Lobster Aloft

The week was consumed largely by projects on the boat. Progress is slowly being made and the only major tasks remaining are installing a new jib roller furling and mounting the solar panels. On Wednesday, I repaired the staysail roller furling, forcing me to make multiple trips up and down the mast. With two people, this is a fairly straightforward exercise: one person ties into a canvas seat called a “bosun’s chair” and the other person pulls them up and secures them from below with a rope, serving as a safety in case the person going up the mast falls. Obviously, with only one person, the important role of the individual responsible for securing the person aloft is left vacant.

To mitigate the risk of a freefall, I use an ascender, a climbing tool that clamps onto the rope. The drawback of the ascender is that it requires me to pull myself up the mast with one arm while contorting my body to prevent the bosun’s chair from falling off. The other drawback of going aloft alone is that if something simple needs to be done on the deck, it requires a trip down the mast instead of having the person below take care of it, necessitating another exhausting trip up the mast. Thanks to the complications of going aloft alone, a project that I intended to take 15 minutes ended up taking four hours. Adding insult to injury, I forgot to put sunblock on before tackling the project. By the time I noticed that I was glowing, it was too late.

There cannot be too many feelings worse than having a bad sunburn in the tropics. As the temperature approaches 100 degrees every day, the added warmth provided by a sunburn is wholly unwelcome. Sweat stings. Sleeping is uncomfortable. Mothers and children cringe at the sight of me. Ugh! Mercifully, after a couple of days the pain from my sunburn moderated and I’m hopeful that the excruciating burn will provide a solid base for a protective tan. It is no wonder that one of the most common requests from sailors is a reference for a good dermatologist

The only other notable event during the week occurred while I was walking back from some maintenance-related outing. As I walked between boatyards, I suddenly saw a wave of about 30 soldiers armed with machine guns. The soldiers were running down the road in the opposite direction that I was walking. Although my curiosity tempted me to follow them, I decided to continue on in my original direction. This incident recalls a similar scene that Brian and I witnessed in St. Martin where we saw a boat full of troops storm the beach. In that case, as we watched from the hill above, we couldn’t help but notice that such a landing was ill-advised. From our protected position, the two of us could have probably subdued the twenty or so soldiers by nothing more sophisticated than the throwing of rocks. While I am by no means an authority on military strategy, launching an attack from the road seems like a similarly stupid plan. In both cases, I kept my opinions to myself.

After a week of work, I rewarded myself with a trip to the movies. Typically, I avoid sentimental romantic comedies like the plaque, but, in this case, I intended to see the new Cameron Crowe movie, “Elizabethtown.” One of the many dark secrets from my past is that I lived in Elizabethtown, Kentucky for eight years. Brian was actually born in E-town. Why they decided to film a major motion picture in such a small town is beyond me. Unfortunately, “Elizabethtown” has not opened yet in Trinidad, so I was forced to watch some other mediocre movie. Still, I wonder how my life would be different if my family had stayed in Kentucky rather than moving to Connecticut. (Insert your own incest, hillbilly, or squirrel-eating joke here.) My parent’s view is that I would be the same person only with a different accent. I prefer to think that I would be unemployed, alone, and a shepherd wandering the earth seeking the Way.

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