
How cool is this? We’re sitting on a mooring at LIttle Harbor (it’s not possible to anchor here) and the boat next to us is playing beautiful, romantic French vocal music. Ryan is doing the dishes and complaining because, actually, it was my idea that we clean up after our lovely dinner of fresh-caught mahi, baked potatoes, and grilled peppers. He got down below before I did, and there really isn’t room for more than one person in the galley, so….here I sit, writing. There isn’t anything I can do, really, and he is vociferously complaining. “It wasn’t my idea and here I am doing the actual clean up. It isn’t quite fair.” No, it’s not. I’m happy not to be down below for once, sweating over the oven or stove. He’ll get over it.
And he is over it. And all the dishes are clean, hooray! After all, I got up at 6:30 this morning and washed all the dishes from last night’s dinner, which I also cooked, partly. Well, it doesn’t matter. These are the little spats that you forget about. We are happily listening to the distant tunes from Pete’s pub, which are largely drowned out by the roaring surf. What an amazing place Pete’s parents came to back in the day. His father was an artist at a university who sailed his family away from civilization to work on his art, found this place, settled here, in caves for probably 10 years, built a foundry, and drove on . What a tyrant he must have been. What an adventuress his wife must have been!
Ryan tells the story of the last time he was here. He was with his friend Robert and his brother Brady. There were two other boats, all anchored out. There was no mooring field then. They joined the other boats at sundown for cocktails and brought a bag of wine. They were drinking and goofing around and talking about their adventures. At one point, very early on, the elderly mother on the boat grabbed the mylar bag of wine and said, “this thing, it’s disgusting, it feels like a ball sack!”
Maybe you had to be there. There was nothing here then, only a few shacks and Pete’s pub, made out of an old sailboat, with a sand floor and, often, no bartender. It operated on the honor system. You poured and paid for your own drinks. Now it’s all developed, with fancy moorings and piers and shops and condos. We haven’t gone ashore, yet. More to come.