We had heard the legend before.
Long ago (but not quite a decade) and in a far away land, Steely-Pete turned 40. As fortieth birthdays tend to be, it was milestone year, and Jen being the devoted and loving partner she is, pulled out all the stops. Having bonded over their love of reality-TV, she stealthfully planned his birthday around the concept of The Amazing Race. Complete with airplane tickets leading to multiple destinations and surprise meetings with old friends all of whom wore color coded T-shirts of exactly the right color and size -despite a last minute T-Shirt Size Snaffu that could have derailed the birthday and cocked the Universe off center. Trust me when I say: Jen really brought Pete into his 4th decade with pizzazz.
As Pete relayed this story around an Innofinholu Beach Fire, I could see the coal dust of fear in his eyes. Here we were, preparing to ring in Jen’s 50th birthday quarantined and essentially locked on our boats for nearing four months. Pete had not been able to acquire any significant gift apparatus and still had no means to do so.
“I think you need to manage your expectations,” He says to Jen.
But Jen believes in Pete, she knows that he can and will rise to the occaision, and so she explains to him: “You have to do something! Come on! At very least transform some beach garbage into something awesome.”
“Like what!?” Pete says, looking in all directions from where he sat.
“Well, Judy makes baskets. Surely you can figure something out.”
Judy makes beautiful baskets. Some of us have used this time locked on our boats to perfect the art of laying around reading smut fiction. But Judy looked at the piles of old fishing net and rope that had washed up on the beach and thought “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” She fired up her YouTube account for that which it is intended (to teach us all manner of obscure skills) and she learned to weave beautiful, colorful baskets of which we were all jealous.
S/V Sonrisa became the lucky beneficiary of one of Judy's baskets on the lucky night that she sailed away, leaving her favorite pair of flipflops behind on Innofinholu beach. We plucked them from the pile of sand in which they had been abandoned, and returned them to her when we re-connected in Male.
“Yeah, Pete. Get weaving.” Andrew says, adding fuel to Jen's garbag fire.
Pete rubs his hands through his now scraggly beard.
“Don't worry, Pete. We'll help you.” I tell him. “We’ll think of something.
And so, the day afer Pete's own birthday, Andrew was tasked with removing Jen from their boat, luring her away with the promise of a nice morning snorkel. I had gathered the dribs and drabs of my random stash of crafting supplies, and a couple items of beach garbage I had found ashore thinking they might come in handy later. Pete and I met to brainstorm our options over leftover Bribery Cake, a mug of hot coffee....and a flow chart.
“You've made a flow chart?”
This is serious business.
From the beginning, Pete knew he would lead Jen through a series of clues, surprises, and separate “events” for her birthday. But how? And what? And where? We can’t exactly go shopping around here, and we can’t even take her to a nice restaurant. Pete is literally working with an abandoned island, some beach garbage, and whatever culinary art we can pull together from the rotting vegetables we received in the latest grocery delivery.
“If anyone can do this, Pete, you can!” I say, balling my hands into fists and placing them atop Steel Sapphire’s dining table. “Let's think. You must have something aboard Steel Sapphire that already has some kind of special connection for Jen, that we could somehow rejigger and make into something else."
The wheels in Pete’s head turn for a moment, then he skitters off the bench and disappears into the bowels of Steel Sapphire to reemerge with....
...a stick.
Actually, two sticks of teak held together with two wood screws. “What is that?" I ask.
“That’s just the thing, we have no idea. It was one of those things we found aboard Steel Sapphire when we bought her, and to this day, we have no idea what it's used for. We’ve asked all the prior owners and no one knows, but it’s obviously designed to be something.” I look it over. I believe all boat owners have these mystery items. When we first took possession of Sonrisa, Steve-The-Chain-Smoker-Broker warned us not to throw anything out until we know exactly what it is and what it is supposed to be used for, lest we toss something designed very specifically to save our sad souls in the moment of distress out at sea. And so it seems, Pete and Jen ascribe to the same notion. Not knowing what in the world this thing is, Pete and Jen have held onto it for safe keeping.
Until now.
“That's hilarious. If we could make something awsome out of this, she surely will laugh. Could we makes some kind of treasure box?”
“Andrew can definitely figure out how to make a treasure box," I say.
Over the course of an hour or so, Pete pulled out a handful more items with great meaning: the blob of ribbon from their wedding day gifts, repurposed into an “Octopus Toy" for Dixie (their cat) and a heart shaped bit of coral Jen had found on the beach and which had been adorning the syrup of bar soap soup that inevitably gathers in the soap dish of the bathroom.
“Pieces of eight!" I exclaim, as though this is explanation enough. “All good treasure hunts need some buried treasure. What could we do with coins from all the countries you guys have sailed….
“PETE! HELP!”
“…to” I say as I peek out the window to see Jen motoring Tango swiftly toward us. What the heck???
Our first brainstorming session was cut short as Jen rolled Andrew’s limp and barely conscious body onto the stern deck of Steel Sapphire owing to some blood related wooziness after cutting his finger while snorkeling.
“I’m fine, I just need to lay down a while….” Andrew says through a haze of subconsciousness. Maybe this was a bad omen, but we shook it off with optimism. Pete’s flow chart was already beginning to fill out with all sorts of ideas for fun and adventure: a treasure hunt on an uninhabited island, bubbly aboard Steel Sapphire, Dinner cooked a la Chef Pete, the 50 Things I love About You List, a Bribery Cake for Jen all her own, and the coup de gras --- a spliced up video of Jen's friends and family letting her know what they love most about her and sending her birthday wishes. And so it was that over the course of several weeks, the Jen-Birthday-Team were tasked with poetry, treasure box carpentry, and jewelry making - all with only supplies and tools already packed aboard our sailboats.
“I don't know why I didn't think of this before!" Pete says, one day over WhatsApp. It's not a treasure hunt, we have to make this into Survivor! It's perfect! We love Survivor. She did the Amazing Race them for me, I'll do a Survivor Theme for her!”
Of course! Where else is better for a Survivor Themed Birthday than while marooned in the Maldives “Surviving” Covid 19? But this only added more specifics upon which Pete had to execute.
“What do you think?” I asked Andrew. “Do you think he’ll be ale to pull it off?”
“Oh, you know, we’ll pull off something.”
I hid away a bottle of Prossecco and we were gifted with four giant Maldivian lobster while in Male. I was finally able to acquire fresh baking powder, and so Jen's Bribery Cake wasn't to be the dense brick Pete's turned out to be. Friends and family’s birthday videos were returned close enough to the deadline, mostly in accordance with Pete’s detailed email instructions.
Things were looking up!
We arrive at Addu Atoll with a black cloud bringing down rain, thunder, and wind on a less than ideal anchorage. And, we are running really down to the wire. Day 1: we arrived, checked in, and begged mercy upon the officials to allow the whole thing to proceed. Day 2, we moved over to the official Birthday anchorage to get settled, complete a reconnaissance mission to determine where to hide things and ultimately write the clues to execute the Birthday Plan on Day 3.
Taking twice the time we should take to put Grin together, the Oddgodfreys arrive at the island without shoes to find Pete trudging across sharp, bleached dry, coral with piles of washed up garbage. His face is glum. Jen is off in the corner already trying to corral plastic and old flipflops in a manner suitable to a garbage burn.
“This island is a bust!” Pete says, shoulders rounded with the weight of ultimate discouragement. “there is no sand anywhere! How am I going to bury the treasure? And I think there is someone lives under a tarp over there.”
This, and T-18 hours to the Big Birthday.
I reach out to pass him a super-secret package behind Jen’s back and offer an olive branch of encouragement. “We’ll figure something out, Pete. Don’t give up!” And I was relieved to find I could see the spark of determination still in his eyes; he must live up to the legend.
Failure is no option.