March 21, 2020: Day 3 of Extreme Harris Social Distancing Boat Life

Ok so we are on Day 3 of “real” quarantine measures. For us that means the kids aren’t allowed shore-side since their personal hygiene isn’t always reliable (they are dirty birds). It also means stepped up social distancing for us adults when we do need to go to shore to re-up on supplies, which is exactly what we had on the agenda for this morning.

Because it’s Saturday, it’s the big island market day which is undoubtedly the best time to venture ashore to get whatever food supplies we need for the coming week.  Well, better in the sense that the availability of produce and other supplies is the best on Saturday morning, but much worse in the sense that the town of Portsmouth is much more crowded with people due to the market (not that it’s very crowded at all compared to a typical city in North America, but just more crowded than not at all…).  So after breakfast the adults saddled up the dinghy and ventured into the market to buy food, get some more cash from the ATM, and get out before picking up anything unwanted (cue he-who-must-not-be-named here). After a brief stop back at Matriarch to pass the food to the kids we buzzed over to a different dingy dock to return our 2 cases of empties in exchange for 2 new cases (don’t judge us…I see you drinking your boxed wine over there like it’s water!). Speaking of wine…this island is amazing and has everything you could want to consume…EXCEPT WINE. What the bloody hell? Why didn’t I buy 10 boxes of delicious French wine when we were in Guadaloupe??? Oh wait, I know why. Because, like you, no one predicted we’d be stuck in the same spot for potential months. OMG months with no wine. Look I don’t drink all the time, I’m responsible and all that but DAMN a glass or two of a lovely French red or California white is pretty close to perfection. Rum and beer is fun and all but…I’m over it. And yet can’t be because then I’m dry and that won’t do either. Not for months anyway. Not for months on board this boat with a pre-teen boy and 2 head strong girls and the most of the time love of my life.

I’m not a wine snob either…while I do appreciate a good bottle I will drink less good stuff too…but I draw the line at bottles labelled SWEET RED WINE or SWEET WHITE WINE as their only means of identifying what they are. Good god no.

My next play is to steal some of the kids juice and see how a little gin tastes in it…will keep you posted.

We also sorted out some of the kids clothes…why did we do this? Well the V-berth is starting to look like a laundry machine vomited out it’s contents and then passed out in the gutter never to return so I felt it was the right time. When you ask for dirty laundry and do the hand washing and realize there is only one pair of kid underwear in there that’s also a good sign that their rooms are full of clothes stuffed in mystery locations festering away….ugh.

So out came every stitch of clothing Aden and Grace owned…sorted, tried out, re-folded and packed away. Greg and I got a little misty eyed over the stuff they out grew and reluctantly cut them up into rags (the stuff that was still in nice shape was put in a bag to give away when we are no longer staying 3-6 feet away from all human beings). They haven’t outgrown as much as I thought they had. Either that or my standards for coverage have changed…which I likely since I like to run around without pants on too often. I was hoping to unearth a bit more space than we did but the V-berth is tidier nonetheless. Next up is toys but I need a few days to recover from this job before I tackle that one.

One of the obvious advantages to isolating on a boat is that you can take your dingy to some cool snorkel locations without seeing another human. I am assuming that at least some of you are hopping in your car and going for a hike which is basically the same thing but I know that some of you can’t even do that right now. Some places in the Caribbean are not allowing cruisers off boats except for food / fuel but not here (yet) so off to snorkel did Greg, Grace and I go while Liam and Aden held down the floating house. There is a now not-in-use small cruise ship dock in the Portsmouth anchorage that is big enough for those small sailing cruises of a few hundred people…bottom line is that it’s a big, nice dock…which dingies are not allowed to tie up to. But given he-who-must-not-be-named and all we thought we might be allowed, or at least not noticed….and yes for all of you who know that I am a rule follower, this was not my idea. I am a serial rule follower than hangs out with people that are ok not following rules like where to put your dingy and that makes me a more well rounded person :)

So we tied up and jumped in…lots of fish and huge amounts of coral growth on the pillars for the pier. Aaaaand the security guy came by and told us we can’t tie up there LOL. So we just dropped a dingy anchor (not on coral) and continued with his permission. In fact, our friend Harry who is an amazing free diver went looking for the security guys lure he lost last night while fishing for wahoo and found it on his first dive down….50ft down. Which isn’t even that far for Harry. Greg is working his way there but has a way to go yet before he’s retrieving any wahoo lures. Grace and I practiced our more modest 10ft free dives. Yes I can go down further than that but not if I am equalizing my ears…I am trying to not go down without equalizing since it doesn’t really equate to practicing free diving…it’s just practicing swimming down and hurting your ears. I’ve not found the right trick yet but I’m sure I will. 

Greg on the other hand is doing very well - rather than praise him (barf) I’ll let him explain what he’s doing: 

When you’re living on a sailboat, having a reasonable free-diving ability is incredibly, incredibly useful. It allows you to check your anchor, clean off the bottom of the boat when the algae growth gets too crazy, retrieve all manner of items from the bottom when you inevitably drop things, and most importantly (right now at least) gives you a fighting chance at spearing dinner when you stumble across some lion fish just hanging out down there. So we are very lucky our friend Harry is a great free-diver and doesn’t mind spending some time teaching us total newbies how it’s done.

The number one first skill he helped me with was equalizing pressure in my ears. Before getting some instruction I wasn’t able to do this at all so was limited to the depth where the water pressure got too painful to keep going (15 feet or so). After some exercises and a couple days of practice, I’ve gotten to the point where I can equalize reasonably well, both right-side up (much easier) and upside down (trickier, but necessary if you have any hope of swimming straight down to the bottom where the interesting stuff is). I also learned that you need to blow a bit of air into your mask as you get deeper so the water pressure doesn’t painfully flatten it against your face!

With that out of the way, the next step was figuring out how to go from the surface down as quickly as possible in order to get the most time on the bottom as possible. Again another tip from Harry came in very handy - the trick is to turn entirely upside down and get the weight of your legs directly above your lungs in order to start yourself moving down. The better you can make this transition, the faster you can get to the bottom, and the more time you get to search around for dinner!

Since we’re going to be isolated to the boat and staying put in our current location for the foreseeable future, we’re trying to practice every day to keep getting more comfortable with deeper dives. Right now I can get down to 25-30 feet pretty comfortably, but don’t have much time on the bottom at that depth, so hopefully it will get better quickly with more practice! Now back to Megan…

Also this handy person (I’m talking about Greg here) was kind enough at the end of the night to clean off our aft cabin fans at my lazy request while I watched The Office…we’ll keep him around despite his annoying ability to get really good at something he decides to learn, really quickly. Ugh. Like seriously ugh. 

Much love to all of you except those who have delicious wine at home. To you I only send a little love until you send me some of your wine.