“Well, Leslie hasn’t written a blog post in weeks!”
“It hasn’t been that long, has it?”
“Weeks!”
Andrew is in the cockpit, trying to eek out the smallest of cell phone signals to wish his father a Happy Father's Day. It’s been too long since we’ve called....or written, obviously.
“It hasn't been weeks since you’ve written a blog post, has it?” Andrew asks me, wondering what I must have been doing all this time.
I shrug and tip my head, scrunch my nose, and confirm: weeks. Maybe even months. I blame Katherine Hepburn, she's got my tongue. “Send them the Maldivian newspaper article we were interviewed for, that will bring them up to speed!”
I jest.
But it’s time to catch up because all sorts of things have been happening - despite the utter standstill in our sailing plans. In our last post, things had improved immensely. Things were so good, I declared “if things could go on like this, I’d be happy waiting where I am." But, as much as this Covid world hopes to hold things in place, the bend of the Universe just isn’t like that. The world keeps turning and change is the only constant.
One by one, the boats in our anchorage drifted away to other destinations. Several boats left off to Tanzania - the only country in thousands of miles to maintain open borders. Eventually, La Reunion opened on the basis of special application to boats with sailors holding European Union Passports. A few more took their chances and cast off to the Seychelles hoping the country would be open by the time they arrived. Others had been given special permits by the Maldivian government to sail Southward to the bigger city of Male after they had been been struck by lightening, experienced (non-Covid related) medical issues, or had broken boat parts and pieces that could only be solved in the big city.
This left the enormous bait ball roaming around the anchorage with fewer choices for shelter. Soon, they took up permanent residence beneath Sonrisa’s hull, attracting a whole school of Giant Travali who would chase the bait ball around in swarms and thump against Sonrisa’s hull as they take aim for their prey.
The thumping irritated Katherine Hepburn quite a lot, and Captain Andrew was worried for the safety and comfort of his bait ball. So, he rigged up the fishing rod with a lure that looks much like the little fish in the bait ball hoping to fool the Grand Travali onto his dinner plate.
And this did not take long at all.
The beautiful blue and silver iridescent fish glows bright in the mid-day sun. They are almost too beautiful to eat, but they taste so good….
As our numbers dwindled, so too, did the attendance at our evening beach parties. More often, Andrew and I found ourselves the only ones casting off aboard Grin with a personal sized cooler full of fresh fish filet ready to be smoked over his Smoker-Grill.
“Ready to go?” Andrew raises his voice above Grin’s puttering outboard engine. I leave a light on for Kitty, then climb out of Sonrisa’s companion way to disembark. I sit on Sonrisa’s side deck, shimmy my feet as low as they go, then slide down into Grin’s hull - my camera bag slung over the right shoulder and the cooler bag with dinner on the left. Grin wobbles against my feet; he and I aligning our footing so we sway together and not apart. “Don’t dump me in the drink, Grin,” I say as I move forward and untie the tether leashing him to Sonrisa.
Grin escorts us across the anchorage, with Andrew throttling up at the last moment to carry momentum over the first few feet of beach sand. I bail out, with Grin’s tether in hand and give him another tug as an incoming wave lifts him and we all move one more jot up the beach. Andrew pulls Grin’s anchor out of its bag and digs it into the sand above the high water line. We don’t want any “drift-away” mischief tonight!
This always feels like the perfect time of evening. The sun has lost some of its intensity, and the golden light slants across the beach. I take my yoga mat further inland and stretch it out atop the soft grasses and plants that grow there. I close my eyes and do a bit of meditation to center my focus on exactly where I am right now. It’s like I’m living inside a meditation recording. I can hear the lady with her calm voice describe my beach.
“Listen to the gentle waves, you can hear them peak up on top of themselves, lop onto the sand, and bubble as they roll away.
“Feel the last glowing rays of sun on your skin, feel the warmth on the left side of your body, and the coolness where the shadows lay. What does it feel like to live inside of that warmed skin?
“Inhale deeply. Notice the anything you smell in the air. Notice the sweet, salt breeze from the sea, the bite from the grasses you lay upon. Notice the coolness of the evening and the softness of the humidity as it travel through your nose.”I notice it all and bask in it as I stretch.
Andrew, meanwhile, is making laps along the beach finding driftwood and chopping down a large dead tree that has rolled up on the drift line. He is building a large tee-pee of sticks readying them to be added to the fire. As I finish my yoga session, the evening light has cooled to pink and blue pastels. He’s tearing apart old coconut husk hair and creating a nest beneath his sticks to light on fire. I sit next to him as he works, and once the fire is ready I dig through our chiller bag to find two cold beers. By this stage we are getting dangerously low!
We think and chat, strategize future destinations, and reminisce about old ones as we watch the last bit of sunset and the stars begin to peak through the darkness. “I’m hungry!” Andrew says, and like many nights over the last few weeks, he hoists himself up to pluck the Smoker BBQ from the nearby pile of coconuts. Except this particular night...
“Uh-oh. Where’s the BBQ?”
We circled the island to no avail. “I bet someone thought it was abandoned garbage. It was sitting in a pile of old coconut husks and burlap bags.” I say, stomach rumbling.
By the time we return to our bonfire, the stars are out in full force. It's a clear night, just the kind of night I’d been waiting for. While Andrew re-stokes the fire to adjust our dinner plans, I gather as much sand into my swim gear as humanly possible, trying to get just the perfect angle for star photos.
Laying on my belly, I peer through the viewfinder of my camera propped on a particularly stable arrangement of driftwood.
“Give me your goodside, Grin.”
“Hold still, Andrew!" He never does. “I said, HOLD STILL!”
“How long do I have to hold still, the fish is burning?”
“THIRTY SECONDS!" Photography models, these days.
Having had about enough sand in my swimming pants, I wade in from the shoreline and let the ocean kiss every square inch of skin. Specks of phosphorescence light up and swirl around my feet as the sparks of green algae roll in the bubbles of the waves. Waist deep over perfect soft, white sand, I dunk under the surface and rub all the accumulated photography-sand into the water.
“Oh, now this is awesome." I say. I spin and swoop my hands through the surf. I light up in an circle. Andrew can't resist a swim either, and so soon we are both splashing the "Sea fireflies," cupping them in a pool of our hands until they spark and go out. Then, I lay on my back and let my toes float to the surface. I look up at the dome of white stars above while my body is outlined by neon green stars as I float. The sea and the air are both a perfect temperature - not cold, not hot - I am the happiest Goldilocks around.
I close my eyes and let my heart feel as big and open as that giant sky above me. I let the realization sink in: if my mood weren't tainted by the ongoing of a world that is far away from me right now - and frankly impossible for me to reach by any mode of transportation at all anyway- this place is heavenly. It's probably not realistic for me to try giving up on worry altogether, but it's such a shame to view my visit to the Maldives through a lens filtered with concerns of global pandemics and political stability at home. I came here to sail to remote islands with white sand, turquoise water, and and prolific stars. To live on anchor mostly alone, in a place where I can swim every afternoon. Mission accomplished.
In this long silence, I've struggled to write and I haven't been sure why. Whenever I sit down to try, I am pulled into the intellectual bang and clang news sources and social media make. I have a hard time hearing my own heartbeat, unlike now, with my ears just submerged in a quieted sea.
I watch the Southern cross meet the Southern horizon and let the scroll of thoughts pass by me in another plane of awareness. When I write this blog, I always want it to be stories carried back from where I am to whomever is reading. I want to transport you to swim with me in the Maldives if I can, if my pen is up to the task. I realize, now, this is impossible if my mind is living inside epidemiological labs wondering what is going on, riots and protests wishing I could help somehow, or even at an imaginary happy hour table wringing my hands and clutching my pearls along side my friends.
It feels like claustrophobia: that tension in your limbs, a pressure threatening to burst your rib-cage. It happens to me without warning, nestled safely in Sonrisa, reading escape fiction so that I don't have to think about where else I "should" be right now either further along my sailing track or (when I really let myself run off the rails) in the career I left on hold, the friendships I am far away from, or the society I've been told I am responsible to help build.
Claustrophobia attack…….NOW!
“You are always wherever you are meant to be."
Do you believe this?
Do I?
It’s an extreme act of faith in Life to believe this sentiment. Out here, I try, but I don't understand why. Why has fate seen fit to place me in the middle of the Indian Ocean, this small Paradise, in this strange time? And what am I expected to do with this opportunity? I'm not sure I have the discipline to be aware of all that is happening, yet keep my mind trained on where I am right now.
But, I also feel it is an act of extreme ingratitude if I failed to see and appreciate the beauty of where I am right now. If Covid had not happened, we would have sailed on already. We’d be marching through other wonderful experiences, no doubt, but this particular night feels special, too. And, important to me. Something I never want to forget in my lifetime.
I place my feet on the sand and reorient myself to vertical while saltwater pours down my body in small waterfalls. I decide it is right and necessary for me to keep my head in this game.
I never want to leave, but well after midnight we are getting tired and Kitty must be wondering where we've gone to. So, I emerge from the sparkling surf like a mermaid whose just found her legs. I let the breeze dry my Northwest side, while my Southeast skin is warmed by the fire that is now falling to its embers. We gather our things and tug Grin off the beach. As Andrew revs his outboard engine, we pick up speed and both his bow wake and jetstream glow white green. I look down over Grin's bow and I see a a streak of light, the outline of a sting ray, darting out from under us and across the darkness of the anchorage.
