What am I doing? Am I really spending my savings and the best years of my twenties making myself feel incompetent? When will the worm finally turn and this will start being fun again? Will I ever leave Trinidad? Since going in the water, I have been suffering through an endless nightmare. As mentioned in my last journal entry, following my launch I proceeded to the anchorage and dropped the hook. At that time, I was about 200 feet from the nearest boat. I then went ashore to post my journal update. When I returned, my boat was only 15 feet from a huge fishing boat and it was already dark.
Obviously, my anchoring skills have deteriorated during my stay on land and I failed to take into account the strong current in the anchorage area and the difference in scope for different types of boats. Not wanting to move the boat alone in the dark, I instead spent the night keeping watch to make sure that I wouldn’t collide with the fishing boat. Once the sun came up, I decided to take the boat out for a sea trial to make sure everything worked before I set off on an offshore passage. Naturally, the roller furling didn’t work and I had to go up the mast to drop the staysail. So, instead of my list of things to fix getting shorter, it continues to grow.
Unable to fix the roller furling myself, I instead have to wait for the services of a rigger. As a result, rather than traveling through the dangerous waters of eastern Venezuela in the company of other boats, I will likely make the passage alone. On Thursday afternoon, I returned to the boat and went down below to avoid the hot afternoon sun. I was reading “Autobiography of a Yogi.” In the book, it says “Whenever anyone utters with reverence the name of Babaji, that devotee attracts an instant spiritual blessing (The truth of this statement has been proved by many readers of this book).” Figuring I could use a little spiritual blessing to reverse my run of bad fortune, I actually said aloud the name “Babaji” with as much reverence as I could muster. It was probably about this time that my dinghy and outboard floated away.
Apparently, the knot that I tied came loose and the dinghy either floated out to sea or someone else received a blessing of their own. Maybe my blessing was to be deprived of a really expensive material thing. Needless to say, this isn’t a religion that I will be following in the future. Over the next several days, I went from complete anonymity to the talk of the marina. It seems that the yachties are more accepting of me as a downtrodden and demoralized youth than as an arrogant young punk. The gossip revolved around whether my boat was stolen with plenty of speculation and sympathy directed my way.
After three days, the network of cruisers finally paid off when someone announced that a fisherman had found a dinghy adrift several miles away en route to Venezuela. It seems my dinghy is in as much of a hurry to go west as I am. I was quickly tracked down and reunited with my now highly valued and greatly appreciated dinghy. Motoring back to the boat in my dinghy, I felt like a king aboard his chariot. The elderly came out on their decks and waved, the children shouted words of encouragement, and nubile, young women threw rose pedals before me. Or so it seemed. It is tempting to hope that the sun has finally come up after a long, dark night. Considering that my string of setbacks was getting gradually worse, I was expecting to contract a deadly, tropical disease before the week was out. The main lesson appears to be that no mistake goes unpunished and I seem to make a lot of mistakes.
The name of my boat, Audentes, derives from the Latin phrase “audentes fortuna iuvat,” roughly translated as “fortune favors the brave.” Either this phrase is wrong or I am not brave. I have a pretty good idea of which one it is.