Most sailors would think I'm talking about the barometer when measuring the glass - or perhaps a measure of rum, but in fact, I am talking about one's perspective on life, and getting stuck waiting for George, the mystery man at Green Turtle Cay. I could see it as a problem, but in fact, it has been one of the best things that could have happened to me.

Life in a small island community is a mysterious thing to a big city gal like me. The relationships and the intimacies in such an environment are unknown to folk in the South Florida fast lane. There are some 500 residents here on Green Turtle Cay and they all know one another. The boaters and fly-in tourists, people like me, are the outsiders. However, most people, George included, make their living off the people like us. I'm sure that if I had a 75-foot fancy yacht, I would have seen my mystery man the first day here - and I would have been handed a bill that fit that stature. However, my little 33-foot boat is easy to overlook. So easy, in fact, that for the 6 days I have been here I have come to feel like I am invisible.

The first relationship I have made is with Eddie, George's assistant. Monday morning a cold front had passed over us, and the temperature was in the low 70's. I was wearing a sweatshirt and when I saw Eddie, he was wearing long pants, a big jacket and a straw hat. I told him that I was worried that my boat was dying, the batteries were bleeding out, and I couldn't start my engine to charge them. By afternoon he was there and he found the issue was merely a bad connection in the digital battery monitor. The batteries were good, just the meter was bad and he fixed it. Later, he brought me a bunch of tiny sweet tomatoes the size of marbles, each on its own green stem and I made myself a delicious salad with them that night. He has since brought me another batch of them, and I am rich in fresh mini-tomatoes these days. Now my only other problem is the engine start switch which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't and I am determined to stay until it is fixed.

So go my days, I get up in the mornings and make my coffee and walk my dog. The island has such strong scents of salt and brush and morning wood fire smoke. The roosters crow and the local parrots squawk and my dog and I explore the back roads and trails around our end of the island.

Then it's back to the boat for a day of writing. I work until 4:00 or 5:00 and most of the time, I simply take another walk, but yesterday, after days without much human contact, I decided to run the dinghy and make a visit to the bar at Coconuts. I met for the second time the bartenders - Yvonne Big Dog and Beryl. And there I met Sybil - the other female singlehander in this place. She had electric blue eyes and a knowing smile. She had just finished hauling her boat out at the yard across Black Sound and she was preparing to leave by plane in the morning for her other home in Boulder, Colorado. She was there with a fellow who was a yard manager and the two of them spoke so intimately of the local folk - who was a cousin to whom, and who was a Cooper or a Curry - and woe be to he who mistook the two. She has been coming to winter on her boat in the Abacos for four years now, and I found myself envying her that lifestyle. She bought the three of us a couple of rounds and we shared Conch fritters and Jerk chicken wings, and I sat back and listened and learned. Maybe, if I get to spend the next few years visiting these islands, I will be accepted as an almost local like Sybil.

Today, Wednesday, I tired of peering out the ports looking for George and I decided to go out to lunch and I leashed the dog and headed to the other local eating spot that has outdoor dining - The Wrecking Tree. Chip and I enjoyed a Conch Burger and grapefruit juice whilst watching the local 6-8 guys work on a truck across the road. A half dozen or so dogs came by to sniff at Chip and we probably watched another half dozen golf carts full of bright red tourists pass looking for something to do. The pace on an island like this is most definitely slow and it's only when you get stuck on the end of a dock for days at a time that you can begin to slow down enough to appreciate the beauty and kindness that such a place exudes.

Back on the boat tonight, I was sipping a glass of wine when a boat approached from the entrance to Black Sound. There was one man on board, his long blond locks flying in the strong easterly breeze. He tied up to boat not 10 feet away.

"Hi" I said to George, the mystery man.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

I had thought that once I saw him, I would be desperate to get him to work on my boat, but suddenly, I realized that his absence had been a gift. I didn't have four years to get to know Green Turtle Cay, but he had given me a week, and I had come to love the place in that time.

"I'm doing fine," I said.

"I'll be down to look at your starter tomorrow. I've been off-island looking at a boat down at Spanish Cay."

"It's okay," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow. Good night."

I watched as the blond, bare-foot mystery man walked up the dock toward his house and I realized that I didn't really care whether it would be tomorrow or sometime in mid-June. Getting stuck in Green Turtle Cay had just changed from a problem - glass half empty - to a treasure - glass half full.

Fair winds!

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The sweat slips slowly down the small of my back. My hair is damp and stuck to my head. Off in the distance, thunder rumbles, but here on Black Sound at Green Turtle Cay, not a whisper of wind ruffles the water. I've got my computer set up in the cockpit so I can work trying to catch whatever wisps of wind come my way. I'm on the dock.

It's not good policy for a sailor, but all my life I've been a procrastinator. I've lived on Island Time. I figured if there was a issue that looked like it might become a problem, the best thing to do was to ignore it and hope it would go away. I've been doing this for quite some time with two problems - my engine start button and my batteries. Of course, neither issue has done anything but become a more serious problem, so now here I am on the dock at Roberts' Marine in Green Turtle waiting for the attention of the most popular man on the island: George.

George is the electronics man. Abaco Marine Services will work on everything else, but only George and Donny are the battery guys. I started this little odyssey a couple of days ago by asking two local men who were sitting outside the grocery store at the Green Turtle Yacht Club if they knew anyone who looked at electrical systems. One fellow was large (or at least his midsection was) and white, the other slender to the point of skinny and black. Both had seen their years of sun and they squinted off across the harbor, then looked at each other nodding. "Ought to see Donny. You keep your radio on?" I told them I did and they said Donny would call me on channel 16.

I returned to the boat, put the handheld on 16 and went to work on the computer. At 6:00 when I quit, I noticed the radio's battery was dead and I didn't know when it had gone. The next day, Thursday, I motored from White Sound over to Black Sound at high tide, and started the hunt for "Donny." I was walking the dog through New Plymouth when a stranger came up along side me in his gold cart (the primary vehicle used here) and told me that Donny had been calling me on the radio and to get in. I grabbed the dog, jumped in and was whisked up the hill to the home of the most talkative Bahamian man I have ever met.

"Yeah, well, it might be yo batteries that have gone bad, but then again it might be that your solar panels are overcharging and then if it is one of your batteries that one cell will pull down all the others like it did that time with this fella's golf cart and you say you have the golf cart batteries..." and on and on. The man used absolutely no verbal punctuation and he shifted over to the weather and then local politics and it was hot and I was dying right along with my batteries.

Finally, he said he thought the real man for the job would be George. He would send George round to see me if I would go back to the boat. I escaped, returned to the boat and began to wait peering out, looking for the magical, mythical George. I turned on my radio and I began to notice that everyone on boats from all over the island was calling for George. No wonder the locals had suggested Donny. He might talk your ear off, but he has time to do so. George is the most popular man on the island.

Just before 6:00, a boat pulled alongside with a white fellow with long curly blond hair and bare feet. He had a shy young Haitian man with him. They introduced themselves as George and Eddie, and they said they would be back the next day to look at my batteries. The next morning at 9:00, Eddie came out in the boat, and he told me that George wanted me to move my boat in to the Robert's Marine dock, that George would look at my batteries then, and there would be no charge for dockage. I spent all day yesterday on the dock and no sign of George.

In the afternoon, I went into town with Eddie and I told him I was a writer. I learned about his 2-year-old daughter and his wife who was in the hospital in Nassau with cancer. Eddie ran for the ferry and Donny pulled up in his truck. He asked if George had fixed me up yet. I told him that I hadn't seen much of George and after a 10-minute monologue, he drove off saying he was going to call George and chew him out.

Now today is nearly gone and the only sign I have seen of George is when he came down last night about 7:00 and told me that he had heard I was a writer. He was a bit in his cups, and he talked about his work, about life on the island. He waved at all the boats in the sound. "There are a hundred stories on everyone of 'em." I nodded. I was tempted to give George my sad story of how much I wanted to get off the dock, out to cleaner water with a working electrical system that was needed to write my stories, but I've been told that George only does work for those he likes. I can't afford to make him angry. I don't have until Christmas. I'm trying to be patient, to be nice and to go along on Island Time, and hope that George will finally find time to get to me. Tomorrow is Sunday. I don't suppose I'll see George then. Maybe sometime in June.

Fair winds!

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The best thing I can say is that I haven't cried yet. Haven't even come close, and judging from everything that has already gone wrong, it scares me to think of what will have to happen to get me to cry. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

According to that fine old adage, Murphy's Law, "If anything can go wrong, it will." Well, I've decided Murphy was a woman. Maybe even a woman sailor, because I have certainly seen enough of the ghost of Ms. Murphy these past few days.

That night anchored behind Mangrove Cay turned into a nightmare as the wind just kept increasing. All the boats anchored around me were much bigger than I am and they didn't seem to be bothered by it, but as the wind continued to screech and howl, I kept thinking about what would happen if my anchor rode broke. I was only anchored in about 10 feet of water, but by midnight, I had let out about 200 feet of scope. I kept thinking that with more line, the elasticity wouldn't put so much strain on it. Ha! And as the boat sailed on the hook, I worried that the line would chafe through and part. I knew that the boat had a snubber, but I had never used it before. Down I went into the forepeak at midnight and then I was back in the cabin pulling out books trying to remember what kind of knot you tie to attach a line to another line. Oh yeah, a rolling hitch, and did I have any books with picture of a rolling hitch? Found it. Now, will I remember that when I get up on the foredeck in the screaming wind and dark? Finally, I managed to tie it, got the snubber with the two lines going to either side of the bow into place, went below and set my alarm clock to beep on the hour every hour so that I could stick my head out and see that we were still okay.

I slept fitfully at best and I was up at 5:30 and underway by 6:00. I sailed wing and wing with the two sails on opposites sides of the boat and got it all balanced and was doing 5.5 to 6 knots when I passed several sailboats that were motoring only in the high winds. I was determined to find a place where I could pass a comfortable night, and my plan had been to anchor off the Hawksbill Cays off of the village called Foxtown on Little Abaco. I arrived around 2:30 in the afternoon, but the gusts were whipping up the water and I decided that it didn't look great. I searched the chart and decided that the small bay at Allans-Pensacola Cay looked good and it was only about five miles away. I sailed over there and the bay was full - the only spots left were in the opening that would have no cover. By this time it was nearly 4:00 and time was a wasting. I had to find an anchorage and I set my sites on Moraine Cay to the north of me. Inside it looked like there was a tiny bay with two meters of water and if no one else was there, I might be able to snug myself in.

At 5:00, I was creeping in watching the depth sounder and the laptop screen with my GPS, which I had brought out to the table. There, in the very spot where there should have been two meters of depth, I slid gently aground in sand. I tried to motor her off, but had no luck. OK, so I launched the dinghy and lowered the main anchor into the dink and rowed her out to deep water. Back on the boat, I fired up the windlass and tried to crank her off. No luck. Then I realized the wind was abeam and I raised the main, she heeled over and floated free. . . and started to sail! I hadn't loosened the mainsail sheet and she was sailing up over the anchor. I freed the sheet brought up the anchor and headed out to deeper water.

The wind had dropped and the bight outside the island seemed like it offered a bit of protection between the two reefs, so I anchored there. I lowered the outboard onto the dinghy and headed in to the pretty - but shallow- bay to get the dog drained ashore.

The water was beautiful and I swam and ran on the beach. Though there were a couple of houses, clearly they weren't inhabited and we had the place to ourselves. Chip barked and raced after sandpipers and he was having a wonderful time . . . until Murphy took hold of us again, and Chip disappeared into the brush inland. I got out of the water and ran up the dune calling his name when suddenly I heard him yelp and he reappeared twisting and running with the oddest gait. I ran over to him and when I went to pick him up, I jerked my hand back. He was covered with prickly burrs, hundreds of them on his face, his body, his feet. Each one was about a half inch across and they were tangled into his fur. If he weren't in so much pain, I would have laughed. He was a sight to see!

I got him out to the boat and spent the next couple of hours doing surgery with scissors and tweezers while he jumped and squirmed and growled and bit me - did everything he could to make the job more difficult. Finally, he was burr-free, and I was too exhausted to do more than warm a can of vegetable beef soup for dinner. I went out into the cockpit with my soup bowl in hand and noticed that the wind was picking up again. In minutes, we were back to showing gusts of 18-20 on the anemometer and the wind had swung south leaving us no protection at all.

I tried sleeping in the forepeak, but the boat was hobby horsing so badly that I was burping up vegetable beef soup - a sure precursor to getting seasick. Rather than lie in bed worrying about losing the dinghy that I could hear snapping at her painter, I got up in the dark and went back and climbed into the dinghy and rigged her for the davits. The boat's stern would rear up on a wave and come crashing down splashing water all over me. I was afraid the dinghy would get under the stern and it would get crushed. But I managed to rig it and raise it with the outboard still attached and got it secure so it didn't flog itself to death as the boat bucked and rolled in the two to three foot seas.

I came below, dried myself off, got out a sheet and made up a bunk on the L-shaped settee in the center of the boat where the motion wouldn't be as bad. Chip was scared and when he's terrified, he wants to be near me for comfort. He jumped onto the short leg of the L-shape and squeezed his body half onto the side of my head.

I couldn't help it. A chuckle started building inside me when I pictured what we must look like, with this dog's body up against the side of my head on this rocking boat in an anchorage in the middle of nowhere. And that was when I heard it. That sound that dog owners know well - that pssst noise of escaping gas - and THAT was when I knew that Ms. Murphy was alive and well and had taken up residence on my boat. I didn't cry, but I did laugh until the tears were streaming down my cheeks.

Fair winds!
(so to speak)

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