Read Online An Embarrassment of Mangoes by Ann Vanderhoof - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Ann Vanderhoof
Tags: Fiction
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years earlier on the mornings of high school geometry tests. I couldn’t imagine choking down breakfast and settled instead for a couple of seasickness pills.
Barely twenty minutes underway, with the lights of Key Biscayne alongside us, Steve, steering, misread a buoy and almost passed it on the wrong side, requiring a sharp, sudden change in direction. Looking behind us, I can see the procession of following boats make the same sharp jog one by one, like trusting players in some on-the-water game of Follow the Expert.
There was no mistaking the place where the Gulf Stream kicked in: The ocean suddenly felt friskier, the waves were bigger, and the line on the horizon where ocean meets sky turned jagged. I sensed some queasy hours ahead, but after that initial friskiness, the sea never got worse. The waves remained bearable, even comfortable, and Steve’s plotting was perfect; although
Receta
was pointed in the wrong direction, the Gulf Stream took charge until—seven hours of fast, uneventful passage later—Bimini appeared in the distance, right where it should be. Ahead of us, like two distinct pieces of cloth joined by a seam, the ocean abruptly changed from dark cobalt to turquoise, at the precise spot where the deep Atlantic meets the shallow Bahama Banks. The Big Deal was almost over—and, to my amazement, it hadn’t been such a big deal.
When we had planned our adventure back in Toronto, reaching the Bahamas was the first Really Big Goal; if we accomplished that and nothing else, the trip for me would have been a success. My confidence soared.
It was short-lived.
Steve is busy taking down the sails, the engine is on, and I am at the helm when the steering problem begins. Suddenly, the wheel is very stiff, the boat unresponsive. “The worst possible time for something to go wrong,” I point out, quite unnecessarily, as we prepare to negotiate the harbor entrance. Steve has taken over the steering and is trying to hide from me exactly how much muscle he has to use to turn the boat even a tiny bit. In case we lose
all
steerage, he decides to err on the shallow sandbar side of the long entrance channel and farther from the rocks. We bump, bump, bottom-bump our way over the sand.
Once through the entrance, he manages to crank the helm far enough left to convince the reluctant
Receta
to head toward the dock, where we need to check in with Bahamian Customs and Immigration. And it’s then that I see it: a thick yellow polypropylene rope streaming incriminatingly behind the boat, wedged against the rudder and preventing it from turning—a rope that most likely has a lobster trap attached to its other end. “All those miles down the Chesapeake without becoming tangled in a crab pot, and
now
we do it, our first day beyond the U.S.,” I moan. If the trap had snagged on a rock or coral head as we dragged it along the bottom through the entrance channel, or does so now, on the way to the check-in dock, the rudder will most likely be ripped off before the heavy line gives way.
If we make it to the dock
, I tell myself,
at least we’ll have fresh lobster for dinner to go with the champagne
. We’d been planning to uncork a bottle to celebrate finally arriving in the Bahamas.
Receta
makes it to the dock. Once the check-in formalities are over, Steve rounds up Todd, several long poles, and a Bahamian dockhand who’s offered to help, no doubt seeing the promise of some free line, a free lobster trap, and a couple of free floats. I, meanwhile, have unearthed our biggest pot from the depths of the aft cabin. To cook the lobster.
They jockey the line out from the rudder, haul in all 80 feet of it—the trap was in deep water—and hoist the heavy metal cage onto the dock with great expectation.
No lobsters. Inside the trap is just one 3-foot-long, pissed off green moray eel.
P erhaps our flagrant disregard for maritime superstitions—not only did we set out on a Friday, we had changed the boat’s name—is also
Barely twenty minutes underway, with the lights of Key Biscayne alongside us, Steve, steering, misread a buoy and almost passed it on the wrong side, requiring a sharp, sudden change in direction. Looking behind us, I can see the procession of following boats make the same sharp jog one by one, like trusting players in some on-the-water game of Follow the Expert.
There was no mistaking the place where the Gulf Stream kicked in: The ocean suddenly felt friskier, the waves were bigger, and the line on the horizon where ocean meets sky turned jagged. I sensed some queasy hours ahead, but after that initial friskiness, the sea never got worse. The waves remained bearable, even comfortable, and Steve’s plotting was perfect; although
Receta
was pointed in the wrong direction, the Gulf Stream took charge until—seven hours of fast, uneventful passage later—Bimini appeared in the distance, right where it should be. Ahead of us, like two distinct pieces of cloth joined by a seam, the ocean abruptly changed from dark cobalt to turquoise, at the precise spot where the deep Atlantic meets the shallow Bahama Banks. The Big Deal was almost over—and, to my amazement, it hadn’t been such a big deal.
When we had planned our adventure back in Toronto, reaching the Bahamas was the first Really Big Goal; if we accomplished that and nothing else, the trip for me would have been a success. My confidence soared.
It was short-lived.
Steve is busy taking down the sails, the engine is on, and I am at the helm when the steering problem begins. Suddenly, the wheel is very stiff, the boat unresponsive. “The worst possible time for something to go wrong,” I point out, quite unnecessarily, as we prepare to negotiate the harbor entrance. Steve has taken over the steering and is trying to hide from me exactly how much muscle he has to use to turn the boat even a tiny bit. In case we lose
all
steerage, he decides to err on the shallow sandbar side of the long entrance channel and farther from the rocks. We bump, bump, bottom-bump our way over the sand.
Once through the entrance, he manages to crank the helm far enough left to convince the reluctant
Receta
to head toward the dock, where we need to check in with Bahamian Customs and Immigration. And it’s then that I see it: a thick yellow polypropylene rope streaming incriminatingly behind the boat, wedged against the rudder and preventing it from turning—a rope that most likely has a lobster trap attached to its other end. “All those miles down the Chesapeake without becoming tangled in a crab pot, and
now
we do it, our first day beyond the U.S.,” I moan. If the trap had snagged on a rock or coral head as we dragged it along the bottom through the entrance channel, or does so now, on the way to the check-in dock, the rudder will most likely be ripped off before the heavy line gives way.
If we make it to the dock
, I tell myself,
at least we’ll have fresh lobster for dinner to go with the champagne
. We’d been planning to uncork a bottle to celebrate finally arriving in the Bahamas.
Receta
makes it to the dock. Once the check-in formalities are over, Steve rounds up Todd, several long poles, and a Bahamian dockhand who’s offered to help, no doubt seeing the promise of some free line, a free lobster trap, and a couple of free floats. I, meanwhile, have unearthed our biggest pot from the depths of the aft cabin. To cook the lobster.
They jockey the line out from the rudder, haul in all 80 feet of it—the trap was in deep water—and hoist the heavy metal cage onto the dock with great expectation.
No lobsters. Inside the trap is just one 3-foot-long, pissed off green moray eel.
P erhaps our flagrant disregard for maritime superstitions—not only did we set out on a Friday, we had changed the boat’s name—is also
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