People we meet

The people we meet continue to enrich the experience of this trip.  For a while we hung out with the crew of Zipporrah who’d been members of our yacht club in Minnesota but who I only met when Doug and I entered a single-handed race to Bermuda. In Antigua they became our Exploding Kittens playmates and twice took our kids for overnights. Ruby considers them a “kid boat,” something few people would recognize. Then in Pointe-a-Pitre we struck up a conversation at the dinghy dock with a Swiss family on a 33’ steel boat, Laya, and kept bumping into them, leading to a friendship.  Their daughter is only three but Ruby still looked forward to playing with her. Both of us were meandering at the same leisurely pace so we were able to spend time with Laya at several subsequent anchorages.  Most recently we parted from Ramble Too who’s crew is a family of four cruising with grandpa for a year.  Their 8-year-old daughter and Ruby soon became BFF’s (best friends forever) and made chicken sounds to each other. We parted with them because they are having a family of 5 come to stay on the boat with them, and their boat is not much bigger than ours. 

Now that we have entered the BVI suddenly the people I meet are not fellow cruisers but staff on boats.  Charter boats dominate the scene here and it seems that the experience, especially the pace, of people on charter boats yields a much different experience.  Despite a couple attempts I have not forged any connections with charterers. Instead we met Sebastian, the captain of a 56’ charter catamaran when he dinghied over with leftover chicken paiaya.  We met Billy, a deckhand on the 105’ charter sailboat Crossbow, when he helped me rescue Leif after he capsized our sailing dinghy.  I met Ben, the captain of the chartered catamaran Soterion, when he came over to ask me about Gryphon.  I briefly met a young woman crewing on a 256’ megayacht after they invited Ruby and Leif to play with their child on an inflatable slide at the beach. I casually asked if it was a charter but she let me know it was private. That’s big money. 

These people working on boats often started out as cruisers.  They share the longitudinal experience of living on a boat.  They are living the life rather than having a flash-in-the-pan, rum soaked vacation.  They share with us good spots to anchor and understand that we are short of good food and probably short on beer.  It is not a novelty to them when they hear the sound of my drill.  They simply understand our situation more than the charterers. Nothing against the energy of vacationers. I was once a charterer as unprepared as anyone. But now I live here. We have a day-to-day routine with homeschooling and boat jobs. I am not on vacation. I still have to floss every night. 

At Nanny Cay (a marina in the BVI) I ran into all the people I met while fixing up Gryphon after Hurricane Irma. From the point when Richard was there to catch my dock lines it felt like a homecoming. I could hardly walk anywhere without stopping to catch up with someone I knew.