Celebrating the life of Oliver

It is with a heavy heart that we announce that the world-famous boat cat Oliver has passed away. Instead of grieving, we want to honor him by celebrating his life, always full of joy and hedonistic pleasures (well, except during those rough passages that the poor guy had to endure).

We found Oliver in a State Park by the Sacramento River. I took the car one morning to drive from our campsite to a nearby windsurfing spot, while Kathy and the kids stayed in the campground. I almost run over a diminutive, helpless black cat and I said to myself, “uh-oh, I hope they don’t see it.” When I came back they were petting and feeding the cat who’d soon be known as Oliver. The girls obviously wanted to adopt him, so we made a deal: if he was still with us by the end of the following day we’d bring him home. The next day we all went swimming and when we came back I was relieved not to see the cat, thinking he’d likely reunited with his mother. But then someone noticed a lump under the tent floor, and that lump became part of the family. Twelve years later his kidneys gave up. The vet said a month ago that according to the blood test, Oliver shouldn’t have been alive. But no one notified him, so he kept climbing trees and bringing live mice to our bed in the middle of the night, happy to be back to his homeland. Until he could no more.

I’m not sure Oliver was ever aware that he was a cat. His feline instincts did show up from time to time, but he developed an unusual personality for a cat. For instance, the way he followed us around the house was a lot more dog-like, although he did attempt to disguise it. If we went out to do some gardening in the front yard, he’d soon show up there. If we then moved to the back yard, he would later surreptitiously appear there, not really looking at us, but very aware of us. He seemed to say “I’m not following you, ok? It just happens that I want to be right here, right now”.

Yoga cat. Oliver always wanted to be where the action was. The closer, the better.

His canine persona also turned up when Kathy and I rowed back to Ñandú at the end of a day out. He’d come out to the deck to welcome us, almost wagging his tail in a mixture of relief and happiness. The sentiments quickly turned into recrimination, though: “you are late for dinner!” He meant, of course, his dinner.

He loved playing hide-and-seek. He wasn’t very good at it, though.

Speaking of food, Oliver wouldn’t accept anything that wasn’t packaged and clearly labeled as cat food. He showed absolute disdain for anything we ate, which was quite convenient, actually, since we never had to protect our food from him. Being the sophisticated cat he was, he wouldn’t eat his meals straight. Noooo, that would have been too ignoble. He had to “prepare” his meals. Using his paw as a spoon he’d add water from the water bowl, stir, and only then proceed to enjoy his gourmet meal.

A well-traveled adventurer, he visited 13 states and 8 countries

Oliver always was fond of water, and not only as a food ingredient. At home he would patiently wait inside the bath tub until someone noticed and opened the faucet to a trickle of water that he’d use to wash himself. As a boat cat in the heat of the tropics he demanded proper showers. He would have happily taken five a day, but with the scarcity of fresh water we had to restrict him to the same standards as the human crew: at most one shower a day.

Our cat was very clear about rights, but fuzzy about obligations. As a natural predator, he could have easily contributed his share to the community by keeping mice out of the house. Instead he brought them in. And when presented with the one chance to capture one, he’d just alternately look at the scared rodent and at me, puzzled and annoyed, as if asking “You woke me up for this? What do you expect me to do?”

Oliver has now joined mother earth buried in his favorite kind of place: a grassy spot in is homeland, California (far enough from his least favorite place, the ocean). Rest in peace, Oliver. You will be sorely missed.

Grenada: last stop for the season

The island of Grenada is as far south as we intended to go before battening down and cowardly deserting Ñandú for the hurricane season. Only 75 miles from South America, this is far enough south to be considered outside the hurricane belt, but that doesn’t mean Grenada is entirely free of risk: Hurricane Ivan caused extensive damage in 2004.

Leaving the boat to its own resources for several month meant many days of you-know-what: boat work! Yay! Cleaning, removing all sails, stowing the dinghy inside the cockpit, getting rid of everything that could attract insects, and a long list of miscellaneous tasks left us with no time to explore this beautiful island, except for half a day around the capital, St. George’s. We expect to remedy that when we come back.

St. George’s colorful homes and Georgian architecture

Grenada is know as the Spice Island. It is the second largest exporter of nutmeg (after Indonesia), but it grows and exports a variety of other spices as well. Grenada’s history starts with the usual suspects: Arawak and Caribs as first inhabitants, and then Spaniards claiming the island but letting the French and English fight for it. Independence came in 1974, and things got interesting five years later, with a communist revolution led by Maurice Bishop that overthrew an oppressive government. With strong ties to Cuba, Bishop improved medical care and education, but the lack of political freedom led to power struggles. 1983 saw more coups; Bishop arrested, freed by a mob, recaptured and executed; and a U.S.-led military invasion.

Human right violations and political assassinations during that turbulent period left wounds that polarized the public—in a way all too familiar to us, Chileans. In 2000 a high school research project about the fact that Bishop’s body was never found, caught the attention of the Miami Herald and ultimately led to the formation of a Commission for Truth and Reconciliation. Today it seems that Grenadians have found their truth and peace, and enjoy political and economic stability.

California-bound, but this is not the Sierra. It’s Bahamas’ ocean floor. We miss Bahamas!

The Grenadian Grenadines

Continuing our journey down The Grenadines we found ourselves in another country, Grenada. As I mentioned in a previous post, The Grenadines is a chain of small islands lying between the larger islands of St. Vincent and Grenada. Of the nine inhabited islands in the chain, the northern seven are part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, while the southern two belong to Grenada.

Carriacou

Carriacou is the largest of the Grenadines islands, and it’s home to 8,000 people. It is known as “the island with a hundred rum shops and one gasoline station”, and also as the “friendliest, healthiest and safest island in the Caribbean”. I didn’t count the rum shops and I don’t feel entitled to use superlatives, but we did like Carriacou and its people a whole lot.

Boat building tradition, brought by Scottish migrants, still alive. This is going to be a cargo boat.

We anchored first in Hillsborough where we did the customs and immigration paperwork, and took a taxi to the village of Windward, on the other side of Carriacou. Then we moved to the small, secluded, isolated and beautiful Anse La Roche, a beach where we enjoyed the peace and solitude we had been seeking for a while.

We did have a little incident with the windlass, though. For you landlubbers the windlass is an electric device that helps you pulling the anchor back to the boat. Our anchor rode is a combination of chain and rope. The splice that joins rope to chain was made by yours truly, possibly not in the most professional manner. Well, things got badly stuck in the windlass, because the splice didn’t want to go through, while the chain that came after had no patience and attempted to get ahead of the rope. The result was a tight jam of rope and chain in a place designed to hold only one of them at a time.

I saw no other solution than to get the tools and start disassembling things (after lowering the mainsail, which we had eagerly raised, since I had no idea how long that would take). In the end the job was not that difficult, except that after reassembling everything I ended up with the proverbial extra part in my hands. Oops.

Sandy Island

Sandy Island is a postcard-perfect crescent-shaped strip of sand declared a protected marine area. Turtles come here to lay eggs, supposedly at night, but we saw one laying eggs in full daylight. The park ranger was baffled when we told him.

La Ronde Island

La Ronde Island is a convenient and lovely stop before reaching the island of Grenada, except that it may take a try or two before finding a sandy spot for the anchor to bite. It’s a private island that happens to be for sale, in case you’re interested and can spare a hundred million bucks.

An active submarine volcano that goes by the name of Kick’em Jenny is located two miles to the west. The most recent eruption was in April last year. You are not supposed to sail directly on top of it, because bubbles of volcanic gases can lower the water density to a point where your boat may no longer float. Since you don’t want Kick’em Jenny sinking your boat, there’s an exclusion circle with a radius that depends on the level of activity. Activity detected in March prompted an increase to 5 km, but now it’s back to its usual 1.5 km.

Chased by crowds in The Grenadines

With hurricane season upon us and the weather being pleasant at higher latitudes and sweltering in the tropics, crowds are supposedly thinning around here. Somehow, the few remaining ones seem to be stubbornly following us. There’s a strange unevenness to it, though. In Mustique, for instance, one day we had the entire bay for ourselves, and the next we shared it with seven other boats. In Tobago Cays, when we moved to a mooring buoy in the turtle area few buoys where available, and our closest neighbors were two boat widths to our side. The next day there was a massive exodus and we got some breathing room.

Salt Whistle Bay

A friend had mentioned that he wasn’t sure he’d recommend Salt Whistle Bay in Mayreau Island, our intended next stop, and also part of the Tobago Cays Marine Park. On the one hand, he said, it’s a gorgeous bay, but on the other, it’s small and popular with reckless charter boat skippers who follow dubious anchoring techniques, so it’s hard to have a good time if your boat is at risk of being smashed by a rental boat on the loose.

We decided to try Salt Whistle Bay anyway. We got there early and space was abundant. We picked the mooring buoy that was closest to the beach. Perfect spot in a beautiful bay! We even thought of telling our friend how wrong he was. Ha! Perfection lasted only one night, though. The next day boats started to arrive as if it was the only place on earth to anchor, and they dropped their anchors haphazardly, left and right. One boat anchored right in front of us, in the minimal space between the beach and Ñandú. We felt social rules had been transgressed, as when someone cuts in a line.

People say that how close is too close depends on where you are from. Europeans, and French in particular, seem to feel the most confortable with closeness. Actually, in our experience, Quebecois also are relaxed and confident with togetherness (is it something with the language, perhaps?).
We, and many of our American friends most definitely aren’t. We have, however, learnt to pick our battles: if you suggest to the newcomers that they are too close and succeed at getting them to move, you can just have the next guy use that vacant space to anchor even closer. When the next boat dropped the anchor behind and only slightly to the side of the one in front of us, we picked that battle. That was too much. They did reanchor slightly farther away, but now very close to another boat whose crew didn’t seem bothered at all. Maybe they were French too.

Last Bar Before the Jungle. It reminds me of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Just minutes later, a huge 70-foot catamaran (for reference, Ñandú is 41 feet) made its way barely fitting between us and our newest neighbors, and then past us to the front row where there was barely enough space to turn around (for the non-sailors reading this blog, and also for the benefit of some boat charterers out there, you can’t park your boat as if it was a car: you need space, first to backup a couple of boat lengths after dropping the anchor, and then to swing around your anchor). Luckily the captain came to his senses and moved to a slightly less crowded space, where they had to use a stern line to the beach to keep the boat from swinging. It seems that they really, really wanted to be close to the beach.

Who wouldn’t want to be close to this beach?

Even though we had already paid the buoy for a second night, we got ready to leave, but we reconsidered and stayed. We spent the rest of the day sulking and bitching, nostalgic of the past when the beach wasn’t crowded.

Union Island

The next day we moved early to Chatham Bay in Union Island. A review we had read said that Chatham Bay was a relief from the Cays, because you are separated from your neighbors by yards instead of feet. It is a large bay that could fit a hundred boats, and we found only six when we arrived. It was indeed a relief… which lasted only until mid-afternoon. We had chosen the right place for peace and solitude, only at the wrongest of all moments. A fleet of forty catamarans, each crewed by six to ten young and energetic partygoers, started arriving one by one. And they were French! Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but as I’ve just said, they seem to have no problem with boat coziness.

It was the Hippocup Rally, “the national nautical rally of the interns and doctors of France”, 24th edition. I have the hunch now that Hippo is short for Hippocrates, not Hippopotamus. The winner of the previous edition gets to organize the next one. Given that each boat was ornamented as if it was a parade, I presume judging to determine the winner was not based on speed. We were literally in the middle of it all, because we had anchored by the beach where preparations for the all-night party were taking shape. So, there we were, separated by mere feet again, surrounded by the BDSM-themed Fistiboat, the Greek-themed Poseidon, the cocaine-themed Pablo, the Pussy Wagon, the Unicorns and Rainbows, and many more, with their crew dressed (or undressed) accordingly. If Waterworld had spring breaks this is what it would look like.

The other cruising boat in that corner of the bay decided to leave. We do love quiet nights, but this was getting too interesting to pass.

“Are you leaving tomorrow (please)?” we asked our closest neighbors.

“Oui”. Alright, the decision is made: we’re staying to enjoy the show, and will rest the following night on a quiet Chatham Bay.

“Where are you going next?”

“I don’t know” answered one. “Union something” said another.

“This is Union Island.”

“Oh. Then I don’t know.”

They invited us to the beach party, but anchored where we were, it was just a formality since we felt we were already part of it. For the party they rented the installations of a small beach restaurant, to which they added concert-sized sound systems, stage, and screen. It’s a fairly isolated beach which by land can only be accessed through a terrible mile-long thing that was once a road, which takes twenty minutes on a 4WD. My hat off to the organizers that pulled that feat.

For us spectators, the wild and pristine scenery siding with a dark night to confine a rebellious microworld of laser lights, outrageous customs, techno music and modern revelry was a unique and surreal experience.

The music stopped at 5AM sharp, with the first signs of daylight. For many, though, the party wasn’t over, and they continued dancing on their boats until the sun was well up.

Fistiboat still partying. If you are prudish, don’t try to make sense out of their flag.

Hard to believe there were hundreds of people wallowing here the previous night

Petit Saint Vincent

After a finally quiet night at Chatham Bay the last thing we wanted was to bump again into the Hippo rally. We had no idea about their itinerary (neither did they, apparently) , but Petit Saint Vincent sounded safe, as it is a small anchorage on a private island that caters to affluent guests with its exclusive boutique hotel.

We were right: no hippopotamuses in Petit Saint Vincent. However, we still got crowded in a strange and ghostly manner. I woke up past midnight and went up to the cockpit to make sure we were still in the same place. Still half asleep, I looked out and didn’t recognize the place at all. Where I expected to see a small wooden dock, I was now seeing a building. A huge building, just a couple hundred feet from us. It was so large that I had to hunch to see the top of it through the window. Oh my god! I almost panicked. Have we dragged all the way to Florida?? Where the fuck are we?

Once fully awake thanks to the shock, I could make sense of the situation. No, we hadn’t moved towards a building. We hadn’t moved at all. Rather, the building stealthily came to us. Only it wasn’t a building but the bridge of a cargo boat unloading construction materials to the island. My hat off this time to the ship’s captain, who managed to position the large ship in the little space between us and the tiny dock, throw a bow anchor and then back up to the dock, all without even waking us up. I said to myself that it was going to be interesting to see them maneuvering for casting off the next day… only that when I woke up in the morning the ghost ship had already vanished, as silently as she arrived.

The abnormal seems to be the new normal for us.