...or, Big Z and Little M in The Case of the Stolen Tender
Road Harbor, Tortola
25 June 2011
Set alarm and wake up at 5:30 am to give myself a half-hour to eat breakfast and have coffee before motoring the boat over to the fuel dock to fuel up for our sail.
Of course, in true Catbird fashion, as soon as there is any movement above deck, Captain Don puts us to work, with the vaguely promising, "Oh, but we'll sit and have a nice bowl of cereal once we reach the fuel dock...I want to make sure we're there extra early this morning so we have room.".
D tells Robin to get ready on the port bowline and puts me at the stern. We motor over, and as we're pulling up to the dock and tossing the lines over to the fuel attendant, Don yells for me to pull the dinghy up alongside.
Well, I look behind me, and there is no 14-foot dinghy in sight - must already BE alongside. I check the starboard side and...no tender to be found. Shout back, "Um, Don? I don't see the dinghy..." and he returns, rather brilliantly, "It's at the stern!" - where I am standing. "No, no it's not..."
He comes down from the bridge to confirm that no, I am not mistaken, there is no tender, no tender line - our dinghy has disappeared.
6:30 am
While he sets up the boat for fueling, he instructs a groggy Robin and I to pull down the double kayak and "just go paddle around and see if it drifted to shore.". Still no breakfast. And shore is quite a distance from the fueling platform. Robin and I exchange a look as we drag the kayak to the stern and set about lowering it into the chop. I suggest we throw a shirt and shorts on over our bikinis, and we hop in, as graceful as we get at 6:30 in a pre-coffee morning, and set out looking for T/T Catbird.
We paddle through the swell and into the sulfurous-smelling mangrove swamp, around the ritzy Moorings, and through the Village Cay Marina, but there is no tender to be found.
We tie off the 'yak, (a subtle shade
of hunting orange) to a cleat at the marina and hop onto the dock, soaked, starving, shoeless and smelling of swamp. It is 0700, and everything is still closed up, so we wander around for a time waiting for the marina office to open, and trying vainly to hail Captain Don on our VHF.
0730
Ravenous and half-asleep, we stumble (quite literally) upon a little French cafe about to open, and both are ecstatic when I find a crumpled, soggy one-dollar bill in the pocket of my jean shorts. Skip barefoot back to the bakery to see what our one dollah can buy us. One dixie cup of coffee, not brewed yet. Oh, we'll be back.
We post up on the pier by the marina office and watch the harbor wake. A very salty woman and her hefty jack russell walk by on their way to the square of crapable grass and tell us to check out the dolphins by the Necker Belle on A Dock.
Walk out, see no dolphins, but use the opportunity to creep on the Belle, and try to hail our trusty captain again from close range. No answer. Feelin pretty punchy at this point, and walk back to the coffee shop to trade in our lone dollar. Practically throw it in the poor girl's hand, grab our tiny Styrofoam shotglass of java juice, and
split sips outside under an awning as it pours rain.
Walk out to the point to try hailing Don on the radio again, and still no response. We do, however, have a lovely exchange with the only other person standing barefoot in the rain at 7:45 in the morning on a field cleared for a public market: a semi-toothless homeless man in a blue and yellow tracksuit.
Walk back to the marina where we make friends with James, the Road Harbour Marine Officer. He ushers our delirious, bedraggled selves into the air-conditioned office, and we all try again to hail our elusive commander. Nada. Attempt to call the police station to report our dinghy stolen, but, it being our third day on Catbird, we have not a clue as to the make and model of the tender, and, not being owners, are not much use ("Umm...it's maybe 25 feet..no? 15 feet long - what's that in meters? Sure. white-ish? Off-white? Eggshell?).
0830
Decided to post up dockside and wait for our space cadet capitan to come kayaking in. While we're sitting, lamenting our broke and barefoot condition, we are momentarily cheered by the tan and shirtless commercial dive crew as they start loading their boats for the day's work. A few
of them give a smile as they saunter
down A Dock, and we are startled out
of our hypoglycemic reveries by two rather great-looking scuba masters asking if we want to meet for a drink later.
The day's looking up!
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