Flats and fire ants

Success! The engineless sailboat is now back from the Bahamas and in its home port on Florida’s west coast. Although we managed to make the trip without getting whacked by a major big windy thing with a name, we did get terrorized by squall after squall after squall. Some contained so much lightning that at night, it was almost like daytime. Dancing in the disco, with bolts hitting the water all around the boat, wind blasting rain sideways at us like someone pointing a high pressure hose, while we balanced on deck reefing sails.
I had been wanting a nice fresh water shower, but that was ridiculous.

We tied to the dock late at night, minutes before another massive squall screamed through. We sheltered below, snug, and laughed at it all.

The next morning, I headed north back to my own home port, after clearing as many fire ants as I could from the interior of my car. A large group had taken up residency in the two weeks I had left the car parked in the grass. I had probably unknowingly parked in their territory, so they decided to take advantage of the instant housing. During the battle of reclaiming my vehicle, I received a few wounds in the ant carnage I caused, but was by and large the victor. When I drove away with a few prisoners of war, I was headed for the scenic drive through the mountains. But the behavior of the car convinced me to alter my course to head for the more populated interstate 95, rather than deserted 81 with all those big hills. This turned out to be a good call, as the wobble in the front end worsened with each mile.

In the middle of South Carolina, the passenger's side front tire blew into shreds. Despite darkness and vehicles whizzing by at 800 mph, within minutes, I managed to replace the carnage with the donut, which itself wasn’t looking too healthy. I could see this pathetic excuse of a spare wouldn’t carry me far, so called AAA and located the nearest tire repair place, planning to drive there and sleep in the car with the remaining fire ants to keep me company. That way I would be the first in line when the shop opened in the morning. I almost made it, too, crawling along at 20 mph, when the donut broke. Always willing to experiment, I tried driving on the rim until that completely crumpled as well.

Thank heavens for AAA, and cheap digs nearby, where the tow truck driver insisted on taking me after dropping my car at the repair shop. It was now well after midnight, and I thought about walking back to the car after he dropped me off, wanting to save the cost of the motel. But the room rate was good, and the allure of a real shower and sleeping without fire ants was too strong.

I was on the repair shop’s doorstep before they opened at 7, and was on my way all repaired by 8:30.
Mechanic: “Have you been offroading this car?” Me: “Well, uh….maybe.”
My former vehicle had been 4X4 with high clearance. Road, no road, it didn’t really make much difference. Lesson learned: Ford Escorts are not meant for anything other than pavement. Where’s the fun in that?

My plan of driving overnight to avoid traffic having been foiled, while parked on the nation’s capitol beltway with the other idiots, I had to appreciate the irony that it turned out to be easier to sail an engineless sailboat across the Gulf Stream in prime hurricane season than it was to get a car 1400 miles up the road.

Back to the Sea, Sort of

Every time I think I’m finished with sailing, a few months living ashore changes my mind. Yes, it’s convenient to have unlimited hot running water at the turn of a tap. It’s nice not to have to haul a dirty smelly bag of laundry five miles down the road to wash it only to have it pour rain on your nice clean clothes on the dinghy ride back to the boat later in the day. It’s nice to sit on the front porch watching the lightening storm approach, without having to hyperventilate into a paper bag thinking about how much it’s going to cost to replace all those electronics when that one bolt lands atop your mast. It’s enjoyable sitting on the porch, knowing that in all likelihood it won’t move, nor will the neighbor’s porch drag into yours.

But after a while, seeing the same sight out the same window day in and day out, the same people coming and going at the same time, having the same drunken screaming fights every weekend, gets a little stale. Living aboard a boat, life swings with the wind and tide, and neighbors come and go almost daily. Often when underway, you change ports often enough to not even remember sometimes where you are upon awakening, especially if arriving in a new port in the dark, so it’s all a big surprise when you wake up in the morning. Geez I thought I was going into Key West, but this here is, uh oh, crap, we’re in trouble now, Cuba.

This current trip is not a pleasure cruise. We’ve been calling it the rescue attempt. The skipper tried to sail his boat to England in the spring, but a series of big messes, including but not limited to a blown engine, landed him back in the Bahamas with no choice but to leave the boat there for the time being.
The timing of getting it out has not been good.
It seemed like a good idea at the time
We are sailing, okay, trying to sail, a nearly engineless sailboat across the Gulf Stream from the Bahamas to Florida in the absolute height of hurricane season.
.
I say nearly engineless because we carried a six horsepower outboard motor on the plane as hand luggage. The guy at the airport in Ft. Lauderdale tried to give us a load of crap about it, which was just what we needed at six in the morning after driving all night to get there. But he was outvoted by the usual laid back Bahamian pilot’s attitude. “no problem, mon, load it here in the nose of da plane.” A day of labor and interesting contortions found the outboard bolted to the stern of the boat. We worked our way out of the sheltered lagoon with only two groundings, mainly because the boat wouldn’t turn quickly enough under half jammed rudder to follow the sharp curves of the channel.
Unfortunately, once out on the banks, there was one key ingredient that didn’t seem to be in the forecast for the foreseeable future: wind. Never mind, the longer we sat waiting, the more likely we were to get much more wind than we could ever use. Jokes of running to Nova Scotia in 150 knots were not so funny when listening to the reality of tropical updates. We decided to motor at less than three knots, nearly the maximum the outboard could push us, until we found a breeze. 70 miles later, we stopped for more fuel.

Nearly 80 miles after that, we found ourselves stressing about whether or not we would have enough gas to get to the next fuel stop. Our sailing had been limited to one good squall, although unfortunately that gave us a wind on the nose for several hours, before the seas transmuted back into a mirror glass finish with every detail of the bottom highly visible. No edible fish sighted, but there were lots of jellyfish, roofing tin, tires, bikes, cans, etc.

Finally, a breeze came up not long after sunset, allowing us to sail to anchor behind the island of Bimini in the middle of the night. The breeze held just long enough to get us into the harbor the next morning. We fueled up and are now ready to cross the Gulf Stream. Except that there is, you guessed it, no wind. And no way we can run that little outboard across the stream. And a low pressure system north of here that is ‘moving erratically’, and could possibly develop into something we would rather not sail into, like square waves in the gulf stream.

Who knows how long we’ll sit here waiting for wind. And who knows how strong it will be when it does finally get here.
It’s all good fun.

Time, tooth and nail

I am blessed with something right now that most people only dream of: spare time. I know this is a gift, and I’d like to think that I’m using it wisely. Working on my tan, brushing the cat, stalking neighbors…

Right now I’m on the Narragansett Bay, hanging out with the most wonderful group of boat bums I’ve ever met. In a few days I’ll be off to Florida for some exciting adventures crossing the Gulf Stream in an engineless sailboat at the height of hurricane season. Sooner or later I’ll have to go back to work. I should have a long time ago, but have been all caught up in traveling. Besides, work sucks.

Many may wonder how I can afford such a luxurious lifestyle.

I rob banks.
I sold my children.
I can live on air.

First of all, it’s not luxurious by any American standards. A lot of my traveling around this country was done in an Astro van which I converted to a campmobile. The rest was done on a variety of sailboats, visiting foreign lands. I am lucky enough to be able to live on very little. Never having gotten married and having kids saved me from the tremendous expense of mortgages, dirty diapers, college funds, divorce, rehab, bail.

Some smug people with children have asked me ‘who will take care of you when you get old? I usually ask them who is taking care of their parents. ‘Are they living in your basement? Do you keep them in the attic? Stuff them in a closet?’ No, they’re in a ‘retirement community’, 3,000 miles away now that you moved. And they’re paying for it themselves, with your inheritance money.
I don’t need kids to lock me up when I get old. The authorities will probably do that for me long before I age. There is probably a nicely padded room somewhere, already set aside for me.

Besides, is there any guarantee that I’ll get old? No. Not one. Warranty not implied. I could die tomorrow in some bizarre hangnail accident.

This doesn’t mean I don’t keep an eye to the future. Many career oriented people ask me: How will you finance retirement? How will you afford to live once you can no longer work? That’s easy: someday I’m going to win the lottery. Failing that, I’d like to think that my minimalist lifestyle will always be easy to finance.
Hey buddy, can you spare a dime…
Security is an optical illusion anyway.

Automatic Voodoo Doll

Has your loved one sailed off taking all your earthly possessions including your heart and the cat? Are you so busy picking up the pieces of your shattered life that you just can’t find a spare moment to get revenge on your ex loved one? Or are you simply so livid that you don’t even want to see a likeness of the now rotten apple of your eye long enough to stick pins in it?

We here at Alitloff Center have your answer: the automatic voodoo doll. Send us a photo of your soon to be sufferer, and we’ll send you back this handy item. Simply fill it with bird seed, chant the included incantation, and hang it up. Every time a bird picks out a seed, your former till-death-do us-part partner will flinch. Savor the thought that while you are hard at work trying to rebuild your dismantled dreams, your wastrel will be wondering why on earth those bits of flesh are so sore.

Using the Automatic VooDoo Doll
When you are certain the intended victim needs to be punished, this is the proper path for your wrath.
The Chickadee Curse may:
• Home in on the victim as if directed by avian radar.
• Cause them to fear cats, owls and hawks.
• Make them flap their arms a lot.
• Give them a craving for bird seed.
• Cause them to squawk at four in the morning.
• Give them funny sore spots.

Order your automatic voodoo doll today!

CrazyLegs the Three Footed Wonder Horse

Today’s guest post comes from the netherworld of Danules, rhymes with Hercules, well okay it doesn’t, but you get the idea:

Let me tell you about the time I invested in a race horse. I had some stock money lying around that I wasn’t sure what to do with. The stock market was fluctuating, real estate was in a slump, and this friend of mine said he could bring me in on a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy a race horse descended from the very best bloodlines. It seemed a little risky, but after some careful contemplation over a large bottle of rum, we decided to go for it. He really was a beautiful horse. He even looked fast. We named him CrazyLegs the Three Footed Wonder Horse. He really had four hooves, not three feet, because generally speaking horses don’t have feet; we just liked the name. It had a certain ring to it. Anyway, we found CrazyLegs the Three Footed Wonder Horse a great jockey and the best trainer available, and we got him whipped into shape, so to speak. In no time, he was blazing down that practice track like a Ferrari. Eventually the time finally came for his very first race. He came in fourth, which wasn’t too bad. We got a ribbon for that one, but no money. The next few races he came in second or third, but we still had high hopes for his winning one until about the tenth race. CrazyLegs the Three Footed Wonder Horse always ran a good race, but he just didn’t seem to have what it took to win. He still placed second or third, just missing by a nose. We had some ribbons and trophies, and every now and then CrazyLegs the Three Footed Wonder horse would get his name in the paper, but he wasn’t generating any revenue. We were starting to get a little worried about our investment. After his fifteenth race, which he lost by a nose of course, my partner and I went out to a bar to help sooth our losses. Normally I’m not a real alcoholic kind of a person, but I guess we both had a few too many that evening. We were sitting at the bar complaining about our predicament, and we just happened to be overheard by a guy in a booth who just happened to be a plastic surgeon, and happened to be even more intoxicated than we were, because he concocted this plan as a joke. But as the river of alcohol continued flowing rather mightily that night, our plan started to become less of a joke and more of a mission inspired by some unquestionable higher power. Anyway, about two in the morning, we led CrazyLegs the Three Footed Wonder Horse into a freight elevator at the Bowling Green Medical Center, rode him up to the fifth floor, and led him down a long hallway to the Doctor’s office. And to make a long story short, which I guess is a useless gesture at this point, from then on CrazyLegs the Three Footed Wonder Horse won every single race he ever ran by a nose. Even if the other horses were faster it didn’t matter, because when they got a glimpse of CrazyLegs the Three Footed Wonder Horse’s eighteen inch nose extension, they veered off the track. After that, the racing commission passed a bill which outlawed any type of cosmetic surgery on race horses, so that CrazyLegs the Three Footed Wonder Horse wasn’t allowed to race anymore. But my partner and I did manage to sell him to a traveling circus that didn’t have enough money in the budget for an elephant. The bearded lady fell in love with him and vowed to look out for him as long as he lived, so everything worked out okay in the end.