Diary of a Mad Bilge Monkey

Boy I would ring an internet gurus neck if I could find one. I always want to write when there is no vehicle. And today, I have had the perfect day for the trece de Julio.I really have lots of things to share but a perfect day is a perfect day.
I worry a lot about things that don’t matter, a given fact. Sometimes worrying pays off, but rarely. So I woke up worrying about the aft bilge. Mostly because I had a weird dream and couldn’t remember the last time I peeked down there.Worse than monsters under the bed.
So after my Dominican coffee, raisin toast and pineapple with mango, the dogs and I set off to spy on the ocean from afar. There's a cut-through usually bound with thorns and stickers at the crest of the road, and off we chase down a paved road, complete with cement gutters decorated with rocks, all overgrown as part of a past development project. You have to be wary of the open manhole covers, now removed probably for scrap, down the middle of the road. My neighbor here has told me tales of burying pot up here for the security of not having it on the boat, and I wonder if its all gone now. We trot into afew clearings that must have once been potential home sites. A very odd critter shoots across the road ahead of us, not a cat, not a squirrel and since there are no vermin here, I am not quite sure what it was. The dogs choose not to ford the one foot gutter for fear they will mess their dos and feign sudden indifference. Such wusses. We cross another discarded street and crest over the brambles to view the ocean with cliffs on one side and a breakwater and private home on the other and the most incredible vast blue waters as far as you can see. Lots of sniffing, looking for cow treats, no doubt (not me, the dogs.) I watch a small herd of goats along the cliffs, with one trying to get down the cliff the hard way, and suddenly there's Max down on the beach having a goat-herders' fit. Alma and I shrug and head back for the streets, me whistling frantically. Don’t want to buy chivo for dinner tonight, thanks. Max finally shows up, no goats in tow and we head back to de-tangle and remove burrs. No water on the dock today, no dog baths you lucky sand muffins.
Eventually I sidle up to The Captain and mention my strong desire to de-bilge the bilge, cupful by cupful. Well, I don’t want to get the hand pump dirty, so I though we could make a vessel and I could use a drinking cup… OK, so finally agree to do it the easy way, and get the pump and a bucket and clump down to our stateroom and pump two buckets of mostly water(you don’t want to know what else could be down there…) out of the bilge. Having water in the bilges is a natural expectancy for the Capt., but for me it still means we are that much closer to sinking, so it must go. That was so easy, I volunteer to check the forward bilge, and manage to remove 10 gallons of water, and wipe it down so it looks nice too. OK so I am on a different plane than most boaters….I am not not Marfa Stewat, mind you, just different. Rock made a sign for our house in Eastover,SC years ago that said ‘Marfa don’t live here’ and just the other night we tried to have a sane discussion with someone here who is a true believer that Marfa improves women's lives, not exploits them. To each her own, Marfa definitely would have approved of my cleaning the bilge by hand, but I did not paint a decorative border so I probably failed her bilge 101 class outright.
And more perfection, two loads of laundry washed and air dried in record time, dog grooming completed with minimal snapping on Max’s part, and then tackling the teak veneer I shredded on arrival. Yes, it has been four months and I am just now addressing it, but the time had to be right. During the passage to Luperon, I became quite obsessed with things coming loose and bumping and rolling around the boat underway. One especially sore spot was my cabinet of canned goods in the salon, which had let loose daily. When you are socked in and waiting to sleep or go on watch, that can of tomato paste down the stairs and to your side of the bed can really unnerve you. It finally wore me down to the point that I grabbed a roll of duct tape and made sure nothing would burst forth, nor would I be able to retrieve anything…no problem, solved so easily. I briefly wondered why I hadn’t used duct tape before. Well, I found out on arrival in Luperon when I casually ripped the tape off to cook something and all the teak veneer ripped right along with the tape. And has hung there for four months, reminding me of another lesson learned. I thought about writing a woman’s sailing book that just had the ‘wait, don’t do that’ list in it….like using a chisel and hammer to defrost the ice box one last time, but that’s another story…..
So me and my contact cement repaired the teak so it now looks like the dogs might have had a small issue with something in the cabinet, and since Max was in a snappy mood while I clipped his nails, he taking the hit on the teak veneer for now. The buzz from contact cement reminded me of my brother’s early teenage model building, and left me with a nice kind of a fuzzy headache plus I had erased one of my well-intentioned solutions.
Then it was peeling and putting up a dozen mangos, a gift from the night watchman Andre, who thinks I am his in-town esposa when I am at my friend Marty’s house. Back before I learned to say NO, and when I wanted to do something for a dear friend, I house-sat for a week, and became fast friends with Andre the night watchman across the road. I always appreciated his wandering flashlight up the hill in the middle of the night. I took him cookies courtesy of Marty in her absence, and then leftovers from dinner each night after Rock drove off back to the boat. So Andre and I would hug,and have very disjointed conversation in espanol only, once with me leaving and the only thing I could think to say was,"Hasta La Vista" and Andre grinned and said," Yeah Baby…." So, he sent a bag of mangoes to Marty which we split. They’re in the freezer for inspired chutney or my slutty mango daiquiries….And yes, theres more: the day is not over. Happy hour up the stairmaster at the Yacht Club and for 55 pesos (about $1.60 ) we had rum and soda/tonica with the usual crowd and bullshit banter. Then came the culinary treats, my now-perfected conch fritters on the stern with vino and music, and gourmet grilled pork, tomato salad and steamed potatoes, all products of the local economy….I don't know how a day could be much better, and now at the end of another one, I wonder what tomorrow will bring.