“Whiskey Jack, Whiskey Jack, Whiskey Jack, This is the Coast Guard.” I’m sitting in Sonrisa’s underbelly, hiding from the irradiating sunrays that drive through the sunshades and burn my skin anytime I’m on deck during daylight hours. The fans below whir and blow dry a paste of sweat and oil into a hardened glaze on the bridge of my nose, my upper lip and my cheekbones. My ears perk up.
“This is Whiskey Jack, go ahead.”
“Uh...you need to prepare to leave. You need to be prepared to leave the Maldives. Tell the other boats.”
A granite stone in my belly sinks and I fall through the black hole that just opened up beneath where I’m sitting. Leave? We cannot leave. There is nowhere to go! I keep listening.
“Excuse me, can you repeat? Do you mean we can leave to move to the Matheerah anchorage? Over.”
“No, you need to plan to leave the Maldives.”
With sunsets like this, why would I want to leave?
I don’t know what was happening aboard the other boats in our anchorage in this moment, I assume the universe swallowed everyone up just like it did me. We all know that this is among the worst things that can happen to us. Cast out of the Maldives, there are no other countries with open borders within 2,000 nautical miles of us. We are blocked in by moving and changing cyclone seasons and challenging geopolitical issues that change unpredictably, almost daily as a result of this Covid mess. What to do? What to do?
The WhatsApp group we keep with our agent lights up with texts flying across cyberspace like crows circling, diving, and attacking: “Sqwaaak! Sqwaaak! We can’t leave! Sqwaaak! No where to go! Sqwaaak! What’s happening? Sqwaak! Sqwaak!”
Over the next week, our agent communicates between with the authorities and us - triangulating an effort to calm things down. “Don't worry, don’t worry. The Maldives is not going to force anyone with a proper visa out.” I trust our agent, he knows the whole situation, and I’m sure he'd tell us if big problems were on the horizon.
So, I try to breathe easier, but I also start to think it’s prudent to open up communications with our embassy. Previous to this, we had registered with the Embassy so they know where we are and can send out general information, but I hadn’t pinged them with anything specific just yet. We get emails every single day with the message: “Americans abroad should fly home to the USA immediately, or be prepared to shelter in place in foreign countries indefinitely.” I would fly home if I could, I suppose, but that has not been even a remote possibility since this situation hit.
The anchorage we are located is hundreds of miles away from Male, the Capital City of the Maldives where the airport is located. And, there are no safe places to leave Sonrisa by herself. There are no marinas open to us, no docks to tie her to, no haul out facilities to lift her up on land. We can’t just leave her alone, she will sink and become a hazard to navigation and/or the environment. Further, even if I could just leave Sonrisa alone, at this point, we haven’t been given permission to sail through the Maldives to get to where the airport is. So, we haven’t been able to fly out. All this time, I’ve been targeting the Embassy's second option: “Prepare to shelter in place indefinitely." But if the Maldives invites us to leave, that option is cut off as well.
I open a blank word document and wrack my brain thinking what I wanted to say to the Embassy. These people aren’t mariners. I can’t expect them to understand the issues around leaving Sonrisa alone, being anchored in remote far flung anchorages, the fact that it will take at least two weeks of sailing to reach any ongoing destination from where we are, or the fact that piracy, cyclones, weather patterns, and currents all play into navigating this area of ocean.
“Maybe we should reach out to the US Coast Guard.” I tell Andrew.
He looks at me cross-eyed. We have to be careful, our communications to Embassies or the US Coast Guard have to strike the right tone. We don’t want to push the panic button and inspire them to force us to scuttle (purposely sink) Sonrisa in the deep just to get us home.
I put the finishing touches on a letter asking the US Embassy in Colombo to help us negotiate alternative safe anchorage where we can shelter in place “indefinitely”. I give them suggestions of a port we would like to target based on an attempt to overlap these qualifications: (1) safe anchorage protected from cyclones and other rough seas; (2) viable safe sailing route to reach that location; (3) reasonable security from violence and infection disease (of multiple types - some locations are dealing with things like Bubonic Plague, Typhoid, Malaria, and Dengue in addition to Covid); (4) reasonably reliable food supply; and/or (5) potential for getting Sonrisa into a safe marina or up on land for us to fly home and wait safely until our journey can continue if that is the only option left.
But, I also know my proposed port is closed tight. Other sailors have tried to go where borders are closed, and many have been given food and water, then cast back out to sea to circle endlessly between closed countries picking up fuel, food, and water but never being welcomed into a safe port to stay and wait. So, the chances of our Embassy negotiating entrance while border closures are in place would take a miracle.
Andrew, binge-watching all the seasons of Homeland while Kitty naps in the Tiger Box and I am furiously typing letters to Embassies.
In the meantime, but as we were expecting, the wind blowing from the East shuts off, turns, and then brings thunderstorms, lightning, and wind squalls from the West. “We have to move to the other anchorage.” Andrew shouts over the cracks of thunder and rain pummeling our decks. We are soaked as we hoist Grin and turn him turtle over Sonrisa’s front bow.
“I still need the good internet in this anchorage to finish discussions with the embassy!” I explain. It’s getting dark anyway, and we don’t want to try to re-anchor on the other side in low light. So, we grit our teeth and ride Sonrisa like a bucking bronco pushed by waves and wind toward the now lee shore. Anchor watch on, double snubbers on, we do everything we can to make sure we are uncomfortable but safe for now.
“Tanzania is open.” The US Embassy tells me. “You can just go there.”
In normal times, I would love to go to Tanzania. There are safaris there, safe anchorages, temperate weather, a marina, a haul out facility, and a warm welcome. But, how can I be sure that if I cast off today from the Maldives, Tanzania will still be open in the 2-3 weeks it will take to sail there? And if it’s not, then were do I go? Floating in the sea just outside of Tanzania is not ideal as it is just a few hundred miles South of the high risk security zone off the coast of Somalia where the most notorious and dangerous pirates have been hanging out for years. It’s been better in recent time, but I can’t imagine the strain on food supplies, law enforcement, and other resources as a result of lock downs and closed tourism would make the Somali pirate risks fewer. I don’t want to end up forced to float in that ocean. Second to that, Tanzania is taking the Swedish approach to Covid19, taking some minimal precautions but generally targeting “herd immunity”. The problem with that, (in my opinion) is that Tanzania does not have the strong and well established medical system Sweden has. The disease will spread there, and when people get too sick, they will die. This does nothing to lure me that direction.
I schedule a call with our embassy to explain these issues, then we up anchor and sail (YES SAIL!) over to the anchorage offering W/NW wind protection.
While we are waiting/dreading for something to change, I try to keep my daily rituals. Instead of creative writing, each morning I’m corresponding to whatever Embassy has raised new questions. I still swim and free dive at 4:00 p.m., I still do yoga on deck under the stars if Sonrisa isn’t too woggly in the anchorage.
Pete and Jen are still swimming and enjoying the anchorage too. (Sort of. Pete, get swimming you lazy arse!)
And, I still cook some of our meals. Tonight, I have one green bell pepper in the fridge. That will go nicely with purple onion, oil, vinegar, cumin and a little honey to make a salsa to put atop a pan fried fish we pulled from the ocean just moments before. I'll put this on a bed of rice boiled in coconut milk. I smile and think back to a day circa 2006 that Andrew’s Grandma Marlene came to visit us in our new house in Las Vegas. She stood next to me, mouth agape in horror and disbelief, as I chopped up a whole bell pepper and threw it into a salad intended to serve five people. "Do you really need all that bell pepper?” She asked. Marlene, a child of the depression and the Oklahoma Dustbowl, could eek out one bell pepper for a whole month of meals. This is the first bell pepper I’ve had the pleasure of dicing up since we left Langkawi. I don’t know when I might get another one. I slice the bell pepper in half, and then in a quarter and use only one small piece.
I see the conversation circulating among medical professionals, politicians, media, and The Regular Joe on the internet. Our strategies depend so heavily on a question that seems impossible to answer right now: How long will these problems last? I go through waves of two mindsets: Sometimes I feel certain that the geopolitical problems, security issues, and economic challenges - if not the disease, too - will last through at least the year if not longer in all of our originally intended onward destinations (Reunion, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa) making our sailing plans to go there there both unsafe and unpleasant. Other times, I feel like I’m making drastic decisions that could halt our circumnavigation either permanently or for a long while over something that will turn out to be a passing drama.
My mind races. It sprints around a circular track of “this is a big deal - this is not a big deal - this is a big deal - this is not a big deal. Wait - run - wait - run - wait - run...” I monitor the communications from the Maldives, and interpret them in waves: “Oh they are just saying we can leave if we don’t like the situation here. No...they are telling us we’d better leave because things are getting bad. No, they are telling us they aren't making us leave now, but we need to be prepared to go when our visas run out...” I never feel certain of anything.
I know I’m not the only one.
I read news reports of people in the Maldives getting Covid. The people on the small island we are anchored near are awaiting results on tests for the people who had come in contact with the one man who had to be air lifted out. I worry for them. I know how sad and afraid they must feel for their own families and friends and country - both for the illness but also the fact that the primary income generating industry in this country is tourism. And, all the tourists are gone.
On my bad days, every few minutes I have the urge to voice aloud the phrase: “Andrew, I think we might die out here.” In the hopes that he can say, “No, sweetheart, everything is fine.” But, I know he cannot say it. If I were to voice my thought, he might say that phrase, but I would know it to be empty. He doesn’t know any more than I know. And he is worried, too. So, I press my palm tight against my mouth to make a seal and force that phrase down and inward to a prison of silence that seems to reside somewhere in my belly. I can feel it bouncing against the walls of its isolation room, picking locks and attempting its great escape.
Stay down deep, you pesky, useless fret!
“This will all work out. I cannot see a solution right now, but one will emerge, and we will know it when we see it.” I voice these words aloud instead.
Then, an essay one of my friends circulated on Facebook crosses my desk. Written during the cold war when the whole world worried the end might come at any moment, it posed the question “If death comes for me, what would I hope he finds me doing?" The author contemplates the possibilities between cowering in a corner waiting for a bomb to strike versus living his life fully knowing that whether we are in a cold war, a pandemic, a cyclone in a small sailboat, or just living out our normal day-to-day lives, death is always a possibility, and eventually, an inevitability for every single one of us. We cannot control our end, we can only control how we live the days we are given.
Right. True. Always true. If death is coming for me, how do I want to be found?
Maybe at the top of Sonrisa’s Mast, taking “drone” photos, the old fashioned way.
