December 4, 2007

12-4-07
Nassau. Finally. Only 35 miles away, but a bit of a tough slog, even with the wind behind us. The boat is very difficult to steer when the waves get large, and they probably weren’t more than three feet, and far apart (swells, as they say, as opposed to steep, breaking waves) they were confused, and coming from a few directions. I get a bit nervous when out of sight of land on all sides, especially when we get storm clouds driving around in glorified lightning rod. I start imagining a lightning strike, and then what we’d do with a hole burned through the boat, and the VHF antenna fried to a paste. We almost broke down and bought a Batelco cell phone tonight, but at a dollar a minute to the states, we can’t afford it. The mooring cost $43.75 for the night, and $6.00 mandatory charge for water, even though we arrived full, and don’t even have a hose. So we just got done taking the showers of our lives. About $3 worth each. Oh, well, better than $75 next door.

Speaking of that, my skin is doing WAY better suddenly. I think having it turn totally reptilian for about a week might have helped it after all. It’s weird though, when I’m not covered in Vaseline from the waist up, I feel all my skin crinkle up when I move or twist. My skin was like that of Adrian Vandenberg, guitarist for Whitesnake- that is, the texture and color of an orange. Kind of interesting in a creepy way, but what the hell, I’m a creepy guy.

We’ll probably do all of our shopping (maybe buy a radio!) tomorrow, benadryl, Vaseline, the works, and go to Starbucks of all places, because they have free internet if you buy coffee. Works for me. I get to post about a week’s worth of blogs, and a ton of pix. Kool and the gang. Tonight we spent $16 on a smallish pizza and two cokes. Then another $8 on two blizzards at Dairy Queen. Yeah, I know. Chains suck. I hear that, but after cold canned beans for a while, you start to smell pepperoni and ice cream from a few miles at sea. Shoot, we’ve only been gone a couple weeks! I can’t imagine how we’ll be fiending for movies by the time we return, and the soft, and demure looks of Cash, and the twinkle in Mickey’s eye. Ahh, me.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Tomorrow’s the big day. We get to write to you all. Maybe even hear from some folks. Maybe if you got my message, you might have sent an email from your phones. Then I can “text” you, kinda. That would be cool to talk a bit live-ish. And I can address the lawsuit with Hammerman and Gainer (the State Farm people I worked for that screwed me out of my millions).

Who knows? Sky’s the limit. We went to a video store in the same strip mall tonight, and they had bootlegged every single movie they had. Rentals, $5. Sales, $6. All of the Faces of Death series, other horror/super morbid shit, and tons of Kung Fu, and then the video library of Sidney Poitier. That was pretty much the extent of it. There were a couple of oddballs, two documentaries- one of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings, and one about the rush into the war in Iraq. It had a pic of Noam Chomsky, so we got that in the hope that the most intelligent man alive might be featured. We also noted to the clerk that all of their movies were stolen, and asked if they wanted to burn what we had, and maybe work out a trade. The guy suddenly got very hush hush, and asked that we return tomorrow and discuss it. Like everyone doesn’t know what’s up. That was kind of hilarious.

I guess the crime here is supposed to be really bad, which explains why we had to get buzzed into Radio Shack, and there’s a guard on the sidewalk, and watching the door of Domino’s. What I couldn’t understand was why there were 7 people working in this tiny Domino’s, and we were the only customers. No wonder their pizza is overpriced.


The place here has a pool too, so we plan on soaking up about $6 of its water tomorrow too. Big day planned, that.

Maybe we’ll try to get the fridge looked at, or at least call someone. We have it running off of shore power now, to see if it will cool down at all. Keep your fingers crossed, eh?

Okay, gotta run and drink some water. I have water on the brain right now, in the best of all possible ways.

Talk to you all tomorrow, I hope.

JL