This is never a good sign, especially when bobbing in a storm off a rocky coast!
I had sworn off alcoholic drinks for the afternoon for a few reasons. One, the smell of diesel always turned my stomach. Add to that the pitching boat on stormy seas and I hardly needed to add rum induced vertigo to the mix. For another, with a sailboat adrift in a storm off a rocky coast, drinking didn’t seem to be the most practical answer. I wanted to be sober enough to swim in need be.
It was our next to last full day in Costa Rica and we were on the one excursion I had really wanted to do all week: A four hour sail along the Pacific coast whale watching. I adore sailing and had never sailed on the Pacific before. I wasn’t getting my chance this day either. The forecast had been for rain, but so had every day of vacation. This was the rainy season in Costa Rica after all! But rain was usually conveniently between 3 and 5, before dinner but still with plenty of time for a day of activities. We hadn’t been worried.
The clouds had been low as we waited in the dock in the town of Quepos, but no rain yet. Still, other days had stayed sunny until the afternoon. Not today, it was gray. The rain set in as we left the harbor under engine power. I assumed the sail on the massive catamaran would be raised as soon as we got out to sea. Storms usually meant wind. But as the rain and the waves picked up, the wind remained fairly slack. It was certainly too light to offset the heavy rain. We stayed under engine power as fruit laced rum drinks were served and dinner was cooked below.
It was a lovely boat, even if we never did see the sail unfurled!
It never dawned on me that we were making a lot of left turns, including a few circles. Then the engine was stalled or died on its own. We bobbed for a bit, drinking and watching, especially the quiet commotion in the rear of the ship as the crew opened up the engine hatch, brought tools out, or gazed over the side.
They tried to keep us from noticing the predicament. Raven had none of that. He knows engines the way I am naturally akin to paint brushes. There are simply engines in his DNA. And engine problems, well that just comes with the territory.
“They are going to pump in enough fluid so that they can bring us to a more protected spot while they try to fix the engine,” Raven informed us after a trip to the back of the boat. He was completely unconcerned about dangers and more interested in the mechanics by this point. “It is probably just a broken line.”
“What if we get too close to shore?” my mother asked.
“Even if the fluid gets low on the way, we can still turn left,” Raven replied with a shrug.
It was good enough for us. My family’s ability to make the best of where we find ourselves has always amazed me. We went back to talking, laughing, mixed with a couple of photo-shoots from the bow with the rainy and rocky shore behind us.
I was only a little wet and the coast wasn’t too close, really.
Eventually, the engine blurbed to life and we slowly veered along the shore to a protected harbor with moorings. The steering was getting sluggish by the time we made it in and it took a few passes to snag a line, but the crew was visibly relieved once the boat was safely attached to something stable. They quickly handed out snorkel gear and encouraged us to jump off the ship and out of their way.
I was happy to oblige. We were already soaking wet and tropical fish were part of the reason I was in the tropics. Even with most of the ship now churning up the smaller waves of the bay, fish were plentiful . . . as was something else.
I heard a few people gasp and cries of “ow!” before I felt the first sting myself. It was a shock like a bee sting on my arm, painful but not debilitating. Close to the boat, I asked what was going on.
“Water ants” was the response from the crew. I didn’t understand really and kept swimming until a dive around the reef had me stinging on my knee, thigh, and other arm. No fish was worth that. I headed for the boat.
The crew handed out limes for the stings, they had a plentiful supply for drinks after all, and explained they were small jellyfish, too small to see clearly in the water. But the size didn’t inhibit the sharpness of their stings, similar to a tropical fire ant, which had earned them their local name.
The lime reduced the pain, the skies let up the downpour, lunch was served, and the engine started. Soon we were headed back to Quepos. We were hardly behind schedule for all the misadventures of the day. The sailboat excursion had been nothing like I had expected, which was true of every excursion we had taken during the vacation. The one I had chosen on day one as the highlight became a side note of boredom mixed with enjoying where we found ourselves despite adverse circumstances. But at least it wasn’t made into a miniseries about being stranded!
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