The Wet Edge: May 2014

Captain Jon suited up and ready to grind

The past few weeks, the Boogeyman has been sitting at the end of our bunk.

Every night, he waits for us.

We try to ignore it's shadowy form,

hissing and chortling in the strange, half-light that glows through our hatch.

It used to be moonlight or stars that shone down on us,

now its the flashy, burlesque of expensive hotels towering over our mast.

Night sounds of Waikiki drift through our open portholes...

The constant rumble of commercial airplanes overhead,

With their cargos of very pale or very brown tourists

( depending on whether they're coming or going).

Sirens, car horns, helicopters, alarms,

mixed in with tribal drumming and ancient Hawaiian war chants...

It's "Polynesian Night" at the Hilton Hawaiian Village again.

The Boogey man doesn't care how exotic it all is.

He's picks his nose and glares at Jon,

hoping to get his attention.

Jon and I have vowed to pay no notice to this brute.

We've met him before;

outside the pass in Port Phaeton when our transmission blew,

and again in Toau, when a bad storm tore off our bowsprit and we were 1700 miles from anywhere...

Lurking mini-monsters have no place in adventure.

There are plenty of real dragons to contend with,

so the one at the end of the bed is met with callous disinterest.

We let him grumble.

Jon stares at the ceiling, ruminating on fiberglass lay -up,

how to shuffle one over due credit account to another,

whether a line to 35* North before turning right for the coast is a good plan, if the Irish Casting director in charge of that dream project, will actually watch his audition for that role that starts shooting in a few weeks...

I listen for the sounds of metal lids popping in the dark.

Did I can enough chicken and beef to get us to the mainland?

Should I re-write the end to the script I turned in a few weeks ago? Have I worked on spelling lately with Kai, or let French slip with Hunter?

We confer with one another about if Ol' Perkie will get us up to Kehi where we are booked to haul out and do our repairs.

Ponder, every possible scenario of how the wind might mess with us, as we try to squeeze our big boat out of this tiny slip in the morning.

The Boogeyman pulls off our quilt.

We don't care... the night's are warm in Hawaii.

Jon and I talk about how great the kids were today.

Kai says he wants his own watches on the next crossing so he can skipper a big boat by the time he's 22 - then he can buy us a new boat if we have to sell Pura Vida to pay off our bills.

Hunter has been running her own smoothie stand at the Yacht Club to earn some spending money.

Tomorrow, we will leave this dock for the first time in months.

We have no idea where we will be next week or what kind of nightmare our haul-out will be, or what we will find under our boat from the damage we took in Lahina.

The ONE thing we do know is;

whatever comes up - we will handle it together.

Jon pulls me closer,

I put my head on his chest,

look up through our hatch and thank the one lucky star

I can still see past the bright lights of Waikiki.

I look down at the end of our bunk,

and realize,

that while we were whispering and laughing,

(about how freaked-out and crazy stressful it can get)

the Boogeyman slunk away in the dark,

and disappeared.