Birthdays, and other musings
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Lydia Fell
Nov 19, 2009, 12:42:05 PM11/19/09
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11/19/2009 – Marsh Harbour
Today is my mother’s birthday. She’s 84 years old, and has just accepted an invitation to join us on Flying Pig for 6 weeks in the Bahamas sometime this winter. She’s been, as you know, on the boat for varying periods of time for the last three years, which is an amazing statement in and of itself to her physical aptitude, considering her age. Each year, I know she wonders if she’ll be up to another trip; climbing in and out of the cockpit, stepping the 2 feet down onto the narrow swim platform, scrambling from there into an often precariously rocking dinghy, and then (possibly worse, depending on how many rum punches she’s had on the beach), reversing that procedure. It takes leg strength, biceps and balance – all the things that 84 year olds have to fight for, and we younger folk take for granted. Even just pumping (read: flushing) the toilet on board gave our 12 year old grand-daughter a sore arm! So, you can imagine what a challenge it would be to an older person, unless, of course, they’ve been doing it every day for the last many years.
I hope and pray that I got my mother’s genes, and not my father’s (who passed away painfully at 68 with an aortic aneurysm), because I have every intention of being on this boat when I’m 84, too. Unless something happens.
And, as my mother says, “Something will happen, dear. No one gets out of this alive, you know”. And she’s right. We have plans, we have intentions, we have goals. Without them, I suspect we rather lose our sense of direction, and without direction, well … nothing seems to get done at all. I, for one, am not happy with an utter lack of structure. I just sort of disappear inside myself and become even more reclusive than my nature dictates.
Recently, I’ve found myself being entirely indulgent, flopping around the boat, day and night, completely immersed in the latest book of my fancy. I suck them up like nectar, and when I begin to feel guilty about the fact that I’m not “living” while I’m reading, I remind myself that I was never able to read when I was in the other working world. But worse, it’s a hard current to paddle myself out of – I lose interest in the world around me, I don’t want to socialize with other cruisers, I don’t want to be a part of the picture.
I was in this leave-me-alone mode just before my birthday last week, and the weather wasn’t looking ideal for hoisting the sails and changing the scenery. Thankfully, along came Fred and Linda, off Conchessa ( a beautiful catamaran) who fairly forced me to make plans to “do” something to celebrate my 56th year on this earth. And so, I reluctantly put my book away, and two hours later, on the 13th November, we sailed over to Hope Town, following Conchessa through the harbor at high tide, barely avoiding the bottom with our 7’ keel, and tied up to a mooring ball in possibly the prettiest anchorage we’ve seen.
Linda is a criminal attorney – her personal story is long, heroic and fascinating, punctuated with perfect love, horrifying brushes with death, and all the meat for a great autobiography. And the girl’s got Energy, boy howdy. We had barely tied up to our mooring ball, when she’d whisked us off in her dinghy to visit other friends of theirs, Alec and Laurie, who had their Hatteras motor yacht tied up in a slip at Hope Town Hideaways, a simply beautiful, small resort of quaint rental units, private beach and swimming pool overlooking the harbor, amid lush, tropical gardens and grass that begged bare feet.
Alec and Laurie, both pilots, both with intriguing life-stories, joined us back on Conchessa, where we all pooled the interesting chapters of our lives over sun-downers, and planned what to do the next day, being my birthday.
I spent most of the next day with Linda, lunching out in Hope Town, wandering the shops and boutiques, enjoying being off the boat … a perfectly wonderful day. Dinner in the evening with the 6 of us was scrumptious and educational, as Alec attempted to teach us in two hours, everything you ever wanted to know about filleting fish, species by species, with absolutely no bones left. Another book in the making. All in all, it was a fabulous birthday celebration, but then again, every day out here is a celebration for me.
We spent another day of hanging out with Fred and Linda, cooking dinner for them on their boat, playing Mexican train until 1 am, and then finally, on the morning of the 16th at a very early high tide, we untied ourselves from the mooring ball, and motored back out of the harbor over that skinny water.
We were planning to head south to Sandy Cay, where we wanted to get in some snorkeling time with Fred and Linda, who, having a shallow draft on Conchessa, didn’t have to take the deep draft route that we had to, and got to sleep in that morning after our way-too-late-for-cruisers evening together. We listened to the weather on the way out, and decided that it wasn’t going to be a calm anchorage off Sandy Cay, and the beat back to Marsh Harbor didn’t make any sense. So, we hoisted the sails and went the way the wind was blowing, which happened to be Marsh Harbor, dropping our anchor in what is becoming our usual spot, not far from the dinghy dock.
So, now we’re here again, doing our daily hoof around town, checking out which eateries are serving Thanksgiving dinner next week, and focusing on boat chores, which are growing in number. It’s time, I decided, to get involved in some volunteer work, to do some paying back, as well as paying forward whenever possible, to stop being a “visitor”. So, today, I’m off to Buck-a-Book, a wonderful bookstore run solely by volunteers, and which profits go directly to the Wild Horses of Abaco, the most endangered breed of horse in the world. We met with Mimi, the sole champion for this fund, a tireless, wisp of a woman who single-handedly takes on the Bahamian government in her quest to save the horses, and asks for nothing more than their preservation, and some help from whomever is motivated and able. I am both. And there’s that wonderful opportunity to browse through all those yummy books, find all my brilliant authors!
And on that note, I’ll get some lunch, jump in the dinghy, and get on with my life here. I have some direction, again.
Be well, be happy, do good things
Love, Lydia
S/V Flying Pig
Morgan 46 #2
"The only way to live is to have a dream green and growing in your life - anything else is just existing and is a waste of breath."
Ann Davison
Today is my mother’s birthday. She’s 84 years old, and has just accepted an invitation to join us on Flying Pig for 6 weeks in the Bahamas sometime this winter. She’s been, as you know, on the boat for varying periods of time for the last three years, which is an amazing statement in and of itself to her physical aptitude, considering her age. Each year, I know she wonders if she’ll be up to another trip; climbing in and out of the cockpit, stepping the 2 feet down onto the narrow swim platform, scrambling from there into an often precariously rocking dinghy, and then (possibly worse, depending on how many rum punches she’s had on the beach), reversing that procedure. It takes leg strength, biceps and balance – all the things that 84 year olds have to fight for, and we younger folk take for granted. Even just pumping (read: flushing) the toilet on board gave our 12 year old grand-daughter a sore arm! So, you can imagine what a challenge it would be to an older person, unless, of course, they’ve been doing it every day for the last many years.
I hope and pray that I got my mother’s genes, and not my father’s (who passed away painfully at 68 with an aortic aneurysm), because I have every intention of being on this boat when I’m 84, too. Unless something happens.
And, as my mother says, “Something will happen, dear. No one gets out of this alive, you know”. And she’s right. We have plans, we have intentions, we have goals. Without them, I suspect we rather lose our sense of direction, and without direction, well … nothing seems to get done at all. I, for one, am not happy with an utter lack of structure. I just sort of disappear inside myself and become even more reclusive than my nature dictates.
Recently, I’ve found myself being entirely indulgent, flopping around the boat, day and night, completely immersed in the latest book of my fancy. I suck them up like nectar, and when I begin to feel guilty about the fact that I’m not “living” while I’m reading, I remind myself that I was never able to read when I was in the other working world. But worse, it’s a hard current to paddle myself out of – I lose interest in the world around me, I don’t want to socialize with other cruisers, I don’t want to be a part of the picture.
I was in this leave-me-alone mode just before my birthday last week, and the weather wasn’t looking ideal for hoisting the sails and changing the scenery. Thankfully, along came Fred and Linda, off Conchessa ( a beautiful catamaran) who fairly forced me to make plans to “do” something to celebrate my 56th year on this earth. And so, I reluctantly put my book away, and two hours later, on the 13th November, we sailed over to Hope Town, following Conchessa through the harbor at high tide, barely avoiding the bottom with our 7’ keel, and tied up to a mooring ball in possibly the prettiest anchorage we’ve seen.
Linda is a criminal attorney – her personal story is long, heroic and fascinating, punctuated with perfect love, horrifying brushes with death, and all the meat for a great autobiography. And the girl’s got Energy, boy howdy. We had barely tied up to our mooring ball, when she’d whisked us off in her dinghy to visit other friends of theirs, Alec and Laurie, who had their Hatteras motor yacht tied up in a slip at Hope Town Hideaways, a simply beautiful, small resort of quaint rental units, private beach and swimming pool overlooking the harbor, amid lush, tropical gardens and grass that begged bare feet.
Alec and Laurie, both pilots, both with intriguing life-stories, joined us back on Conchessa, where we all pooled the interesting chapters of our lives over sun-downers, and planned what to do the next day, being my birthday.
I spent most of the next day with Linda, lunching out in Hope Town, wandering the shops and boutiques, enjoying being off the boat … a perfectly wonderful day. Dinner in the evening with the 6 of us was scrumptious and educational, as Alec attempted to teach us in two hours, everything you ever wanted to know about filleting fish, species by species, with absolutely no bones left. Another book in the making. All in all, it was a fabulous birthday celebration, but then again, every day out here is a celebration for me.
We spent another day of hanging out with Fred and Linda, cooking dinner for them on their boat, playing Mexican train until 1 am, and then finally, on the morning of the 16th at a very early high tide, we untied ourselves from the mooring ball, and motored back out of the harbor over that skinny water.
We were planning to head south to Sandy Cay, where we wanted to get in some snorkeling time with Fred and Linda, who, having a shallow draft on Conchessa, didn’t have to take the deep draft route that we had to, and got to sleep in that morning after our way-too-late-for-cruisers evening together. We listened to the weather on the way out, and decided that it wasn’t going to be a calm anchorage off Sandy Cay, and the beat back to Marsh Harbor didn’t make any sense. So, we hoisted the sails and went the way the wind was blowing, which happened to be Marsh Harbor, dropping our anchor in what is becoming our usual spot, not far from the dinghy dock.
So, now we’re here again, doing our daily hoof around town, checking out which eateries are serving Thanksgiving dinner next week, and focusing on boat chores, which are growing in number. It’s time, I decided, to get involved in some volunteer work, to do some paying back, as well as paying forward whenever possible, to stop being a “visitor”. So, today, I’m off to Buck-a-Book, a wonderful bookstore run solely by volunteers, and which profits go directly to the Wild Horses of Abaco, the most endangered breed of horse in the world. We met with Mimi, the sole champion for this fund, a tireless, wisp of a woman who single-handedly takes on the Bahamian government in her quest to save the horses, and asks for nothing more than their preservation, and some help from whomever is motivated and able. I am both. And there’s that wonderful opportunity to browse through all those yummy books, find all my brilliant authors!
And on that note, I’ll get some lunch, jump in the dinghy, and get on with my life here. I have some direction, again.
Be well, be happy, do good things
Love, Lydia
S/V Flying Pig
Morgan 46 #2
"The only way to live is to have a dream green and growing in your life - anything else is just existing and is a waste of breath."
Ann Davison
Lydia Fell
Nov 21, 2009, 9:37:38 AM11/21/09
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Lydia Fell
Nov 23, 2009, 10:30:47 AM11/23/09
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wonderful
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