An Embarrassment of Mangoes (5 page)

I can believe it.

It’s almost dusk when Steve roars back to
Receta
, his jeans and sweatshirt plastered with bits of marsh—strands of weed, splotches of creek mud, and hairlike pink shrimp feelers—to exchange a plastic bag bulging with shrimp for a couple of bottles of our wine. “For my pal Orland,” he says, as he grabs the wine and hands over the sack. I’m duly impressed—even when he confesses Orland had to supplement his student’s catch with his own shrimp so we’d have enough for dinner.

What to make is easy: shrimp and grits. I’ve been keen to cook hominy grits since buying a box at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store (motto: “Big on the Pig”) in Georgetown, South Carolina, a couple of days earlier. The only problem is that unlike storebought shrimp, Steve’s haven’t come sorted by size. Some are truly jumbos . . . and some are barely salad shrimp. Which makes the shelling, deveining, and, particularly, timing the cooking a little tricky. I complain to the supplier, who’s by now pinching off the last of the shrimp heads in the cockpit. Given that he’s just delivered the freshest shrimp I’m ever going to eat, he’s not the least bit sympathetic.

Eating shrimp just an hour out of the water is a revelation. The first thing we notice is their texture. They’re meaty and firm, with none of the mushiness that affects their brethren that have spent a lot more time on ice. When I bite into my first one, it almost pops. And then there’s the smell: clean, fresh, the essence of shrimp without any undertones of fishiness. They are set up perfectly by the mound of soft grits underneath, ribboned with melted cheddar.

As we wind the rest of the way through the marshes of South Carolina and Georgia, Steve no longer needs encouragement to get underway early. He wants time at the end of the day to cast before dark. Rock Creek brings stir-fried shrimp with garlic and ginger; Herb Creek, red-curry shrimp with coconut milk; New Teakettle Creek, shrimp in garlic butter; Shellbine Creek . . . cheese omelets. Damn: The wind’s too strong for shrimping.

Steve’s making it look easy now, but he’s taking far too much credit for being the great provider. One evening I decide to go along in the dinghy and try casting myself. I thoroughly soak us both with marsh water before I manage to throw the net so it lands wide open. I can’t wait to haul it in to see what I’ve got. “Let it settle for a few seconds,” says the expert. “Okay, now, tug it closed and bring it in.” Four measly shrimp. I try another equally unproductive cast, and since I have my heart set on pad Thai for dinner, I turn the net back over to Steve. By the time it’s dark, he’s brought in enough that we can even give a bag to another couple, who have dinghied up the creek from their own boat to join us on
Receta
for drinks.

The marshes give us solitude, though, as well as dinner. There are so many bends and twists that even if another sailboat anchors nearby it is usually out of sight, only the tip of its mast visible across the marsh grass. One evening,
Receta
sits alone under a vast sky that has been brushed top to bottom across the horizon with fat strokes of reds and pinks. Another night, we are the only witnesses when a half-dozen hungry dolphins work the shallow edges of the creek, hoovering up their shrimp dinner as Steve scoops up ours.

W
e’re moving south, but we’re not outrunning winter.

I look like the Michelin Man and I can barely clamber up and down the companionway. I’m swaddled in a full set of thermal underwear, jeans topped with rain pants, a fleece pullover topped with a down ski jacket topped with a foul-weather jacket, two pairs of socks, gloves, and a wool toque.

Under the toque, my hair is greasy and desperately in need of washing. Although it’s possible to take a hot shower on
Receta
, it’s not easy. Water is heated onboard by the engine via a heat exchanger, and it’s a fair distance from the hot-water tank, which is aft, under the cockpit, to the head, far forward, where the shower is. By the time the water coming out of the showerhead is even tepid, I’m shivering; by the time it’s approaching hot, I’ve already wasted so much water, I can’t enjoy it. Plus, there’s the cleanup. One drawback of
Receta
’s lovely traditional oiled teak interior is the head. Modern cruising boats of similar size have a separate molded-plastic shower;
Receta
’s shower is part of the head itself—which means the toilet, teak-trimmed counter, teak-trimmed walls, and floor (with teak grate) get soaked when you use it, despite the valiant efforts of a shower curtain—which means you need to wipe the entire head dry when you’re finished, or mildew will sprout everywhere. In warm weather, in isolated anchorages, we showered in the cockpit, using a solar shower (essentially a heavy-duty plastic bag with a nozzle; fill it with water and leave it out to heat in the sun all day). Larger towns like Annapolis and Beaufort (
Boh-fort
) have shoreside showers for cruisers, but we haven’t anchored off a lot of “larger towns” lately. A daily shower these days simply isn’t worth the trouble.

One more night of record-cold November temperatures, the radio tells us. One more night of disgusting dirty hair. For the first time since we left Toronto, I wish I were curled up in our warm bed at home.

W
e drone along, 50 or so miles a day, 51⁄2 miles an hour, the engine doing the work, often with one sail up to give us whatever assist from the wind we can get. The only variation in the deep thrum of the diesel comes when we need to slow down to wait for a bridge to open or goose it up to reach a bridge before it closes. Opening bridges are the bugbear of the ICW, eighty-five of them between the Chesapeake and Miami, as many as twelve in one day’s travel. Some open only on the hour, some on the half hour, some every twenty minutes, some not at all during morning and afternoon rush hours, and some on a mysterious schedule apparently known only to the bridgemaster and completely unrelated to what’s printed in our guidebook. Missing a bridge means endless circling until the next opening. More than mere annoyance, it can be downright tricky when the channel is narrow and the tidal current is sweeping in or out. Steve is always at the helm when we approach a closed bridge.

“
Receta
. Be careful.” The cockpit speaker of the VHF radio had squawked to life as we circled in front of the highway bridge at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. “This is
Kairos
, the boat ahead of you. Don’t follow me. We just touched bottom.”

Thump
. “
Kairos
, this is
Receta
. Too late. We’re aground.” Right in the channel, I might have added.

Piss
. I hadn’t even been anxiety-ridden about this stretch of the waterway. It was tomorrow’s—the shallow, tricky Cape Fear River with its multiple inlets, strong currents, and confusing buoyage—that I was dreading.

This was the last bridge we’d planned to go through today; I had been
so
looking forward to being at anchor on the other side. But now our keel is firmly stuck in a ridge of sand that the current had deposited along the channel’s inside edge.

We don’t know
Kairos
, don’t think we’ve even seen the boat before this afternoon. But, like us, they have been waiting for the Wrightsville Beach bridge to open. It’s the second in a particularly odious one-two combo of bridges. The first opens on the half-hour; this one opens only on the hour; and with 4.8 nautical miles between them, it’s impossible for a sailboat to catch consecutive openings. We got to Wrightsville Beach with twenty minutes to wait before the next opening—twenty minutes for Steve to circle in a narrow channel with a lively breeze and an even livelier current pushing us around—and now, hard aground.

“I don’t think I can tow you off.”
Kairos
on the radio again, a male voice, with a bit of a twang, apologetic, as if it’s his fault for leading us astray. “If I get close to you, I’m afraid I’ll go aground too.”

“Tell him no problem,” Steve says to me. “And tell him to
get going
or he’ll miss the bridge and have to wait another hour, too.”

Steve has raised the mainsail and unfurled the jib, sheeting them both in tightly to heel
Receta
over to one side and lessen our draft. One side of the deck is now almost touching the water. But his tactics aren’t working: The current is too strong, pushing us farther into the sand. Unlike on Worton Creek, we can’t just wait for the tide to rise: It will be well after dark by then, and it would be decidedly unwise to spend the night parked in a channel.

“TowBOAT U.S., TowBOAT U.S., this is
Receta
.” It’s time for professional help.

Five minutes later, the nice men from TowBOAT U.S. have pulled up alongside—seems this is a popular spot for them to wait for business—and it takes them a scant twenty minutes more to “prop-wash” the sand out from under
Receta
and tow us free, giving us plenty of time to circle some more before the next bridge opening. When the driver hands me their bill for $432, I hand it back with a demure smile—and our no-limit towing insurance card. “
Everybody
goes aground at some point on the ICW,” experienced cruisers had told us way back in New York. “If we see you later and you tell us you didn’t go aground, we’ll know you’re liars. Buy towing insurance.” The official TowBOAT U.S. card had caught up with us via a mail drop from home just days before.

We’re still rehashing our no-harm-done-to-wallet-or-boat adventure—“only to my ego,” mutters Steve—as we get settled in the anchorage on the other side of the bridge. “Hey,
Receta
, catch. You need these.” Two cans of Coors fly from a dinghy into our cockpit. Which is how we make face-to-face acquaintance with Todd and Belinda on
Kairos
.

First-time cruisers just a few years younger than we are, they too had decided to take a time-out from careers that were growing increasingly stressful. He is gregarious, upbeat, quick to laugh, a practical, hands-on, do-it-yourself guy—and a gentle romantic. He had proposed to Belinda on the bow of their boat as they were sailing along the western shore of Chesapeake Bay, their home waters—on a day he just happened to have a minister friend in the cockpit who could perform the ceremony when she said yes. Belinda, meanwhile, is his perfect foil: She seems quiet at first, almost subdued, and then slowly reveals a steel-trap mind, and a sly and wicked wit. We like them immediately.

Their break is open-ended. “We’ll see how we feel, how we like cruising, how the money holds out,” Todd says. For Belinda, heading off on a sailboat was as much a leap of faith as it had been for me. She seems to have no more confidence in her sailing abilities than I have, and just as many anxieties. Their short-term plan is much the same as ours too: Florida by Christmas, the Bahamas in the New Year, and then, as hurricane season approaches, decide where to go next.

We don’t see them again until we’ve crossed into Florida in early December, but we frequently meet up in anchorages after that as we hopscotch our way down the state. Over potluck dinners, we share experiences, the friendship grows, and a loose plan develops: Let’s cross together to the Bahamas—our first big ocean passage.

Low-Country Shrimp and Grits

Grits (a.k.a. hominy grits) are ground, skinned white corn kernels. They’re a staple of Carolina cooking, found at both high-end restaurants (wild mushroom grits with oyster stew are a first course at Charleston’s renowned Peninsula Grill) and in local luncheonettes (where a standard breakfast includes eggs, sausage patties, biscuits, and grits). We love them plain—with just a lump of butter and perhaps some freshly grated Parmesan—as a comforting, warming, stick-to-your-ribs alternative to potatoes or rice. But we never pass up an opportunity to have them with fresh shrimp piled on top.

For the shrimp

2 tablespoons butter or oil

1 small onion, thinly sliced

1 clove garlic, minced

1⁄2 red bell pepper, thinly sliced

1⁄4 pound mushrooms, sliced

1–11⁄2 pounds shrimp, shelled and deveined

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Hot sauce

For the grits

1 cup milk

2 cups water

3⁄4 cup quick-cooking grits

1⁄4 teaspoon salt

1⁄2–3⁄4 cup grated cheddar cheese

1. To make the shrimp, heat butter or oil in a large frying pan. Sauté onion and garlic until soft. Add mushrooms and red pepper and sauté until mushrooms give up their liquid.

2. Add shrimp and stir fry until just done, about 2–5 minutes, depending on size. (The shrimp should be just opaque inside.) Sprinkle with lemon juice and parsley, and season to taste with salt, pepper, and hot sauce.

3. In the meantime, cook the grits: Bring milk and water to a boil in a large, heavy saucepan. Slowly add grits and salt, whisking constantly. Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook until grits are thickened, about 6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, stir in the cheese and a few dashes of hot sauce, and season to taste.