Sea Wife - Amity Gaige Page 0,14

a compromise; a sailor could spend his life in that place alone.

We came across them in the late-afternoon light—a chain of small, sandy islands, each one about the size of a baseball diamond. They looked like so many other islands in the territory. Palm trees tilted toward the crashing surf like bouquets of tulips, and forgotten human artifacts—a fisherman’s cold fire, broken eyeglasses, a single shoe—lay scattered in the sand. We knew that each island belonged to somebody, but the owners never posted a sign, never left a name. The Guna do not consider themselves Panamanians. They do not speak Spanish, unless to trade with outsiders; they do not believe in selling or buying land, and they do not use money. The coconut harvest was their currency. This implausible economy had preserved the place, and we roamed it like embarrassed ghosts. Truth is, we had blundered into the territory, on our way east to try to tick through Michael’s list of port cities. But Guna Yala had already blown open our provincial knowledge, and we were humbled by all we did not know, all that can only be known by boat.

Good conditions for arriving, Michael said. We’ll be able to see straight down.

He started the motor, and the boat rumbled warmly. He stepped up to the mast and freed the halyard.

But it’s still hairy here, he warned me. There are shoals all over the place. Absolutely no route to enter from this side of the cays. Juliet, honey, look at the chart. You’ll need to be really vigilant today, honey.

In my experience, shoals all over the place was simply descriptive of Guna Yala—hundreds of islands sitting on a shallow ocean shelf. A sailor could see variations of depth by the color of the water, which was a patchwork of blues—the incandescent turquoise of sand, the mother blue of deep water, and the purple discoloration of coral heads. These colors were a map that was misread at the boat’s peril. It was often my role to hang out under the lifelines and eyeball the whole process so that we didn’t run aground. Michael didn’t trust the GPS. I thought he was crazy until it blinked out in the middle of a field of coral heads.

We weren’t purists. We used the GPS. We used our SAT phone until we lost it overboard in the Golfo de los Mosquitos. We used our iPad if we got reception, and we definitely used our autohelm—promiscuously. Like many novice sailors, I developed an emotional attachment to the autohelm, which labored on like some unthanked sub-wife, the quiet, accommodating third hand that we needed desperately.

While Michael lowered the mainsail, I went to the cockpit and switched off the autohelm. Juliet’s wheel hummed in my hands.

Sybil was sitting on her hands in the cockpit, gazing at her father, whom she had begun to idolize since we’d started to sail. He knew the name of every rope, clutch, or valve. He was a wonderful new stranger, this Captain Michael. Or was that other man the stranger, I sometimes wondered, the one who used to sit with a bag of Funyuns propped on his belly, the TV flickering across his irises, a man who never knew the name of her teachers or friends?

Corgidup, he shouted, flaking the mainsail. How did you know that means Pelican Island, Juliet?

I read it in the book you gave me, I told him.

I love pelicans, Sybil reminded us.

Will you please bring us a little downwind, honey? Michael called. We’ve got to go around the leeward edge of that little dup there. There’s a deep channel between these two islands. Good, good. Is Corgidup inhabited?

Well, there’s the pelicans, I said.

Uh-huh.

I had to smile. Michael wasn’t really listening. He didn’t really care whether or not Corgidup was inhabited. He was tucking the sailcloth vigorously into the cover, the tip of his tongue sticking out.

You’re just trying to make me feel useful, I said.

What? he said. I can’t hear you.

Uninhabited, I said. The guidebook says that Corgidup is only inhabited during the coconut harvest.

Wonderful, he said. We’ll have the whole place to ourselves.

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