Before going further into the details of our Great Misadventure, I would be remiss if I didn’t share some of what we do with our non-sailing time. James and I each came to this adventure with plans for various projects of our own. Mine included creating a new body of photographic art, exploring design, illustration and painting inspired by the islands, and doing some writing. James’ projects are mostly boat-related: build our own dodger from a Sailrite kit, the addition of two solar panels to increase our capacity for things like a freezer, water maker, and an industrial Sailrite sewing machine to make said dodger and to convert the existing main sail cover into a lazy bag (into which the sail just drops and zips - easy!) Actually, this is just a very short list of the projects James has in mind. While he cuts steel bars and sews sail cover zippers, I write, photograph, sketch and try to stay connected with the rest of my world.
This is how we spend our days or, at least, those that don’t involve daylong sails. Varied and go-with-the-flow, we both seem to have the ability to pivot quite happily when circumstances call for it. No two days have been the same.
Our evenings, on the other hand, have found their own rhythm made up of healthy, home-cooked meals by candlelight, catching the sunset, sometimes ice cream, and ALWAYS a game. We started with backgammon. It’s been a while and my strategic-thinking skills, I’ve found, have become weak from disuse. Strategic, logical thinking is, by contrast, second nature to James. I embarrassed myself by not seeing obvious moves and by losing more than I care to admit. I suggested a game with which had more recent experience/practice: Yahtzee. James was all-in so I ordered a game to be delivered to the marina in Florida before we left.
While we were waiting for that, he taught me a game I knew absolutely nothing about: cribbage. Have you ever played? There are about ten thousand different ways to accrue points and, if you’re not really on the ball, you’ll miss many of them. Or, at least, I did. If I had known going in that I would fail so miserably, I might have declined the offer to learn. With James’ encouragement and coaching, however, I won the first game. Beginner’s luck. But now it seems I cannot win at all. Not-a-one. Game after game, he has been beating me, and badly. As he repeatedly counted points that doubled or tripled mine, I think I heard him mumble something about “an embarrassment of riches.”
What you may be surprised to know is that this has actually been fun for me. Even though I happen to really like winning at games, playing cribbage with James has been a huge lesson in letting go, of getting out of my own way and just having fun with someone I love, even if it means losing game after game after game. Losing and being able to laugh about it. I’m talking about laugh-until-you-cry laughter because it’s all so unimportant and absurd. The winning comes in getting to that place together, where winning and being right or better-than doesn’t actually feel better for anyone, and where being generous, gracious and joyful is the best currency that love can offer.
Note: As of this writing, I DID start winning at cribbage, and not just once. It seems that playing with James has been a Master Class. He’s an outstanding teacher and has created, in me a somewhat worthy opponent.