Mother Earth’s Anger

​It’s daybreak and I feel tired, because I didn’t sleep well. It’s windy outside. The rigs on the boats sound like a concert of clanking bells. Ñandú shudders during the gusts. Oliver is hiding under a cloth. The brisk breeze comes loaded with high humidity. We are getting only the gentlest strokes from hurricane Maria, which is passing a hundred miles off shore. Dominica, Saint Croix and Puerto Rico got the full brunt of her fury and they are in ruins now.

We want to thank all the friends and family who reached to us these past weeks. We are safely tucked in a corner of the Cheasapeake Bay, still on the dry, busy with boat projects. We can’t stop thinking about other friends and all the people that we have met throughout our travels who weren’t so lucky. First Hurricane Harvey in Houston, a city we called home for several years. Then Irma, a huge monster that fed on the warmer than normal Atlantic waters, which devastated the Caribbean and Florida. And now, Maria. Is this sort of violent weather the new normal? Will we have to mourn more loss of life and property in the future?

Mother Earth is hea​t​ing up and speaking loud. Maybe she’s trying to tell us something and we’re too self-centered to hear. I think of my kids and the next generations and ask myself what sort of legacy we are leaving for them. In my darker days I wonder if there will be any legacy.

In the present time there are urgent needs for those who have been in the pass of these super storms and are living a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. Juan and I have decided to donate through globalgiving.org and through the group of cruisers (us included) that would have been visiting the British Virgin Islands in November. There was discussion of going there to help, but at this moment a bunch of sailboats arriving at the islands after sailing 1500 miles would be more hindrance than relief.

When we got Ñandú we joked that she was going to be handy for global warming. I imagined a romantic post-apocalyptic time of bobbing around in warm waters swimming and fishing for food. In a way, my naivete reflects in the name of the boat. Ñandú, the Patagonian bird, is a kind of ostrich. Don’t ostriches hide their head in the sand when facing a threat? It’s clear that our planet’s challenges are not trivial. We can’t hide from them anymore.

PS: Ostriches turn their eggs buried in the sand. They are not hiding.