Ode to Angelo

There are many people that I miss while we’re cruising. Our daughters and son-in-law are certainly at the top of the list. Specific situations can call up a pang in the heart for this friend or that relative. We find ourselves constantly saying “I wish so and so were here to see this.” Or, “So and so would really enjoy that.” But, every four weeks, there is one person that I absolutely long for, yearn for, would almost die for – Angelo, my hairdresser.

Cruisers face multiple challenges in maintaining the routines of home. Washing clothes, getting groceries, internet access, cell phone service, repairs on the boat – all of these present frustrations at various and sundry times. For me, a woman of short tress, the number one obstacle to normalcy is getting a decent haircut.

Every beauty school in the world must teach the same fundamentals. First, you ask the customer “What would you like done today?” This, of course, is intended to lead the customer to believe that you 1) care and 2) can execute their desires. I always go into an elaborate description of how I want the sides to angle up, with a little over the ears, and don’t cut too much off the top. “Leave me something to work with,” I say. This leads to the second fundamental. You smile nicely and nod your head as if to indicate that you 1) understand completely and 2) know exactly how to do this.

Once past the second fundamental, all bets are off. Actually, I’ve decided that the most practical thing for me to do when asked “What would you like done today?” is to answer “I’d like for you to make me look as much like Leonard Nimoy as Dr. Spock in Star Trek as possible. Do you think you can do that?” This will accomplish two things – they will be free to do what they are going to do to me any way, and my expectation of what I will look like when I leave the salon won’t be a surprise.

At least in the Bahamas my scalpings don’t cost me much. It’s doubly painful to have to shell out $40 or $50 for someone’s creative interpretation of my instructions. Yes, Angelo, I miss you more than I miss just about anybody. If I can stand it, I may just let my hair grow until I see you again.

Copyright 2005 – Beth Tally

Eli

Today is March 7, and we’ve been back at No Name Harbor on Key Biscayne waiting for a couple of consecutive days of Southerly or Westerly winds to lay down the Gulf Stream so that we can cross over to the Bahamas. It’s a lot like waiting for the moon to come to the seventh house and Jupiter to align with Mars. Tomorrow looks like the day to do the crossing. We fortunately have hooked up with some other sailors who already have experience going over to Cat Cay and then on to Chub Key. There will be at least three boats, a great source of comfort to me.

Our communication will probably a little more sporadic now, I’m sure. I’ll continue to write and send you things as possible.

Speaking of which, it’s been quite a while since I wrote about our travels. We’ve been from Key West to Marathon Key and up the West coast of Florida as far as Fort Myers. We backtracked down the Gulf to Marathon and took several days to come here. I’ve deliberated about the best way to consolidate all of our experiences into some manageable format. I certainly don’t want to exhaust either you or myself with the telling of tales.

So, I’m going to focus on some of the people who made this stretch of our trip interesting and enjoyable – Eli, Bruce and Susan, “Cruddy, “ and Betty. They’ll come to you as vignettes.

Eli –

For the five days that we hung on the mooring ball at Key West, we noticed that our batteries were not holding a charge like they should. We would run the engine every morning and every afternoon to give them a boost, but before long, the battery tester at the navigation station would indicate a drop sometimes below 50%. The refrigerator resorted to cycling over and over again looking for enough power to run. At night, it would invariably wake me up until I resorted to just cutting it off until morning.

We planned to leave Key West on February 8 and the day before, John discovered that there was a dead cell in one of the batteries. This was somewhat perplexing because the battery was not even two years old. After discussing it with me, he determined that the prudent thing for us to do was to buy new batteries. I couldn’t imagine having to wake up every night to turn off the refrigerator and we surely didn’t want to be dealing with this problem once we crossed over to the Bahamas. So, he began researching where might be the best place to get this done. He decided that we would head back to Marathon Key. We would need a place to stay as well as access to either a West Marine or a NAPA store. The Fero Blanco Marina, where we had docked on the way up, appeared to be the best option. He placed a call to the marina and made a reservation for a slip for the following night.

The next morning, was bright and sunny. The persistent 20-knot wind from the North that we endured during our entire stay at Key West was now coming from the Northeast. We started the engine, slipped off of the mooring ball, and made our way back around the northern tip of Fleming Key into Man of War Harbor taking us around the western-most side of Key West. As we rounded Fleming Key, John noticed that smoke from the engine was blowing out of the raw water coolant vent on the starboard side of the boat. He pulled the throttle down to idle and asked me to check and see if there was any water flowing through the vent. I leaned over the lifelines and could see that there was some water spewing out, but not as healthy a flow as normal.

John checked the engine temperature gauge and could see that at our normal 3200 RPM’s, the engine was running hotter as well. Usually, at that speed, the engine temperature lingers around 180-degrees. It was getting up above 200. He decided to see how things would go if we backed it down to around 2800 RPM’s. It might slow us down, but at least we could keep going. (From a practical standpoint, this meant that the 43-mile trip from Key West to Marathon Key would go from almost seven hours to almost nine.) As John pulled back on the throttle, the strategy seemed to work. Even though the engine continued to blow smoke, the temperature stayed around 180 degrees. So we continued on around Key West and began our way back down the Hawk Channel towards Marathon.

To my chagrin, as we rounded the Key, we were met with 3 to 4-foot swells and gusts up to 30-knots. We sloshed along for a few miles, our reduced speed making Up Jinks barrel from side to side. In order to relieve some of the pressure on the motor, and to perhaps make our ride a little more comfortable, John suggested that we put up the sails. Now, I usually balk at such an idea because, for the life of me, I can’t seem to overcome my discomfort with the job of holding Up Jinks into such a stiff wind while John goes out on the deck to raise the mainsail. But, it was so rough, that even I wanted to do whatever was necessary to better the situation.

After we raised the mainsail and unfurled the jib, I killed the engine, and then tried to bring Up Jinks close to the course prescribed by the Autopilot for our next way point. Unfortunately, that course was such a “close haul” (almost into) position to the wind that Up Jinks severely heeled over. The heel was so fast and so far that everything in the salon not completely secured rushed to the opposite side of the boat. So, I eased off of that tack, John let the boom out and we headed towards a broad reach (more 90-degrees sail to wind). Unfortunately, that put us on course for somewhere in Spain. After wrestling with the helm for a few minutes, I gladly handed it back over to John.

We were forced to tack constantly because our desired course was directly into the wind. So finally, we decided to bring the sails in and motor to Marathon, even with the engine running hot. At this point, John asked me to be on the helm so that he could make the phone calls necessary to deal with the battery problem. He was hoping to find someone who carried Exide batteries because that was what we had, and since one of them was relatively new, it still might be under warranty.

For the next hour, I stood behind the helm, swaying from starboard to port and back again, periodically checking the engine temperature and noting where we were on the chart. While John searched the cruising guides for phone numbers, I was fantasizing about how nice it was going to be to actually tie up somewhere after five nights of swinging on a mooring ball. There would also be the consolation of the wonderful shower I was going to take when we docked at Fero Blanco.

John called West Marine first and they suggested that he call the NAPA Parts Store because Exide makes batteries for NAPA. So, he did and found out that, yes, Exide makes their marine batteries, but since our batteries didn’t have the NAPA logo on them, there would be no warranty. The larger issue then became buying batteries and negotiating to have someone haul the old batteries out and put the new ones in. They weigh about 150 pounds each, plus you really need to have knowledge of the electronics involved. Once John knew we could get the batteries, he asked the man at the NAPA store if there was anyone who might be able to do this for us, and he recommended “Eli” and gave John Eli’s phone number. John called him and, ironically, Eli was at the NAPA store at that very moment. So, John told Eli what we needed and they struck a deal. Eli would get the batteries at NAPA and meet us at Fero Blanco the next morning at 9:00.

I’m guessing at this point we were about half way to Marathon Key and had been swinging right, left, up, then down for almost four hours. The engine continued to blow smoke, so we had to keep the RPM’s down. John hid his consternation about the motor behind all of the concern over the batteries. Secretly, he was thinking that we might be in Marathon Key longer than overnight.

Around 2:30 or 3:00, John decided to touch base with Fero Blanco to let them know that we were going to be late arriving and we might have to stay a little longer the next day because of our situation. He called the dockmaster and I could tell immediately that there was something wrong by the way John’s shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry, what?” “No, I called yesterday to make a reservation for tonight.” “Huh, you were expecting us last night?” “Well, do you have anything available for tonight?” “Oh, okay, well, can you recommend another place that we might call?”

My reverie popped as if someone had poked it with a needle. It was already approaching 4:00 PM. This was February, the height of the “season.” We stood a better chance winning Powerball than we did finding a slip at Marathon Key. John began calling other marinas – first, Burdine’s Waterfront, then Marathon Boat Yard, then Boot Key Harbor City Marina. He even inquired about mooring balls inside the bridge at Boot Harbor, but they were all taken. I was beginning to understand just how Mary and Joseph might have felt.

The young lady at Boot Key Harbor City Marina cheerily suggested that we could anchor on the perimeter of the mooring field if we allowed 75 feet of swing room from the moored boats. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t really be such a problem, my disappointment notwithstanding. We’ve resorted to anchoring when we couldn’t get dockage. But, John had made all of the arrangements with Eli and it just wouldn’t be very practical to dinghy 300 pounds worth of batteries out into the middle of Boot Key Harbor. Plus, we had the problem with the engine, the cause of which was yet unknown to us. It appeared, however, that anchoring was exactly what we would have to do.

John called Eli to tell him that our plans were all messed up. After several minutes of conversation, Eli said “Give me just a few minutes. Let me see if I can work something out.” John hung up the phone and we both sat in the cockpit of Up Jinks anxiously wondering what Eli could possibly do when no one else had been able to assist us. In a short while, the cell phone rang and Eli was on the other end. His big voice came booming through so loudly that I could hear what he was saying even though John had the earpiece to his ear. “When you get to the entrance to Boot Key, radio Tina at Pancho’s on Channel 16. I’ve made arrangements for you to tie up at the east end of their fuel dock.”

“Man, thank you Eli. How did that work out?”

“Oh, I do some work at their place and refer people to them to fill up with gas. No problem. I’ll see you there at 9:00 in the morning with the batteries.”

This certainly wasn’t love at first sight because I had never laid eyes on Eli. But, if one human can love another without any significant point of reference other than a kind deed, I loved Eli. Not to mention that there was a great sense of satisfaction in sliding by all of those marinas that couldn’t accommodate us and easing into our own, personally reserved, very special place in the universe called Pancho’s Fuel Dock.

It was around 6:00 by the time we finally came to the channel markers leading into Boot Key Harbor. John radioed Tina at Pancho’s and she acknowledged that she was expecting us. To our surprise and delight, not only did the dock mean we could tie up, but there was also electricity. I had to forego the shower, but I wouldn’t be swaying all night, so one out of two wasn’t bad.

Once we secured the boat, John pulled out the manual for the Yanmar Engine. After a few minutes, he opened up the engine compartment in our berth, reached down and pulled out the raw water filter. It was full of seaweed which was keeping a strong flow of water from going through the engine for cooling. Apparently, the necessity to run our engine so much while on the mooring ball at Key West meant that an inordinate amount of garbage flowed into the filter. Once John replaced the filter and started the engine again, we could see that the usual strong flow of water dispensed from the vent. The temperature gauge stayed within the normal range. Thank goodness, that’s all it was.

We cleaned up a little and changed clothes. John treated me to another great dinner at Castaway’s. We came back to Up Jinks and slept like logs. It had been a very anxious day, but thanks to Eli it ended well.

The next morning at exactly 9:00 Angel Eli appeared at our companionway. He was huge with a broad, ready grin and impish eyes. His 16-year old football-player son was with him, brought along to lift the 150-pound batteries up and down the companionway. Within an hour, Eli had us all fixed up. I’m sure he’s still wondering why I was gushing so about all that he had done for us. In his mind, it was just a simple place to tie up a boat. For me, it might as well have been the Ritz Carlton. Thanks, always, Eli.