Essays

The Sailors' Trap

By John Guy

s/v Pachamama

“Rio Dulce is a sailors' trap,” says Jack Chap, over a beer, at The Sunny Island Yacht Club, somewhere south.

“What do you mean? A sailors' trap,” I asked.

“Some places,” says Jack, “grab us like a spider's web. They are beautiful, enjoyable, convenient, and darn hard to leave. Places like Luperon , Chaguramos (sp), Puerto La Cruz, and El Rio Dulce, where you find cruisers who have been there for months, some for years, some even on the verge of investing in property or opening a business. These folks leave home, imagining an idyllic cruising life visiting countless versions of paradise and meeting local people in dozens of new cultures. Instead, they find that the trip from the U.S. is not idyllic. They work. They sweat. They do not sleep. Things go wrong on the boat. Anxiety is everywhere. At the point of greatest anxiety and frustration, they arrive at a sailors' trap, like Rio Dulce, a comfortable spot, relatively safe from hurricanes, with inexpensive services and with lots of other cruisers like them who want to sit awhile and to organize the daily pot luck or the annual Thanksgiving fest while making sure never to miss banter on the daily local VHF and SSB nets.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “We stayed in Rio Dulce almost seven months. The place is gorgeous, and the available land trips are attractive, challenging and rewarding. Never did I imagine staying in one place so long. The world is too large for that. You stay in one place too long, you lose the motivation to leave, and you forget that your first goal had been to see the world. Your idea of a sailors' trap is right on, but the trap is composed of another lock you forgot to mention.”

“What is that?”

“Leaving from these places is difficult. Let me explain. Departing from some locations is easy. Leaving anywhere in the Leewards , for example, is convenient. Head south with an east wind and within less than a day you arrive at a new location, a new little paradise with different people and different things to do. Leaving from the Rio , and other places like it, is not easy. To anywhere is a struggle. You can go north, of course, but you have been there before, and you don't want to cross an earlier track. Northeast? Look at the chart. The next stop is Jamaica , three, four nights, hopefully with a wind south of east? What about east, then south? At least two days to Roatan , usually against the wind, and once there, what do you do? Stay there several seasons? Some have done it, but most want to get out to avoid The Big Ones. At that point, they can either take an easy run back to The Rio, or face the mighty walls of adverse winds and seas by heading to Panama or Colombia . These are not easy day sails, Jack. They are work, both in preparation and in execution. Faced with the big challenges of moving to other significant ports, the mental hard disc says ‘maybe life here is as good as it gets. I'll stay here another season, then move on. The spider's web has done its job.'”

“I'll add to that,” says Jack. “My wife and I have holed up in some places more months than we imagined and you know what happens? We forget how to sail. We forget what big waves are like, what currents can do, how our skin becomes like putty with the mixture of perspiration, salt and sun screen. We again feel a bit of The Great Mal, and we cannot find the Sturgeron . The joy of healing is an old memory, and its renewal is not pleasant, or the wish wash of a down wind run takes charge of the psyche and makes us wonder why we left. ‘We need to rig the preventer ,' someone says, but where is it? After finding it, we wonder why the snap shackles will not open. ‘I thought we had WD 40 somewhere,' says the captain. ‘Didn't we have a check list,' says the first mate. ‘Thought we did,' says the captain. It takes a few days, maybe a few weeks, to get back into that grove. Life at a comfortable, sociable marina is a lot easier.”

“I'll drink to that,” says Jack. “Listen, what are you doing this afternoon? The folks over on the big trawler, The Pot Royale , are organizing a dominos tournament. Want to play?”

“No thanks,” I said. “Chichi and I just decided that we are going to stay here for the season, and we must lay in some stuff, because she agreed to organize the pot luck tonight, and we do not have any meat on board.”