Float Plan(61)
“Please take your hands off my boat.” My voice gets lost amid their arguing. I reach into the cockpit locker and take out the flare gun. Load it. Climb up on the cabin top and scream, “I don’t want a fucking mooring ball!”
The men go silent, their eyes round.
“I don’t want a tour. I don’t want a necklace.” My voice is as big as I can make it, and I point the flare gun at the bilge of Norman’s skiff. I would never fire it, but as long as he thinks I will, I have the upper hand. “I want you to take your hands off my boat and go away.”
He pulls his arms up in a sign of surrender and makes an I wasn’t doing anything wrong face at the others. These men are only trying to support themselves and their families, but their aggression is too much.
“All of you. Get the fuck away from me.”
They mutter to one another as they leave. Look back over their shoulders as if they expect me to beg their return. Call me a crazy white bitch. My hands shake as I climb back down into the cockpit, turn the boat around, and motor away from Wallilabou Bay.
My eyelids are heavy with exhaustion—so tired, I could cry—but it’s only four or five more hours to Bequia, the next island in the Grenadines chain. A hysterical laugh escapes me when I realize five more hours at sea no longer fazes me. I hug the coast of St. Vincent until I am calm enough to raise my jury-rigged sail and kill the engine.
* * *
The water in Admiralty Bay is so green and clear that I can see my anchor buried in the sand at the bottom. I dive in from the stern rail and Queenie splashes down beside me, dog-paddling in circles around me as I float on my back under the sun. My belly is filled with pancakes, and in the cool water, St. Vincent washes off me like sweat. We take a long nap in the hammock, go ashore to check in at customs, and stroll the Belmont Walkway, a narrow strip of pavement that runs along the seawall. We eat lionfish pizza at a little blue hut. And stop at Daffodil Marine Services to drop off my dirty laundry and hire someone to fix my halyard. Daffodil—a self-made businesswoman who raised her boat boy game to a marine service empire—guarantees both will be done by tomorrow morning.
Back on the boat, I doodle a sketch of me and my dog as pirate queens—Queenie with an eye patch, and me with crossed cutlasses behind my head—and write State of Grace O’Malley beneath. Long stretches of time pass without me saying a word. I sit with myself and am satisfied in my soul. Even missing Keane doesn’t change that.
The harbor is lively with yachts, fishermen, and ferries from other islands, and a white woman from the nearest sailboat calls across the distance. She introduces herself as Joyce Fields from Port Huron, Michigan, and after I call my name back, she invites me to come have a drink. I put Queenie in the dinghy, and barely a minute later a glass of rum punch is pushed into my hand.
“Come, sit.” Joyce is an apple-shaped woman wearing a strapless bathing suit that seems perpetually on the verge of falling down. Her tan is leather dark, and I wonder if my skin looks the same as hers. I don’t know if it’s because of the rum, the island, or a combination, but she is shiny-happy. “Where are you from, Anna?”
It’s a simple question, but my home is right here, right now. “Florida, I guess.”
She laughs. “You guess?”
“I’m kind of a nomad at the moment, but I started this trip in Fort Lauderdale.”
“Goodness, you’re so young.” Joyce sounds like a concerned mom and it’s very touching. “Did you come all this way by yourself?”
“I’ve done some of it alone, but I had company for most of the trip.”
“We came up from Grenada,” she says. “We took a couple of years to sail through the Caribbean, but we like the Grenadines and Grenada the best, so we’ve been going back and forth between the two for the past six months. What about you?”
“South to Trinidad, but I may keep going. Not right away because I need to save up some money, but—” I take a sip of punch, surprised at myself. Sailing to the Panama Canal would be incredibly difficult by myself, and I don’t know that I want to cross the entire Pacific Ocean, but nothing is off the table. “Yeah. I can go anywhere.”
I eat dinner with Joyce and her husband, Mike, who dinghies out from shore with a bucket of lobsters. The orange-shelled monsters send a pang of longing for Keane through me. I snap a photo and text it to him: What the poor folks are eating right now. I miss your face and the rest of you too. The three of us compare notes about islands we have in common, and I laugh at myself as the crazy screaming white woman of Wallilabou Bay.
“It’s hard to choose a favorite,” Joyce says. “But I think mine is Mayreau, just down the chain from here. Gorgeous beach, fun bars, and the national park at Tobago Cays is spectacular. Turtles everywhere. You can even swim with them.”
I’m glad I’ve had enough rum to disguise the flush in my cheeks when I tell her Martinique is my favorite. It’s not completely a lie when I tell her it’s because of the slave memorial and the beach at Les Anses d’Arlet.
Before I go, Joyce takes my picture for her sailing blog and suggests we have lunch tomorrow. A warm buzz sits in my head, in my body, as I motor Queenie ashore for a quick bit of doggie business. I fall asleep with the hatch open to let in the stars, and dream about sea turtles.