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Published: April 17th 2010
Davis, California to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Red-eye flight, rush to San Francisco, morning in Florida. Five Davis grad students (our skipper and four women) meet up with James’ (our skipper) sister and high-school friend and we’re off. We pile the van high with food and head to Treasure Harbor, the start of our adventure.
We have a boat, a 40-footer with blue trim called the Trade Wind. An eight-day charter, Monday to Monday, Treasure Harbor to Key West and back again. One of the heads (bathrooms) doesn’t work but we shrug and keep loading into the nooks and crannies. I pull open every drawer I can, fascinated by how space is maximized and how the drawers are fashioned so that they don’t slide open as the boat rocks (you have to pull up hard on them before they can open). I doubt the musty smell ever goes away below deck. The sky is overcast so we stay in our windbreakers and pants but we know the sun is coming.
We’re off! We motor out, following the colors and numbers of day-markers, keeping green on one side, red on another, finger-tracking our course on the maps. But then, then there’s
nothing ahead but grey-green water, tiny wave-ripplets, and we set the sails, unwrapping the blue canvas coverings, hauling on ropes, finding the wind direction, charting the course, tossing out all the terms and phrases I’ve heard only in the movies. Several folks get slightly sea-sick as we rock from side to side. I scramble to the side that’s highest out of the water; all of James’ assurances that this boat will not turn over except in extreme circumstances don’t make that tippy-feeling go away.
Only a few hours on the water (~9 mi via car!) and we reach our first night’s destination, Indian Key, an uninhabited state park. Dropping anchor is more complicated than I had thought. There are two anchors and we (meaning James) must calculate where the boat should be in the morning, taking into consideration how the boat will swing as the wind shifts and what stretch of water the island will buffer. Anchor dropping and weighing and tacking are surprisingly delicately timed maneuvers. This is where muscles tense in readiness, voices raise, and instructions shouted back and forth.
But our first anchor drop goes well and we swing to where we should. We eat
Navigating
James (our skipper) and Angeeour first meal on the boat, cooking on the stove that swings so that when the boat rocks, the pans don’t slide off the burners. There’s a fore bed-room, the common room, a narrow hallway, and the aft bedroom, two stairways going up to the top center where the wheel is. All sitting and reclining surfaces are glorified plastic couch-cushions, the kitchen table folds into the wall and more couch-cushions fill out the kitchen bench to form a nice-size bed.
Lauren and I claim the front and awkwardly tuck in sheets around the oddly-slanted cushions. We have a porthole which makes the small space bearable. That first night is chilly and none of us really have a good night’s sleep, either due to sea-sickness or first-time-on-boat-overnight jitters. James’ pops up every twenty minutes to make sure the anchors are set and we’re not drifting into the darkness. I awaken several times and blearily poke my head through the port-hole, blinking to make sure that that blinking far-off red light and the dark jumble of the island are still where they were when we went to bed. Every time I go to sleep, I feel the boat heave and part
of me squeezes tight in glee and another part of me wonders, "Could I get sea-sick while asleep? Could I get sea-sick if I concentrate on this movement? Could I get sea-sick thinking about getting sea-sick? Oh crap, go to sleep!" Luckily, I never do. This landlubber gal’s stomach stays quiet the whole trip.
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