It started reasonably enough. I was naked and about to pull the pop top on a can of corn. Those two things were unrelated. I was naked because I had noticed that I stunk. There are two kinds of singlehanders: the punctiliously clean kind and then, well, the other kind. I belong to the other kind. But eventually even I notice the smell and realize I need to take a bath and change my clothes.
Taking a bath is fairly easy on “Ventura,” at least in the tropics. The air is warm and the water is warm. I strip, sit in the cockpit, reach over the side with a bucket and grab water. Then I dump it over my head. I lather up with “Joy” dishwashing liquid. “Joy” works in salt water, unlike other kinds of soap and shampoo. Rinsing just entails more buckets of salt water, of which I have an infinite supply.
The trick is getting the salt water off my body. For that I use some of my precious supply of fresh water, maybe a gallon. I have one of those sun showers they sell for camping. It’s basically a plastic bag that is clear on one side and black on the other. If you fill it with water and lay it in the sun with the clear side up, the water gets very warm within an hour or so. Then you hang the bag — from the boom, in my case — and water sprays from a small plastic nozzle. Works like a charm, aside from the fact that everything is swinging about wildly in 10-foot waves.
But not today. Today is completely overcast, so I didn’t want to use the sun shower. Instead, I stood in the kitchen — which on Ventura is also my navigation workstation, my bedroom, my living room, and storage room — and took a sponge bath. I threw the sponge overboard after I was done. I was that dirty.
So now I’m standing there, naked and trying to dry off, not wanting to sit down on deck because waves keep splashing over the boat, trying to figure out how to kill five minutes. Since I’m in the kitchen anyway, I reach into a locker and pull out a random can. (I often eat this way — just pick a random can and eat whatever I get.) As it turns out, it’s one of my absolute favorites, Jolly Green Giant corn and it even has a pop-top.
Just as I am about to pull open the can — heck, I can already taste the corn — I hear a thumping against the hull. Now on a sailboat hundreds of miles from land, things knocking on the outside of the hull below the waterline are never good. This is not a fish wanting to visit. Something is broken. So up I jump on deck, peering over the lifelines, and I see a line, the spinnaker sheet, trailing in the water. A block has come loose from the toe rail and is hanging in the water banging on the hull. (I’m not using the spinnaker today, but the lines are tied off on deck, awaiting their next use. Well, they are supposed to be tied on deck. One got away.) I’m also trailing a propeller connected to a generator that creates electricity as well as a taffrail log, a smaller propeller that spins and turns a dial and tells me how far I’ve gone. So now there are three lines trailing the boat, and the spinnaker sheet is tangled in the self-steering rudder and is about to tangle with the other lines. I look like a boat being chased by serpents.
I realize quickly that I need to stop the boat. Easy, you might think. But sailboats don’t have brakes. So I head her quickly up into the wind, into the 10-foot waves, and the whole time I’m thinking, “shit, I just got dry again and now this!” The boat does its best imitation of a bucking bronco, I grab for the only piece of attire I know I need — my safety harness — and I (and every part of me) hang over the stern trying to tame the serpents. I’m pulling in on lines, acutely aware of the blocks, winches, rudder and tiller all inches from the only swinging serpent I REALLY don’t want to lose.
I got it all in, of course, and set “Ventura” on her way again. And I’m thinking, “If only the ladies at Curves could have seen this.” Now you know why sailors always wear pants.
By the way, the corn didn’t seem so good after that, so I reached in for something else. Fruit cocktail.
Hang loose, but not too lose.
David