Wives of the Sailors

As the wives of sailors, we are both blessed and cursed at the same time.  We are blessed with adventure, freedom, location and unlimited travel.  We meet interesting people from many different cultures and countries, making friends is always easy for us. We get to experience and explore countries for months at a time, really getting to know the land and the people and learning about their different cultures.  We climb volcano’s, swim with sharks, rays and turtles, sail with dolphins and whales, and hike through screeching  jungles chasing monkeys, to name just a few of our everyday pastimes.

We go where we want, when we want, for as long as we want, dependent only upon the weather.  We don’t wear watches, or worry about time. Our days are measured in daylight, and last from sun up, till sunset.  We breathe clean unpolluted air, and eat fish fresh from the ocean.

We are a perpetually wind swept, sun kissed lot, in our colorful sarongs and bare feet; shoes are redundant on a sailboat. We spend most of our time in Islands that non-yachties may only get to visit for a few days a year, if they’re lucky, and even then it’s usually only the more commercial islands. 

We stock up our freezers, fridges, coolers, fruit and vegetable hammocks, and head out to sea, where we spend our time swimming, snorkeling, reading or just lazing around in hammocks strung from the ships mast or between two palms on the beach, dozing in the sun, it’s a truly, blissfully easy life. 

Or is it?

Me with provisions for a few weeks in the San Blas

Now for the cursed part of the story; the time in between! Not spent exploring the islands, or lazing around in hammocks on deserted beaches. The time spent in  boatyards and marina’s, with no breeze, and sometimes no power, so no air conditioning.  Working in dusty, unbearably hot conditions, maintaining, repairing, replacing, sanding and varnishing, dealing with burning hot decks that are painful to walk upon.  Waiting for those urgently needed parts from the mainland that are held up for weeks sometimes months at a time by the customs, just because they can; then dealing with customs, knowing that you are completely at their mercy, and OH don’t they love it. 

OH let’s not forget fending off mosquitoes by the thousand, spraying ourselves liberally with dangerous chemicals to stop them biting, which rarely works, and does God only knows what sort of damage to our bodies, followed by hours, days, sometimes weeks of itching and scratching, and then the inability to sleep because of the bites and the heat.  The perpetually wind swept hair, which sounds so romantic, but in reality you can’t get a broom through it, let alone a brush, the sun kissed faces, that are actually covered in skin blemishes from all the sun damage, and under serious threat of developing skin cancer, or just having leather like skin, and looking  20 years older than you actually are. 

We’re almost always barefoot, so when we do try and wear shoes again we discover to our horror that our feet have spread so wide we now look like duck’s, and shoes are not even made in the width we now need to fit, but don’t panic, at least we still fit into, and look great in flippers!

The hours and hours and hours  of time spent at sea, for some it’s magical, for me not so much, unless there are dolphins or whales to watch, I am so dreadfully bored all I can do is sleep, then I find myself desperately scouring the horizon for the next destination, and counting the minutes until we can drop anchor.

A  life on the ocean waves can be wonderful, thrilling, magical, incredible even, but there is always another side to everything, and boat life is no different. 

However,  If you were to ask me if I would I do it again?  I would  probably say Yes, with only a moment’s hesitation, because even though I hate sailing, and I’m scared to death each time we hit bad weather, there is no way would I miss the unbelievable experiences I’ve been blessed with on this journey.

Thank goodness I’m the wife of a sailor (I think)!