Six a.m., Wednesday morning, the last day of January. It was finally time to leave Miami -- the weather looked good, the boat was full of provisions -- but the anchor was reluctant to let go of the familiar bottom. We finally coaxed it up and motored through the fleet of anchored sailboats in the pre-dawn calm, hitting Government Cut just as the sun began to show itself.
Big waves pounded us as we entered the ocean, and for a moment we were disheartened and surprised. We were angling south of the direct course in order to make some south before the Gulf Stream started pushing us northward in earnest, which put us almost directly into the wind and the waves. Although the wind was under 8 knots, the waves were big enough to break over our deck, and it slowed us down a lot, as did the Gulf Stream when we edged into it. But when we turned east toward Bimini and hoisted the mainsail, our speed went up and the ride got more comfortable, and in a few hours the sea had quieted down to the barest of ripples. It was a comfy ride and a sunny, warm day. Portuguese man-of-wars (men-of-war?) "sailed" by us, and we wished we were sailing too. But with only 4-7 knots out of the southeast, we would go too slowly for an afternoon arrival with good light to read the entrance channel. We made it to the waypoint just about at 2:30 and spotted the range which guided us between the shoals, then turned parallel to the beach to enter the harbor. The eyeball piloting skills we learned last year were not forgotten, we are pleased to report, over a summer and fall of opaque water and plentiful navigation aids; we made it to the anchorage without even bumping bottom.
At this point, we made the mistake of thinking we were "there". Because it was at this point that things started to go wrong. First, we attempted to anchor at the far northern end of the anchorage, which was a lttle shallow for my taste. We didn't actually know the tide level because we'd been unable to find a current Reed's Almanac or set of tide tables before leaving, but inferring from last year's Reed's and the Miami tides, I was worried we'd end up high and dry at low tide; I was secretly relieved when the CQR didn't stick (the anchorage at Bimini is known for its poor holding). We argued a little about a second spot to try and compromised on a place that looked sandy, and the CQR held when we set it, but our second anchor, needed because of the reversing current, didn't. Britt was skeptical of the first anchor, and downright worried about the second, so he grabbed his fins, mask, and snorkel, and jumped in, with me on deck to let out and take in anchor rode, and restart the engine if necessary.
Sure
enough, the CQR was only holding because it had hooked onto a corner
of rock. He dug a little hole and set it by hand, then moved to work
on setting the second anchor, our Danforth. I let out more line and
he straightened out the chain and began a series of dives to dig it
in. That's when I saw the Portuguese man-of-war drifting straight
toward him.
Britt's pretty good at holding his breath; I held mine as I saw the jellyfish heading his way. Would he come up in time for me to warn him? Would he stay down long enough for it to pass harmlessly over him? I guess Murphy was working overtime, because he came up right in front of it. I gestured and screamed, "Swim! Swim out of the way of the jellyfish!" I guess this was not the best thing to yell, especially considering the yellee's ears were filled with water, because it took several moments for him to figure out what I was trying to tell him, and by then it was too late.
He screamed various unprintable things, and I let the dinghy out on its line toward him, yelling that I'd pull him in to the boat, he didn't have to swim. But he didn't realize how badly he was hurt, and splashed around a little before swimming over to the boat. I carefully wiped off the tentacles still stuck to his elbow and back, then while he showered off, I quickly leafed through our copy of the Onboard Medical Handbook and discovered that, "Movement causes the venom to spread..." Great. I gathered up antihistamines, vinegar, and hydrocortisone lotion, prepared to go through the steps listed under "Treatment of Coelenterate Envenomations". He had only been stung in two small areas, and the treatment looked pretty straightforward.
Then Britt got out of the shower, came over to the settee, announced that he didn't feel very good, and promptly went into shock. I nearly did, too; here I was, not yet legally and officially in the Bahamas, with a hyperventilating husband and a boat that may or may not have been completely anchored. I made him swallow some antihistimine, lowered his head and elevated his feet, covered him with blankets, and threatened to poke him with an epi-pen unless he started breathing normally (which he promptly did, much to my relief). I was pretty scared, and so was he; in addition to the surface pain of the stings, he had bad pain spreading all across his arm and chest, and he was afraid that the long day, the strenuous work with the anchors, and then the jellyfish sting had all conspired to mess up his heart somehow. But I read him the list of Portuguese man-of-war sting symptoms from the medical book while I bathed his wounds in vinegar, and it reassured both of us that his reaction was normal. The list of symptoms itself, though, was not particularly reassuring.
"Nausea,
weakness, anxiety, sweating, vertigo," I read. "Runny eyes and nose,
shortness of breath, headache, muscle spasms, a sense of impending
doom..."
"That's it," he croaked.
"A sense of impending doom?"
"Yup. Muscle spasms. Impending doom." Having heard his symptoms given official recognition seemed to lift the sense of impending doom, and he breathed a little easier.
I left out the scariest items on the list: kidney failure, shock, and death. The parenthesized "rarely" in front of them didn't reassure me as much as it should have. I was hyperalert, listening to his breath, taking his pulse, watching his eyes. I thought about putting out a call on the radio for medical help. It was clear he was recovering, though, so I continued treating his stings, holding his hand, thinking loving thoughts, and reading him interesting tidbits about venomous marine animals.
I knew he was feeling better when he reminded me that we hadn't finished anchoring yet. I put him to bed and took care of the anchor lines (in the excitement we had both completely forgotten that the second anchor line had been let out and not cleated off. Good thing he remembered!). Fortunately it's a calm night, actually somewhat foggy. Tomorrow we'll go in and officially check in -- hopefully they will understand why we didn't do it when we arrived! And since a cold front is forecast, we'll dive on our anchors again to set them well. But I think we'll wear wetsuits this time.