April 11, 2020-Activities during a Corona Virus Breakout

There was a bug in the sailor’s wine. He dipped it out with his finger and found it was still alive. He placed the bug on a paper napkin and watched it stagger drunkenly in circles.

That midnight he spotted the gecko that lives behind the coffee cups. He and his wife, his crew, occasionally during the night saw the gecko lurking on the wall behind the galley, watching for bugs. The gecko’s company was welcoming to the old sailor and his wife; "Hey! We’re all friends, ship mates on a happy ship."

The sailor, thinking of his own experiences with drink, didn’t know if the bug would have a hangover or if, in the morning, it be deceased due to alcohol poisoning.

Later the wine bug sobered up and flew off.

Wings is in voluntary quarantine anchored in the bay, but Judy and I are not alone; we are co- quarantining with a gecko and some wine bugs.

www.marca.com/claro-mx image
The Plague Breaks Out

It is a strange time we are living in right now. This seems like some dystopian science fiction movie where a plague from another planet has landed on Earth and spread like wildfire across the human population. In this science fiction movie we would see newscasters from around the world daily announcing the spread of the plague and the increasing death tolls. Fear runs rampant among Earth’s inhabitants. The plague has made it dangerous to go outside so they cower in their houses. City streets are deserted. Businesses are shuttered. Governments are found to be helpless to stop the onslaught and they impose draconian restrictions in hopes of slowing it, but it is too late; the plague has escaped far ahead of any preventative measures and is running wild. Within weeks over a million cases have been confirmed and the trajectory is straight upward.

But this is not a science fiction movie, it’s real. The apocalyptic scenario took all of us totally by surprise, even though the science fiction writers and the movie script writers have been describing it for years. Who would think that one day we’d wake up and it would be real.

And where is our boy hero and his beautiful scantily clad sidekick from the movies whom we need to discover the weapon which will save the Earth?

The old sailor contemplates the world on the quarter deck of his ship. He sways as his ship rolls in the gentle swell as he has done for decades, if not for centuries. From his rolling vantage point it seems still and peaceful in the world. The shore is distant, the plaque may be lurking there but it lurks silently. He thinks the gecko ate the wine bug.

Night falls and the moon rises. It is a “Pink moon”.

The shutter of his Nikon clattered as he “shoots the moon”.

Then the tumbler of amber liquid waiting near his right hand called to him. The cool Scottish whiskey was soothing even if the world’s situation was not.
The sailor’s thoughts turned elsewhere. The past few weeks had not been filled with sailing.

Am I really a sailor? He wondered. I have hardly sailed for 2 hours in the last two months. I am but a engine room flunky with grease on my hands and tools to put away every night. The toil on a sailboat these days never ends. It is not the virus which constrains me, but the engineering.

First it was the water tanks. Two were leaking and the welder said, “Can’t be fixed.” So take them out and put some new ones back in. Hard work, took four days. Peter came around and lent a hand.

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Engine Lifted

Then an engine oil leak manifested itself, not that it was previously unknown. But by now it was too much to ignore. So the engine had to be pulled and all sorts of falderal must be removed to get to that silly leak, which was actually simple to fix once exposed to the light of day.

A New Oil Seal!

Makeshift table in a work zone

But it took four days; four hard days, and in the process the oil pan was shattered, and had to be repaired. Both the sailor and his mate worked hard on that project, and they worried that they wouldn’t get it all back together in time the big race, but they did.

Anyhow, that deadline evaporated when the plague struck. Racing was cancelled for the rest of the season.

And a family visit was also cancelled; the plague.

Thinking about that made the old sailor reach again for his drink. How plans can be tossed about like a dingy in a storm, he thought. So now the old sailor and his mate had nothing else to do but finally go sailing. Not how they envisioned March and April, but that’s how it comes down.

They had to provision the ship.

In reality many people were stocking up on food and supplies at that time. But for the old sailor and his wife this was nothing out of the ordinary. They stocked up like this every spring in preparation for an extended annual cruise. To see them packing carts of food down the dock was nothing new. They did it every year. The others might be provisioning to weather out the viral storm but the old sailor and his wife planned a cruise away from people each spring, and even though now being away from people was essential, it was ordinary to them.

This time however, going cruising felt different. There was an underlying anxiety in their hearts. It came from not knowing what would be going on ashore when they came back, and certainly they wondered about what would happen when they thought about stopping somewhere.

The scotch was down to the dregs. The sailor reflected on the fact that the the cruise they had embarked upon had been cut short; more engineering problems.
The charging system crashed and the cause bedeviled him. For five days he worked on it, and made countless calls to tech support back stateside. But each night the system was still down. A work around was found, but only a temporary one. Parts must be ordered. The ship must return to port.

And the water maker failed and a spare had to be installed. The old one was rebuilt.

Still, with all that, the sailor was rather enjoying himself. His work days were pleasant and he hummed tunes. Zen and the art…

After all, in our real life science fiction disaster movie many people have it a lot rougher than we do. We are lazing about on our comfortable boat anchored in a beautiful place, trying hard to enjoy a wonderful Mexican cruise while people back home are dealing with body counts and shortages of protective gear.

Deaths are mounting.

So, I guess we have it pretty good.

I wish others did.

wingssail images-judy jensen
Cooking

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Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Punta Mita, Mexico

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Full Moon