the stories

We stay up most of the night. For once, I was the soothing presence, the listener, the one who would be there close to him as bits and pieces of his "fabulous" (his word) journey spilled out. 

He had pulled in before 10 pm, delayed somewhat because the planes were all overbooked and arguments arose as to who should fly and who should get off. He sat squeezed in, his one pack under the seat in front, but sticking out so his long legs came up high, knees bumping the tray, making it useless for the duration of the flight. No matter. His laptop was destroyed in mid voyage so he had nothing to put on that tray except my book, Like A Swallow, which he read with fascination. You remembered all that stuff! I did. I'm that kind of a person who remembers stories.

At the farmhouse now, he was wound up like I'd never seen before. Explosive laughter, one episode piggybacking onto another, story after story, interrupted only by eating. They had thrown him off the boat in the early morning and he had had no food since the day before. Well, one beer at the airport, purchased by a sympathetic crew member from another boat, now also leaving an island under an impending siege. The hurricane is fast approaching Marsh Harbor were nearly all the boats coming in from the north are anchored.

How had it come to this? 

Ed had posted his willingness to be crew on this year's sail down to the Caribbean (it's an annual event: boats from the northeast coast leave the fast approaching cold and go down to the islands for the winter) and a captain of a catamaran nabbed him. The captain and his wife had one other crew member -- a woman who was very good at sailing and indeed racing tiny sailboats in the Chesapeake. None of them had any sailing experience out at sea.

I think not knowing how to sail in ocean waters is bad enough, but what to me sounded horrendously difficult was the fact that the captain and his screaming wife (yes, she was good at that) did not like advice from one who knew better. Inevitably, following their own convictions would get the boat into trouble and they'd have to come around and do it as he had suggested. This made them more mad. It was an admission of failure.

If you know Ed, you'd perhaps be a little sympathetic here. Put him in the same room (or the same boat) with a person insecure about her/his abilities and things get dicey. He doesn't tiptoe around the truth. If you are a terrible sailor, he'll say as much. And yes, you should not be out at sea, but still, many people do not like being told that they are terrible at something. While you stew and grumble at his bluntness, he will work hard to fix things for you and go the extra mile to make it all work out in the end. But you remain bitter and resentful and determined never to ask him for advice again. Until your next failure.

This particular captain and especially the wife who was the real captain on board, if you bestowed such a rank to the one who screams the loudest, did not want to hear that their blundering attempts, at one point causing the boat to go round in circles against crashing waves, were putting everyone in danger. By the time they had anchored, these retired boat owners from Kentucky had had enough of advice, never mind that without that advice they would not have made it to the islands. They'd be spinning around in circles, forced to retreat with too many tangled and broken lines to keep going. (Do you know how to make a knot for cleat? No... Let me show you. No!) No good byes no thank yous. They were done with him.

So why call this a fabulous sail? For so many reasons! -- he tells me. The people were nuts, but the winds were fantastic! And the captain and wife, didn't they bother you? It was like watching a comedy -- an endless source of amusement! Wasn't their incompetence dangerous? He shrugs. In the end, they deferred to him as he fixed things and set the course of the boat and taught these reluctant learners about winds and whitecaps and all those things I haven't a clue about and, it appears, neither did they. 

Sometime in the middle of the night, I turned my head toward the window. Ed had dozed off for just a few minutes and I waited to see if this was a deep sleep. Outside, the moon went from bright and almost full, to darkness. I missed the red glow and occasionally clouds would obstruct the show. Eventually it moved out of my range entirely. Still, I had caught a bit of it -- a total lunar eclipse. Not to be repeated again until 2025.

And in the Caribbean, Hurricane Nicole is approaching Abaco Island, the island Ed had left because the sail was over and there was no reason for him to linger.

Before any sign of day break, Ed is up and out, on his way to the sheep shed where he tries to fix his broken laptop. It's a no go. He'll need a new one. 

I get up, in less of a hurry, tending to the animals, admiring the beautiful light on this cold November day.

We eat breakfast together. The stories are still there. A question will bring out another and another. All without remorse or complaint. All part of the fabulous sail with the monstrously big captain (twice my size! -- Ed tells me) and his thundering wife. 

How can you pick a better boat situation next time? -- I ask. He has an idea: I'll charge for my navigation and sailing skills. He doesn't care about the money, but he tells me that those who hire, will want to learn, want to use the experience of someone who has been out to sea many many times to their advantage. And still, you never know. Friends he made once on the island told him that their crew started with four but one was so hopelessly sea sick that he was useless and in the way and the other drank too much. Only two could be trusted to take turns at the helm.

In the afternoon, Snowdrop is here. Briefly.

Because it's Tuesday and so there is ballet.

And in the evening, despite the fact that it's election night, I want to have a get together, a dinner with his Madison sailing friend and his sailing wife. I don't have much to contribute to such a group, but I love to listen at the side. And this sailing pal and I had kept track of Ed's progress out at sea and he had shared many stories from his voyage with Ed three years ago. 

But Ed holds back. He is now in his farmhouse mode. He wants to share stories, yes he does, very much so, endlessly even, but ... couldn't we just do it on Zoom? You know, there's still Covid to consider...

We stay home, I bake a frittata. The hens are still laying and I have the eggs and fresh CSA spinach and locally farmed oyster mushrooms. And our chocolates.

with so much love...