February 16, I said!

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2008
Well, Ruth and I left Stella Maris this evening. It was chill there, in the marina. $25 a day ($1 a foot- the guidebooks says $.75, but they don’t seem to ever be right on this point), plus $7 a day electricity, that they didn’t seem to want to bother to charge for. Water was free, so I washed all my shirts and underwear, which was a real luxury. We filled our tanks too, but the water didn’t really start coming out as a dark, rusty color until I was doing laundry, so we think what we got was pretty good. It’s R/O water (reverse osmosis created water- fresh water from salt, I think) mixed with rain water from a cistern. Anyway, it was pretty good. It ws nice having the extra dough in our pockets from waxing Chris’s boat last week. Our friend Brian made some extra money “scrubbing some guy’s bottom,” but that didn’t sound like a very manly undertaking, so I’d just as soon be waxing the Selene.
Good people around there too, including this cat Norman who was a big Chomsky fan, and so we had a lot to talk about. Chris was next door, but we didn’t see him too much, he had a lady friend coming in tonight (hubba hubba), so good for him. This other cat Hugh was really nice, captain of a big fishing boat, and he had us and Chris over for dinner the first night we were there, and made potroast and potatoes, which rocked. Then the next night, we brought over lobster tails, and me him and Norman had a nice dinner, and I had three tails, plus two I had for breakfast that day. Tough life.
We filled the gas tanks and water getting ready to head outta here to cross to Rum Cay, which is about 23 miles off of Long Island, plus four more to the anchorage. After that, it will be to Concepcion, Cat Island, then Eleuthra, home of the pink sand beaches. These islands all sound pretty spectacular, so we figure it’s worth the trip across the water 15-20 miles apiece to get to ‘em.
They also had air tank filling at Stella Maris, so I scuba’d around the marina to use up the leftover air in the tank before we fiilled up. While out, I didn’t see the hugeass barracuda (3-4 feet) that was stalking the boat earlier, but just a small one while I was stalking a few jacks under some half sinking fishing boats that were rafted up in the corner. I shot one for dinner with the spear, and got out of the water a.s.a.p with that flopping, bleeding dying fish, which is the best thing to bring a barracuda around posthaste.
We tossed the rest of the red snapper we caught in G-town, because it was starting to stink. Who am I kidding-starting? That thing reeked. The marina had showers too, which was nice, if only cold water, and before that I took a dip in their pool- salt water- I should have guessed. The place was run by Germans from Argentina who’d been here 40 years. According to Hugh, they were fled ex-Nazis, so I figure they weren’t just foot soldiers if they had to get out of Dodge after WWII. Anyway, they seemed pretty cool, and decidedly unNazi-esque.
Speaking of nice people, Hugh and Norman and Chris, all three either hauled us around in their cars at various times or offered to, in Norman’s case, barely after exchanging names. He then brought us conch salad, and the next day, a bag of fruit, tangelos, pears, apples and suchlike. Cool guy. Must be all the Chomsky he’s reading.
On another note, I read something interesting in the Marine Medicine guide when I was trying to look up what Ruth might have from the symptoms she had the other day. Numbness of the lips, fingers, nausea, headache, etc. sounded just like Ciguatera, but she seems fine now, and we haven’t eaten anything that could give it to her. Anyway, she seems to be really well, and her ribs aren’t hurting her like they were. We still wonder if she didn’t crack a couple when she fell in Nassau, but it’s really immaterial, since they can’t do anything about it anyway. Oh, but anyway, where I was going with this was that I read in the Marine Medicine book that antihistamines make you sensitive to sunlight. This is something that none of these damned doctors have seemed aware of yet, nor any of the websites I’ve looked at. And as I think of it, it seems there’s a pretty strong correlation between me getting sun and having itchy nights/days. So, I spent the last couple of days with my shirt on for a change, and didn’t take any antihistamines at all today, and I’m relatively itchless. Could it be? Well, it’s an improvement anyway over how I was feeling. Pressure urticaria my butt! I’m allergic to antihistamines. That occurred to me over the summer, but almost as a joke. I’m going to try to stop taking them for a while and see how I do. I hadn’t had any alcohol, wheat, or preservatives in almost two weeks, and that seemed to make no difference. So last night I had four beers, and not an itch in the bunch. That was pretty chill. It was kind of a drag having people toasting right and left, and offering to buy each other a beer, and owing you a beer, and on and on and having to pick… water. I’m actually joking, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed water so much as I have on this trip. After much messing around trying to put an electric water pump on the boat, I finally ended up putting in a different hand pump tap, so now we have one inside and out. Now drinking water is a treat!
Wow, I sure do miss talking to my folks. Anybody around there that could aid them in getting an email out someday? In Phyllis’s case, maybe she could even jot a note down and if someone visits they can type it out and send it for her. It kind of sucks not being in touch, and if anyone is around that could help out with that, they and I would both be grateful.
Speaking of staying in touch, make sure you all keep track of what blogs from the archives you’ve seen, because I’ve noticed it only seems to show the most recent one, or a couple, maybe. Like yesterday, I put up a ton of pictures and three blogs, and most of that stuff went straight into the archives, and you didn’t really see it as “new” stuff on the screen, so to the casual observer, it only looked like there was a few new photos up, but really there were at least 25, plus three long entries.
Well, I think I’ll wrap it up. Since tomorrow we have to make tracks to Rum Cay. Hopefully they’re not out of rum when we get there. There’s also a wreck near here we might want to check out in the morning.
Oh, by the way, it should be some cool scenery coming up, we heard Rum and Concepcion are supposed to be beautiful, good shelling, fishing and maybe even lobstering. Cat Cay is supposed to be hooked up too, but Hugh said he saw a ton of sharks there when he was there. Like 30 in the water together, and not nurse sharks either. Black tips, white tips, etc. And a bunch that were 10 feet long or more. Oh, and if you think we had an interesting crossing of the Gulf Stream, you should have heard his tale: “calm” weather turned into 30 foot breaking seas, so bad he thought he was dead, and didn’t even think it was worth putting on his life jacket. The boat was forty or fifty feet, and some waves it went down it was going down nose first, almost vertically. The fridge ripped out of its bracket and fell on the cabinet on the other side of the kitchen, and left a big mark from the handle, basically falling straight across the room. Pretty intense shit! He was up on the flybridge (way at the top), and got tossed right over the steering wheel, across the console it’s on, and landed on the other side of the flybridge, and broke his arm in the process. And then made it over. That was from Fort Pierce to Westend. Starting a bit south of where we did, and going a little further north. Anyway, he’s a cool guy. He had a boat in Michigan for a while, one of five, and Hemingway had one of the others. It was made in 1928. He got it in 68, and had it for a few years, till it was in storage, and he came back to find it stripped. Every fitting, the portholes, everything.
Well, we hope you’re all well. Write an email sometime and tell us if you’re alive. We’re ya know… curious.
Later,
Jack