An Embarrassment of Mangoes

by Ann Vanderhoof

  By the next day, Steve had the engine started, and we up-anchored to take Receta on a test spin—only to have to return under sail and anchor under sail again. Our anchorage neighbors told me they thought we were purists who just didn’t believe in using an engine . . .

  I can hear you laughing, Todd. Obviously these people didn’t know me very well.

  Although I was lighthearted with our friends, by now I was seriously demoralized. Receta’s engine is actually the source of some of my greatest “sailing” fears—and the fact that it had stopped working before we even started down the Thorny Path had me really worried. It’s not just that the engine is old, and shoehorned under the steps in a way that makes working on it difficult even for professionals; it’s also that diesel mechanics aren’t Steve’s strong point. Completely confident in matters of sailing and navigation, he is learning as we go with “Mr. Engine, Sir,” as I respectfully refer to the smelly red beast in its presence, hoping to placate it. Seeing capable, confident Steve worried and unsure fuels my own anxieties.

  He tried one thing after another to coax it back into action—no luck—dinghying into shore between troubleshooting attempts to call a mechanic in Florida who had done routine maintenance on Mr. Engine, Sir, for advice on what to try next. I again began to question our decision to continue south. What if something like this happened in a more remote, less repair-friendly spot? I envied the boats where one-half of the cruising couple was a mechanic, or an engineer, or anything but a magazine and book designer, a career that had almost zero applicability in our current predicament.

  Finally Steve diagnosed the problem—not the engine after all, but air in the fuel line from a cracked filter housing—and fixed it (luckily, he had another housing stowed in his spare parts bin), and we were nervously ready to leave again. This time, a phone call home revealed my father had been rushed into intensive care.

  Dad recovered nicely, and a week later we were ready to leave again. Just twenty minutes outside the harbor, we got hit by a surprise squall—40 knots of wind, sideways-driving rain, daggers of lightning attacking the sea, huge steep waves that appeared out of nowhere. We’d never seen anything quite like it, except maybe on the cover of Cruising World magazine’s “Safety at Sea” issue: “How three boats got pulverized and what they did wrong.” The other boats that had left that morning realized the wisest course of action was to go back, to retreat to the safety of the anchorage. For us, there was no choice: I had become suddenly, violently seasick, completely incapacitated, leaving Steve to manage the boat in the squall by himself.

  Strike three.

  I don’t know, Belinda. Maybe someone is trying to tell us something. Maybe we’re not meant to go farther south. We’re licking our wounds, reevaluating our plans. But in the meantime, everything bad holds something good. Our aborted leavetaking means that we are still in George Town when the Family Island Regatta begins.

  The Family Island Regatta is a traditional event that’s been held each April for more than forty-five years. The raceboats are tall-masted wooden Bahamian sloops, the kind once used as workboats in the islands. With bragging rights as well as cash at stake, supporters from each boat’s home island pour into George Town as the regatta approaches, and the town is reclaimed by the Bahamians, completely transformed from its cruiser-centric winter-season self.

  Every day we go out in Snack to watch the races. The start line appears placid, almost still, the sloops apparently asleep at anchor with their sails down. But when the gun sounds, they spring instantly to life, the sails blossoming in seconds, opening like enormous white flowers, so lovely they make my throat catch.

  With their minimal keels, these boats need to counterbalance the force of the wind on the acreage of sail. As many as twelve of the crew clamber outboard astride long narrow boards—called pries—that extend perpendicular from the boat on the windward side, their weight providing leverage to help keep the overcanvased boat upright. When the boat turns at the mark (the course is a big triangle), the crew scrambles off the pries and onto ones flung into position on the opposite side of the boat. The penalty for being slow is a capsize or even a sinking, so agility and quick reflexes, coupled with a certain amount of beefiness (the more weight outboard, the more upright the boat will stay and the faster it will go), are prized crew characteristics. Nerves of steel don’t hurt either—since all this is happening at high speed within inches of other boats.

  Along with the other dinghies and powerboats that make up the regatta’s “spectator fleet,” we follow them from mark to mark. I’m driving, faster than I want to, so Steve can take photos. And when he has me position Snack just beyond the big orange float marking an end of the finish line, closer than I want to be, one of the racing sloops comes screaming right at us, a white bullet with a football field of sail above. It just about T-bones us before veering off nonchalantly at the last minute, the guys on the foredeck laughing and waving. They were just playing, having a bit of fun after a good race. The photographer, his eye happily glued to the viewfinder, didn’t flinch.

  My heartbeat back to normal, we head into George Town. “You’d barely recognize it,” I e-mail Belinda and Todd. “Wooden shacks have sprouted all along the point.” Some are nothing more than serving counters, with yummy smells issuing from behind them; others have yummy smells and a handful of tables and chairs. Ribs, chicken, and snappers smoke away on long barbecues made from oil drums cut in half, while conch fritters—crunchy, deep-fried balls of dough with bits of conch hidden inside—bubble in big pots of oil, tended by oversized ladies. When the balls turn golden, they scoop them out, drain them for the briefest second, and pop them into brown paper bags that quickly become sodden with grease as we munch our way down the road. We feel duty-bound to try the fritters at two or three different spots, until we settle on our favorite, which has the highest conch-to-dough ratio.

  Right at the water’s edge, where some of the smaller racing boats have tied up for the night, an apron-covered man turns out conch salad. His place of business is even more bare bones than the shacks—just a rough wooden table with a pile of conch shells to one side and a half-dozen yellow buckets to the other. When you place your order, he picks up a shell, knocks a hole in it, and removes the mollusk with a quick twist of his knife. A few more swipes and he’s got it cleaned, skinned, and dipped in one of his buckets to rinse off the slime. He then dices it finely with onion, tomato, green pepper, cucumber, and fiery goat pepper, adds a dash of Bahamian sea salt, and squeezes sour orange, sweet orange, and lime juice over the whole mixture, creating a briny/sweet, hot/cool, crunchy/chewy salad to go.

  At another shack, a lethal mix of gin and coconut water is being ladled out of a Bahamian cocktail shaker (a five-gallon bucket). “Honey child, come go with me/Back to the West Indies/Baby can’t you see/I lost my strength and my energy/What I need is gin and coconut water, gin and coconut water . . .” proclaims a traditional island song. Like the Baha Men, who perform a version of it, we’re soon singing its praises.

  Steve finds a fat wad of bills on the ground amidst the revelers dancing in the streets to the tunes that blare from speakers the size of Volkswagens. “It could belong to anyone,” he says. “Let’s give it to Mom.” We head for the Hugmobile, parked in its usual spot, a bit removed from the heart of the regatta action. In Williamstown, where her bakery is located, Mom is known for her good deeds as well as her bread and crullers. “This is for your church work,” Steve tells her, explaining he had just come upon the money in the road. “Praise the Lord,” she says. “Praise the Lord.” She gives him a big glazed doughnut—and a very big hug.

  After sunset, the shacks really get going, serving up full dinners of barbecued chicken, jerked pork, fried snapper, cracked conch, and souse, a thick, meaty stewlike soup made from the parts of the animal that might otherwise go to waste: pig’s feet, cow’s stomach, or sheep’s tongue. (I decline, though Steve pronounces it delicious.) The dinners are all accompanied by cole slaw, peas ’n�
�� rice, and another light Bahamian side dish, mac and cheese, baked and cut into squares. After all this (and the fritter first course), I am absolutely, positively stuffed.

  Not so Steve, who next drags me into Aunt Keva’s Dessert Shack. Steve is downright runty these days, still working off calories faster than he can take them in. A couple of weeks ago, while he was off somewhere in Snack, I had searched the boat in vain for my favorite khaki shorts. We had each bought a pair in Florida—mine, a ladies’ small; his, a men’s medium. I became suspicious when I found the men’s medium tucked in a drawer. Sure enough, when Steve returned from his excursion, I checked the label in the ones he was comfortably wearing: ladies’ small.

  Aunt Keva, a substantial woman, takes one look and decides he needs a double helping of her guava duff. Guava trees grow readily in the sandy soil of the Bahamas, and guava duff is perhaps the most popular incarnation of the juicy, sweet-tart fruit—it would be named the Bahamian national dessert, if there were such a thing. Each cook puts her own spin on this cake that’s steamed or boiled rather than baked. Aunt Keva’s version is more pudding than cake, kind of like a tropical Christmas plum pudding. She scoops a huge spoonful onto Steve’s plate, puddles it with potent hard sauce, and then dollops on a whipped-cream topping. Runty Steve finishes every last bite.

  Let’s just go sailing,” Steve says. No plan, no decision. We’ll just see what happens. But we both know that if we’re hit by another problem—another breakdown, another squall, another family illness—it will be strike four and we’ll almost certainly head north, toward home.

  Conception Island is a small cay that rises out of the ocean where Exuma Sound meets the Atlantic, a 40-mile day sail from George Town—in the right direction if you’re starting down the Thorny Path. We spot our first white-tailed tropicbirds soaring overhead, glorious unmistakable things with a 3-foot-long streamer of a tail. The sailing is serene—no engine problems, no sudden storms—and when we arrive at Conception, the anchorage is ours alone—that is, if you discount the two laughing gulls that persist in sitting on Snack, shitting copiously, and cackling uproariously at the gooey white mess we’ll have to clean up when they depart. I swim naked before dinner, the water so deceptively clear that I’m sure my feet will touch sand if I stretch out my legs beneath me. Receta’s depth sounder tells us the water here is 14 feet deep.

  Steve hands me two perfect sand dollars that he’s spotted on the bottom framed by delicate ridges of sand. The fragile white discs are the skeletons of a close relative of the sea urchin, and if they break open, five perfect replicas of a dove spill out—the Doves of Peace, so the legend goes. The doves have a rational, scientific explanation: They are the five teeth the urchin used to eat algae. But knowing the science doesn’t change the fact: The sand dollar, with its doves, is believed to bring good luck.

  Let’s just go sailing tomorrow and see if our good luck holds, we agree over dinner. To Rum Cay, 20 miles farther along the Thorny Path.

  I’ve managed to avoid it for the first eight months of our travels, but now it’s inevitable. After Rum Cay, the next stepping stone is Mayaguana Island, at the southernmost end of the Bahamas: 137 miles from Rum Cay, twenty-seven hours at Receta’s anticipated cruising speed of 5 knots, no easy place to stop between the two. No way around it: an overnight passage.

  I agree to two-hour watches, and my first is the 10 to midnight shift. As Steve heads below to sleep, I clip myself to the boat with my safety harness, hoping desperately that I can keep my pride intact and my anxiety at bay and refrain from calling him before his two hours of naptime are up. At least there’s a routine to keep me busy: Keep an eye on sail trim, boat speed, and course. Scan the horizon for the lights of other boats, then go below every fifteen minutes to check the radar screen. “Why do they appear on my watch?” I mutter nervously—but in fact the boats add more interest than worry to the night. I track them on the radar, as Steve’s shown me, to make sure we won’t cross anywhere near each other. On the hour, I note our latitude and longitude in the ship’s log, and carefully plot our position on the chart. In between, I sing to myself—a catholic repertoire of Hebrew hymns I remember from my childhood, black spirituals, and rock-and-roll—write letters in my head, develop the plot of a mystery novel, and watch the night sky. An almost-full moon pours molten silver on the ocean, the surface so calm it looks like smoked glass. For a while, Receta is accompanied by giant fizzling sparklers: the bioluminescence of thousands—millions—of tiny marine organisms that the boat stirs up as she slides by. Mesmerizing. I realize that not only am I not terrified, I’m not even worried; I am actually enjoying myself, almost completely relaxed. I sleep well when it’s my turn, and the night flies by. I don’t even think once about waking Steve.

  We’re anchored off Mayaguana by 12:30 the next afternoon. Herb and the other forecasters tell us this is a weather window for the history books, a once-in-a-lifetime weather window, a weather window to the Caribbean as big as a barn door. Foolish to stop now, we agree. Let’s just go sailing. If we leave Mayaguana this afternoon, a two-night passage will have us in the Dominican Republic just after dawn on the third day. What’s a two-night passage after such a benign silver-lined first night?

  We’ve escaped from Chicken Harbor at last.

  Bahamian Mac and Cheese

  I was never a particular fan of Kraft Dinner, but I adore the macaroni and cheese that’s a standard side dish with Bahamian meals. It’s kind of like a savory noodle kugel from a Jewish kitchen, the pasta bound together with eggs as well as cheese, then baked and cut into squares—solid, soothing comfort food.

  Evaporated milk is de rigueur, and gives the mac and cheese a rich, velvety taste.

  1⁄2 pound uncooked elbow macaroni

  1 small onion, finely chopped

  1⁄2 green bell pepper, finely chopped

  11⁄2 cups grated cheddar cheese

  2 eggs

  Salt and freshly ground black pepper

  1 teaspoon paprika

  Hot sauce

  11⁄2 cups evaporated milk (1 12-ounce can)

  1. Cook the macaroni in a large quantity of boiling, salted water. When it is just al dente, add the onion and pepper to the pot and cook for a minute or so more, until the vegetables are softened.

  2. Drain the macaroni and vegetables and return to the pot. Add half the cheese and stir until it is melted.

  3. Beat the eggs with a couple healthy dashes of hot sauce, salt and pepper, and the paprika. Stir the eggs and the evaporated milk into the macaroni and cheese.

  4. Spoon the mixture into a well-buttered 8-inch or 9-inch-square baking dish and sprinkle remaining grated cheese evenly over top.

  5. Bake at 350°F for about 30 minutes until mac and cheese has set and is bubbling and brown around edges. Remove from oven and let stand for 10 minutes, then cut into squares and serve.

  Serves 6–8 as a side dish

  The Delicious

  Dominican Republic

  June, too soon

  July, stand by

  August, come it must

  September, remember

  October, all over

  TRADITIONAL RHYME ABOUT THE WEST INDIAN

  HURRICANE SEASON

  The squeaking of oars in wooden oarlocks signals the arrival of Eddy and Freddy. Their open skiff, with its worn paint job and battered gunwales, has two 100-gallon drums perched bow and stern. If you need diesel fuel in Luperón, on the north coast of the Dominican Republic, Eddy and Freddy are how you get it: They row it out to your boat and then pump it—slowly, laboriously, their T-shirts stained with sweat and fuel—by hand into your tank.

  Eddy and Freddy have been rowing and pumping diesel since dawn. We are their last delivery of the day. It is ninety degrees Fahrenheit without a breath of wind.

  “Refresco? Cerveza?” I ask them when they pause to wipe their dripping faces. Soft drink? Beer?

  “Presidente?” Eddy asks. We’ve only been in Luperón a few days, but you don’t have
to be here very long to make the acquaintance of the President. It’s the popular local brew, and a grande—twenty-two ounces of beer—costs just over $1 in the small bars and colmados in town.

  “No, lo siento. Tengo solamente cerveza americana.” No, I’m sorry, I tell them. I only have American beer.

  “No, gracias,” Eddy replies sadly, and Freddy concurs with a negative shake of his head. “Agua, por favor.”

  They’d rather drink water.

  When you’re used to a tall, amber bottle of Presidente, I guess a can of cheap American swill makes a poor substitute. Presidente has body. Presidente has flavor. And we still have a couple cases of Florida-bought Old Milwaukee stored in our bilge that need to be consumed before we can buy more beer. Yesterday, I caught Steve pouring the better part of a can overboard—Steve, who never wastes an ounce of beer.

  Presidente isn’t the only thing that tastes good on this island. Fruits and vegetables grow on the mountainsides and in the valleys with wild abandon, seductively good and embarrassingly cheap: Silken avocados that dissolve like pale green butter on our tongues. Papayas the size of footballs, with honeyed flesh. Tart, refreshing limones—key limes—and mandarinos, overgrown mandarin oranges that spew sweet juice when we break through the peel. Intensely flavored sun-ripened tomatoes, lavish bunches of cilantro. Coconuts, cocoa, rich dark-roast coffee for $2.60 a pound.

  As we approached the Dominican Republic at dawn, after two uneventful nights—two nights!—at sea, I could smell the land before I could see it: 15 miles out, the smell of trees after a heavy rain, a fertile, rich, green smell, the smell of things growing. And then, as the sun gave a glow to the horizon, the island’s mountains emerged, thick with vegetation, a thrilling sight after three months in the flat, dry, scrub-covered Bahamas—particularly thrilling when making it here is such a huge milestone, when we came so close to giving up and going the other way. I know that in the greater scheme of things this was a short offshore passage—people who cross the Atlantic or Pacific by sailboat might be away from land for a month—but I feel like an explorer reaching a new world. “We are so proud of you,” Elizabeth says, when she contacts us on the SSB radio. She and Don are in Virginia, almost home, their trip just about over.