BVI

The Water

24 February, 2019

One of the things I like about living where we live in Boston is that I get to walk over the ocean every day crossing the Summer Street Bridge to Fort Point. No matter how big a hurry I am in I find my eyes wandering to the surface of the water. It is choppy, churning, glassy smooth? Is the tide — without measuring, there must be a ten-foot variation in the Fort Point Channel — going in or out? Can you differentiate the ripples from the tidal flow from the chop the wind is blowing up? What’s under there, can I see the bridge pilings? There’s an endless flow of information — mostly useless, sure — that I can sample, and I find it delightful.

It’s safe to say that I don’t find land nearly as interesting, unless I am viewing it from the water. The interface between land and water is endlessly fascinating (I’m far from unique here I guess judging from all the time we spend at beaches). Even far out at sea, though, water is interesting. It reflects what’s around — the sky, clouds, your boat — while distorting it according to its mood. Occasionally interesting things like turtles pop out of it.

As I think about it, it occurs to me I like the same thing about people. I’d rather have a conversation with someone who is able to absorb, change, color, and reflect the world in interesting ways, than a conversation with someone who is not reflecting, or not changing. Even the music I like — jazz, bluegrass — involves absorbing, coloring, and reflecting back, hopefully in real time. The interplay of light on flow, or chop, or storm surge, is like the reinforcing feedback loop between a great soloist and a great drummer, where the net result is greater than either could achieve alone.

Unfortunately I am afraid reflection is out of fashion these days, at least in the shouting contest of social media and the popular press. I am certain it will come back in one day though, just like the tide.

It’s My Birthday

20 February, 2019

And I am spending it in the best way possible: sitting in a micro-architecture security conference that I organized!

Here is a photo of some birthday calamondins. That is all.

(They’re not quite ripe yet… Once they ripen they are the best garnish ever for a Gin and Tonic.)

Avoidable Drama

3 February, 2019

The Moorings, looking west from the north side of A dock. B dock was destroyed in the hurricane and is being replaced, hence the barge and crane. If you look carefully to the left of the barge you will see the mast of a sunken boat sticking out of the water — a Hazard to Navigation.

I was chatting with a friend in the BVI last week who had seen an interview with someone — I don’t recall who, unfortunately — who made the point that there are two kinds of drama to be dealt with in life: Avoidable Drama and Unavoidable Drama. Hurricanes, and interacting with your family, are examples of Unavoidable Drama. There is nothing you can do to mitigate or prevent it, you just have to deal with it as best you can.

Avoidable Drama, on the other hand, can and should be avoided, unless you are a Dramatic Person and thrive on that sort of thing. (Probably worth mentioning that most Dramatic People don’t realize they are inducing Avoidable Drama, rather they believe they are victims of Unavoidable Drama. But that is another blog post.)

Anyway — Avoidable Drama was in full force during our return to The Moorings dock A on Friday afternoon. Total disorganization on the dock was made worse by a few as yet un-dealt-with shipwrecks in the harbor (Unavoidable Drama). This was further aggravated by a whole bunch of catamaran crews with no idea what they were doing (Unavoidable Drama). The combination turned what should have been a straightforward procedure into a stressful interaction with lots of yelling back and forth between us and The Moorings boat handlers that left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth at the end of a really nice trip.

Why was this avoidable, when there are so many unavoidable elements present? Well, all that had to be done to remove the drama and lower everyone’s temperature would have been to tell all the boats coming in to hold in Road Harbor (where there is plenty of sea room) until cleared to enter the marina. This would only have required a single organized person with a radio, a pencil, and a pad of paper. Instead, the standard procedure was to tell every boat that radioed for permission to enter to come to the end of dock A and wait for further instructions. Unfortunately, because of the above-mentioned Unavoidable Drama (shipwrecks), there is only really room for one boat at the end of dock A. Try to put us and 8 clueless catamaran captains there at the same time, and hilarity ensues.

(What did we do when faced with this situation? The only safe thing to do: We entered a random open slip and tied up the boat. We were lambasted by the dock maser for this, but the alternative was crashing into something and endangering people and property, so…)

If there is a moral to this story, it is that the way to avoid Avoidable Drama is by putting a bit of process in place. Of course, if you put too much process, then you create more Drama than you avoid. So be careful…

Mixup

1 February, 2019

Since I’ve never been sailing with a dog before I thought I should provide a little documentation. Mixup the Dog, pictured above, belongs to our friend Guy Clothier from Great Camano. Unlike ours, Guy’s house got through Irma in a habitable state, although the hurricane did decide his refrigerator would look better on his front porch.

Mixup and Guy rode out the hurricane in his bathroom. Guy is completely deaf from head injuries he suffered many years ago. He is able to understand speech with help from a cochlear implant (which is amazing in and of itself), but if the external microphone and computer isn’t turned on he can’t hear at all. This of course means he didn’t hear the godawful hurricane sounds that Mixup was hearing. Guy says he just held Mixup there in the bathroom for four hours straight, wrapped in a blanket while he shivered in fear.

Mixup has gotten old since the last time I saw him three years ago — he doesn’t have the island mutt energy he used to. He’s still a sweetheart of a dog, though. It was a lot of fun sailing with him.

The Anegada Smoothie

31 January, 2019

A wonderful thing, sitting on the Anegada Reef Hotel bar

The first time I tasted one of these things I was 22 and in love. It was May of 1990 and my soon-to-be-fiancee Kim and I were sailing here on her father Ron’s new boat Priority II. I was in love with her, in love with her family, and in love with the boat, which was the most amazing thing I think I had ever seen. So many things to fix!

So we sailed up here to Anegada and moored up, then dinghied ashore to the Anegada Reef Hotel. Since it was the afternoon, naturally we stopped for a smoothie, which turned into… many. I mean it’s basically a rum punch with some family secret ingredients (they won’t tell you what), but in such an amazing setting. Anyway I vaguely remember the dinghy ride back to the boat, but only vaguely…

Anegada from the northeast — the Reef Hotel is visible on the far right of the photo. Photo by Walker Mangum. Original uploader was Nwmangum at en.wikipedia – Originally from en.wikipedia; description page is/was here., Public Domain, Link

So here I am again at Anegada, almost 29 years later. The friendly guy pouring the smoothies back in 1990, Lowell Wheatley, is no longer with us — the harsh island life got him in the end. His children are now running the place and in general they seem to be doing well with it. They have been odd beneficiaries of Irma’s destruction of so many of the bars and restaurants in the main part of the BVI. Weirdly, the storm went just a bit south of them, so they had some damage but nothing awful, and as a result there are many more charter boats willing to make the long (for a week-long charterer) sail up here than there used to be… which means the lobster dinner at the hotel is much better attended than it used to be.

What I find remarkable is how much has changed around me since I had that first smoothie 29 years ago… marriage, business, career changes, grandparents and then parents dying. Yet I carry the funny illusion that I myself, like the smoothie, am no different. Heavier, grayer, wiser, sure… but coming back here reinforces the feeling that I and the smoothie are at the center of some kind of whirlwind of change that flows around us while we remain the same.

Of course, if Irma had gone just a few miles north, its 200-knot winds would have removed all signs of life from largely-unprotected Anegada, and then there would no longer be a Reef Hotel or anyone to make the smoothies. Are we all just as close to the brink of disaster? I suppose so… so I had better keep coming back here to make sure nothing happens to the smoothie. It’s as good an excuse as any.