An Embarrassment of Mangoes (32 page)

Pete stands ready with the gaff as Steve brings the fish alongside. The head emerges. A big blackfin tuna . . . well,
part
of a big blackfin tuna. No need for the rum: That big tug a few minutes ago was another fish biting off three-quarters of the tuna for a snack. The cut is surgically, scarily clean, which makes the thief most likely a blue marlin, we learn later. The part he’s left us is 19 inches around and 20 inches long.

It becomes the dinner that Steve rates the best onboard meal ever. Rubbed with a little olive oil and grilled rare, it is certainly gorgeous, but the circumstances—the first big fish we’ve caught ourselves—push it totally over the top. “The Beautiful Babe Spit did it,” Steve crows between mouthfuls. And the now-proven-beyond-a-doubt fish attractant has a name.

Next day, Sari and I liberally gob the lures on both lines with scarcely a protest. Why quibble with being called a Beautiful Babe? The result is a 31⁄2-foot great barracuda, not a wise fish to eat. (Large barracuda can carry ciguatera toxin, which causes a dangerous form of food poisoning.) We release it, but no matter: We have plenty of grilled tuna left. That night, I serve it cold, with lemon-dill mayo. One wonders how the stuff in cans can have so little flavor.

The next morning, more gobs. That evening, we have a choice: bonito or Spanish mackerel, both great eating, both large enough to serve four. As we eat baked mackerel fillets topped with olive oil, bread crumbs, and Parmesan, I suggest a moratorium on fishing the next day: The steaks and chicken Sari and Pete had brought vacuum-packed from Canada need to be eaten. No one will hear of it, and it’s business as usual the next day: Sari spits, I spit.

Luckily, we only hook one.

O
h my God, you mean it really
works
?” This, from Cleo, weeks later. We had sent him a postcard with a full accounting, which reached him while his son Will was visiting. And now he has sent us a full account of their conversation:

“Why’d you ever,” Will said, laughing, “mention that old superstition, anyway?”

“Not a superstition. It’s a fetish.”

“Whatever. Why’d you tell them?”

“I don’t know. A boat in the water, two beautiful babes. They wanted to catch fish. Noblesse oblige . . .”

“You know, Dad, you really have got to shape up. You’re the one always saying speak nothing but the truth. Steve”—Will’s brother—“and I got one hell of a dose of that when we were growing up. Now here you are telling women to spit on fishing lures. You need to be more careful with people.”

“Yeah, sure. But just look at that postcard. I never really believed it, but a little female spit
does
bring in fish. Has to do with pheromones or something.”

“Pheromones my ass.”

“What?”

“Pheromones are species specific. You should know that.”

“I couldn’t argue the point any further,” Cleo concludes. “Will has a degree in chemistry.”

Chemistry be damned. The stuff
works
. Just ask the Queen of Expectoration or the Queen of Salivation. That’s what Cleo now calls Sari and me.

Grilled Tuna, Three Ways

The only trick to this dish is to grill the tuna quickly over high heat, so it’s seared outside and rare within.

4 6–8-ounce tuna steaks

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon dark rum

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Combine marinade ingredients and rub into both sides of tuna. Cover and let tuna sit about 10 minutes at room temperature.

2. Meanwhile, preheat barbecue.

3. Grill tuna over high heat about 2 minutes per side for rare, brushing occasionally with remaining marinade. Serve hot or cold one of the following ways.

• Grilled Tuna with Wasabi: Mix 2 tablespoons wasabi powder (Japanese green horseradish powder) with enough water to form a paste and allow to stand 5 minutes for flavor to develop.

• Grilled Tuna with Mango Salsa (see page 101).

• Chilled Tuna with Lemon-Dill or Lime-Cilantro Mayonnaise: Combine 1⁄2 cup mayonnaise with 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice and 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh dill; or 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice and 1 tablespoon finely chopped cilantro. Refrigerate briefly to allow flavors to blend.

The Passage
from Hell

Lure-making on a boat in the middle of nowhere demands deep concentration. It’s best accomplished by lounging in the sun for a couple of hours and sipping a beer or two.

E-MAIL FROM STEVE TO TODD AND BELINDA,
MAY 1999

By the time we next meet up with
Splashdance
, as planned, in Boquerón at the southwest corner of Puerto Rico, Beautiful Babe Spit has rocketed
Receta
into first place in the tournament. Since Sari and Pete have flown home, it has also been proved that the spit of one Beautiful Babe works as well as the spit of two.

Boquerón is the usual leaping-off spot from Puerto Rico back across the Mona Passage to the Dominican Republic, and
Receta
and
Splashdance
plan to cross together. The four of us work out the timing and the course over dinner on
Receta
: cero baked with lime and onion. Steve had landed the 17-inch mackerel-like fish (one of our smaller catches) on the day’s sail from Ensenada, with help from my salivary glands, of course. If the forecast holds, we’ll spend one more day in Boquerón, then leave at one the following afternoon. At a projected speed of 5 to 6 knots, we should arrive in Luperón two days later—in the morning, when the sun is high enough to give us the good visibility we’ll need for the eye-of-the-needle passage between the reefs. It’s been a full year since we were in Luperón, but its harbor entrance still holds first place in my memory for being the trickiest of the entire trip—the
only
spot we had needed a guide boat to lead us in. I’m not looking forward to the repeat performance.

In fact, the entire 244-mile, two-night, one-and-a-half-day trip between the two islands still stands as my most-hated passage. I haven’t forgotten the thunderstorms that “charge like bulls,” or the “steep seas” and “spurious currents.” I haven’t forgotten the churning water or my twenty-four hours of sporadic vomiting. Going this way, though, is supposed to be comparatively easy—because the wind’s at our back and the waves are largely in our favor. Piece of cake, other cruisers tell us. Even our fear-mongering guidebook calls it a cinch. None of them, however, makes the trip on the good ship
Receta
.

Only fifteen minutes later than planned, the hooks are up, the sails are raised, and we’re on our way out of Boquerón Bay. The start of the trip is a cruiser’s dream: steady breezes and good speed throughout the afternoon, and some fishing action just before sunset. As the line whistles off the reel, Steve grabs the rod, but is unable to make any headway toward bringing in whatever’s on the other end. It’s heavy, and it’s fighting hard. Suddenly, the 80-pound test line snaps and the rod goes slack. Gone. Steve’s pissed off, even more so when Jack radios from
Splashdance
behind us to say he’d seen the black shape of the fish surface “and it looked like you had hooked a whale.”

By the time I start my watch at 10
P
.
M
., Puerto Rico’s regular evening lightning is already crackling in the distance. But it’s far away and we’re smoothly steaming along at almost 6 knots. Because the wind had lightened at dusk, we’ve turned on the engine for an assist, to keep our speed up and the boat on schedule.

A
few minutes after midnight I hear a gentle
clunk,
followed by a momentary change in the hypnotic drone of the engine. I’d instantly drifted off to sleep on the settee after coming off watch, but any little variation in the regular pattern of boat sounds, under sail or power, is enough to snap either of us into instant wakefulness. “Did you hear that?” I call up to Steve, but he’s already lowering the throttle and checking the gauges. He’s heard it, too. “Everything’s fine,” he says reassuringly, and increases the speed again. Within seconds, the engine’s overheat alarm screams its omen-of-very-bad-things warning.

Engine off, all hands on deck. I struggle back into my evening offshore attire—pants, jacket, life vest, safety harness, armband strobe light, mini pocket flashlight, shoes—and back into the cockpit, taking the wheel while Steve goes below to troubleshoot. But the problem isn’t obvious, and it’s hard to keep my mind from leaping ahead and my anxiety from turning into full-blown fear.

We’re sailors at heart. Even me. More so than many cruisers we’ve met (who invariably seem to motorsail everywhere even when the wind doesn’t require it), we
hate
to turn on the engine. Yet here we are, not in the least bit of danger, sailing without an engine—and not the least bit happy about it. The engine is like insurance: It’s sure nice to know it’s there when you need it. Which we will, soon. Without it, the reef-strewn entrance at Luperón will be more than just a little challenging. And assuming we make it in safely, how will we get Mr. Engine, Sir fixed? Luperón gets the nod as the spot least likely to offer spare parts, let alone a mechanic acquainted with the likes of our aged Westerbeke 50. One step at a time, I tell myself. First let’s get
to
Luperón.

But getting to Luperón isn’t going to be quick. We’re making less than 4 knots under sail alone, and the wind is lessening and shifty. Without enough air in the sails to drive us, the Mona Passage chop and slop has started rolling the boat, making my stomach, which is already knotted up nicely thanks to the engine problem, even less happy. We radio
Splashdance
to alert Jack and Carol to our problem. Jack immediately says they’ll slow down to keep within VHF radio range. I’m relieved to know we won’t be out here alone, but feel horribly guilty, knowing how frustrating it will be for them to prolong their own time on passage. “That’s what buddy boats are for,” Jack says, shrugging off my concern.

Still, my off-watches are not marked by anything like sound sleep. And take it as an indication of my anxiety level that nowhere—not in my journal, not in the ship’s log, not in my memory—is there any indication that we ate during this passage.

As soon as it’s light the next morning, we agree to switch to our big headsail—678 square feet of Dacron—to help us get a little more speed in the light air. This giant has lived in the cockpit locker since we left Toronto, never used and “taking up valuable space,” as Steve has reminded me every time he’s had to shove it out of the way. (It can barely be lifted by just one of us.) Now that we actually need it, I feel vindicated about insisting we bring it along, but I refrain from making comment.

Steve got even less sleep than I did last night, and wrestling the small sail down and the big sail up is hard work—especially while clipped onto a rolling foredeck with a safety harness, and with
Snack
tied upside down right in the middle of the working area. The maneuver takes more than forty minutes, and by the time he returns to the cockpit dragging the smaller sail in its bag, he’s drenched in sweat. But we pick up a little speed, the boat’s motion in the waves improves, and he disappears below to crash on the settee before tackling the engine again.

Meanwhile, I call
Splashdance
and give them a cheery-voiced morning update. “Do you mind if we go on ahead?” Jack asks. “Of course not, no, not a bit, really, no, of course not”—and in the daylight, riding along at a reasonable clip with the big sail pulling nicely, I almost mean it. Since they will soon be out of VHF radio range, we set up a schedule to talk on the long-range SSB.

We may be sailing faster, but we can’t sail directly at Luperón (like most boats without a spinnaker,
Receta
doesn’t sail well dead downwind), which means a series of long jibes: a succession of 5-mile zigs and zags adding many extra miles to the straight-line course. Then, to heap further trauma on my already traumatized self, on one of these jibes a shackle lets go at the back corner of the mainsail where it attaches to the boom. The sudden bang is bad enough, but it’s followed by a loud
rrrrrrrrrriiiip
, as a long tear appears along the foot of the sail. Great: Now we have to reef the sail past the tear or it will blow out entirely. Almost one-third less sail area. Just what we need.

After more time contorted over the now cool engine, Steve’s still found nothing wrong. Oil, coolant, belts, pump, impeller—they all seem fine. The only thing he can’t check is the business end of the shaft and the prop, and we’re suspicious this is where the problem may lie, given the
clunk
. But checking it would mean diving under the boat—impossible since the wind and seas have been steadily increasing since dawn. When you don’t want wind, you get it.

Those thunderstorms that “charge like bulls”? The first one rolls over us around eight that night, when Steve’s on watch. Pounding rain, lightning all around, and us once again the tallest object in any direction (the
only
object in any direction, for that matter). At ten, his terse notation in the log is another “
AWFUL.
” I don’t even realize how bad “
AWFUL
” really is, because Steve has suggested I stay dry below and he’ll stand a longer watch. I just know I can see him in the flashes as clearly as if the cockpit were lit by huge film-set lights. They come one after the other, classic forks of lightning, stabbing the water on all sides—so many and so frequent there’s no longer darkness between flashes, so close and so bright he has to hide his eyes behind his hand and peer out between slits in his fingers. Only later do I learn that he could
hear
the sizzle as the forks crashed into the water around us, and that he was truly frightened, fearing we would be hit. Steve, whom I have never known in twenty years to be afraid.

Usually, squalls cross our path quickly: a few wild minutes and then peace. But these squalls are traveling in our direction and, like hitchhikers, we are picked up by their wind and carried along. The lightning stays with us.

Below, I’m carrying on a lively interior monologue. “Okay, name ten ways this could be worse,” I say, trying to trick myself into believing it’s really not so bad. But I bog down after number 1, “We could be sinking.”

By midnight, the fireworks are finally over and I’m back on watch. As often happens post-squall, there is zero wind. Zip.
Nada
. Absolutely nothing. We have virtually no forward motion—we just sit there, slatting around, rolling with the big waves that refuse to depart with the wind. The boom, with the flogging mainsail, is first on one side of the boat, then crashes over to the other; back and forth, with all the attendant banging, popping, and squeaking. For me, sitting stock-still in the middle of the ocean, knowing we have no engine to turn on to move us along, is worse than the squall. I am beside myself. I fiddle endlessly with the sails, but I can’t make the boat move. I twiddle endlessly with my hair—the one nervous habit from back home that I haven’t been able to break entirely in my new relaxed state; it still returns in times of stress. I want to scream. I could
walk
to Luperón faster than this. I resist as long as possible, but finally wake Steve, get him to reassure me that there is nothing I—or he—can do, and then let him go back to sleep.

“I’m going over the side to take a look,” he announces when it’s still very calm the next morning. Because of the current, our speed is a full knot even with the sails furled, so he ties himself to the boat with a long line, and we run another floating line with a life-ring on the end out behind the boat. It wouldn’t do to lose him mid-ocean.

He’s only underneath for a few seconds. As he surfaces, he spits out his snorkel and the news: “A fishing net’s wrapped on our prop.” Bingo! I hand him his dive knife and run yet another line over the side, this one amidships so he can hold on when he comes up for air between cuts.

Although we’re rolling in a slight swell, the surface is calm, and the color is the exquisite cobalt of bottomless ocean. (The depth is over 3,000 feet here.) As Steve works under the surface, his black diveskin is cleanly etched into the rich blue, and the water is so clear, I can see beyond him into infinity. Beautiful—euphoric, even, now that we’ve found the cause of our problem.

Fifteen dives later, he surfaces waving a 3-foot square of thick, green, ratty cordage, probably from one of the dilapidated Haitian fishing boats that ply this coast. Each of its heavy strands required a full breath to cut. Steve heaves the net as far into the sea behind us as he can. We should have brought it onboard, of course, but at that moment he just wanted to cast our problem as far away as possible.

The engine starts, we put it in gear, and we keep our eyes
glued
to the temperature gauge. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. All seems well. We even leave the gauge to run to the foredeck when a dozen dolphins converge out of nowhere in the sparkling water, as if they’ve come to celebrate with us. Riding
Receta
’s bow wave, they shoot from one side of the boat to the other, somehow calculating their leap across our bow so they never touch the boat. What a party.

We take freshwater showers in the cockpit to continue the celebration as we race along (comparatively speaking) at 6 knots. We’re even going in the right direction: straight toward Luperón. At our next radio check-in time, we let
Splashdance
know the good news.

As the day progresses, though, it becomes clear we’re not going to make Luperón by sunset. The harbor entrance isn’t lit, and neither are the markers inside, and we know there is no tolerance for error. We debate going into another, closer port, but Sosua is an unacceptable choice given the wind direction, and Puerto Plata is simply not recommended, a poor port of entry for a cruising boat. We debate standing off, spending a third night at sea, and entering harbor in the morning. But the sight of fresh lightning in the distance, as dusk begins to ride over the backbone of the Dominican Republic, makes that a pretty unpopular alternative too. Especially since Steve (although he hasn’t yet admitted it) has been badly spooked by last night’s storm. Especially since we’re already very tired (both of us) and very seasick (me).

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.