Many years ago, when the world was young, dearly beloved, a young lady adopted Vern as her grandfather. She wouldn't have the other half of the team, Me, as grandmother, though.
She and her husband ran a big charter yacht in the British Virgin Islands. In those days, as now, it was difficult to get to know charter crews, as they were always too busy to stop and chat. Two-day turnarounds were luxurious for some of them, allowing almost enough time for housecleaning, laundry and provisioning.
We were lucky enough to find a moment of their time to visit aboard one day. Penny's husband was in the midst of an engine-room job, and had moved out of his way some of the things stowed in there while he was working. One of these things was a large, rolled-up blue object tied up with string. At the end of the job the captain and mate decided that there was no longer house room for this object and we received it as a gift.
We were a little dubious about it when we took it home to "Sea Dream" and unrolled it. It turned out to be a pool float in the form of a mattress, and aging a bit so that there were cracks along the edges of it which could catch bits of skin on the unwary. But in spite of its condition it soon became a valued addition to our arsenal of toys.
Its name never progressed beyond "the blue floaty-thing". We used it for bathing, especially after Vern's surgery. He has negative buoyancy, in common with about 3% of the world's population.
When I caught him twelve feet down and still sinking, trying to rinse shampoo out of his hair, I decided that he'd be better off clinging to the blue floaty and letting me do the rinsing. This had two unexpected but pleasing side effects. First, I was no longer in danger of losing him if we bathed in murky water. Second, a brisk shampoo (of someone else) turned out to be the very thing most useful on days when my fingernails were grimy from the engine room or vegetable
peeling.
The communal bath is a well entrenched ritual for us now. We have raised an eyebrow or two among visiting yachties as Vern rests on the float and has his skin laved. Little do they know what agility is required for this feat. The floaty-thing will tip off anyone paying the least bit too little attention, or anyone who has had an alcoholic drink within an hour of bath time.
But the float really came into its fullest use as an aid to snorkelling. Some of our friends are non-swimmers. Muriel, for instance, couldn't sleep the night before we'd planned a day sail to White Bay on Jost Van Dyke, worrying about the trip. She made it as far as the dock where we were waiting with the dinghy and was about to chicken out, when we told her we'd turn around immediately and come back if it got too much for her for any reason. After that, there was no problem at all.
The weather was beautiful and nearly flat calm, the destination was in view almost before we dropped our mooring strop, and the beach was one of the world's prettiest on that day. We bundled Muriel and her husband Eddie into the big hard dinghy along with a few dollars for painkillers (the wonderful rum drinks at the Soggy Dollar Bar) and the blue floaty thing, with a rope through the pillow end.
We'd talked Muriel into bringing a snorkel and mask and she and I sat in our masks up to our middles in the sea. We ducked our faces in for a few seconds at a time to examine our toes, then caught sight of a few tiny fish. That was the cue to get used to using the snorkel, so we could keep an eye on the fish, in case they got too interested in our toes. Next, Muriel draped herself athwartships across the float, holding herself up on her elbows, and we began to walk out into deeper water.
In minutes she was happy afloat, in water without a single ripple on it to startle her, and we wound up spending most of an hour out on the reef watching the wonderful variety of parrotfish, angelfish and dozens of others. I held the rope, which was long enough that I could duck down to the bottom to bring her sea eggs, shells or sea cucumbers to admire close up, and still keep control of the float. We were in shallow water over the coral but I could easily keep both of us from touching anything.
The end of the afternoon saw Muriel back at "Sea Dream" by float, transferring to the boarding ladder and up on deck as easily as if we'd been using a stepladder on land. The trip home was a delight, with Muriel doing an impersonation of a figurehead, sitting on the bow pulpit. The painkillers had flattened the seas to a mirror and nobody minded that we had to motor back.
The next time we were all over at White Bay, Muriel had a non-swimming friend with her and was teacher as we introduced another new visitor to the reef. This girl was one of the many we've met who was a swimmer until she could no longer touch bottom with her fin tips. It was her turn to lie across the blue floaty- thing, with Muriel
alongside.
We discovered that a little extra flotation was a great help if a mask flooded or a fin came off. Away we went, and just as we were about to lose fin-tip contact with the sea bed and I was ready to turn the whole equipage back to shallow water, a stingray swam under us from behind and nothing would do but we chased it across the deeps (almost ten feet at the deepest part) and out to the reef. Again the reef fish showed off and entranced us all.
After a long and useful life the blue floaty-thing finally disintegrated, and we were bereft. We had some pieces of closed-cell foam aboard after replacing the cockpit cushions. Vern glued them all together with an aerosol contact cement and we covered it with open mesh fabric so that it would drain quickly when it got wet. The only problem with the blue floaty-thing Mark 2 is that it's even narrower and more skittish than the original.
Some days, the most energetic task we perform is bathing. Still, it's better behaved than the average pool noodle and can be relied on to stay with the boat on its long tether. Like most leashed pets it has an aptitude for wrapping its line around things, such as anchor chains and boarding ladder legs. Aside from that it's the perfect companion. It never talks back, eats very little, and doesn't demand overtime pay. Every yacht should have
one.
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