Read Online An Embarrassment of Mangoes by Ann Vanderhoof - Free Book Online

January; the days are warm and lazy. We go for long walks, catch up on boat jobs, share dinners, and, one afternoon, play with the manatees that have swum into our anchorage. These huge, slow-moving beasts that surface every few minutes to breathe are thought to be the basis of sailors’ tales of mermaids. But only someone who had been at sea a very long time would divine a beautiful woman from these wrinkled, whiskery snouts and leathery elephant bodies covered with patches of algae and barnacles. Also called sea cows, manatees are, like their grazing namesakes, none too bright. They like to rest just below the surface, where they are often hit by speeding powerboats (whose drivers, some of them none too bright either, ignore the signs telling them to slow down in manatee zones), keeping these unfortunate mammals on the list of endangered species. (Their numbers were reduced well before powerboats, when they were hunted almost to extinction for their meat.) However, manatees haven’t learned to fear boats or people, and they swim trustingly up to our dinghy and let the four of us scratch them. One big guy, all 10 feet and probably 1,000 pounds of him, rolls onto his back like a puppy to have his tummy scratched, his flippers up and his tongue lolling out.
    Meanwhile, we’re frustrated as hell.
Kairos
has been tied to us for so long that Steve has dubbed Todd and Belinda “the remoras,” after the fish that attach themselves to ships, sharks, and other big fish to hitch rides and feast on food dropped by their obliging hosts. “Things could be worse,” Todd says. “We could be someplace cold—and at work.” The dreaded “W word,” as it’s called in cruising circles. He’s right, of course, but the tourist board has convinced us it’s better in the Bahamas. Besides, Belinda and I are
desperate
to get the crossing over with. Each day we’re primed for it, pumped, filled with nervous energy, ready to go—and then we gradually deflate as we hear the weather reports and realize we won’t be leaving. At the same time, we’re also a teensy bit relieved that we’ve been granted yet another reprieve. Boaters do this crossing all the time, but for us it’s a Big Deal—
our
first challenging passage—and the longer we wait, the more our minds blow it out of proportion.
    It’s not the distance that makes the crossing potentially difficult—only 47 miles separate Key Biscayne from Bimini, where we plan to land in the Bahamas—but rather the Gulf Stream: a 40-mile-wide river of warm water that flows northward past the coast of Florida at speeds of up to 41⁄2 knots. We have to build it into our course, initially heading south rather than directly across to Bimini, to compensate for it sweeping us north. But even with a perfectly calculated course, the Gulf Stream can make the crossing miserable. When the wind is out of the northeast, north, or northwest, it collides with the north-flowing current and sets up white elephants—steep, square, often dangerous, and always stomach-churning waves. All the guidebooks agree: Don’t cross the Gulf Stream until you have a weather window without any “north” in the forecast. Which is why we’ve been waiting eleven days at Key Biscayne.
    Finally
, it looks like a window is opening. On a
Friday
.
    We go.
    Perhaps that’s why
Receta
snags a lobster trap on the way into Alicetown, Bimini. Of course, we don’t know for sure that’s what it is—just that we are entering a strange harbor, on a falling tide, in an unfavorable wind, with the current against us, a shallow sandbar on one side and rocks on the other, and suddenly it has become almost impossible to turn
Receta
’s wheel.
    We had crept out of Key Biscayne in predawn darkness,
Receta
leading the way,
Kairos
(and a string of other boats) following—an arrangement that boosted my already-high anxiety level several notches. Before we even left the anchorage, my stomach had knotted up the way it used to thirty