An Embarrassment of Mangoes (11 page)

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.

L
et’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.

Luperón’s harbor is a stubby ragged Y cut into the coast 14 miles west of the tourist town of Puerto Plata and 46 miles east of the Haitian border. The entrance is a narrow slit of navigable water at the base of the Y, with hull-crunching coral teeth set just below the surface on either side. “When you’re just off the entrance, call another boat in the harbor,” we’d been told in George Town, “and ask them to come out in their dinghy and lead you in.” There’s no margin for error here, and the trickiness quotient was upped recently: The red buoy marking the hard-to-see reef edge on one side went missing several weeks ago, and no one’s got around to replacing it yet. A few green stakes, though, are apparently still there. “Do
not
trust the stakes,” our guidebook says.

Carl and Kathleen motor out in their dinghy to be our guides, and we follow close behind them: through the narrow slit in the reef, through a sharp dogleg to the right, all the way past the green stakes. As soon as we are safely beyond the stem of the Y, I see why Luperón is called a “hurricane hole,” a place to hide from hurricane-force winds. Dense mangroves enclose the harbor, their roots poking out of the dark water like gnarled witches’ brooms, with the mountains rising up close behind them. Together, they create a protected, cushioned pond, where two-dozen boats float this morning, hanging lazily on their anchors. Very little breeze penetrates, and the air is close and still, not merely warm but boiling stinking baking roasting unbelievably hot—even for people who’ve had several months of acclimatization in the Bahamas. The wind generator on
Receta
’s stern, which provided all the power we needed to keep the boat’s batteries fully charged there, scarcely turns here. And gone is the crystalline Bahamian water. The bottom of Luperón harbor is covered in thick, dark, gooey mangrove mud, and the water itself is a slurry of silt mixed with considerable sewage runoff from the town; you can’t see more than a couple of inches—well, maybe an inch—below the surface. This is not the place to consider popping in for a cooling swim—though the local kids have no such reservations and even eat the oysters (raw) that they pry from rocks and pilings. I quickly learn to carry a package of antibacterial wet wipes to use on our hands after we tie
Snack
’s soggy painter to the sagging dinghy dock at the edge of town.

In the Bahamas, where 80 percent of the food is imported, we were happy we had thoroughly stocked
Receta
’s food lockers before we left Florida. In proper frugal-cruiser mode, we had loaded up not just on beer but also on canned stuff we would
never
buy at home: soft gray canned asparagus and waterlogged canned green beans; canned flaked white-meat chicken (the poultry version of canned tuna) and—worst of all—disgusting-looking cans of
whole
chicken. “About 15 servings,” the label chirrups unbelievably, showing a badly photographed, pasty-looking miniature bird perched on a blue background that does nothing to improve its looks. “Home-style goodness.”

The Dominican Republic makes a mockery of our Florida supermarket sweeps. We barely open a Florida can—except for the Old Milwaukee—the whole time we’re here.

W
e tie
Snack
to the dinghy dock, disinfect our hands, and walk down the gravel jetty toward the small village that starts at the far end. Like the island as a whole, Luperón is a combination of third and first worlds. Chickens scratch along the dusty roadside and the occasional donkey or pig strolls by, but reliable e-mail and fax service is available at the phone-company-cum-souvenir-store on the main street—as long as the power doesn’t go out, which it frequently does. There are places that will do our laundry—but it’s then spread out to dry on curbside bushes, roofs, and barbed-wire fences, where it will be leisurely coated by thick dust stirred up by the
motorconchos
that blast along the main street. Salsas and merengues blare from open doorways, and mangy dogs slink through the shade at the edges of the concrete buildings—painted soft pastels mostly, though the headquarters of the Dominican Liberation Party is a startling combo of bright purple and canary yellow. (In fact, it’s called the Purple Party, and displayed as such on ballots, the rainbow of political parties a nod to the high illiteracy rate.)

When substantial supplies are needed, we can go to Santiago, the island’s second largest city, about 38 miles away, where the supermarkets are said to be just like the Florida big boxes. Except that the parking lots have guard towers, and security guards with sawed-off shotguns roam inside and out, protecting these pockets of affluence in the midst of an impoverished country. The class divide in the Dominican Republic is blatantly huge.

But Luperón’s small, un-air-conditioned, dark (to keep them cool), and disorderly stores turn out to be surprisingly well stocked. “Go to Ana’s on the main street for chicken,” Kathleen had told us. “It’s the best spot—she takes off the head and most of the feathers.” “And she’s got beer and rum,” Carl jumps in, “very cheap.” “But watch out for the cat at the
supermercado
across the road. She bites.”

Our noses lead us down a side street to the
panadería
, where squat loaves of bread are cooling on racks lining the sidewalk. We buy a bag of warm rolls and dive into them the minute we’re back on the street. Steve is a bit put out to discover the seeds sprinkled on the one he is about to bite into are moving. Ants. Inside the bag. Yummy rolls, though.

At Ana’s, besides cheap chicken, Presidente, and the Dominican Republic’s three Bs—Brugal, Bermudez, and Barceló rums—we discover the creamy thick Dominican drinking yogurt, sold in
cuartillo
bottles and gallon jugs, which tastes like a rich delicious milkshake. At the
supermercado
, the cat is as crotchety as advertised. (“Don’t worry, she didn’t break the skin,” Steve assures me after his friendly overtures are soundly rebuffed.) She prowls the aisles for four-legged intruders in search of peanuts and beans that have spilled out of bins onto the wood floor. Cases of Presidente and gallon cans of cooking oil teeter at the ends of the aisles. The
supermercado
accepts Visa just like the supermarkets in Florida, but when I slide into the front seat of the pickup the store’s owner commandeers to take us and our groceries back to the dock, the driver carefully removes the pistol stuck into the waistband of his trousers and lays it on the seat between his legs.

T
engo hambre
”—I’m hungry—the shoeshine kid says to me softly. You don’t have to look very hard to see poverty, and when someone tells you he’s hungry here, you don’t doubt him. I learned this our first night in Luperón, when a very pretty, very young woman started to braid my very short hair in a restaurant. Before I could muster the Spanish to refuse, she had one braid finished, with two beads and a piece of foil from a cigarette pack hanging on the end. “
Basta
,” I tell her, enough. “But I have four children,” she replies. It seems impossible given her young age, but the restaurant owner quietly confirms her story—adding that she supports the children herself. We pay her lavishly for the single braid, and later spot her in a corner, wolfing down a plate of food that she’s bought with the money.

Now I dig out some change for the shoeshine kid. He knows we’re both wearing sandals, realizes he can’t work for the money, but he sees I’m holding a map. “Where do you want to go?” he asks in Spanish.

“
El Museo del Jamón
,” I tell him. The Ham Museum. He picks up his shoeshine stool, motions for us to follow, and leads the way.

We had taken the public bus—actually, a couple of buses—kitty-corner across the country to visit Santo Domingo, 120 miles away on the south coast, leaving
Receta
at anchor in Luperón. A young Israeli man was looking after her; partway through a solo sail around the world, he was happy to make a little money to replenish his cruising kitty. After living on a boat for months, our small, basic Santo Domingo hotel seems like five-star luxury. King-sized bed! Air-conditioning! Full-size shower with hot water! Cable TV! In between watching the NBA playoffs (and the Three Stooges) in Spanish, we’ve been walking our feet off exploring the historic capital, which was founded by Bartolomé Columbus, Chris’s brother, in 1496.

The shoeshine kid ushers us importantly through the door of El Museo del Jamón and exchanges a few words in rapid Spanish with the man inside. “Is it true? Did he bring you here?” the man asks. “
Sí, sí
.” He goes to the cash register and gives the kid some change—a finder’s fee, for bringing us in, his lucky day. I don’t bother mentioning that we’d already rewarded him, or that we would have found El Museo ourselves without much trouble, as we were just steps from its door when he intervened.

El Museo del Jamón is a small tapas-style bar, where the Presidente is served so cold it’s almost frozen and the ceiling is festooned with whole serrano hams dangling side by side, dozens of them, marching from one end of the room to the other. On its bottom, each ham wears a small, pointed white paper cup—the kind you’d find at a water cooler—to catch any greasy drips before they land on the patrons who are sitting at the bar or tables underneath, tucking into plates of the ham (sliced paper thin), spicy chorizo sausage, and other porcine offerings. Steve, to put it mildly, is in heaven.

“Serrano” means from the mountains, and these hams are dry-cured in the cool mountain air of the island’s interior by Dominicans who have been trained in Spain, in traditional methods. Steve is a porkophile who’s been severely deprived since he started living with me: With my Jewish background, I never ate pork at all while I was growing up, I don’t cook it, and I still avoid eating it in its most obvious forms, such as ham and bacon. He pronounces El Museo’s ham the best he’s ever had: delicate, almost sweet. “I read a story years ago,” I tell him as I soak a hunk of crusty bread in the garlicky red oil that’s pooled around my chorizo (which I do eat, with barely a pang of guilt). “It was about a young Spanish bullfighter, who carried a serrano ham with him as he traveled from town to town, and bullring to bullring. He’d hang it from the ceiling of each hotel room, so he could carve off a slice whenever he wanted. This was the ultimate luxury for someone who grew up poor without enough to eat and now was tasting success for the first time.”

That image had long stuck in my brain, but sharing it with Steve is a big mistake. Now he desperately wants to buy a whole ham from El Museo, carry it back to Luperón on his lap on the crowded bus, and hang it from one of the handrails in
Receta
’s main cabin. He can picture himself on future night passages, ducking below to remove a delicate slice or two whenever he feels the urge for a snack. The ultimate luxury, he quotes back at me. I draw the line: A mezuzah at the entrance to the cabin, and a whole
jamón
swinging over the settee? I think not.