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| This is where the intruder on our boat was standing. I was in between him and Wayne, whose legs you can see in our v-berth bedroom. |
This is one of the top three questions
cruiser-curious folks ask, along with
- Aren’t you afraid of storms?
- How can you spend that much time together in such a small space without going crazy?
And yet, in ~2500+ miles of cruising in the
last two years, mostly outside the United States, we rarely felt compelled to
lock up our boat. This year, other
than in notoriously unsafe Nassau (though watch for a future post on the safe
haven we discovered there), we did not lock up our boat. No need. How many United States homeowners can claim they’re
comfortable doing that?
And yet, there’s the perception the world
outside our country is a scary, dangerous place.
The biggest scare we got cruising was
a few days ago.
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| This is my view from where I stood when we were intruded upon. The intruder was just beyond the bookshelf on the left. |
“How can you not like tying off right across
from Hooters?” chuckled a fellow cruiser, when I began telling him about our misadventure. There was a free dock, welcome to
overnighters, right in the heart of downtown, at lovely riverside Jacksonville
Landing (Jacksonville Florida).
Music, eateries, flanked with a pleasant park complete with a boardwalk,
restful lawns, trees, benches, a pavilion. Struck us as the perfect re-entry spot after a two day passage
to both celebrate and rest. We
took a walk and enjoyed the rare pleasure of being served – with affordable
food, no less – enjoying people watching as part of our riverfront view.
Earlier on our walk, I noticed a tall, slender
young man with beautiful, delicate features, seated on the riverfront pavilion
steps. He wore dark, clean blue jeans and a crisp white t-shirt, and appeared
zen-like in his still, serene pose, his eyes closed, his face pointed out over
the river.
At dinner, I again noticed him as he walked along the
boardwalk. Oddly, his jean tops slid down below his butt, and in between his
shirt and jeans, his boxers flashed a broad royal blue band. He was wearing
socks, but no shoes. He trailed a couple by a yard or so, but he appeared to
not only not notice them; his walk was trancelike. His shoulders were slouched
forward and down, and he was dragging his feet.
Wayne concluded, when I pointed him out, that
he seemed “just a bit soft in the head.”
Seems the local homeless shelters were closed for Memorial weekend,
complained a veteran, panhandling earlier us on our walk. We weren’t sure that was true, but could explain the
presence of some of the less mainstream folks we observed in the area.
We too, appeared to be a curiosity. Quite a
few folks gazed at us on our boat, wearing expressions of wonder. While there were two other boats
docked there, they were smaller day-sailboats, around 25’ or less. Comparatively, our 36 ½ foot boat loomed large. Plus, we were aboard our boat; the
other boats were uninhabited.
That night, Wayne and I agreed to awake at 7
am, and set sail by 8 am to take advantage of the peak current flow headed our
desired direction.
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| Dawn, this morning from our boat in the very safe Jacksonville (JAX) naval marina, Mulberry Cove. |
At 7:45, after finishing his massage, I
turned, and was startled to see only about a yard away from me, inside our cabin salon that same odd
young man I’d observed the night before!
“What are you doing on our boat!?!” I
shrilled. “This is our home!”
He raised his hands, as if in supplication or
apology, replying softly in an unaccented voice, “I’m not from around
here.” He turned, and melted silently away
in fluid movement, up the companionway stairs and off the boat. I watched his ankle exit off our boat and onto the boardwalk through our galley porthole window.
Wayne and I don’t believe he meant any harm,
but we’d be lying if we didn’t admit the incident didn’t scare the crap out of
us (figuratively, not literally).
Some “Welcome home.”
Pirates?
We know where not to go to avoid them (click here for a great resource
on avoiding pirates and other crime while sailing). Heck, in our all our months the Bahamas
we weren’t even panhandled once.
Oddly, it’s the complacency of familiarity in
one of the richest countries in the world that for us encouraged what in
retrospect we’d consider riskier behavior. It’s atypical for us to dock; even more so right in the
heart of a city* rather than in a
marina, surrounded by other boats much more attractive than our humble craft to someone curious or
avaricious.
*Notable exception -- St. Lucia’s Soufriere, where we locked ourselves into our hot, steamy boat – click here to read about why we did that and here for why others should consider giving St. Lucia a miss
*Notable exception -- St. Lucia’s Soufriere, where we locked ourselves into our hot, steamy boat – click here to read about why we did that and here for why others should consider giving St. Lucia a miss
What would we do differently? Not stay there. Or lock ourselves in,
as we did in Soufriere. In the
future, we’ll hide knives (Wayne’s more dramatically proposing placing a
machete on vberth shelf) in several places around our boat, as well as looking
into motion detectors. One brilliant application another cruiser used was a
motion-triggered barking Doberman recording.
What intruder boat scares have you
experienced? What did you do when
it happened? What would you do
differently “in the moment”? What
preventative steps steps do you take now to avoid future mishaps?
Location Location
May 30, 2014, United States. We recently completed a continuous 46 hour / ~230 mile Atlantic
passage to the St John’s river inlet near Jacksonville Florida. We are currently at very safe but internet-less JAX Naval Base
Mulberry Cove Marina (N30.12.980 W81.40.234), about 7 miles from Jacksonville Landing's free dock. How safe is the marina? Base entry is via gates allowing passage of only those with military i.d., further protected with car, foot and aerial armed patrols. Once we know where we're living, we're off to store our boat for
hurricane season in Green Cove Springs, FL. There is no shortage of unpublished photos and adventure
stories to fill the gap between now and cruising season and even transitional tales you won’t want to miss, like, "What two words do we say to offset our wistfulness when not cruising?"
Cross your fingers for us, please -- we're interviewing for jobs to replenish our cruising kitty. Tomorrow we should have our U.S. internet solution in place and will resume more frequent blogging. Update! Wayne just got a job offer! Acceptance testing is Monday morning; he begins the following Monday June 9th. I'm in the process of making arrangements to restart at West Marine.
