Two nights ago, as we hauled at the sodden, slime and critter encrusted mooring line off the Hotel Hibiscus, I cursed and grumbled under my breath.  Within the sticky mess that would hopefully be our safety line for the night, neither Jess nor I could discern the shape of an eye to tie our line through.  Hoping to inspect it closer, we idled the boat ahead and I tugged with all of my might for a better look.  With a “pop” the end of the boat pole snapped off, and the remainder smacked me in the chest, sending me reeling across the deck and rather ingloriously onto my heineken.  My expletives may or may not have been so well-restrained after that.

I got over it, sort-of, and had a good laugh.  So maybe it’s not the cleanest mooring.  But the line is sized for a small tugboat, and after tying into both available eyes (???) I feel pretty secure here.  (The specific geometry of the mystery knot is impossible to determine underneath all the sludge…)  Normally I’d have taken a better look in person (swimmingly), but I’ve either bruised or fractured a rib on that boat pole, so I’ll be on easy street for a while.  And after Jessi brushed on a sea urchin with her foot last night we made for a veritable crippled-crew.  (Don’t worry, Sue, she’s better already.)

Sometimes blessings come in strange packages, if you look at it right. (Sometimes, “right” is the only practical way to look at it, anyhow.) I’ve been almost pathologically working on boat projects in all my free time lately, trying to get Cadence super seaworthy, while Jessi’s been blogger-extraordinaire.  Now, due to my hopefully temporary invalidism, physical labor is out of the question. In a vicodin-induced haze after we tied up, I powered on and (hopefully) fixed the final two pressing issues, the motor and windvane (did I mention I fixed the mystery leak in Bora ?).  Now we’re prepared for overnight passages and my slate feels clean, so yesterday we changed tack.  Renting a couple of bikes from the Chez Hibiscus owner, a friendly retiree Frenchman who rehabilitates sea turtles for release into the wild, we pedaled lazily along the coast for a lovely scenic afternoon getaway.  Amid ant hills and crab burrows, in a scenic coconut covered grove by the sea, we had a lovely picnic.  We exchanged friendly Hello, how’s it going‘s with locals in Tahitian as we glided by on our bikes, and were mercifully out of range by the time our limited vocabulary ran out.  We were treated to the last few beautiful bars of a hymn as we rode by a church service in what may well have been a mini basketball court with a grandstand.  Back at the hotel bar we enjoyed a few Hinanos with some cruisers from a round-the-world rally, and learned that the hotel owner would let us use his internet wifi connection.

Yes, free internet.

So here we are, and the time is right for more cerebral pursuits, whether I was ready to switch gears or not.  All is as it should be, and I’m a writer again, rather than a slave to the screwdriver and wrench.  Plans were tentatively to move on this afternoon, but that didn’t happen, and there’s always tomorrow.  We are, after all, “cruising.”  Sometimes we all need just a little smack in the ribs once in a while to remind us to stop and smell the Hibiscus.

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