RAINBOW BANDAIDS

No matter how filthy I am, how frustrated, or how endless the work seems, I can escape to the reef before dark and find solace in the translucent, amber-glowing lips that feather in the offshore winds, the collage of colors surging below me on the reef, or the uplifting appearance of a rainbow. I delight in the rings around the raindrops that land in the sea, the wise and faithful presence of the tall green mountain, a whale and her calf that surface just 30 yards off the pass. A set rises from the wild mid-Pacific to catch me inside and give me a whitewater scrub and degreasing after a long day of work. The fresh trade winds clean the toxic dust and fumes from my lungs while the clouds tell me stories of their journeys across the sea while I'm not out there myself. I feel balanced again. The horizon line is tangent to the great orange sphere in the west. It knows I will follow it again one day, but now is not the time. The work will all get finished. Everything's perfect. It always is.

DOMESTICATION

As I type this, I'm alone in a three bedroom house. There are walls and doors and windows, a yard with banana and mango trees and birds of paradise, a cat (and a stray dog and her puppy), a couch, a kitchen with flowing water, a big bed with a mosquito canopy, a washing machine, and a refrigerator. I jumped at the opportunity to housesit when my friends, Simon and Manuelle, needed someone to feed their cat while they went away for work, granted me a week's reprieve from living aboard Swell in the yard and a much needed place to stay while refinishing the floors and fixing the galley area (jobs that would be next to impossible to live aboard through).

And so I shifted my sanding efforts from the waterline of the hull to the tattered teak and holly inside Swell. That evening as the shower line gathered at the bathroom, I loaded my dinghy with essentials and made the 5 minute lagoon-commute to my new pad where my own hot shower awaited!

It would be tough, but I would have to try to finish the floors within a week. The sanding went quickly, but then arrived the rain and with it, a mysterious leak. Every time the rain squalls commenced, a wet patch would seep up through the floor. I hunted for the leak for three days-even taking off the teak lining on the walls to check where the bolts came through the deck, but that wretched, impossible-to-find leak continued to evade me. Friday came and everything was ready--no rain for almost 12 hours and I'd vacuumed and dried the floor with the heat gun three times that morning.

Just as I began to pry open the epoxy wood sealer, a thick, black demon cloud rose over the mountain. The air turned cool at once and I popped my head out in time to see the rainline sprinting across the lagoon towards Swell. I scrambled to heave the disassembled hatch into place and get the powertools under the spray dodger. Already soaked through, I slumped into a corner of the cockpit, rain pelting me sideways with the gusts of wind. I frowned as I hopelessly thought through every inch of where that damn leak could be until the voice of my friend Laura J singing the Annie theme song burst into my head. "The sun will come out, tomorrow!!!!!" I rode my bike home and made a hot tea in my big, dry house.