An Embarrassment of Mangoes

by Ann Vanderhoof

  There’s a cruising rule: Never enter an unlit and unfamiliar harbor at night. Especially if that harbor has claimed more than one boat on its treacherous reefs even in daylight. I radio Splashdance, who had long since arrived: Would they be willing to lead us into the harbor in the dark via dinghy? They radio back yes, saying they’ll try to get some help, too, from an old Luperón hand. It’s hard to get a sense from Jack’s voice—Jack, who’s so calm and reserved in any case—whether he thinks this is madness or the best of a bad lot of choices. What I do know is that it’s a huge imposition on our friendship.

  By the time we’re off the harbor entrance, it’s totally dark, except for the evening’s lightning show, strengthening in the distance and clearly heading our way. Even without the help of a moon (barely half full and shrouded in cloud), I can picture the entrance from a year ago: reefs tight to both sides. We must pass very close to the red buoy (missing the last time, now back in place), but not too close: It’s attached directly to the right-hand reef. Then head more-or-less for the first green stake, hard turn to starboard, and you’re through the worst of it. I’m on the foredeck with the battery-operated handheld searchlight. Steve’s at the helm with the handheld VHF radio. Jack, Carol, and Lisa (the old Luperón hand—her sailboat, Serenity, has been resident in the harbor for more than a year now) are in Splashdance’s dinghy at the unlit red buoy, flashing their light. Sweaty-palm nervous, I would be twiddling my hair if I had a free hand, but I’m clutching the searchlight in one and the forestay in the other. The wind has inconveniently picked up again, of course, so we’re bouncing through the waves. This will be no romantic moonlit entrance.

  Here we go. As we pass the red buoy, I can see and hear the breakers all too clearly—and we seem entirely too close to the left-hand reef, a bit of info I anxiously call back to Steve. Luckily, I can’t hear the radio conversation between the skipper and our guides. Only afterward do I learn that our depth sounder had suddenly dropped to less than 10 feet from more than 20, an indication we’d strayed dangerously from the channel, and the dinghy crew didn’t know which way to tell Steve to head. He inched the boat first to starboard, then to port, until he saw the depth begin to increase.

  It seems a lifetime, but it’s probably only thirty seconds until my light hits the first green stake. (My mind foolishly flicks to the Energizer bunny: My light is now guiding our guides, whose flashlight has already weakened.) We head for it, make the turn, and have another heart-pounding few moments until we spot the next stake. But the water has become flat calm; it even smells different—lush, fertile. We’re through the reefs.

  You can feel the tension drain from the boat. From here on, if we miss the stakes and go aground, it will only be in mangrove mud and we won’t punch a hole in Receta’s bottom. A good thing, since the dinghy crew—their light dimmed to an emaciated glow by this point—can’t find the rest of the stakes. Steve steers from memory, and after what seems another lifetime, we are pointed at Splashdance, which is lit up like a Christmas tree—masthead lights, spreader lights, cabin lights—and told we can safely drop the hook on their starboard side.

  We’re giddy with relief, my arms and legs weak, with the adrenaline no longer pumping. Laughter and too-loud jokes echo in the anchorage, replacing the tension. “You know they say a sign of alcoholism is when you say, ‘I need a drink?’ ” I announce. “Well, I NEED A DRINK.” With Caribs popped open all around, we rehash the trip with Jack and Carol. “We were really, really worried about you last night,” Carol says, uncharacteristically somber. “We could see a wall of lightning way behind us, and knew you’d be going through that.” And it’s here that Steve confesses how really, really worried he was, too.

  I let myself sleep in—screw getting up to listen to the weather reports, I’m not going anywhere for a few days—and when I pull myself out of the berth at eight, it is already dripping hot, a typical Luperón morning. Flat calm, blazing sun, little breeze, no worries. Bliss. (Jack has already offered up his sewing machine for the torn mainsail, the only thing that now needs fixing.) The tide is receding and the water around us is littered with white feathers. I assume someone is plucking chickens by the town dock, and only days later do I realize they are from the elegant long-necked egrets that roost in the mangroves at night and fly off to feed in the morning.

  In the early afternoon, a frantic call is broadcast on the VHF radio by a sailboat trying to enter the harbor: It’s gone up on the reef, and its panicked owners are calling for help in getting off. Knowing that there but for the grace of God go we, Steve roars off in Snack and is the first to arrive on the scene.

  The British-flagged Milda Rose has already been pounded by the waves so far over on its side on the reef that Snack’s bow is soon covered with the boat’s bottom paint. For some reason, probably tiredness, new arrivals Stan and Sue had passed on the wrong side of the red buoy, and the Luperón entrance is completely unforgiving of such errors. In fact, the reef is so close to the surface just beyond the buoy that some of the rescuers stand on it, the water barely over their knees, making it all too obvious how easily we could have come to grief last night.

  A dozen dinghies, a big charter trimaran, a heavy local fishing boat, and several hours of pushing and pulling are required to free Milda Rose and get her back into deeper water. The dinghies then push her into the anchorage (her engine had ceased functioning while on the reef), with one of the other cruisers at her helm. Stan’s nerves are too shattered at this point for him to negotiate the rest of the turns through the stakes and, besides, his eyes are needed below—to make sure Milda Rose hasn’t been holed and isn’t taking on water.

  The next day, the word goes out on the radio: Milda Rose is fine, and Stan and Sue are hosting happy hour at the Puerto Blanco Marina bar, in grateful thanks to those who saved their boat.

  This evening, though, we’re off to a noisy cruisers’ dinner announced by another sailor that morning on the VHF net. It’s at the “chicken shack,” a nameless, signless restaurant on Luperón’s main street. The outside is painted robin’s egg blue, the inside cool and dark, with bare wooden tables and mismatched chairs. No menus—the food just arrives: crispy fried chicken, more than I can manage (Steve, of course, offers to help); rice and beans, served as they had been in Puerto Rico, the beans a spicy soupy mixture to be ladled on top of plain white rice; and creamy cole slaw. Dessert is caramelized papaya, the sweet fruit cooked in an even sweeter syrup. The meal, including a rum-and-Coke for everyone, costs 35 pesos each—$2.21 at the current exchange rate. Only the beer is extra, and the buck-a-bottle grande Presidentes taste as grande as ever. I am positively gleeful to be here.

  A week later, Receta’s lockers freshly stuffed with cases of MasMas bars, Presidente, and Santo Domingo coffee, the fridge crammed with cheese and yogurt, the hammocks sagging under full loads of fruit and vegetables, we’re ready to tear ourselves away again from the Dominican Republic. Remembering the comandante’s finely engineered bridge, I try to weasel out of the excursion to his hilltop headquarters to check out, but Steve won’t hear of it: What if he needs a translator? Jack and Carol decide to come along at the same time, figuring they might as well enjoy a free translation service, too. “Milda Rose told us there’s a new bridge,” Carol says.

  The wobbly branches and trick planks have indeed been replaced—by two heavy steel beams. Unfortunately, that’s it: No crosspieces, just two steel beams separated from each other by more than three feet of empty air, over the still-fragrant sewage stream. I step up on one beam, Steve on the other; we grasp hands and wobble across like a circus act in training.

  The junior official who handles our despachos tells us, in English, we need to pay him a fee. The comandante himself—a different one than a year ago—had visited us on Receta to check us into the country, and when he relieved us each of $10, he had explained clearly that no additional payment would be required. And so I say gently and quizzically in Spanish to the junior official, “There must be some misunde
rstanding.” And then I get to the magic words: “El comandante told us . . .” The junior official instantly leaps in and agrees that yes, of course there is no fee. Just a little attempt to extract a mordida, a tiny bite, an unofficial supplement to the government’s paltry wages, from visitors who don’t know better. Steve figures if they want to charge us to leave the Caribbean, maybe we should just stay.

  But, no, the next day we’re on passage back to the Bahamas, both fishing lines streaming out behind the boat. The tournament is still on, so I had worked up a couple of big, satisfying goobers for the lures. “Good work,” said Steve.

  Zinnnnnnnnnng. SNAP! The line starts screaming out of the rod and reel, and almost simultaneously a clothespin pops off the lifeline. The clothespin is the low-tech alert system that lets us know a fish is on the line attached to the Cuban reel. The clothespin holds a loop of nylon cord; one end of the cord is attached to the heavy monofilament run out behind the boat, the rest is wound on the yo-yo. If a fish hits the lure, it puts pressure all the way up the line and, SNAP, sends the clothespin flying. We have two fish hooked behind Receta at once.

  A few seconds later, a massive dorado leaps out of the water and tailwalks about 100 feet behind the boat, hooked on the lure attached to the rod and reel. Called mahimahi in the Pacific, the dorado is a stunning fish, iridescent blues and greens, the colors of the sea, shot through with purple and gold. It’s also quicksilver fast—it has to be, to catch one of its favorite foods, the flying fish, which it can grab out of the air—and when it runs with a lure in its mouth, it really runs. More importantly, it makes delicious eating, though it’s sometimes shunned in North America when it’s called by its other common name: dolphin. This fish is no relation to the air-breathing aquatic mammal, but those who think they’ll be eating one of Flipper’s relatives steer clear. I adore dorado.

  Graciously, I offer to wind in the yo-yo, letting Steve fight what is obviously “the big one” and avoiding the possibility of losing dinner because of a tangle with the other line. It doesn’t seem like there’s very much tension on the line coming out of the yo-yo in any case, so I suspect if a fish is still there, it’s quite a small one.

  But, geez, winding in the line is hard work. “Hurry, or it’s gonna tangle for sure!” I can hear Steve’s impatience with my seeming lack of gusto for the job—but I have to keep resting and switching hands. My arms ache and my fingers are cramping. I’ve never reeled in the yo-yo before, so I simply assume it’s difficult because the cheap and cheerful yo-yo lacks the gearing and handle of a conventional reel.

  And then the “small” fish on the end of my line decides to tailwalk too, with Steve watching. (I’m too busy concentrating on the yo-yo to look up.) “Holy shit.” He dumps his rod—with “the big one” still on the end—back in its holder and runs to the other side of the boat to help me. Now I have a reason to keep a death grip on the yo-yo: We have two big dorados hooked at once.

  I’m determined to finish what I’ve started, and refuse Steve’s offer to take over the yo-yo. I manage—albeit very slowly—to wind my dorado all the way to the side of the hull, where Steve gaffs it. I can’t believe my eyes, and arms. This fish is way bigger than anything we’ve dealt with before: much too big to dump in our bucket, no garbage bag handy that’s big enough to hold it. (Bagging or bucketing helps keep the cockpit reasonably clean of the assorted fluids of a gaffed and dying fish.) So a little side-deck butchery is called for before we bring in the other fish. “But get the tape measure first.”

  My “small” fish measures 411⁄2 inches from the tip of its blunt head to the end of its forked tail. I don’t know whether I’m more pleased about my strength or my spit.

  Even after dorado number 1 has been dispatched into numerous Ziploc bags, it’s still another twenty-five minutes before Steve brings dorado number 2 alongside. By now it must be close to dead. No such luck: Just as Steve’s reaching over with the gaff, it does an effortless flip, snaps the heavy leader, and swims away. But we get to eyeball it long enough to agree that it was indeed “the big guy,” well over 4 feet long. “But mine,” I hasten to remind him, “is worth more points.”

  What do you do with 411⁄2 inches of dorado? You throw a dinner party, with sautéed dorado in Creole tomato sauce as the main course. Luckily, we’re just two days away from George Town, our old nemesis on Great Exuma Island. Splashdance and other friends are already there waiting.

  The problem with all this piscatorial activity is that it’s decimated Steve’s small collection of lures. The few he has left are as bedraggled as revelers after Carnival, the fringe on their skirts torn and tattered, their once-brilliant pinks, yellows, and greens faded, their feathers half-chewed off.

  Basking in the pleasure of self-sufficiency, Steve decides to manufacture his own replacements. We’ve heard of cruisers who trolled the fingers of yellow rubber gloves behind their boat with success, but Steve shuns inelegant solutions. He goes to the hardware store and returns with a bright green $1.49 featherduster. Back in Ontario, he tied his own flies to cast for bass and trout, and his fly-tying equipment and supplies are onboard, though depleted by the small flies he’s been making for his own reef-fishing attempts and as gifts for friends. For big game, he needs a somewhat different approach, something that will mimic a fleeing baitfish when it’s dragged behind the boat.

  From our plumbing supplies, he retrieves two short pieces of nylon-reinforced clear plastic water hose—“the nylon reinforcement kinda resembles fish scales”—epoxies a sinker inside, and strings them onto a wire leader to create a jointed body with a hook on the end. He ties on green feathers from the freshly plucked featherduster, adds a few strands of shiny tinsel and the last yellow feathers from his fly-tying box, and glues on a pair of fake eyes.

  “It looks,” I tell him, “like an overdecorated Christmas tree.” He takes it as high compliment.

  Next, he plans to carve a mold out of bath-size bars of Ivory soap and fill it with silicone sealant to make replacements for the mangled squid skirts. “But I need something to color the sealant with,” he says. I think for a minute: What do we have onboard that’s fish-friendly fluorescent green or yellow?

  I remember a kids’ craze from a couple of years back where Jell-O was used as a hair dye. “How about Jell-O?”

  “Worth a try. I’ll take the lime.”

  The Jell-O is evidence of something I’ve been noticing lately: I’ve become a much better lateral thinker. Not only has my brain not got out of shape without the daily stimulation of my job, but I’ve also learned to use it differently. Completely nonmechanical in my old life, I can now help Steve troubleshoot a balky water pump or diesel engine. Independently, I had deduced that our engine-overheating problem in the Mona Passage most likely had to be something obstructing the prop.

  Steve calls me Receta’s weather goddess. Those days when the offshore forecasts were like a foreign language, reducing me to tears as I struggled to transcribe them, are long gone. Now I not only confidently take them down in weather shorthand—I filled a 200-page notebook in ten weeks during hurricane season—I also work with Steve to analyze them and plan passages. “It takes a huge load off my shoulders,” he tells people. “Her understanding and judgment are sound.” Who would have guessed? This is not the sort of thing I used to be good at.

  Other changes have been sneaking up on me too. The old Ann fussed and fretted about her appearance, never left the house without makeup. Most days now I barely glance in Receta’s one mirror, which is in the head. Very occasionally, on shore, I will catch my full-length reflection somewhere and I am taken aback, barely recognizing the tanned, slender, fit woman who stares out at me. I look better than I ever did at home.

  I can’t believe I’m spitting on a Jello-O-infused hunk of silicone and the remains of a featherduster.

  Mid-morning, just when we’re changing watch, Steve looks back and sees the bull head of a dorado making a beeline for the ex-featherduster. It takes a full hour for him to
tire it enough to bring it alongside and get it on the gaff. Finally, we heft it aboard, snap the requisite photos, and lay it out on the side deck for measuring: 491⁄2 inches. Good Lord. Let the filleting begin.

  “Splashdance, Splashdance; Receta. Can you come for dinner tonight?” Steve tells Carol why we slowed down, allowing Splashdance to do a horizon job on us.

  “Meanwhile, we lost two new lures on two strikes,” Carol says glumly. “Two dorado, couldn’t land either one.”

  Damn. That means they got six points. The ten pounds of fillets now jammed in our freezer got us only five. Who designed this tournament anyway?

  Sautéed Dorado with Creole Tomato Sauce

  “First, catch a 3-foot dorado,” my step-by-step notes for this recipe begin. That part over, the preparation is simple—all that fabulously fresh fish requires. With white-fleshed, delicate fish such as dorado, I prefer to garnish it with the sauce, rather than cook it in the sauce, as Daphne did with her tuna in Bequia.

  For the sauce

  4 tablespoons olive oil

  2 cloves garlic, chopped

  2 medium onions, sliced thinly

  3 sweet bell peppers (a combination of red, green, and/or yellow), thinly sliced and slices cut in half

  1⁄2 teaspoon hot pepper, seeded and finely chopped

  Salt and freshly ground black pepper