Fernandina Beach, FL

Our Hitchhiker Friend

Before we left Charleston, a young stranger approached the boat in the marina. He introduced himself and said that he was looking to crew on a sailboat going south. He had just come in from Virginia on a catamaran, but that boat had crew lined up for the next leg. Neither Evan nor I was inclined to invite a stranger to spend days and nights with us on the boat, helpful though it always is to have extra hands on deck. Apparently, this kind of arrangement is common enough, but we politely declined and set out on our second off-shore overnight trip.

Twenty-nine hours later, we'd motor-sailed 175 nautical miles (or 200 "statute" aka land miles) from Charleston, SC to Fernandina Beach, Amelia Island, FL.

It was perfect weather for motor-sailing: very light wind, calm water with the occasional swell from a distant weather system. Evan and I listened to the soft hiss of the boat's wake spreading out ripples of quick-dying froth across the sea. The sound resembled a snake's hissing, its flickering tasting and smelling exploration of something unidentifiable in the air. We sailed past blooms of mushroom jellyfish that really did look like baby portabellas.

We saw at least four or five dolphins too, a few of which surfaced so close to the boat out of the blue that I yelped. They didn't hang out much after that, even though I apologized for the rude welcome.

Along with terns and pelicans, we noticed a small bird fluttering in crazy swoops. It was clearly not a seafaring bird--it looked like a swallow, or some other bird that should be hanging out in bushes and shrubs, hopping around on the ground for seeds or something. We worried that the poor thing was somehow lost and would just wear itself out if it didn't find someplace to land. It flew close to the boat a few times but didn't land, and we eventually outpaced it.

Lo and behold, not long before sunset, almost an hour after we first spotted it, the small swallow-like bird landed on the stern rail! Then it hopped onto the covered fender, which was easier to keep hold of than the slippery metal rail.

It explored that section of the cockpit before taking off in a mad flutter behind the boat, up into the sky, and then back onto the boat! This happened over and over again, each time its stay on the boat a little longer than the last. Finally, the bird hopped over to Evan and me and onto our feet, our knees, our arms. Even though it weighed no more than a couple of ounces, I could feel its weight where it perched on me. It flew away again.

Next time, it walked around us like we'd known each other since land--"hey, got anything to eat?"--and hung out on the floor of the cockpit, pecking at whatever uncleaned mess dwelled down there and the fresh water we'd put out. Then, as the sun went down, Otto (we named him after the seventh visit or so) hopped into the cabin and, after checking out different areas a couple times, settled down next to a wadded-up fleece blanket on the settee, and, puffing his feathers, went to sleep.

He stayed asleep the whole night, even with our comings and goings and the constant crackle of the radio. At first light, while I was napping, Otto woke up and paid Evan a visit in the cockpit, did a couple of his usual swoops off and on the boat, then didn't come back. We missed him during the day and hoped that the rest he'd had would at least give him some juice for the six mile flight back to land. Later in the afternoon, we were glad to hear a woman on the radio announce that a yellow-breasted bird had come into her cabin. I hope it was Otto!

Besides the excitement of making friends with Otto (who, as internet research reveals, was probably a female Carolina wren), Evan and I fell into a smooth rhythm for the night watch. Once the moon set a little bit before 9pm, we took turns standing watch, one person keeping an eye for other boats in the night, listening to the VHF radio, and monitoring the autopilot for deviations from our plotted course. We found it easy to stay awake during our turns at watch, easy to fall asleep when our turn was over, and easy to wake up on our own when it was time to switch. Thankfully, the night wasn't as cold as I'd feared, and I was warm and toasty in my layers. Also, my Kindle with its built-in cover light came in very handy for keeping me alert: every 5-7 minutes or so, I'd read a few pages, cover the light (to get back my night vision), scan the horizon, check the GPS, and resume reading, ears pricked for radio communication. It was fun.

Now we're on a mooring in Fernandina Beach, FL. The sun has just set, so I'm going to go to bed soon. My head feels like a cracked bronze bell that's been stuffed with wool and packed away in a dusty crate.

Charleston, or Beauty isn't Everything

Charleston is the equivalent of a very beautiful, lazy, spoiled heir who never worked a day in his whole life. The very beautiful and graceful mansions, homes, and churches in their charming alleys and streets attest to the leisure and privilege of colonists-turned-planter millionaires who owed their wealth to the exploitation of slave labor, or "enslaved people" (more on this below).

(After the Civil War, Charleston's wealth came from banking and the stock market. But it was still dirty money. After all, it takes money to grow money, and most of Charleston's money that went into banking was old planter money.)

So, as beautiful as the city is, I can't help but feel some revolt, like when I visited the Vatican several years ago. The Vatican was the richest and most opulent place I had ever seen--it made Versailles look like a barn in comparison--and the Sistine Chapel was indeed breathtaking. But it was also a gross display of the wealth that the Roman Catholic Church could only amass by manipulating tenant-nobles and exploiting uneducated peasants.

To return to the term "enslaved people," I found it somewhat odd that our tour guide at Drayton Hall plantation was using this to describe slaves. She also used the term "enslaved laborers." A little digging around on the internet later, it appears that the terms she used are the current politically correct terms. I had no idea. I understand the intention and motivation behind "enslaved people;" namely, to emphasize that the slaves were, first and foremost, people, who, circumstantially, happened to be enslaved. There is a fair amount of debate, though--"enslaved people" versus "slaves."

For me, the question is, which term better accurately describes the injustice experienced? My first instinct is "slaves." No mention of the word "people" drives home the point that at that time, slaves were not considered people at all. They were chattel, or personal property like a chair or a horse. As a word, "slaves" leaves no room for euphemism or illusion.

That said, there is an argument against using the word "slaves" because it is grounded in the perspective of the slaveowner. That is, just because slave traffickers and owners didn't consider slaves to be people doesn't mean the word we now use to refer to slaves should reflect that too. "Enslaved people" restores humanity--and linguistic neutrality--where "slaves" does not.

I think I don't like "enslaved people" simply because it is incomplete. People who are enslaved are enslaved by somebody. Who? But perhaps this is the point: using "enslaved people" begins a dialogue, one that covers not only white planters and traders in the South, African traffickers in Africa, but also the slaves themselves and their lives before they were slaves. As long as this was a dialogue that was opened by African-Americans, cool. Otherwise, it would be like a convicted grand larcenist who had made off with hundreds of millions pointing his finger at the bank employee he'd paid a couple of million dollars to give him the account numbers and passwords he stole from. Ok, but, in the total scheme of the crime, it doesn't make him that much less culpable, does it?

Like a snowball turns into an avalanche, the day I really started to be bothered by all this, I also had a Hispanic tour guide in the Calhoun Mansion ask me if I could read Chinese. I said, nope. I'm not Chinese. He replied, "So you can't read Chinese? Where are you from?" I was going to say "New York,  Korean by ethnicity," but he cut me off and said, "So you don't read Asian? Fine, I thought you could help by reading Asian but nevermind." !!!!! THE STUPIDITY!!!!!!

On a happier note, the food here has been amazing, the sky has been crisp and blue, and we ran into friends we'd made back in the Dismal Swamp Canal. We'll stay for another day or two, then off to Florida.

Slideshow.

Easy morning, anti-swamping

I woke up this morning to birds chattering and squawking (crows) and tooting (the one pictured above) right outside the open hatch. I opened my eyes and saw the belly of a blackbird fly over. Evan came over from the computer, where he was checking the weather conditions for the day, and told me that there would be strong winds today, 20-25 knots (10-15 is fine, 20 iffy, 25 gale-like). We could go out and have an uncomfortable six hours going through marsh stretches of the ICW, which are completely exposed to the wind without any real treeline barriers, hoping that the wind wouldn't blow us, despite our best efforts at the helm, out of the channel and into some shoals.

That's the worst-case scenario, of course. Actually, that's just the tip of the worst-case scenario iceberg. The rest of the worst-case scenario is swamping: one gets grounded in a shoal at high tide, the water level falls as the tide goes out, leaving you stranded like the bird in my picture, the boat's keel gets wedged deeper into the mud bottom at a strange angle, and by the time the tide turns again, the boat is so stuck that it lacks the buoyancy to float back upright with the rising water, which instead floods the boat and causes extensive damage.

Swamping would have been unlikely today, but we're still going to wait out the windy day. The next two days are forecasted to be cold and rainy, and we'd prefer to arrive in Charleston in good weather, hop off the boat, fresh as daisies, and stroll around town all day. So we'll be here in McClellanville for a few days more. Corn muffins, huevos rancheros, lots of reading and writing, full seasons of Weeds and the Wire...I'm pretty happy.

This is home for the next couple of days.

Last images of NC