured out and I feel competent I tend to lose interest. After my wife and I sailed from San Francisco to Key West at the turn of the century we figured we had the live aboard cruising thing down pat. We wanted to integrate into our new community so we came ashore.

Other people are less obsessive and for them sailing is a sport, a weekend of fun racing, perhaps a way to have some time away from the family, to be active with the boys...Women do sail but almost always as adjuncts to the husband and family (apologies to the few exceptions out there but I am generalizing), and as a sport it's not cycling or mountaineering but it is more active than watching other men run around a sports arena. And it is out in the fresh air, sometimes too fresh, especially if you sail San Francisco Bay, let me tell you.

Against that background we have the professional sailors, a way of life I cannot begin to imagine.

Pay is not good, after all why would wealthy boat owners pay their crews a decent wage, when the work is just "going sailing."

I don't think the life of a paid crew member is an enviable lifestyle. Yes there is travel but it's travel to work and much of sailing is fixing broken crap and these boats have lots of crap. You may be in San Diego, Seattle Ibiza or Key West, but it's all about blocks, tackles, tangs and sheets, not daiquiris.

To run a vaguely competitive racing boat you have to have money. Owners jet in, steer more or less badly and jet out. It's a feudal way of life, no job security as everything is dependent on the knight's mood and the squires have to hop to. The rich old man says jump and in the time honored manner the crew ask how high?

I suppose it is a young man's game, heave the line, climb the mast, sleep as you can and hope for the best.

The equipment list is endless and the racing is out of sight, small triangles chasing each other across the horizon. You can stand on Smathers Beach and watch the distant silent shapes but for what purpose? This is not high paid television stars acting out on a Sunday afternoon in your living room.

Sailing and thus being on a first class racing circuit is an integral part of Key West, the city with the vaguely imagined maritime heritage, so these sailors and their plastic sails thanks to the magic wand of the Chamber of Commerce connect to wrecking, pirating, and the yo ho ho drama of Key West's pirate-free past. And unlike the powerboat races which are run loud and long in the harbor with helicopters and paparazzi paraphernalia, the sailboats lack any form of internal combustion. They come and go as silently as the dragonflies they resemble, hovering over the water it seems, rather than driving through it. The powerboat racers on land funnily enough are just tourists but the sailors are pirates and not in a good way. This is a week to avoid eating out unless you like sitting next to loud obnoxious over sized sunburned children who were never trained how to behave in public. Bike Week is much hated by city residents for the loud exhausts but the riders are the milquetoast accountants you imagine lurking underneath the leather. Sailors, the people who harness the elements are louder than the bikes or powerboats when they come ashore.

There is something elemental about living on a boat, it's a return to the womb, the safety of set limits, the security of everything found and to hand. Cruise ships feed that need, the all inclusive holiday driven to exotic places seen and not properly touched. That was the part of cruising by sailboat that got to me, constantly having to worry about the life support pod, tied to it by an umbilical that interfered with visits ashore to inland sites. It's the good and the bad of traveling with your home.

Similarly these sailors travel with their lives, but in a backpack. As much as it is a sport it's an all absorbing job that brooks no rivals for your attention. Everything must be perfectly tuned to get results because every other team is doing the same thing. Racing is where boating gets expensive, no doubt about that. Specially cut sails are tossed out after a race or two, cordage is replaced and every inch of the boat has to be gone over. That's expensive.

So yes, boats can cost a lot, an unreasonable amount, but not necessarily. Clean a gutter here, termit tent there, replace pipes, rerun electrical wires, and that damned paint. A house doesn't come cheap of course. But if sailing isn't racing you are so to speak in the same boat if you live aboard and cruise gently. Boats and their fittings need upkeep. But when it comes to racing its a world apart, macho men living as playthings for the one percent and you see them swaggering through town as though they represent a world we cannot aspire to. Maybe. Bring the money go sailing have fun. And step off the sidewalk for old fogeys walking their slow elderly dogs. Thank you.

 

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Isabel Segunda, Isla de Vieques

I have been to Puerto Rico twice, but never to Vieques a nearby island. My sister-in-law went a couple of years ago and my wife liked what she heard. Then her oldest friend in a Key West wanted to take her to an island for a birthday vacation, because islands are, I suppose, what island dwellers visit, and my wife put up no resistance to Vieques when she was told that was where she would turn 60. That is why I have pictures of people riding horses in the Caribbean town of Isabel II.

When we drove across Puerto Rico the first time almost twenty years ago I have vivid memories of sharing the roads of the mountainous interior with riders on horseback, bareback, in pouring rain, stopped at traffic lights like furry tall cars. Things have not changed. Below the sign to the road to Esperanza, the tourist town called "Hope." Estacione is Puerto Rican English for "park." They speak another language in that part of the US of A...read on as the plot thickens.

Puerto Rico is a strange mish mash of a country, an overcrowded island in the Caribbean chain of big islands the "Greater Antilles" of Jamaica, Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, but it's citizens are US nationals with no Presidential vote but the right to live and work in the US an inestimable privilege especially as the island has a debt of 70 billion dollars for a population of three and a half million, which is decidedly not a privilege. They sell gas by the liter but speed limits are in miles per hour (frequently not posted!) and distances are posted in kilometers. For a nerd like me it is a paradise of contradictions. Yet Vieques, a Puerto Rican municipality, is its own paradise.

My wife apparently took a walking tour of the main and only town on Vieques yesterday and sent me these phone pictures using a better equipped friend's cell. That's because Verizon doesn't serve Puerto Rico but AT&T does, making my wife madder than a wet hen. Isabel Segunda means "Elizabeth the Second" and refers to the Queen of Spain who authorized the first European explorers of these waters.

Ten thousand people live on Vieques, a hilly island twenty one miles long, four miles wide and about eight miles from the Puerto Rican mainland whence come the car and passenger ferries. And this being America (!) whence also come the airline flights. My wife, ever the careful shopper, wanted to rent a car in San Juan and take it to Vieques on the ferry, as rentals are in high demand on the little island. No can do they told her. Only passengers are allowed on the ferries, and privately owned vehicles. However the government run ferries only charge two dollars a head, and locals whose taxes help pay for the ride get to board first.

I wondered how isolated the "Little Sister" (La Nena in Spanish) would feel compared to the big island, but my wife says Vieques attracts some top flight chefs, especially in the smaller southern community of Esperanza, (Hope) said to be the tourist hub. My wife also told me she met quite a few former Key West residents in Isabel Segunda. I'm not certain I'm ready to make the switch to a tiny island with a 35mph speed limit, wild horses on the roads and not too much in the way of road trips.

As pretty as it may be it really is quite isolated, and for all that it is American, served by the US Postal Service (zip code 00765) it really isn't part of what one might call the United States. The language is Spanish though the tourist industry speaks English, so you can get by. But to live or travel off the beaten path in Puerto Rico is to be in Central America, not Connecticut. From what I see and hear Vieques too is that sort of rural community, leavened by mainland Americans and a lively tourist industry that keeps the island going economically. Vieques has its own police detachment my wife found out, with their own dedicated dispatch center...but no my Spanish is nowhere near good enough for that, especially considering one of these young officers had no English at all. Tourist be ready!

I think I can see the charm of living on an island with not a single traffic light, well paved, yet narrow lanes, isolated beaches and a community strong enough to enforce a strict dress code of no bathing suits on the streets. It sounds rather quaint, old fashioned perhaps, and there is nothing wrong with that. Indeed when I get tired of hearing the complaints how Key West has changed and deteriorated over the years, I shall rest assured a small Caribbean island will be there ready to take into distant exile the detritus of whiners who can't stand change in their beloved Key West. Me included.

Vieques has community spirit to spare too. The island is responsible for chasing off the U S military who used the ends of Vieques as pin cushions for target practice. You may remember the sit ins and protests and the determination not to give an inch (or a metric centimeter) until the US Navy withdrew completely. Which they did in 2003, promising to clean up their mess. The clean up is almost completed though one area remains closed to civilians as munition and chemical removal continues. As you can imagine there was more than one naysayer who predicted economic calamity with the military withdrawal, and Key West has benefited as training was moved from Vieques splitting the increase between Key West and the Florida panhandle. I did read one blogger who suggested a high murder rate was created by the withdrawal of the US Navy. Vieques, Puerto Rico, Murder Rate Highest in the World though I must say the island is also voted the friendliest in the Caribbean so I'm guessing the killings don't affect tourists...

The net result of the anti-militarist shenanigans has been to create what is by all accounts an absolute paradise on the bulk of the island. The former military land has been turned over to the US Fish and Wildlife Commission so the islanders have smartly preserved themselves from development and given visitors an opportunity to enjoy secluded beaches, empty rolling hills and minimal infrastructure. Truly, by the sounds of it the Caribbean as it once was. In fact they recommend renting four wheel drive vehicles if you seek secluded beaches as the sand can be a long rough drive from the pavement according to the literature.

 

That then is my introduction as much as yours,maybe, to Vieques. I am promised more pictures of more places by my intrepid explorer wife. For more instantly: Vieques, Puerto Rico - Vieques.com - Island Travel Guide / Isla de Vieques or Vieques travel guide - Wikitravel

If you liked this third hand view of Vieques you might like this essay too:

Key West Diary: Finca Vigia. Or:

Key West Diary: Havana Part 1 Or:

Key West Diary: Havana Final Part

Travel by Conchscooter. Cheers!

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Reflections In 56 Degrees

Winter is the season of contrasts in my life. In winter the days are relatively short, with daylight lasting from six am to six in the evening, a little later as we move away from the equinox, and the sense of a closed, rigid season of the year is heightened by the chill temperature of our latest cold front. Winter is the season in theNorthern Hemisphere where life slows, ices up and pauses in the otherwise frenetic pace of spring rebirth and summer fun and autumnal gentle adieux to life. Winter is hibernation.

Waking at four in the morning to the jangle of two alarms is bad enough. To awaken after a few hours of troubled sleep, faced with a day at work is bad enough, but to slip out from under the warm heavy covers to step into dank chill darkness to me is hellish. Hell is an ice field, not a pit of burning tar, and hellfire is a snowstorm, at least for me. I hate being cold and before you laugh 56 degrees, 13 centigrade, is cold. Even mocking northerners who have experienced a windy cold front in the damp chill of a Key West winter express surprise at the actual chill factor of what appears to be a relatively benign temperature. I snuck a ride to work in my absent wife's new car. The roof stayed closed for the 27 mile commute through the dark. The heater was on high. I felt a twinge of guilt at not riding but I still carry traces of my lingering cold so caution was advised. I told myself. I did not miss my motorcycle, if I am honest.

My wife went sweating on a hike in the tropical rainforest of El Yunque to celebrate sixty years of life. I wandered round the communication center swaddled in a furry jacket drinking green tea. It's a hell of a way to start the day, walking the dog, making your own lunch, feeding the dog, remembering to pack all the bits and bobs and trying not to forget the components of a twelve hour day at work...I got it done, I forgot the thermos of tea and trailed out of the house ten minutes late. I got to work on time with no speeding ticket to my credit. Recklessness is not my style, but urgency infused the start of my day and I felt slightly resentful of the unseen scrum of needs at my back pushing me faster than I wanted to move.

The day turned to sun, primary colors outside, lots of paperwork inside. I hate paperwork and like a cat that prefers the company of humans with cat phobias, paperwork seeks me out at work and I felt like I spent most of the day writing reports, filling in forms and reviewing documents and the slice of Friday devoted to the radio and the 911 phones was a tiny crumb of my day. I enjoy dispatching, the problem solving of who to send to deal with each crisis major or minor as it appears on the computer screen. Writing a report measuring the positive and negatives of my colleague's performance is about as exciting as trying to describe how a daisy appears to be growing. It's there, it's where it should be, I'm fine with it. Who am I to judge? As imperfect as I am...

We had a good day, three of us old timers worked as a perfect team in an imperfect world made worse by tragedy not evil. We had several crises, a death not suspicious, yet a crushing sadness for a family, a multiple car accident blocking the main road downtown, an argument, a theft, illness and accident, acts of stupidity, acts of unkindness and we three jugglers in the room kept the balls in the air and didn't miss a beat, and the problems came and went and there and then we had no time to reflect. Belen tried to keep a dying patient alive helping the spouse do CPR over the phone as Nelly and I rushed professionals to the scene by radio and yet it all failed even as Belen kept reading her lines, telling the caller how to do chest compressions and breaths to keep the blood flowing as the lights and sirens rushed across town. I sent the cops and there was nothing more to do but wait. We talked after it was finished, and Belen wondered what more she could have done but Nelly and I who have faced the inner demon of doubt before and often knew there was nothing. It had been perfect, and yet it failed. We talked of stories of accidental impromptu childbirth over the phone to change the mood, and did not succeed. Life is tenuous some days and the drive home in the traffic of chaos among impatient people who did not die that day, gains value by the knowledge gained of how sudden it can be, to find oneself turning the corner, from the routine of the daily chores to the termination of it all. Too often I think death is suggested to us by the popular culture as a heroic statement, a conclusion of purpose. In reality death is sometimes what happens as an interruption to a numbing routine. The moment infused my day with a chill inside to match the chill outside.

Cheyenne was full of joy, ready for her evening walk so out we went, under the mackerel sky, but the wind had abated so even though once again it was 56 degrees it was warmer.

For me it was a matter of keeping an eye on my hound as she rooted around while I tried to figure what the hell I would do about dinner. Chinese? I thought about that as we strolled past the back of China Garden on Big Pine Key. Pizza? A TV dinner from the supermarket? All such stereotypical choices. I went home and had left over pasta, cheese and crackers, and a glass of wine. Very innovative We sat on the porch Cheyenne and I to watch the moon rise over the mangroves. A dog is a good companion, if not very talkative. She tired of my company, got up and walked to the distant end of the porch. Apparently I am too intense even for my dog. The boredom of life versus the permanence of death seemed not to grip her as it did me.

There was that strange mackerel sky so I played with my camera as Cheyenne snuffled around my feet in the Key Deer Plaza parking lot. I don't feel like I've had much time to stand around and take pictures lately. It's ironic because winter is the season of playtime for the visitors, lots of events and happenings, performances, readings and concerts and plays. For everybody not working. It's the time of year when days are short, energies are frosted and low, and crowds are everywhere. The more they organize the harder it is to see anything! The Key West Paradox. The more they invite people to happenings, the less you get to experience.

Its a salutary reminder when your wife is away, how much there is to be done by one alone. Laundry done, trash out dog fed, menu decided...etc... Exhausting. And yet still Life, precious humdrum daily life.

Cheyenne knows how to deal with exhaustion. The best company when one is alone, and life seems cold and short. Fifty six degrees puts things in perspective.

Key West on Dwellable

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Winter In Marathon

I seem to have lost track of the weather lately. When I lived on a boat weather and tides were the dominant features of daily life. Now, in a house securely anchored to the ground by nine pilings, I go out into cold windy weather and have no clue what's going to hit me. This lackadaisical attitude earned me a very cold walk with my dog yesterday morning. I deserved the pain.

My job was to deliver my wife to her job in Marathon as she was to be picked up after work by one of her girlfriends who had organized a birthday trip to Puerto Rico for a few days. Nice for her, the forecast for Vieques is 85 by day and 75 by night until she gets back. Marathon was sixty yesterday morning after we said goodbye and Cheyenne and I took off for an icebound stroll.

The north wind off the Gulf of Mexico was biting cold, plus it had the added effect of filling the north shore with seaweed.

These conditions are not conducive to fishing which was apparently at a standstill.

They are a big industry in this town.

Check out the miles of lobster pots and piles of colorful buoys.

Cheyenne surprised me by making like she wanted to board a fishing boat. I figured it was the smell of fish rather than the lifestyle she craved.

Aside from a local inhabitant delicately walking on water there was no life to be seen in the idled fleet. Idle yes, but picturesque nonetheless.

And there went the sole sign of life. I'm telling the breeze packs the seaweed solid. Not solid enough for Cheyenne and I to risk it, but it was a well matted carpet of weed.

We strolled past the Keys Fisheries restaurant, which I recommend if you are nearby at feeding time. In this case I wasn't but I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the shark, always feared as a limb eater, and the sign. Sharks play to our deepest most primal fears, yet we humans murder far more of them than they of us. They are endangered, we unfortunately aren't. Well, perhaps it's fortunate else I wouldn't be here among the seven billion.

Further up the street the gated community, well protected from unannounced visits by local working stiffs was as dead as the fishing fleet.

They had a nice cheap plastic No Trespassing sign on the gate, similar to this one below, which encouraged passersby not to trespass onto the very desireable lobster pot assembly area.

Too much excitement for young Cheyenne. We got home eventually and she had but one thing on her mind. Well two actually...

...sunbathing (in the shade) and sleep. Good dog.

 

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