Ah...tune in...isolation was no problem...none at all. Storms...well, avoided them when we could but sometimes old Nellie Nature has other ideas. We had a saying "whether it's cold or whether it's hot we're going to have weather whether or not". True...true.
Will talk about storms later....but isolation was curious:
I left a successful job in sales. 3 days before we left, I landed the second largest printing account in the Pacific NW...no one could believe I walked away from all the commissions (headaches, middle of the night press checks, acid reflux etc.). Money...not important. Me? Very important. But out where God left his flipflops, on a boat where DH called the shots and I cooked and cleaned...I felt very ..."pink" (pink jobs and blue jobs). It bothered me. I had no recognition (commissions, clients needing me etc.) and no sense of ME. So, Bob put me in charge of the Weather. Right!!! BFD! So, I started a crash course, self taught, on reading weather maps, talking to boats, ships etc. about weather....and I got rather good. I made the decisions about where we went and when...(power...a heady drug). So, I listened to single sideband radio and VHF a lot. This was my connex with the world.
In the meantime, listening to radio (singlesideband and vhf close at hand) I made friends. Out in the middle of the ocean I could call up Max in Sebastapol and he would patch me in to my son in Bellingham, or my sister or my friend in Seattle. I listened to fishing boats talking....'nets' (like a forum) would have radio schedules and we would talk to eachother every day, exchange information, stories etc. It was family. We were never alone.
I remember one day sitting in the cockpit in the vast middle of the ocean en route to Chile...not a breath of wind. We were motoring ...there wasn't a mark on the water, yet there was an ever so quiet and subtle movement to the sea...as far as the eye could see. I thought to myself...'this ocean never sleeps, she is breathing'...the water only changed heights of about2" but it was obvious. Except ;for the motor...it was still. When I am feeling harrassment or crowded, I go back to that place.
Another time in some bouncy seas with a lot of wind, a tiny yellow finch was blown onto the boat...we were 300 miles from the Galapagos and he dropped in. He hopped about the boat, totally unafraid of us or the boat, went below, looked for insects, and came out again. He slept in my lap for about an hour and tried to fly off ....and soon was back again. I felt so badly for him...obviously he was blown off course and was trying so hard to get back on schedule. Finally he left for the 3rd time and we never saw him again. We named him Fred.
I, the gregarious salesperson typeA personality drank in the isolation and quiet like a parched camel at a river. It was exquisite!
One place in Chile we were in a cove, inside a bay, inside another bay, tied down with 2 anchors out and 4 lines ashore tied to trees while storm after storm after storm came thru. After the 2nd day we stopped talking and just read our books, after the 6th day the paints came out and after the 10th day, I hid anything pointed!!! HAHAHA...just kidding. But we really didn't need to talk...we played music, we rread and we went crazy. It's very simple. After day 12 the wind stopped and we went out in the dingy for a tour around the place...no where to land, no where to walk, 100' cliffs all around...back to the boat, back to 14 sq. ft. of floor space. Life was simple. I would call up the Chilean Navy guys on the radio who were as bored as I was (they were on radio duty) and we would exchange recipes, tell jokes.... We visited an isolated Lighthouse on the coast once...amazing. After a horrendous trip thru the bay to the dock...we had to walk 5 miles to the lighthouse...the Oxen couldn'tget thru because of the landslides.
I learned how blessed we are to have what we do and to live where we do. I learned how blessed they are with no TV, no traffic, no commercials. Life without commercials is so REAL....better than drugs/wine/coffee, any day!!!
Isolation...? I learned who I AM and I learned to like myself (not much choice...I was all I had!!!). I also learned to beat my husband at Scrabble which made me delighted! We went places in Chile and in Fiji where no boats had ever been....we found beautiful places to anchor that we told the Navy about and we were able to give them names: Caleta Snibs (Bob's Mother), Caleta Elyxir (our boat), Estero Capt. Jack (my father). In Fiji we got special permission from the President of Fiji (thru the Chilean Ambassador to NZ whom I met at a bank in Tahiti and we all became good friends) to sail to the Lau group...a group of islands speaking their own version of Fijian, with their own history and very protected by the government. We sailed into villages never visited before...became part of the island life, were never asked for anything but were given everything. If I got bored I would go ashore and 'hang' with the women who wanted to know all about my life like I wanted to know abut theirs...their kids were terified of me at first. We would go to the cement wash area and wash clothes (BroshieBroshie in Fijian)....a cement slab, a stiff bristle brush and lots of harsh detergent....whites were WHITE. They were the top choir in all the country wide competitions so we washed clothes singing "Rock of Ages", 'She'll be Comin around the Mountain" and other old hymns in Fijian!!! Their harmony was natuaral...no instruments. We were invited to church and sat up at the altar with the preacher and given hymn books to sing from ....in Fijean...and they all thought we spoke the language. How can you miss? Onward Chrisian Soldiers in a monosyllabic language....we really impressed them!!! Everything was so simple. So uncomplicated. So basic. So real.
OH, I edited this to say that my FAVORITE was Amazing Grace....I still get chicken skin when I hear the remembered voices singing in perfect harmony...and when 4 or 5 would start...the whole village would join in....and it was Amazing Grace.
The first big supermarket we went to was in Panama and I had a list and off Iwent. I came home with nothing. I couldn't decide. Too many choices. I just wanted (for instance) olives and wanted the olives on the shelf...not a choice of 4 sizes, 16 brands, 5 colors....you get the picture.
Off to bed...TTYL
This message was edited Nov 17, 2005 5:03 PM
