The End of an Era

Location: Montreal, Canada

Yesterday I had my third PCR test in three weeks. This time, the swab was self-inserted. We love new experiences. Anyway, back to Antigua.

As the boat was going to be hauled out, all of the food had to be taken out and stored in the house. There was an impressive amount of truffle-related products, including a truffle-infused soy sauce. There were also four cupboards' worth of spices. Cleaning the upper cupboards required climbing on top of various counters and standing in strange poses; in one case, I had one foot on the starboard counter, the other on the port counter, and I was hunched over with my upper back touching the ceiling. My six-foot-tall crew members who had never had to do this were slightly unnerved.

More cleaning of the boat included scrubbing the deck and polishing the fiberglass. Cleaning the teak deck involved scrubbing it with a mixture of water, cleaner, oxiclean, and a heavy acid that really burned in your cuts. (Apparently, the acid eats away at your fingers so much that you can't unlock your phone via fingerprint for several days afterwards.) The guy that I was scrubbing the deck with had a son who was turning nine that week. They were going to the movies to celebrate. Polishing the fiberglass came on my last day of the job. It was the same procedure as polishing the hull of my racing dinghy back home, so it was a nice familiar thing to do. However, due to the Caribbean sun, my eyes hurt while doing so despite the fact that I was wearing two pairs of sunglasses. (Also, apparently, being six-eyed is not a good look. I think that that's just a hater mentality.)

Apart from polishing, my last work day was spent trying to haul out the boat again. It was a long process that involved making an 82-foot boat complete a right-angle turn into a slip (passage) less than a foot wider than the boat itself. Since the bow thruster (propeller at the bow of the boat that allows sideways maneuvering) was iffy, this involved pulling and releasing at least seven lines attached between various points of the boat and both sides of the slip. There were three people on winches, five people on shore, a few more scattered around the boat with lines, and the rest (including myself) running around with fenders. Due to the narrowness of the slip, fully-inflated fenders didn't fit at the widest part of the boat, so instead we were handed stacks of interlocking foam boards (the kind you use to make cushioned gym floors) duct-taped together. It was these things that were used to protect a multi-million-dollar boat from scraping against hard concrete.

And then, of course, despite multiple assurances that a boat this size could fit, the mast's top spreaders were wider than the crane that was supposed to pass around them. To haul out the boat here, we would have to take the entire mast off. It's always interesting when the captain's day is ruined at 9am. We could have stayed on the north side of the island, safely hauled out, and done all our work there, but no, they had to do it down here. Also, the guy organizing our haul-out was the same guy organizing our rudder job. Doesn't it just fill you with confidence?

Two days before leaving Antigua, David drove me in the morning to the hospital to get my PCR test. The receptionist thought that we were married. After all, it is known that the mark of a married couple is wearing matching work t-shirts. Also, it's amazing how flexible schedules are here. "Here's your paperwork, come back for the test at 2pm." "Would it be possible to get it any earlier?" "Let me see... Yes, the doctor will see you shortly." The testing area was the hospital's chapel. The doctor was very friendly, and then he stuck a swab in my nose and left it there while he swabbed my mouth. It was a strange, painful, and, I suppose, slightly spiritual experience.

My airport experience was relatively pleasant. The airport was a modern one by all standards, which threw me off slightly because after months of living on and around boats, I wasn't quite used to civilization. Then again, I'm not sure if it was because the conveyor belt system wasn't working, but they made us move our checked baggage to various areas after having weighed it. My connecting flight was to Charlotte, North Carolina, so I was surrounded by people complaining in heavy southern accents. The moving checked baggage experience was repeated in Charlotte, though. "Don't they normally do that automatically?" asked a passenger. "Not here," replied an airport employee. Mood. By this time, I had been up for several hours too many and decided to buy a coffee. The cashier called me Sir. I was not bothered. Fun fact: when Anna and I flew from St. Maarten to Antigua, our flight tickets had both of us down as "Mrs." However, with the Antiguan laws, I suppose that when we landed we would have to call ourselves "good friends."

After landing in Montreal late at night, I had another PCR test done in the airport, took a taxi to my quarantine hotel, ate the provided supper, and collapsed into bed. Actually, before doing that, I watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon until 3am. It was one of those late-night bad decisions, but it was a great movie, so no regrets. My hotel room was comfortable, sterile, and overlooked a parking lot. Not the greatest of views, but I marveled at how the sky was still bright at 8pm. After the large portions and explosions of flavours in Antiguan food, the hotel quarantine food was small and bland (like my high school geography teacher). Stew beef beats chicken parm by a long shot.

After receiving my negative test results, I went home to complete the rest of my quarantine. Whew, it's good to be home! I finally have a large selection of weather-appropriate clothes. I can wash my hair with something that isn't bar soap. After months of doing yoga on deck or tile, I finally can do it on a yoga mat. I can look outside and see conifers straight out of a picture book and squirrels running along wires. I can eat tofu. My family is here. My sisters' hair has grown. Life is good.

And I will miss the Caribbean—its warm, clear, turquoise waters, its bougainvillea, its comfort food, its people. I will miss the mountains in Grenada, the sunsets in St. Vincent, the howler monkeys in Panama, the party boats in Colombia, the lagoon in St. Maarten, and the hummingbirds in Antigua. I will miss my time on the Caribbean sea, that feeling of awe and smallness when looking up at the night sky, that thrill of an exhausting, well-executed tack, that excitement of catching fresh fish, that inner peace when the wind calms and the sun sets. I will miss Jem and Anna and the people that I met at every stopover. And I will see them again, maybe in two months, maybe in five years. But for now, I have my own island to rediscover. I have friends to visit, cobblestone streets to stroll along, Mount Royal to climb, terrasses to sit on, and a river on which to sail. I've missed Montréal. It's good to be home.