Float Plan(63)

I fling open one of the cockpit lockers and grab a rope. Run up to the foredeck and tie the line to one of the cleats. Keeping hold of the line, I lower myself into the dinghy … and tow my boat into the harbor.





stranded in paradise (30)





I spend most of the next morning on the internet, troubleshooting what’s wrong with the engine. I’m not sure I can afford a professional mechanic. I can only hope the fix is easy enough to do myself. Or maybe I can ask someone from a neighboring sailboat to help me. All signs point to the water pump bearing having seized up, so I take a local bus—a large van with about fifteen people squished inside—to the nearest marine repair shop in search of a new pump.

“We’re waiting on a delivery boat from Trinidad,” the mechanic tells me. “It’ll be here Tuesday or Wednesday.”

“Would anyone else have it, you think?”

He shrugs. “I can call around, but it’s pretty unlikely.”

“How much?”

“About three hundred US,” he says. “Plus labor if you want us to install it for you. That will run about four hundred and fifty dollars with the service call.”

I think back to Provo, when Keane and I decided not to spend extra money waiting for a weather window. Hindsight and a dislocated shoulder made it a bad call at the time, but now I have money for a water pump.

“Let me know when you get the part,” I say. “I’ll decide on the labor later.”

Since there’s nothing I can do until the water pump arrives, I decide to enjoy Grenada. I stop at the IGA in Grand Anse to restock the galley, then play with Queenie on deck while I cook up a pot of chicken, rice, and beans. Later, when music drifts across the water from the bar on Hog Island and a lively conversation from a nearby boat make the night too loud for sleeping, I swing in the hammock with Queenie.

Your tool bag misses you too, I text Keane.

I do it without thinking, and he doesn’t answer, just like he hasn’t answered my other texts. Maybe in the middle of the ocean my words get lost in space. Maybe a bag of tools is a small price to pay for Keane’s escape. Doubt has a way of creeping into the smallest places and putting down roots, even though I don’t believe Keane would ever leave that way. Even so, I need to stop doing this. I need to let go.

I email my mom and Carla to let them know I’ve reached Grenada. Celebrate crossing the 1,600-mile mark. Share my victories over the broken halyard and the failed engine. Attach the picture Joyce took of me in Bequia. I haven’t devoted many words to describing the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met, but I’m saving them all for one big story.

Carla emails back almost immediately.

A—You look so different. And not just because you’re smiling. You look like the Anna I remember. I miss you, but I love seeing how far you’ve come, both geographically and emotionally. At the bar, we’ve been keeping your progress on a map, but I know we’ve missed some places in between. I can’t wait to hear all the details, especially the ones about Keane Sullivan, because I’ve missed some details of that story too. Sail safe. xoxo—C



Saturday, I take a bus to the market in St. George’s, where I wander a street lined with tent-covered stalls, heaping with vegetables and fruits, spices and souvenirs. I buy some fruits I’ve never seen before—soursops, mangosteens, and sugar apples—while vendors call out offers for T-shirts, tote bags, bottles of hot sauce, and spice necklaces. Chicken-scented smoke swirls around me as I drink the water from a coconut with a straw and buy small sacks of spices for my mom—whole nutmegs, star anise, cinnamon sticks, and tiny black seeds called nigella. I find a blue batik sundress and a little steel pan drum for Maisie. And I let myself be talked into buying three spice necklaces—strung with red mace, cinnamon, ginger, clove, nutmeg, and turmeric—for ten EC by a lady whose brown arms are draped with them.

“You hang it in the kitchen or the bathroom,” she says. “It lasts for three years and every six months or so, soak it in water to freshen up the scent.”

My last stop is at a meat vendor, where I buy some oxtail segments that I later cook with rice and beans and steamed cabbage. After dinner I try one of the sugar apples, separating the knobby skin into pieces. The white flesh is soft and sweet like custard, and each piece contains a seed. It’s a lot of work for such a little fruit, but it’s worth it. I wrap some of the seeds in a damp paper towel and stash them in a plastic baggie. Maybe I’ll gather some dirt and start growing my own tree.

On Sunday afternoon a group of cruisers from all over the world load coolers of beer into their dinghies and raft them together off the beach in front of Roger’s Barefoot Beach Bar, where a reggae band plays. I’m watching from the cockpit when a grandmotherly-looking white lady wearing a wide straw hat, corks dangling from the brim, motors past and shouts, “Come to the dinghy concert!”

I grab Queenie, a couple of bottles of Carib, and a bag of plantain chips, and join the party. I lash my dinghy to one belonging to a bald white guy in his late thirties. His dog, a shaggy reddish-black mutt, scrambles over the boats to meet Queenie before I’ve finished tying the knot.

“Sorry about that,” he says. “Gus is a friendly guy.”

“No problem. Queenie’s glad for the company.”