CUBA LIBRE CHRONICLES

23 Dec 2015 -  Wednesday - Memphis to Mobile

Weather plays an inordinately large role in my Cuba Libra Chronicles and it started while leaving Memphis this AM.  A light rain under deep overcast skies did not prevent Kris from forcing me to drive to Graceland.  (for those of you across the pond, Graceland was Elvis Presley’s Memphis Mansion)  Sure, I remember Elvis but I never threw my underwear at him while he was on stage like some people I know.  An interesting phenomenon at Graceland did come to my attention however.  

Scratchings

What is it about painting, drawing, scratching or carving one’s initials on any available surface that I do not understand?  Marking territory I understand, but 99.999% of the Scratchees will never return to look for their handiwork. Furthermore, no one cares that your scratchings are about you.  Everyone cares that your scratchings are taking up space I could be using for my own scratchings.  From whence comes this undeniable urge?  Is there some transference of fame, talent, or magic from Elvis (or whatever location) to the Scratchee that I am unaware of? I know it has been going on since Paleolithic times… (see Lascaux in southern France, et.al.) but I guess the gene carrying that memo is missing from my DNA. Regardless, I found this the most interesting part of our short Graceland visit and thought about it for several hours as we drove south through more rain.  We both were puzzled by a weird electronic beeping noise from Kris’s I-Pad.  Finally solving the mystery, we realized it was a severe weather warning in her Weather Bug App.  We had driven directly through the area affected and had not seen the two tornadoes that took half a dozen lives that afternoon.  Suddenly my ruminations about graffiti seemed quite petty.  It was a severe storm just as predicted by NOAA and warned by the Weather Bug app. 

You know you have arrived in the Real South when Po Boys are the first listing on the menu and we enjoyed excellent sandwiches at Penn’s, in Meridian just before getting to Mobile and the boat.  I have been a little worried about AURORA not having been here since November.  NOAA weather has shown enough rain in Mobile the past couple of weeks to float the entire state of California.  AURORA has spent her entire life protected from water falling out of the sky.  First in LA (because it NEVER rains there) and then in Kentucky where she lived under a tin roof that kept her dry even in the winter. Boats have a tendency to dry out under those circumstances and AURORA was no different. The two days of October rain while bringing her down the Tombigbee proved the truth of my worries and I spent quite a few hours locating and plugging leaks around windows, hatches and deck seams before I left her in November.  Now the two or three weeks of rain in Mobile would put to the test my effectiveness as a waterproofing expert. 

Still afloat and waiting

 It is not a good sign when you splash into the pilot house and water flows over your shoe tops.  The small deck in the pilot house is sealed completely so it did not run down onto the cabin sole but it did fill up the seat next to the starboard window.  Obviously the space between the sliding glass windows was the source since the prevailing winds would drive water into the opening between where the glass panels overlapped.  OK, we can fix that.  Checking below in the main cabin, I saw one small stain across the floor from a drawer to the forward hold hatch cover.  Going forward, there were no apparent leaks in the forward cabin at all and so off to the aft cabin.  A small leak had appeared from the starboard aft porthole above the bed, but I had anticipated that one because of a dried out o-ring seal and had placed a makeshift catch basin under it so the mattress was ok. Returning to the main cabin, I checked the drawers under the bench seat and found the middle one had two inches of water in it. Obviously there had been more because all the canned goods stored in that drawer had illegible or missing labels. Hmmmm, some cooking surprises will result no doubt.  But where in the world was the water coming from?  And why was only the middle drawer inundated?  Every boat owner knows this dilemma intimately. The actual leak will never be in an obvious location nor one easy to access. The water will travel the length of the boat if need be to confuse and frustrate my attempts to locate its source. 

After cleaning up the standing water, sealing the leaky window and guessing at where the canned food drawer water came from, Kristine and I opened all the hatches and allowed a warm breeze to aerate the interior.  Mr. Sun had come out to welcome us back to AURORA as well and life could be worse.  And sure enough, it got worse.  An overnight heavy rain kept me awake and getting up every hour or so to watch the flooding water creep up towards our car.  It was parked exactly where Brett’s car had been totaled by flooding just a month ago.  Car déjà vu?   About 2 AM I got up, put on a light foul weather jacket, went out and moved the car to higher ground.  This vacation is starting out with more stress than I had anticipated.

CUBA LIBRE CHRONICLES

22 Dec 2015 - Tuesday - MKE to Memphis

Three days before Christmas and what could be better than to start a boat adventure with a road trip?  In my mind? Not much!  I personally have never been a slave to holiday convention, my Dad being a fireman for the city of Milwaukee for 25 years, so we celebrated whichever holiday whenever he was not working. Missing a holiday by a day or two or three was no big deal in our family.  In some families, however, it is a very big deal.  I learned that lesson many, many years ago when I convinced Kristine to accompany me to Thailand for a three week vacation that just happened to fall over Thanksgiving.  She had spent every Thanksgiving of her life celebrating with her family or with the Brother and Sister-in-law at their magnificent Thanksgiving Dinner Extravaganza.  Tradition or not, she agreed to go with me and we spent that particular Thanksgiving dining in a famous outdoor restaurant abutting the Golden Triangle in Chang Mai, Thailand near the border with Myanmar, nee Burma. As in many South East Asia restaurants, the day’s fresh ingredients were on display in large woks as one passed into the dining area proper.  Kristine’s eyes relayed her horror as large insects and big bugs were the main course in several of those huge wok pans.  Her First Thanksgiving Dinner away from family was going south fast.  Rushing her past the last few display woks we ultimately tasted and savored several spectacular dishes but she never got up the courage to sample the deep fried larvae.  When Kris relayed the day’s events to her rellies, her brother and sister-in-law did not speak to me for months afterwards.  Not only had I absconded with her to violate their life-long tradition but I forced her to eat bugs on a hallowed holiday!  

Times have changed since the close-knit family of her youth has been severely depleted by age and today, leaving before Christmas Holiday was her first choice.   And so, after packing Oreo off to my son’s house, loading the Mini Cooper well beyond any reasonable load limit, we pointed the car south towards Memphis, our first stop.  Situated on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, the city has several claims to fame other than Graceland. Thanks to our good friend Chuck’s Memphis cousins, we were admonished to not miss three of them.  

Logo of distinction needs explanation

First, the Peabody Hotel, an elegant old dowager with a rooftop attraction and a 360 degree view of the heart of the city.  The roof top attraction was the gilded glass enclosure (aka “duck palace”) for a small flock of ducks who march through the hotel lobby every day at five o’clock to the patio.  Following a uniformed bellhop, they start on the roof, trail him onto the elevator, exit on the first floor, waddle resolutely behind him through the packed bar and lobby amid the stares and camera flashes of a standing room only crowd of tourists to their early evening spa.  To say pampered would be a gross understatement. 

Off to the roof

 

We should all have a "duck palace"

The second “do not miss” entailed my favorite event…  food intake.  The Rendezvous is an old time Memphis BBQ legend.  One can find good BBQ throughout the southern half of our country (and some places north of the Mason –Dixon line) but one should NEVER pass up the opportunity to experience a “legend.”   Picture taken just prior to letting out my belt one more notch. 

Rendezvous deserved the "legend" sobriquet

 It is a short walk to famous Beale Street and the raucous mixture of Memphis blues and country music emanating from the myriad bars lining both sides of the street.  The vision of this window display of fanciful toilet seats would haunt us in Havana.

Cover up

 The New Orleans Latin Quarter immediately came to mind. As luck would have it, we were able to discover a couple of cold draft beers, two warm barstools and a hot country band on stage.  

Selfie aim distorted by beer intake volume

Beale Street after closing

Not a bad way to spend the first night of one’s sea passage, even if it was “only” 60 degrees this late December night!.   We Yankees are easy to please. 

CUBA LIBRE CHRONICLES

PREFACE

I am a slow writer.  I make many changes, multiple corrections, and take sharp turns to port and starboard as I write about my chosen subject.  I also take mucho time to let the events affecting my subject matter percolate and distill in my head. I would make a horrible newspaper writer and have great admiration for those who are able to observe, record and write under deadline. It is not my skill set. So to those of you (and there have been a few) who knew about my sailing trip to Cuba and have been bugging me about reports concerning same, this is for you.     

As much as I had looked forward to and subsequently enjoyed AURORA’s passage down the Tenn-Tom from Kentucky Lake to Mobile AL, I had one more adventure niggling away at the back of my mind even as Kristine, Brett and I floated down through the center of our great country.  Back in the summer of 2015, friends we had met when AURORA first arrived in Kentucky a year prior asked if I had any interest in sailing to Cuba with them for a few weeks on their boat, TALARIA, a cutter rigged Tayana 43. They did not have a great deal of sea experience and I think they felt having an experienced ocean sailor along made some sense.  And also, we liked each other, always a plus in close and constrained boat spaces.

         For my part, I salivated at the opportunity to re-visit a place I had seen once as a pimple-faced teenager in 1961.  Furthermore, as a published journalist, I qualified now under the current US rules regarding US citizens traveling to Cuba.  (the rules seem to change every couple of days)  And, Cuba plays a role in a follow-up sequel novel to my Fayal Roads epic of several years ago that I am finally working on again. Details needed to be worked out but I desperately wished to make that passage. In situ research and a chance to see Havana again before it becomes Starbucks and Mickey D’s South (and it will because big money always wins) was the overwhelming impetus to make it happen.  
              And so it has.  The CUBA LIBRE CHRONICLES begin now, so stay tuned my friends.

Havana skyline is best seen from a distance

    As with all of my Roger’s Rants, opting out and getting off my mailing list is easy and pain-free for you, if not for me.  I hate losing even one reader.  Personal failure still bothers me even at my ¾ century mark.