Valentine's Day, 2000

In late January 2000 my wife, myself and two large dogs were living at anchor off the beach at Isla Mujeres in Mexico. We had sailed up the coast of Central America from the Panama Canal, exploring the buggy islands off Nicaragua's Caribbean coast and comparing them  unfavorably with the granite rocks that litter Panama's Pacific Coast where we had found ourselves six months before.

Our goal was to arrive in Key West before the money ran out completely, the money we had spent getting there from San Francisco. I think we left California with around $15,000 and a well found Gemini catamaran but our run up the Caribbean was a race against insolvency so we had to move more than we wanted to, as we didn't want to finish a two year cruise on bread and water. I drank a lot of tea off watch, which isn't free.

The sail from the Cancun area is three hundred and thirty miles to Key West and  is a complicated bit of water. It requires crossing the Gulf Stream, dealing with winter storms that blow the stream into piles of very uncomfortable waves, while not washing up into Cuba which was not a friendly destination that year. We watched the weather and pondered our chances.

They weren't great and things got a bit messy. We sailed accidentally in a  group with two other catamarans, most likely because each of us independently saw a decent weather window and we cleared out of Mexico at the same time. A 330 mile passage at an average 6 knots, hoping for a boost from the Gulf Stream would take more than two days. Finally we left of an evening and it was dark when we cleared the reef and settled down to a course as due east as we could against the wind.

I was ready to arrive in Key West and rest. Our plan was to stop for a couple of years, make some money and then tour the Caribbean before settling down for a bit longer. It was obvious the current cruise was over so I wanted to start work on the next one, never imagining I would be leaving Key West 21 years later...in a van no less. 

The storm blew up when we were still fifty miles southwest of the Dry Tortugas. Our loosely knit group split with Tom heaving to, stopping in place with his huge catamaran while us four on our smaller machines decided to run downwind and get out of the Gulf Stream slammers that were making life miserable. I wanted  to arrive in Key West but not like this. Perhaps we should have stopped in place like Tom but our decision to spin off downwind with Dennis on his Gemini sent us on a real adventure and it was all to the good.

The storm blew us into Cuba into a  vast bay filled with mangrove islands into which we ducked. We had no desire to go ashore officially as Cubans take a dim view of unexpected arrivals in towns not equipped to process strange boats. They might have kept us onboard in a harbor making life hard for the dogs and difficult for us trying to explain to Debs and Emma why they couldn't go for a walk on land. So we anchored among the mangroves and waited out the storm. Our boats were very shallow, drawing 18 inches and David taught me to enjoy sailing in two feet of water as we drifted like dinghies through the channel and reefs watching the thinnest of water slipping under our hulls. It was hair rising for cautious old me but I learned to love it as we picked our way through water that wouldn't cover our knees were we to walk in it. Of Cubans we met a few fishermen and bought all they had to sell: lobster tails. We feasted on lobster till we were sick of it.

Captain Ray and Rodolfo entertaining Arlyce, Dennis Layne and I

There was a lovely beach nearby and we sailed out to it and spent an afternoon in the sand, apparently far from civilization until a naked man came round the corner and startled our dogs, middle class creatures not used to men with dangling appendages walking into them. They barked, the French vacationer swore at us colorfully and with proper Gallic hauteur and we hastily got back aboard out of range of any Cuban authorities likely to be sent to investigate. A scrubby security guard duly appeared but we were sailing out into the bay and he was powerless to interrogate us. The nudist colony of Punta Jutia was secure once again and our dogs were tired from their exertions. We sailed for Key West.

The weather was perfect, and we sailed through the afternoon pointing north with the wind conveniently behind us and the current dragging us toward Florida.

Throughout our journey we had developed a technique for landing in foreign countries which went like this. On approach we would scout out a quiet bay with a beach out of sight of whatever community there might be ahead. There we would spend an evening prior to our official arrival walking the dogs and enjoying land for a while. In the morning the dogs would get a pleasant spell ashore and then with ourselves, the dogs and the boat washed and cleaned we would sail smartly to the customs post in the next town, arrive at lunch time and present ourselves for check in with sleepy exercised dogs on board.

My plan was to do the same in Key West. At first I thought of stopping at Sand Key, familiar to me as a large arc of sand under the old lighthouse seven miles from Key West. By the time we were sailing up the channel at dusk and Sand key Light came up close I realized my memory of a broad arc of sand was reduced to a handkerchief.  We pressed on, drifting in to Key West harbor after dark. I knew where I wanted to go and we anchored off Christmas Tree Island, more properly known as Wisteria, named for the ship whose remains lie to the west of the little island.

I dropped the dinghy into the water and the dogs ran swiftly down the steps into the rubber raft. I am a pansy so I had a small outboard to propel the clumsy Caribe through the water and we pushed up onto the pebbly beach. The dogs jumped out and wandered up the beach. I tied the dinghy off to a large piece of wood and walked toward a bonfire.

He nodded to me as I stood in the light of the flames. He looked up weighing me and the quality of my character as I watched the flames and listened to Debs and Emma scratching the pebble sin search of the exact right spot to pee. Wanna beer? he said. We manly men stood and watched the flames together. 

Across the water I could see the cabin window illuminated as Layne sorted dinner out for the dogs and for us. The sky was a deep dark blue and anchor lights were appearing around the anchorage. Where you from? he asked with another grunt. Mexico I replied unwilling to list my illegal foray to Cuba. Nice trip he said. Welcome to Key West. I drank some beer and then the struggles of wind and wave and storm and the uncertainty of smuggling myself where I was not wanted, all of that nonsense fell away. The naked guy at Punta Jutia became a metaphor for vulnerability, not a threat. 

Thank you I said. The silence persisted. A wet snout nuzzled my empty hand. The peeing was done and it was time for dinner. We had arrived.

A Weekend Off

The plan was to take a few days off, no overtime and rest after a three week stretch of dispatching. The plan fell into disrepair almost as soon as we woke up Saturday morning. By the time I was driving the van over the Sunshine Skyway bridge into St Petersburg my mood was as gray as the sky...

 Friday might was decision time in my household. I got off work and was home by 6:30 pm and Tropical Storm Fred was lumbering around the north coast of Cuba producing modest 40mph winds and lots of rain. My wife and I decided it would be best to bundle ourselves on the road and get to the mainland before the storm as modest as it might be, swept the Keys. 

The next morning we tackled the storage locker problem and rented an upstairs unit near the Miami airport. The idea is when we fly back we can stop by the storage locker and pick up anything we might want to haul back to our van life elsewhere in the world. We rented an upstairs unit in an air conditioned building with the hope that our sentimental few possessions might be storm proof...If not we shall be even less burdened than we plan to be as we start our travels.

My wife was strangely lethargic and forced me to do the paperwork (horrors! Me in charge of paperwork?). After we had cleared the back of GANNET2 of our first pile of boxes I insisted we go home. It isn't like Layne to show anything less than a type double A personality. She overrode me and insisted in turn that we continue to St Petersburg and our friend's pool house on loan for the weekend. I got behind the wheel and drove Alligator Alley while wife and dog slept in the back.

The owner of the house is away so we stopped to get supplies at Publix, and when I say "we" I mean I did. In another display if uncharacteristic disinterest herself pulled up extra blankets while I walked Rusty and then stopped in Publix all by myself to get dinner. I was very restrained and bought Useful Things like salad and soup but steered well clear of banana pudding and ice cream and alcohol.

It was a rather odd evening watching my wife droop as a nasty rash appeared on her forehead straying onto her eyelid. I got a bit grumpy feeling certain we should have turned back after the storage locker drop off in Miami and now we were six or seven hours from home. After a disturbed night's sleep I was on Rusty duty as usual and we wandered the neighborhoiod known as The Coffeepot for an hour, Rusty with his nose and me with my camera while the invalid tried to sleep.

It's an interesting part of St Petersburg, near the water  and north of the central downtown, streets of upper class homes covered by large trees with varied architecture and neat gardens on all sides. 

I followed Rusty as he wandered ahead and we were alone on the streets at five of a Sunday morning. It took my mind off my wife's rash, at least a  little bit.

Faced with the prospect of living and traveling in the Promaster  camper van this medical problem was an interesting exercise in how we might cope when away from home.   Certainly it was hugely convenient to have a bed and toilet and kitchen right there for the patient and for myself when she was in medical facilities being checked out.  If necessary we could always rent an air BnB I suppose. In this case we found a clinic and waited two hours beofre Layne could be admitted.

The primary care doctor was pretty freaked out and wanted her to see an ophthalmologist at St Petersburg General. So back in the van where Rusty and I had waited in the rain we called the hospital where a very apologetic nurse said the wait to be seen was at least eight and a half hours. Covid has swamped us she said. My wife looked a bit taken aback. We can get home before that she said, So I started back down the freeway toward Alligator Alley. 

I had been to the Dali Museum that morning, pushed out of the pool house by my wife to see an exhibit of photographs by Lee Miller. 

At the time I couldn't figure out why my feverish wife was so forceful but on the drive back toward Miami she confessed she had wanted to come to St Petersburg so I could get to see the exhibit I had been looking forward to for a while.

She knew if she didn't push I would never have agreed to take on this crazy drive with her showing every sign of a fever.

We had been concerned she might have been starting down a Covid path herself with her compromised immune system but the doctor diagnosed a nasty dose of shingles, so there was that sort of not terrible news. It was painful though.

I took these pictures in a light drizzle outside the museum sitting under the trees and just catching my breath after the sensory overload inside the Dali.

There I was, lurking in the shadows, wondering where my weekend had gone.

On the road to Miami my sick wife had a brilliant idea, and we pulled over to check it out.

There is an eye hospital in Miami called the Bascom Palmer Institute attached to the University of Miami, the preeminent eye hospital in the country. I wonder she said fi they have an emergency clinic. 

Sure enough they have 24 hour emergency services for people with eye problems so I recalibrated Google maps on my phone and got GANNET 2 back into gear. It was an inspired decision. We arrived at about 11:30 at night and I unloaded Layne so she could shuffle off to get help. Part of the joy of this Covid nightmare is the impossibility of gaining access to any medical facility unless you are the patient. This added little wrinkle engenders the sort of helplessness and distance that makes the whole process so much harder. There's no doubt the no visitor rule is critically important but it sure does add a burden. I took Rusty for a walk and then we settled down in the parking lot to sleep until the patient called back. Thank God we had the van and the air conditioning and the toilet all to ourselves.

My walk took me past a hellish landscape of urban decay, homeless lunatics squatting on the sidewalks mumbling to themselves, blanket shrouded lumps snoring under the trees, piles of trash and discarded fast food containers all along the sidewalks. Miami at it's least finest. It was a relief to get home to the van and close the door on the outside world.

Layne woke me from a  deep sleep with a telephone call around 1:30 in the morning with the good news that her eye was not in danger but the facial pain would persist for a few more days. I got behind the wheel, she and Rusty went to bed and we zipped down an empty Overseas Highway to arrive home at 3:30 in the morning. Rusty got his neighborhood walk to check the latest smells, and that was the end of a very weird weekend away. The van's contribution was outstanding; the rest of it sucked. Van life, from the files:

Lee Miller, Photographer

The Dalí Museum is one of our favorite destinations on mainland Florida. Indeed three years ago in August we planned to celebrate our wedding anniversary the weekend after the day I was run down on my motorcycle. Three months in the hospital scotched that planned visit. Here we are three years later and I spent 90 minutes touring the visiting exhibit...on my own. 

Lee Miller was born in 1907 in New York State and died in 1977 in East Sussex England and between those mile posts she lived a great deal of life. She was tall, blonde and beautiful, traits she used to advantage and Life also turned around and used that beauty against her as you might expect. It was therefore a bizarre life in many respects but she was lucky to live in difficult times, unlucky to live in times when women were objects of desire and not valued for their artistic or work skills. That in part is why you haven't heard of her even if you have heard of surrealists such as Man Ray, or Pablo Picasso, or...Salvador Dalí. She liked to use a Rolleiflex, a camera you have seen in the hands of well known male photographers from her era, even if she and her brilliant use of that tool is unknown to you.

My wife stayed at the home of the friend we were visiting while I went to the museum. She is immune compromised and thus always concerned about Covid, but she was simply not feeling well, with a nasty headache. In fact this photography exhibit was for me and she pushed me out the door, go enjoy it she said. So I did. We had a ten o'clock appointment to enter the museum with its current policy of controlled visits. They even had masks to give away for anyone who went through the folderol of getting a reserved time online but showed up without their own mask.

The exhibit started outside right there on the viewing deck overlooking the garden and Tampa Bay. When the new museum replaced the original which was built in 1982 the big question was whether the vast array of windows were hurricane proof. Since the new place opened in 2011 one can only say they have been - so far! However I was shocked to see cracks on this visit, which it turned out was part of the surreal ethic of the exhibit. Fooled me.

I had a ten o'clock appointment thanks to my sick wife's foresight so I had the viewing deck pretty much to myself as the other early arrivals sped to the exhibits. I thought this trompe l'oeil was, as you might expect, nicely done.

The exhibit was up the usual standards of presentation at the Dali and I spent 90 minutes wandering the rooms and looking at the pictures. I came away with a  few thoughts about Lee Miller and her life and times. 

She started out as a model and evolved into a  photographer herself, but from what I could read of her life she seemed to live through the  men who courted her more or less desperately. She worked with and naturally ended up sleeping with Man Ray, a photographer of influence but not of beauty or stature according to the rather cruel commentators. It was, they implied none too subtly, a union of convenience - he got the babe and the babe learned a skill. Rather drab really.

Anyway Miller married a rich Egyptian who took her off to Egypt where she moldered far from the sights and parties of pre war Europe. Her most famous surrealist photo of this period and apparently an inspiration to painters is the one above, A Portrait of Space. 

A disappointment for me in the exhibit was the lack of pictures of her time in Egypt which you'd have thought could have provided endless subjects in those happy 1930s far from the reality of Depression era politics, especially when married to a wealthy guardian.

World War Two was a test for the American dilettante and she rose to the challenge with bravery and determination. It was, as happened to quite a few wanderers, her finest hour perhaps. She traveled with the troops, saw all the horrors you might expect, including the experimental first use of napalm at Saint Malo which produced some pictures. She saw the liberation of Dachau and was most famously photographed washing that concentration camp dust off herself in Hitler's bath tub the day he committed suicide. She had carried Hitler's home address in her notebook for just such an opportunity:

I was struck by her devotion to the picture, her planning and her fearless use of the lens. This next picture struck me, a 16 year old Nazi dead by her own hand in her father's office, unwilling to live when everything around her was collapsing. You can even see shreds of plaster fallen off the ceiling from the bombardments. Such clarity and unwavering precision in the face of such a terrible fate.

After the war Lee Miller divorced her Egyptian husband and married a British surrealist who carted off to a country house in genteel southern England where she took to the bottle and withered away. She seemed to lose her path as she was apparently unable to make her own path without a man. The commentary on this stage of her life was brutal, a woman who had lost her looks discarded by a  philandering husband. One wonders what happened to the artist inside. This cryptic quotation was attached to a photograph of her early modeling days:

I guess it was inevitable that the exhibit would focus on Lee Miller's portraits of famous people gathered around her surrealist friends, which to me was the least interesting aspect of her career. I came away wondering to myself how much we would be celebrating her art had she been a man. There again measured against the indomitable Margaret Bourke-White who was equally beautiful and talented but who kept working as an independent woman Lee Miller seems to have failed her own talents and on her own terms and gave up her photography without a fight. A great shame.