Sometimes You Get Bit

And sometimes you stumble into perfection...

Rainbow in Ensenada Honda.

Yesterday, I completely disassembled the aft head, to clear a clog. It is the third time I have taken it apart, though this deconstruction was more comprehensive than the previous two. It is safe to say I now know more about a marine toilet than I ever wanted to know—which at least helps me understand how to better avoid repeat system blockages in the future. We’ll see if I can find that silver lining to today’s unsilver mess. Regardless, I am firmly putting this experience down in the category of: Cruising Isn’t Always Cocktails On A Beach At Sunset.

To try and kill that false impression by non-cruisers once and for all here is what it looked like (Warning for the weak of stomach: do not look too closely).

Manhandling the balky commode was made somewhat more painful by some bruising of my lower right rib cage (an injury which also dispels the Cocktail/Sunset Myth). Onboard a boat, you try to be careful, and purposeful, about every move you make. First off, to avoid going over the side, which could be game over. But also to avoid injuries, contusions, cuts, lacerations, and all manner of bodily harm a boat and its fixtures can inflict on an unwary or unlucky human. Another Salty Dawg labels these inadvertent harms “boat bites.,” which is a perfect description. Boats are always trying to bite you, and if you are not careful they can get you pretty good.

I have generally considered myself a smart and elusive target, when it comes to biting boats. The biggest danger, I would say, is a swinging boom. That could bite your head off, and I am always aware of the boom danger zones when I go forward. Beyond that catastrophic possibility there are a myriad small ways to get injured, especially if you, like me, prefer bare feet while sailing.

Running around on a deck full of metal fittings, while a boat pitches and rolls, is inviting serious pain. But I like to think of it as playing a video game at a higher skill level than those who plod around defensively in shoes. It is good for balance, anticipation, and perception skills to play at that barefoot level, and avoid mistakes. So far, aboard LG, I have played to a high score.

Of course, pride goeth before the fall. Last week, Laughing Gull was on a mooring in Christmas Cove, St. Thomas. I had friends aboard and we swam and feasted on fresh-baked pizza from Pizza Pi, the funky floating pizzeria. All was good. Upon leaving, while trying to pull the mooring line from my bow through the mooring eye, Laughing Gull finally chomped me. The mooring line got stuck in the eye, and I impulsively and reflexively started to pull harder. Just as the thought “Wait, if the line suddenly clears and pulls through it will be like playing tug of war and the other side lets go” flashed through my brain, and before my brain could signal my arms and legs to stop what they were doing, the line suddenly pulled through. The next true and undeniable thought that went through my mind as I fell backwards onto the bow was “I am so dumb.”

It could have been worse, and a subsequent fast reach to Culebra (filmed by Steve Yang, visiting LG with his wife and daughter, was a tonic for all ills). I initially thought I had escaped my lesson in failing to anticipate without real harm. But my right side had landed on a bow cleat, and after the initial adrenaline wore off the pain started. Soon it hurt to lift my arm, to sneeze, to breathe too deeply, and to sleep. Dr. Yang (how lucky to have a top-flight orthopedic surgeon aboard just then), diagnosed a contusion as more likely than a fracture, which was some comfort. Regardless, I discovered the benefits of Ibuprofen. And reset my video game score to zero.

Lesson: aboard a boat it is very hard to anticipate EVERY risk and danger. Sooner or later, you WILL make a mistake. The key for bodily protection and integrity is to avoid making a big one. You might not always have an ortho on hand to fix you.

Day by day the ribs are feeling better. And while I hate dismantling a toilet, my current surroundings go a long way toward alleviating my petty sufferings. My current neighborhood is called Ensenada Honda, and it is on the south side of Vieques. You wind your way in past shallow reefs until you get to a wide open bay that is completely undeveloped, lined with thick mangrove stands, and totally protected from swell (in fact, it is known as an excellent hurricane hole). Pick your spot, drop your hook, and settle into your own private paradise. According to my personal What Makes A Great Anchorage criteria, it is very hard to beat. Here, I’ll show you:

Like some perfect places, it is a paradox. It is undeveloped because it was a former US Navy bombing and artillery range and there is probably lots of contamination and unexploded ordnance ashore. But the net result is sort of like Chernobyl—a place unfit for extensive human intrusion, because of extensive human intrusion, now gives nature all the opportunity and space it needs to thrive and create. Out of the destruction, Esperanza Honda has become a serene wildlife refuge.

Capt. John sailing to his mooring as the sun starts to dip. Photo: Steve Yang

There is one regular inhabitant of this unique place: Capt. John, who lives on a 50-year old Pearson ketch and runs Vieques Sailing Charters. He loves “the Honda” so much that he put down a mooring, and spends much of his time living out here. He is a good storyteller, and good company, the charming and welcoming magistrate of a municipality with no constituents, and only occasional visitors.

I get why Capt. John was seduced. I’ve been here in the Honda for four days now, enjoying the peace, solitude, and brilliant stars above as I do my detached nomad thing. I’ve had the place almost entirely to myself, which is unheard of in the modern Caribbean in any decent anchorage (Capt. John has been away, visiting his wife in Esperanza, where he helped me free my snagged anchor, but that is another story). Sometimes I just pause in my busyness, transfixed by the quiet and earthy beauty, and a little bit stunned that I happen to be here. I could happily stay well beyond my planned departure back to St. John tomorrow. But I can’t resist the forecast of moderate SE winds, which will make the trip back east way more pleasant than it usually is in a region where getting east often means bashing into stiff winds and big waves. In the end, as always, the weather has its say.

Anthropocene Notes:

1. I am glad to see that flying an upside down flag as a sign of national distress is catching on. This is a flag hung by National Park Service employees in Yosemite, protesting the mindless and lawless DOGE devastation of the federal workforce:

Also, in Esperanza, I got my first comment about my upside down flag. A Swiss boat next to me helpfully mentioned my flag was hung incorrectly, thinking it had been an inadvertent mistake. I explained that I was flying the US flag upside down as a symbol of opposition to the Constitutional peril Trump 2.0 had unleashed. They pumped their fists in response, and cheered. (Related: what Trump’s cuts will mean for the National Park Service, and visitors.)

Esperanza has some great restaurants and cafes.

2. If we want to change our polarized, disastrous, nihilistic politics, we need to change how we elect our representatives. My old college friend, Ned Foley, a leading expert in electoral law, explains why, and what a solution would look like:

   There is an election procedure that eliminates this center squeeze [where moderate candidates are pushed out by highly partisan candidates]. It stems from the work of an eighteenth-century French mathematician, the Marquis de Condorcet. Condorcet’s great insight was that in any election involving more than two candidates, the candidate most representative of the electorate as a whole—and thus deserving to win—is a candidate whom a majority of voters prefer to each other candidate when candidates are compared head-to-head, two at a time.

   After Condorcet, scholars have developed various voting methods that ensure the election of a Condorcet winner. The simplest would be a nonpartisan primary of the kind that California and Alaska use with three candidates advancing to the general election rather than two or four. In the general election, voters would directly express their preference for each pair of candidates: A versus B, A versus C, and B versus C. The candidate who receives more votes against each opponent would be the Condorcet winner.

   There are other options, but Ned makes a strong case for Condorcet-based systems. The key point, regardless, is: our prevailing partisan primary system, in a highly polarized era, delivers highly partisan elected officials who fear only the most extreme wings of their parties and are disincentivized to support the moderate policy solutions that most Americans favor, or work in a bipartisan manner. And that is very bad for any country.

   

3. Okay, that’s more politics than I intended. But even from my remote location I don’t think anyone who cares about the future can or should ignore or downplay the tectonic shifts underway. Still, as a compensatory palate cleanser, I will leave you with this brilliant, passionate, essay about…walking, by Henry David Thoreau. You may think you know what it is to go walking. But Thoreau would like to tell you something:

   I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, — to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.

   I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going à la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer, — a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

   It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearthside from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return, — prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again, — if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk.

   Preach it, Hank. I have paid my debts, made my will, and settled my affairs. I am a free man, an inhabitant of Nature (and “The Honda), sauntering forth in a crusade for freedom and wildness. It is an excellent way to live.

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