Log 25 Medregal November 2008

Discord in the Marital Bed

We got to Medregal with no incidents arriving at noon and only getting lost twice. The yard is easily accessible from the water but an hour from the nearest village at Carriaco at the head of the Golfo and down a road that some days would turn into not much more than a trail at times flooded and impassable. We were surprised by the number of boats both in the anchorage and in the yard. When we had left there were ten or so boats, but now there were thirty in the yard and a dozen out on the anchorage. Medregal had only started to haul out boats the year before after operating as a hotel for a decade. The attraction is a combination of price and weather. The cost is sixty percent of most Caribbean yards and the yard lies totally out of the hurricane belt. The downside is you might as well be on the dark side of the moon it is so remote. If you enjoy a busy social life this is definitely not the place. If you are a monk or the uni-bomber and like solitude, you are home. Most of the boats both in the anchorage and on the hard were staging to head north to beat the beginning of the winter trade winds. We decided with a big job in front of us to take a room which was 100 Bs a day with breakfast. This worked about to about 18 dollars a day for a small air-conditioned room with a double bed and its own private washroom with shower.

Of course news of the shootings had reached here and after settling in we were told of other incidences that had occurred during our absence. Cruisers Peter and Betty on Raven’s Eye a Hans Christian that we had met at the yard had left by sea for Trinidad shortly after us. The couple were experienced with a circumnavigation under their belt. They also had a large boxer bull type dog that always had a muzzle on when walking the grounds. After leaving Medregal they aimed for Trinidad and had been sailing along the Paria coast. This was the same coast that Moon Godess had been boarded on last spring and is a hot zone for piracy. Somewhere off the coast they were attacked by a pirogue with six men one of whom was wearing a uniform. At one point they tried to ram the smaller boat but this just aggravated the pirates who then boarded shooting the dog and beating Peter. At one point they cut Betty’s hand bad trying to remove her wedding ring and at one point threatened to cut her finger off. The dog survived and the boat made it to Trinidad. The skipper of the Dutch boat we had anchored with in Cubagua and Laguna Grande had also been killed in Porlamar when he and his wife had been run over by a teenager in a fishing pirogue racing around the harbour. We were also told of a French cruiser who had been killed off Caracas in the fall when he didn’t move his boat into the safety of the marina basin for the night. This was told to us by Petrona who were there and had themselves been boarded anchoring out at Coche. Finally right at Medregal a group of bandits from Cumana had come one night on a dinghy raid and had awaken one Swede who had tied a thin line to an alarm in his sleeping berth. He evidently had gone on deck armed with his flare gun. The boat had a few dinghies from the anchorage and was leading them off in a gaggle when he warned them to stop. Not heeding him he fired the flare directly at the fishing pirogue where it ignited the fuel. All the men abandoned the boat which burned and the dinghies were recovered. The bandits in the mean time had swum to shore, one of them with an injured arm. They later showed up at a local village seeking medical attention but the locals who also had been suffering from thefts practised a little local retribution beating the bandits and then turned them over to the authorities such as they are. It turned out that the thieves were from Cumana twenty miles away. All of this was alarming but not surprising. The situation seemed to be deteriorating and had us rethinking our plans. There were several boats that were planning on leaving mid December to head west including our friends Neriea, Sojourn and Zydeco. We had to decide whether we could manage the work in a month and then prep the boat for the next few months in such a short time as well as miss travelling inland. The crime is not directed against cruisers in particular but at anything that looks like an opportunity. Without getting into the politics all of which seemed to be based on a philosophy of us verse them along with a dash of divide and conquer. Hugo Chavez the nation's leader has actually told his people and supporters if they need something they should take it off the rich. Land redistribution and natonalization of not only foreigner’s assets but well heeled Venezuelan businesses is a daily occurrence. You can imagine the actions Chavez’s blessing has generated.

We had planned to fair our hull and repaint it. We were also hoping to redo the decks and install four more stainless ports. We had all of our supplies on board having been warned nothing would be available in Venezuela. Looking at the situation we decided to make a list and see what we could accomplish by the time the other boats were leaving. We spent the first week getting use to the climate and while organizing the boat discovered the cockpit lazerette had separated from its tabbing. Now we weren’t sure if we would have enough epoxy to repair both it and also fair the hull. We use West System and not wanting a variable in the mix if something went wrong we were loath to use Venezuelan epoxy on the hull.

Our room came with breakfast and Jean Marc cooked five nights a week at the hotels resturant. Two Swedes Eva and Sven had sold their boat and retired to shore buying an old earthquake wrecked building which they had started to rebuild including a pizza oven in his yard and twice a week they served. No one was charging more than 25 Bs (1 dollar =5 Bs) for a meal. After a day in the heat only broken up with a siesta from the mid day sun nobody was in the mood for cooking and with the boat ripped apart that wasn’t likely anyways, so other than lunch we pretty well ate out for the whole two months. Our room was small and clean and ice cold. In hindsight this turned out to be not such a good thing.

A large assortment of zoological species came with the room at no extra charge. Every night when we would return to the room Deb would perform a role call as we tried to figure out where our small ménage of geckos and frogs were bunking for the night. Some nights this was a game of tag especially with our frogs that had an amazing room width defying jumps aided by their suction cups enabling them to reach out, grab and land on all kind of surfaces. The little frogs would appear anywhere disguised as bedside table ornaments, hanging on the drapes, blending in as ceiling art and sometimes as a chest mole. Some nights you wouldn’t find them and figuring you had the night off just go to the head for whatever and swinging the door shut would find buddy clinging to the back of the door looking at you with his bugged out eyes. Couldn’t count the times I had a leaping lizard go flying by my nose as I turned on the shower head. Never mind the coup de grace of surprises I got in the toilet bowl. Of course this led at least in Debs case, to a slightly nervous decent into never land. It was in this room with our little zoo that I finally crossed another of life’s Rubicons. Now from a male’s point of view, certain rites of passage should be crossed gently, even unnoticed works. I mean who needs young women calling you sir, because, is there anything worse or more signalling of being past it, than that of young attractive comely woman calling you sir and meaning it with a dose of sincerity. An ego crusher at the best of times. But, you never expect the enemy to surface within the matrimonial bed, as one of the convents of a strong marriage is built on some sort of blinded eye or turned head theory. Sometime one night just on the shoulder of the darkest hour and dawn I was violently raised out of one of my Technicolor dreams by a frantic Deb jumping up and down on the bed screaming get off me. Now usually in the marital bed when the word off is heard it is in certain contexts, well in my world it’s usually prefixed by bug, shove, get, bugger or well use your imagination. And like any male permanantly installed in the HIP program (Husband In Progress), that’s my cue to turn over and go to sleep. But in this case the trampoline motion of the bed (the mattress is on a concrete pedestal) was signalling a little something different bringing me to my senses. Hyperventilating and gyrating like a go go dancer on speed, between bounces the message was somehow conveyed that something was biting her under her pyjama top. After a good shake I still couldn’t see a damn thing and told her so and then made the big mistake of telling her to calm down. The rebuttal came in the form of a ‘what kind of knight in shiny armour are you “. Oh such a cruel blow, standing there on the centre of bed in the dimly lit room, middle aged paunch hanging out over my briefs, no glasses and squinting like the cartoon character (you know the near sited possum crying Deputy Dawg Deputy Dawg) well I had to admit she had a point and I suddenly felt defeated by my age. The truth inspiring culprit had been a little scorpion trapped between Deb’s blouse and skin. We never saw it and the fact it was a scorpion wasn’t confirmed till the next morning by the locals. The sting lasts about 15 seconds with a hot burn that turns to a hard spot. It was one of the local small ones that roll up like a tiny potato bug a la armadillo wrapping its stinger up and curling for protection. Needless to say I was placed on watch for the duration of the night in a fully lit room sitting up against the backboard trying not to nod off while seriously armed with a rolled up copy of the Economist. The next morning the room was sprayed and the bed was carefully checked and from then on shaken out every night.
To be continued....