Dena Hankins's Blog

Disengaging from Red Hook

The day after my last day, it rained. Mostly softly but also with some vigorous downpours. My satisfaction with that situation reminded me that it’s important to decompress after an intense work experience.

This job was more like Krohne and Hamilton Marine than like the Three Mile Harbor debacle or the horrifying Windham Falls unethical quagmire. I mostly like the people I worked with and, while I have a heavy dose of judgement about how the bosses handle their business, I’m not rooting for their misery.

At the same time, I always wondered whether I would be able to support the catamoron charter industry. This kind of crewed charter, meals included, is so far outside my experience and so opposite from my dearest desires that it seemed likely that I’d pick up a paycheck or two, holding my nose the whole time, and then flounce out with my opinions intact.

Instead, I ended up with a group of men (some sooooo young that I couldn’t help blinking with puzzlement at them sometimes) who were up to the task of boarding these shitty boats from pitching dinghies in ridiculous chop and acting as the experts in plumbing, electrical, engines, aircon, rigging, and so much more. It’s hard to be snooty when these guys were coming to me for the float switch and then going back out there, in all kinds of tropical weather, with their strippers and crimpers and butt connectors and all the same things that have kept me and James and Beluga Greyfinger alive and safe for so long.

So many of us were liveaboards and not a one was on a catamoron. They’d seen the shoddy construction of these floating palaces and, perhaps I’m wrong but, I think they had higher standards than gaining expansive spaces that become pinball fields in surging waves. Buying old monohulls that need a metric fuck-ton of work makes so much more sense than buying a hurricane salvage catamoron with electronic systems that will never, ever, function correctly for more than a few years at best.

Today is the first day that I would have gone to work but didn’t. Day two of my post-employment period felt a lot like the first, with less excuse. I change and grow in the dark, though, and sometimes I cope with feeling like that spinning circle on a computer that tells you something is happening without letting you in on the process. Today, I am present in my moment, on my boat, with my companions and my unformed ideas about the future that nonetheless are so bright…I think it’s time for sunglasses.

I’m not going to slough off these connections as fast as I have at times in the past. I like these folks. I’m hoping that the next chapter works out in a way that will result in sending invitations to visit us in Bocas del Toro, Panama, or on the nearby island of Bastimento.

The best thing about the future, though, is that it’s wide open. A loved one knows me so well, she has bansai’ed into someone who can both engage with the possibilities of my life and maintain a sense of the quantum uncertainty that plays out. It’s not for everyone – this excitement for possibility, knowing that our direction is never settled. It’s for me, though, and it’s deeply satisfying to get back to the elemental facts of life.

We will go with the weather.

We will take care of each other and the boat.

We will find joy and let pleasure in.

Our Caribbean, our world

We sailed to this place in the middle of the Caribbean Sea a little under nine months ago and we continue to live in this place. No, I mean, really live in this place. St. Thomas is, no doubt, a beautiful place. St. John provides the perfect wood-block painting view east of Vessup Bay when it’s not invisible due to rain. The weather is perfect most of the time. That rain happens or at least threatens almost every day, so it’s hard to get painting projects done, but the interior projects are rocking.

…A new carpet deserves a thorough Murphy’s cleaning on the cabin sole, stem to stern.

I (James) fill my days with the living necessities of household chores like laundry, groceries, dishes, cat, and, well, living life on a boat in a place that is constantly trying to eat you. The Caribbean is known the world over for its sapphire water and fair weather but the reality is that those aforementioned pleasantries tend to bring all the destructive micro-elements into play all at once and you can’t let your guard down, even for a second. Between the weather and the many species trying to devour our beautiful little boat, even a full time indentured servant like myself isn’t quite enough of a force to keep the living at bay. Don’t get me wrong, I am indentured only to my choices and I reapply those choices every single day with a satisfied sigh and a steaming hot cuppa.

…Beluga Greyfinger seems to like the new carpet.

Like I said before, the above-decks projects are going a whole lot slower than I had hoped because of the almost daily rain but I’m jumping on them when I can.

…Like the teak dorade box rebuild and finish.

…And between drenchings I’ve been installing fans.

…Throughout the cabin.

…Building shit!

…and of course, we’ve been rowing, and rowing, and rowing, and rowing!

This time has been all about the Work to maintain our off-the-grid lives. It really is two people and one cat’s worth of working to stay alive against a status-quo that has learned to hate us politically. It’s more than one full-time job to turn that around while, at the same time, surviving and staying afloat in this incredibly expensive and abrasive place. It’s two solid full time jobs to thrive and, maybe, even inspire.

That’s why I (Dena) keep going to work, keep clocking in. As much as just existing here draws from us, we’re not trying to sustain an ongoing reality. We’re preparing for the next world-shattering, alternate-universe-feeling shift in our space and time. We’re maintaining the wellness of our vessel and ourselves while also maintaining an unstuckness, which is its own act of will.

Watching the bank balances shift in our favor is a strong enabler of that willfulness we share. James is approaching eligibility for social security and might even see some return on that investment. I’m getting paid weekly, which translates into meaningful weekly progress on the feeling that this is optional. We’re not stuck. We’re free and our decisions could make life more difficult instead of easier but that’s on us. Sometimes, the littlest gap is the path to self-determination.

While James labors aboard, I labor ashore. It’s by far better than my worst job while still being something I’m coerced into agreeing to, so I’ll never claim that I’m doing what I want to be doing. There’s appreciation for my talents and respect for my idiosyncrasies and that means it’s a good job for me, for now.

I am eating too much, drinking too much, and sleeping too much…or just enough to keep this work thing rolling along. My irritations here are real, though – no safe roads to ride a bicycle on or walk on, a gym open only during my working hours, and a half-hour’s wages (before taxes) for the least expensive lunch that isn’t the hot bar at the grocery store.

Pause – so, that hot bar is occasionally awesome. Most of the time it’s a meat-lover’s fantasy, though, so it’s not to be counted upon.

If the point of these pauses is to be ready for the next bounce, I’d call my status a solid C. Even a little more exercise would get me to a C+ or B-, but honestly? This industry is soul-sucking to a degree that makes me preen a little at being okay at all. To stretch the school metaphor, it’s the equivalent to that time in 1992 when I dropped calculus (as the second highest grade earner in the class) for jazz choir. Yeah, baby, give me jazz choir.

It’s so worth it!

So, we’re settling in on the Island of St. Thomas here in the Caribbean Sea on what is commonly known as the US Virgin Islands. Dena has set her mind to doing a job for the company she works for and I (James) have dedicated myself to getting the boat ready for a run at the Northwest Passage as soon as we can make that happen financially, psychologically and physically.

The yacht management company that Dena works for has given us a mooring (as a perk?) very close to her office so the commute is as simple a row as we’ve ever had. As a matter of fact we’ve never had a row in from a mooring field or anchorage that has been as easy on us as this one, no matter the weather.

Now granted, we’ve had better looking neighborhoods than the one we’re in today but it’s so calm back up in Vessup Bay that it will give me the opportunity to get all the work done that needs doing on S/VSN-E Cetacea.

The first order of business is aesthetics. Our working systems like the sailing rig, the electric propulsion system, the pumps, cooking and lighting systems are all in good working order so getting the boat looking good gives me a chance to get a much closer look at every inch of the vessel while at the same time making her look and feel ship-shape and ready to go.

The scum-line around the entire boat between the bottom and the rub-strake was a serious eyesore after our voyage from the Canary Islands to Africa’s Cabo Verde Islands. The reason it got so bad was because of all the travel we did in the shipping lanes.

When sailing amongst the big ocean going freighters and tankers on the seas a tiny sailboat tends to pick up a lot of the slime and waist that those giants tend to dump into the water while they are underway. Once a ship is more than 12 miles from any landmass international law doesn’t prohibit the dumping of anything but plastics and petroleum products. Everything else can go straight into the ocean, untreated. That’s the law. Now, that’s not saying they don’t dump plastics and used oil overboard: all I’m saying is that it’s illegal. But who’s going to police that shit…the answer, is no one!

The above is the placard that you must have for Coast Guard compliance before you go off shore but when at sea the “No-Cop-No-Law” rule totally applies.

So, while my partner is diligently ordering parts for a Catamoron fleet in paradise I get to go to work on that scum-line with a vengeance…and that means, a full body suit, some toxic chemistry and a whole lot of elbow grease.

Now that aforementioned ‘toxic chemistry’ I used has been totally approved by the (pre-trump) chemical regulations authorities for use in inland waters as biodegradable so I didn’t feel all that bad using it on our topsides way back up in Vessup Bay with all the sunken boats and hippy-ship-shit. The fishies didn’t seem to mind and the bats and the pelicans continued to hunt (like they do) while I scrubbed and scrubbed and (fucking wow) scrubbed our little Cetacea to perfection.

…and let me tell you my friends, this boat looks amazing!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like it’s ever really ugly here in paradise but way back up in this totally protected bay I wouldn’t even think about swimming or (Gato forbid) making, reverse osmosis, water! So we’ve dedicated ourselves to going out once a week on Dena’s days off for sailing and/or water making. Plus it gives us the opportunity to use the systems aboard the way they were meant to be used.

The water in the outer bay of Red Hook off the island of St. Thomas is so perfectly clean and clear that you can see a good 30 feet under the boat, so anchoring out in this beautiful place is a wonderful reprieve from the “neighborhood’ we’re now, very much, a part of back in Vessup Bay.

So, we’ll continue to provision and repair our broke shit as necessary all the while living in a place that is truly an incredible example of a paradise on Earth.

So here we sit…

…at the dawn of the Great American Oligarchy, taking our pick from the flora et fauna, and we still decide who lives and who dies. We are pit against each other in our arena of capitol that is bringing us down with a system so vast that even the minions can erase you.

…But where there is life and love and beauty there is hope.

We continue on because there is imperative to life and love and beauty.

We live on not because we can’t die but because we must see the life and the love and the beauty prevail.

We’ve been through a lot together Dena, me (James) and all of you but that doesn’t mean we can rest, and I mean, not for a second.

We have jobs to do. We have projects to complete. We must fix what we have broken and whatever it takes we must continue on with our lives and loves and our beauty.

So here we shit at the top of the food chain in the third decade of the twenty-first century… still taking our pick of the flora et fauna… we still decide who lives and who dies but we’re not pit against each other, or at least we don’t have to be, and we can bring it all down with a system so vast that even their minions won’t escape us.

Peace first!

We sail on

So we sailed on to St. Thomas, USVI from Martinique and moored up in Redhook Bay. The voyage was one of the most intense sailing experiences of our lives which, as you know, is really saying something.

Double reefed leaving Martinique

We set off from St. Anne’s Bay shortly after a squall that pulled us along at a good clip all the way to sundown. The wind was fresh off the beam and the seas were kindly till well after sunset. As night set in and we took on the dog-watches we entered the Dominica Channel with all the bright eyed innocents of a couple of kids day sailing in a dinghy in Harness Creek. It didn’t take long to get schooled.

The best of Martinique

The Dominica Channel is 22 nautical miles wide, 7,000 feet deep and carries a 2,000 nautical mile fetch across the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a brutal body of water that on any given day can lay waste to most little boats and of course we had to do it at night. The only things that changed when we entered the channel were the wind velocity, the angle, size and shape of the waves, in other words, every(fucking)thing. The seas were not only angry, they were downright infuriated with screaming banshees in the rig and a 10 foot broadside slap every few seconds in sets of three. This went on for hours, so many hours, before we made the lee of the island of Dominica but we were about 30 nautical miles off the coast of that island so we saw very little reprieve throughout that second day at sea.

Missed us fucker

Even though we had marching storms throughout the day, we never actually got rained on and as we got north and east of the Windward Islands the weather settled into a more traditional Caribbean Winter feel. The wind was warm and fresh from just abaft of the beam and that second overnight was spent watching the radar and dodging storm systems the best we could. Ultimately we got rained on through one overnight watch each and the third day was spent dodging one hell of a cumulonimbus that periodically popped the surface of the sea with angry bolts of lighting. When you’re on an electric sailboat, one of the things you don’t do is sail into a charged electrical storm so we jibed, jibed and jibed again and ultimately dodged that big mean motherfucker.

The spiral of life

Our final night at sea was the very definition of Caribbean perfection. Orion tumbled across the sky endlessly drawing arrows as Ursa Major guarded the northern horizon well into the Virgin Island chain.

Night begins

Three days, twenty hours and forty-one minutes after sailing off the hook in Martinique, we were safely moored up in Red Hook Bay off the island of St. Thomas in the Caribbean Sea.

Coming into St. Thomas

The whirlwind…We rowed…

Rowing man going home

Dena interviewed and of course blew them all away…

Resistance is futile!

…so now it looks like we’ll be here for a while fixing stuff, working and adding to the cruising kitty, readying ourselves and the boat for a shot at the Northwest Passage the next chance we get.

Martinique to St Thomas Day 4

Sunday, December 22

The sun is low behind heavy clouds and the afternoon has been low-key for the last few hours. No storms in a while, after being chased by monsters throwing lightning.

No birds or flying fish either, unless I’m just being impatient or inattentive in my gazing. We’re going to be very near a marine conservation district called Lang Bank as we pass east of St Croix, but it will be dark then. There’s so much famous snorkeling around this area that I’m surprised not to see more life, even this far out.

Where do dolphins hang out? It’s been a while.

I wondered about the weather band on the VHF radio and, sure enough, the US National Weather Service does broadcasts in both English and Spanish with a transmitter on St Thomas. I barely caught the end of the English language version and entertained myself through the Spanish by picking out words I know, like medianoche.

When it got back to English, it sounded dire! Thunderstorms, lightning, gusts to 30…but that was for Puerto Rico. Of course, it made me edgy though (forecasts are always right said no one never). I passed the edginess on to James.

My first long watch has turned out to be beautiful. We’re almost to the east end of St Croix so there’s been a little traffic, but nothing within 3 miles. The sky has been starry, mostly with a clear bright sparkle so not even light clouds. One dense cloud patch passed over and brought nothing. No worries.

Now. Here’s hoping it stays this way.

The forecast also has a 50% chance of rain, so it likely won’t. Still, a good watch is a good watch.

Monday, December 23

So far, no drama! No rain, no boats nearby, definitely no lightning. Also, we’re making good speed and it’s quite likely I’ll be within VHF range well before my scheduled interview. As long as I can get them a message, I’ll be satisfied.

Did it! Got a message through by tweaking the access point settings for cell towers we don’t have service from. Ha! Rescheduled for the tomorrow.

Mooring position: N 18° 19.503’ W 064° 50.633’

Distance: 90.2 NM
Average speed: 3.91 kn

Trip distance covered: 344.4 NM
Trip average speed : 3.68 kn

Martinique to St Thomas Day 3

Saturday, December 21

We’re in an area with a lot of names. I’m certain we’re in the Caribbean Sea. The Leeward Islands are to the east a little ways but I’m not sure we’re in them. I know we aren’t “in” Montserrat, the closest island, nor St. Kitts and Nevis, the next ones up. We weren’t in Guadalupe, but we got pretty close to Dominica.

We were in Martinique but on this trip one of my strongest memories and hardest watches was passing the bay that harbors Fort de France and we certainly weren’t in that bay.

I don’t think about the ramifying names of bodies of water as much as I used to, but the Caribbean has countries you have to check in and out of in areas like Maine’s Downeast waters. I don’t think anyone whatsoever cared whether or not we were “in” Jonesport while anchored at Mistake Island. The people who were taking a family holiday on a family-owned lobster boat off Cutler definitely didn’t ask if we’d checked in.

It’s different, I’ll give you that.

And yet, you can sail to islands while “in” Maine that have cultural particularity and a sense of a separate selfhood.

And we’re sailing to a place where we’ll be in Vessup Bay on St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean…and I didn’t even mention the town name though I think it’s Red Hook?

For now, I’m just sailing in the Caribbean Sea on the planet Earth.

The wind slacked off around sunset but it’s coming back a little. We’re making decent speed, 3.5-4 knots, and when it steadies we do even better. I’m burned by the squalls though so I only have the main (single reef) and the staysail out. I don’t want to wrestle the yankee in a sudden high wind. Fixing or replacing it is back on the list and until then I’ll take the hit on speed (no pun intended) overnight.

Sunday, December 22

It’s a beautiful night with a good light breeze. The waning moon rose at the end of James’ watch, just before midnight, and I got to watch it lift out through the light low clouds just above the horizon. It’s bright enough to be helpful but not so bright that it empties the sky of stars. I love this part of the cycle. Then again, they all have their beauty.

There’s no way we’re going to make it to St Thomas in time for my interview. We just spent the morning dodging storms and made even less progress towards the destination than we did over the ground…and our speed over the ground wouldn’t have been enough to get us the even if we had made a straight line for Red Hook. Oh well. Now I’m just hoping we can get close enough to avoid being a no-call no-show.

Noon position: N 17° 17.118’ W 063° 45.778’

Distance: 85.2 NM
Average speed: 3.65 kn

Trip distance covered: 254.2 NM
Distance to destination: 88.4 NM

Martinique to St Thomas Day 2

Friday, December 20

For us to pick up the mooring they offered by 6am on Monday and get the dinghy launched, make me presentable, and row in by 10am, we’d have to average 4.283333333 knots. This past period we did less than 3.5 and there’s light winds coming tomorrow.

Crap. Well, we’ll see how they take the no-call no-show if I can’t get a whisper of internet signal. I’m thinking about calling them on the VHF if we’re close enough.

Meanwhile…a few hours later and I’ve been taking my own advice from yesterday…focusing on the sailing! I’ll admit that’s a more pleasant prospect when the winds are full but not strong and the waves active but not uncomfortable.

We’re also celebrating a whole set of storm cells that have missed us…maybe a dozen? We got clipped this morning by the edge of one right before change of watch and I did an extra 5 wet minutes in the cockpit monitoring LoveBot.

I just took over for my first long watch. Even though we’ve been doing one hour watches anyway, it’s been dark since 6. I hope that means James will sleep but he’s excited all over again about the big celestial event from last night. We’ll check with other sky spotters and see if there’s an explanation.

It’s as breezy as promised passing west of the gap between Guadalupe and Dominica, but a little less so than last night between Martinique and Dominica. Somewhat nervous because of the broken leg attachment on LoveBot. Currently, it’s held together by a twist of seizing wire so I’d rather not make it work so hard.

Sitting downwind means leaning back more comfortably instead of bracing myself, but I don’t know how long I’ll want this wind in my face! I’ll probably lay down a while but then I have to set an alarm in case I doze off and to remind me to sit up and do a visual check for other boats.

Saturday, December 21

What a night! Storm cells and squall lines, and when they stopped being predictable I threw my hands up and said, “Fine, I’ll get wet. But NO lightning.”

That’s what we got. Rain, some wind, a lot of rain, and then the calm after the storms.

Literally. James spent his 6-9 watch doing a little motoring and a lot of sail work. He shook one reef in the main and that’s still the right amount of sail a couple hours later.

We don’t know what the rest of the day will bring but doing the work in the light of day, no matter how wan, will be a comforting change.

Noon position: N 16° 17.981’ W 062° 49.278’

Distance: 93.1 NM
Average speed: 3.88 kn

Trip distance covered: 169.0 NM
Distance to destination: 168.5 NM

Martinique to St Thomas Day 1

Thursday, December 19

We took our time getting out of Sainte-Anne and I later realized I was in trouble. I did bad math and I don’t think we’re going to make it in time for my job interview. Oh well, guess I’ll focus on the sailing.

Except that we got absolutely pounded by rain before I finished my first watch. Wow!

Friday, December 20

Long night of high winds on a reach with a couple of random die-outs that left us at the mercy of the pitiless waves. As we came into the Dominica channel, it turned rather nerve-wracking again. Neither of us slept well so I’m hoping for some napping.

Birds are cool. I enjoyed the last hour of my 6-9 watch with a couple of what I think were brown boobies, one adult and one immature. It really felt like they were either showing off for me or teasing me by doing the coolest things when I wasn’t pointing my phone at them.

Still cool.

Noon position: N 15° 11.705’ W 061° 47.913’

Distance 22h 5m: 75.9 NM
Average speed: 3.48 kn

Trip distance covered: 75.9 NM
Distance to destination: 257.3 NM

…and then what?

We rolled up on Martinique like we owned the place, dropped the hook and then what? We sat in silence for about an hour and stared at shit while our minds and bodies caught up with each other.

When a meat-bag body gets tossed about for 23 days at sea and suddenly stops, there a thing that happens. It’s as if the imaginary parts of your body, the parts that dwell in the mind, keep going at the same rate as the sea while your physical self is anchored with the boat. It’s a reality shift and it takes a while for the two parts to catch up with each other. My (James’) mind was still traveling through the Milky Way galaxy at the relentless pace of the multiverse while my bruised and battered meat-sack recoiled from the sudden relative stop. It was beautiful and terrifying… It was calm and chaotic… It was and still is an altered state of being that words will ultimately fail at describing.

One last sunset from offshore

23 days at sea from Africa to the Caribbean on a single downwind run is a life-changing experience and, when it’s over and done, what the fuck do you do next?

Grocery shopping, of course!

We weighed anchor after coffee to do an exploration trip of the inner harbor on the southern most part of the island of Martinique, a highly protected bay known as Le Marin. If you look at a satellite view of Le Marin, it’s mind boggling how many boats are packed in that tiny little bay on any given day but we figured it was worth it to at least check it out.

Martinique from the Atlantic Flow

The first place we anchored, Sainte-Anne, was protected by the island but wide open to the north and the east. There were well over a hundred boats anchored off the beach and we settled in about a half a nautical mile from a dinghy dock.

Because we ran out of almost all of our provisions on the crossing from Cabo Verde, we knew we were going to need quite a few trips to the local grocery stores. It was worth it to at least check out Le Marin to see if we could get closer to provisioning.

Well, man did that pan out! The big local discount supermarket in Le Marin actually has a dinghy dock that we managed to anchor about 600m from. We launched the dinghy and rowed in but didn’t even look at our provisioning list. We tried to find an open restaurant but Martinique in a civilized island so they siesta for about three hours every day, right about the time we went on the hunt for food.

We got about a quarter of a mile from the dinghy dock/grocery store and realized we hadn’t walked over 15 feet in a stretch for almost a month. We’d best just get our basics (bread, eggs, butter and rum) and get our out-of-shape asses back out at anchor where we belong. On the way back, we stopped at a creepy chain “taco” shack and paid way too much for a fish wrap that kind of tasted like velveeta, paper, and mayonnaise… who puts french fries on a taco?

We got back to the boat and began the chilling process that we so desperately needed. Let me tell you folks, it was an awesome experiences!

Home again, Home Again…

So now we re-begin the routines of our lives…

Packed deflatable dinghy dock

Finding stuff, getting stuff, and putting stuff away.

So here we sit…at the top of the food chain, in the second decade of the 21st century… taking our pick from the flora et fauna and we still decide who lives and who dies.

We humans move through the multiverse as if we own the place and yet our mortality is spelled out to our ignorance on the daily and yet it’s so spinningly beautiful that sometimes it hurts so bad that we freeze in place and yet can’t resist the motion of the world we’re on among the planets and suns and stretched out arms of this galaxy among all the fuzzy-looking fascinations that are the other galaxies…