Day Tripping in the BVI

 And on the seventh day, God rested.  So the Creation story in Genesis tells us.  And the image is that God worked 24-6 and then took a day off.  Beer drinkers would add  “And God kicked back and tipped a few cold ones.”  Scotch drinkers might append, “And God had a wee dram.”

Like many ministers, I was a work-a-holic, and for the most part, proud of it.  When I became an executive for a presbytery, I told myself I needed to be the first one to the office in the mornings and the last one to leave in the evenings (unless of course, I had some meeting elsewhere, in which case, I simply needed to be the last one to quit working that day.)  That bad habit was nurtured in my 20’s and 30’s and frankly by my later years, I was mentally and spiritually set. 

I understood that God got to rest because Creation was finished.  But my work was never finished.  And when there wasn’t work at work, I faced the list of work at home, meaning the list of chores simply grew.  Now, I’m sharing all of this because yesterday, I experienced one of those rare moments when I discovered a different and better path…

Turning a Chore into a Picnic

Azure Wind has a watermaker.  That means we can draw water from the ocean and de-salinate the water and store and drink it.  The watermaker was one of the selling points as we considered this particular boat.

Here’s how it works:  You open a thru hull and let ocean water come into the system.  The water passes through four filters.  The first (not shown) simply removes any large items like bits of sea grass.  Then it passes through a charcoal filter (on the left), followed by a 5 micron filter (at the top), and finally goes to the Clarke Pump, where the salt is removed.   We were told that the watermaker would make 15-18 gallons an hour; our experience is more like 8-10 gallons.  Every two hours, we add about 20 gallons of water, (or 10% of our 200 gallon tanks).    All this means that we’re not tied to the land to get the water we need.

Now, we only use this water for drinking, cooking and showering.  Salt water is used for the toilets and washing down the decks (although we have occasionally splurged and used some of the fresh water to clean them).

The thing about watermakers is that THEY HAVE TO BE USED AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK.  If you let the system sit, the Clarke Pump will go sour and not do its job and it’s a very expensive part to replace.  So, we play it conservatively and try to make water about every 4-5 days.

Here’s the problem with that:

Penn's Landing Marina & Fat Hogs Bay

We can’t sit in the harbor where we keep our boat to do this.  It is too shallow.  You want to make water in deeper surroundings so you don’t pull the sediment into the filters which shortens their usage.  Besides, marina areas tend to be crowded and where there are more boats, there’s likely to be more junk in the water to avoid.  And it’s noisy.  REALLY NOISY some days.

So….

Like a good work-a-holic, I’ve turned the watermaking into a chore.  It’s on the list.  We mark a calendar and when the day arrives, we dutifully turn on the engines, release the mooring lines, motor out into the Drake Channel and turn on the watermaker.  We’ve raised the sails sometimes; other times not.  We sail back and forth across the channel and make water for 3-4 hours and then return back to the mooring ball.  Job done.  Chore checked off the list.

Until yesterday.

We’re starting to make a few new friends in the other sailors around us.  Two are a younger couple from California who’ve bought a fixer-upper and they’re stuck on the dock, where it’s hotter and stickier than on a mooring ball.  One is the wife of a ship captain who works three weeks on, then has three weeks off.  They just sailed their 50 foot boat from Norfolk, Virginia (ten days crossing), and then he left for his next three-week work stint.  She sits on a mooring ball and well… we invited all three to go sailing with us on our watermaking day.  They all readily accepted and yesterday we took off.

We left at 10am, sailed the channel and made water, while we sailed over to an outer island we had told them about and dropped the anchor at Deadman’s Bay.

Deadman's Bay, Peter Island

It’s a beautiful spot.  There were about six boats at the anchorage.  We swam, and had lunch snacks and left for the marina refreshed, cooled, and feeling so good for a bit of play.  Play that wasn’t on the schedule, on some list – just a bit of serendipity.  Didn’t return home until 3:30pm.  Making water was enough of the “work” for the day.

I kind of wish the Creation story had been told a bit differently.  That God didn’t wait until the seventh day to rest and play.  But rather, God took off an hour or so of each day and played with the water, then the skies, then the animals, etc.  You know, creation and serendipity and work and play had been mingled together a bit more.  Alas it wasn’t.

So, it’s up to each of us to figure this one out.  For me, I kind of like turning a chore into a picnic.  Hope to do more of that.