A Quiet Inlet

We won’t live on a sailboat forever. Oh, there are many folks who continue to live on their sailboats that are much older than we are. But 4 ½ years ago when we moved aboard, we said that it would be for 2 to 10 years, “as long as we’re enjoying it."

Well, it is beginning to feel like we are on the backside of that mountain with regard to our live-aboard years. We talk about living on land again from time to time. We try to figure out what we will do next. How fortunate we are to have the luxury of thinking about it for a while.

Today we are alone, resting in the Winyah Bay, just off the Atlantic. We’ve seen a few fishing boats across the inlet, but other than that, it’s very quiet here. Just nature and us. Earlier today, we watched a pod of dolphins, through our binoculars, as they were some distance away.  


There were at least 6 of them that we could see based upon the number of fins that broke the surface in various locations. They were swimming slowly round and round in a long loop. Gathering their dinner we figured. Occasionally, we saw one big splash and sometimes a small bit of some thing come flying out of the water and land back in again.  Part of a fish, no doubt. The rest of the fish would have been in a dolphin’s mouth, I’m sure.

It made me wonder about the things that I might miss the most when we no longer live on the water. I think it will be things like those dolphins over there, catching their dinner. They weren’t put there for our entertainment. We didn’t pay anything to see them. The dolphins couldn't care less that there were two people watching them. There are lots of other things just like that, too, that I think I will miss the most.

It probably won’t be the many islands we’ve visited or the U.S. cities we’ve visited, like St. Augustine, Florida and Savannah, Georgia or Charleston, South Carolina. It won’t be sailing through New York City, although that was very cool. I don’t think it’ll be going to Plymouth, Massachusetts or Newport, Rhode Island or Bar Harbor, Maine.  

I guess the reason that I think it won’t be those things is that a person could get on an airplane, or drive a car to go see those places.  When we arrived there, we and every other tourist was interested in seeing the same things—historical sites and local foods and art. And we enjoyed them thoroughly.

But the part that only we will see, we and about a few thousand other cruisers that travel by boat, is all the wonderful stuff that wasn’t planned or expected.  After we live on land again, we will most likely never see dolphins in a quiet inlet, corralling their dinner together. Why? Because at this time, we are living on a boat at anchor in that inlet and we have all day to sit here for whatever happens next.

We will never have the good fortune to be escorted across the Bahama Bank by a group of dolphins that take turns at our bow. When the lead dolphin peels off another immediately takes his place as the lead. As if they are playing with us and saying, “come this way.” Oh, and the hundreds of dolphins that we met one day, all day on the Atlantic—we were sailing south off the New Jersey coast and the dolphins were all headed north to the fall hunting grounds.

There are incredibly beautiful places along the waterways: the rivers and ICW, bays, and oceans, as well as in natural harbors that only people on boats will ever see. We will likely never see these kinds of places again.  When we live on land, we will never see phosphorescence on the ocean in the night. Thousands of little sparkles on the water alongside the hull as it moves through the water.  Fireflies of the ocean. Carl has explained to me that they are actually plankton emitting light when the water is disturbed. An amazing phenomenon, I think.

We will never hear snapping shrimp on the other side of the hull, sounding for all the world like popcorn popping. We will probably never go out in a dinghy in the nighttime and see little flying fish jump out of the water across our path by the light of our headlamps.  

I am quite certain we will never again be surrounded by thousands and thousands of flying fish all going in the same direction that we were, off the island of St. Lucia.  Northern Star flying along under full sail, and the flying fish flying with us, probably being hunted by bigger fish.

We will never again watch a circus while sitting in our dinghy being performed across a stage of three connected sailboats, using the rigging for aerial acrobatics, as we did on the island of Martinique. Never again be rocked asleep to the sound of island music in the distance.  Nor are we likely to ever wander over to an uninhabited island and go exploring by ourselves.

It is unlikely that we will spend days and evenings anchored in quiet places like this one, miles from any other person, surrounded by marshland, open water and birds of all kinds. Terns that dive headfirst into the water from great heights. 

Pelicans who do the same, but without as much grace. Herons and egrets that can stand in the marsh and yet still be above it on their pencil-thin legs.  Flamingoes that look like pink flying sticks. Sea birds that fly in synchronous patterns evenly spaced—when their backs are to us, they make a herringbone pattern; when as one, they turn their chests to us, the pattern is like black and white lace.  

And of course, the Magnificent Frigate birds whose mating ritual is a soaring and swooping dance so beautiful that it took my breath away.  Oh, to see love expressed in such elegance! Or lust. It’s possible to see Frigate Birds on land, too but rather unlikely to see the dance in the sky.

And oh my, I have fallen in love with snorkeling. I guess I could go on snorkeling vacations again when I live on land, but it won’t be anything like jumping off the back of the boat and seeing incredible creatures right there, beside our home.  There are so many things that live in the water that I had no idea existed.

Seventy one percent of the earth is covered with water, and we have seen only a tiny bit of it.  I guess it will have to do, won’t it.