Carpe Feline

We sat at The Reef, a BAR/restaurant atop a ramshackle two-story stone building at the edge of a litter-strewn beach, where the Gulf of Honduras meets its western border slapping at the shore of southern Belize, trying to escape the ghastly heat of Punta Gorda (PG), a third-world town just north of Guatemala of about 4500 folks from the various Central American indigenous peoples and funky tourists like us, there to experience a moment of it. It was Saturday, and by sheer coincidence we had caught the weekend of the cacao/wine festival complete with tents and tarps forming booths for the various co-op groups and local organizations extolling the virtues of, say, white cacao being to my understanding the jungle’s response to WD-40, strung together there on that triangle that served as the town square with the requisite huge speakers thumping away with local talent in the background. It was all pretty cool, but way too fucking hot without a whisper of air—I was already drenched in sweat just paying for the extra provisions; doing neither the shopping nor the carting, just the handing over of money—and had tasted about as much of that experience as I wanted. Thus I went searching for hydration and a breeze and found The Reef, from which I cold enjoy the activity below on the main street of PG.  

I was—if such a thing could be said about life in paradise—disgruntled. We’d had to motor all day the day before because the trades never started stirring until around 3:30, and by then you’d better be getting to your anchorage, not just setting out to sail. I don’t like motoring. If I wanted to motor, I wouldn’t get a sailboat. We’d settled on an anchorage at Frenchman’s Cay, about 12 miles from PG, where, after the ardors of finally getting anchored I observed, “Well, we’re protected on all but the other three directions of the compass.” No worry there, though. We awoke in the morning to a ghastly sauna, steam hanging over water smooth as a mirror, not a ripple of breath. We carried out our morning work with frequent plunges overboard until somebody prayed, “Jesus, let’s get under way. At least we’ll get a breeze while we motor,” and so we did, motoring the 12 miles to PG, though with scant heat relief, tying up at the town’s t-dock at about 11:30; by 1:00 I was at the BAR/restaurant disgruntled because here it was, the fourth day of our grand adventure, and we’d spent two of them motoring.  

Then the crew started showing up, and I forgot my disgruntlement for their presence and the fascination of trying to order a meal there at The Reef on the weekend of the cacao/wine festival. Ordering meals in that part of the world is interesting in general, because the choice isn’t what you want nor even what’s on the menu, but what they have. In our present case, the big festival party the night before had pretty well cleaned them out, though it took about four or five trips with the latest news, we don’t have that. We got to eating our compromises and I noticed the wind was piping up, so I called Gabbin’ Gary—who will never convince me he’s an introvert—by VHF because he was pulling security watch on the boat, “Yep, the wind’s picked up and bouncing the boat into the dock pretty good,” so I announced that we needed to get underway, and about an hour later we eased on down to the boat, and pulled out from the dock against a pretty stiff breeze forming little whitecaps, coming from, as per usual, the very direction we wanted to go, proving Gary’s adage, “Anywhere you want to sail in the Caribbean, that’s where the wind is coming from.”  

Gabbin’ Gary knows that because he’s sailed the Caribbean loop before, which is why he was the First Mate and so assigned to the helm for this particular leg (“sailing honcho”). So we consulted and decided we could sail it with maybe only one tack and so we raised sails and he trimmed them to an exquisite set and held a tight course and we began to haul ass. She gathered speed and raised up in the water and began skipping across the face of it, dancing on the backs of the smaller waves, smashing the more rambunctious ones into a billion diamonds raining over us. The winds boomed a rhythm in the sails and whistled a bizarre harmony in the shrouds and strutted its power and snatched my fluorescent orange Astros’ cap from my head as its toll, and I laughed thanks. Grown men—preachers!—were romping on the nets up front between the two hulls of the catamaran, what’s called the trampoline, through which the water blasts. Coffee DEEwayne—who earns that by his most gracious work of meeting our coffee needs every morning, even when he didn’t have galley duty—looked like a bouncing bear up there, shivering off the spray. His crew mate, Radio Tim—who once hosted a talk radio show—bounced next to him, each sending the other off into tumbles and squeals of delight ee yah! breaking through the water. Duane the Red hunched up there getting bathed in it, and NT Ray sat on the very front of the port hull, legs dangling over the edge, suspending his intellect for the rhythmic dunking. Manic George was, unbelievably, asleep in the main cabin, while John of the Northlands sat in there and read. Matchmaker Don chuffed on a cigar in the back of the cockpit, while silent Colleen of the Magnificent Menu—”Silent Col”—silently took it all in. I stood in a private space on the starboard cockpit coaming, hanging on to the bimini frame, from where I could see everything–the forever ocean and onrushing waves, the sails beautifully billowed against the sky and working to breathe the wind, the motion of the boat through the water, running and bucking. It became a sensual thing: I could feel the wind; I could feel the boat’s rigging humming in its work; I was soaked with the jewels of smashed waves; I could hear bangs and clanks from below decks as she smashed along; and did my own dance on a deck that bucked up and down in a full gallop. It seemed to me I was on the edge of a wild thing, as if we were not so much sailing as that the wind and water and boat had conspired to take us for a ride, shouting only hang on, to the exhilaration of ones who’ve been treated to a ride on the back of a tiger. The boat became its name: Carpe Feline  

Seize the Tiger, indeed.  

We rode this magnificent tiger for an ecstatic two hours, and then alas had to tack toward our anchorage. And while we sailed nearly as fast on the new course, the direction of sail relative to the wind created a far more sedate, subdued sail. Of course, it too, was marvelous, for how can you be sailing in Belize and not be thrilled? Indeed, we had several more days of marvelous sailing. But we did not again ride the tiger. We sailed and loved it. But the ecstasy comes when the tiger lets you hang on for the ride.  

It is the gracious mercy of the Fierce Landscape.