January 29, 2004
Exuma Park

What an emotional day. I stood on the deck of the Exuma Park office building watching St. Jude sailing away with strange and overwhelming feeling in my stomach. Now, St. Jude isn't a vessel I am particularly familiar with, only meeting it's captain couple of times before. Any other day I wouldn't pay much attention to it's comings or goings, but this wasn't any other day. Today was different. Today everything was different. Today would mark the change that would affect the entire trip. I am profoundly sad on one hand and on the other excitement rises up inside. So there I was was watching St. Jude leaving her mooring, motoring away, rounding up small cay at the North end of Warderick Wells and then filling up her sails and following couple of other boats taking the same opportunity in the recent change of weather to sail towards the Nassau. After few minutes watching St. Jude getting smaller and smaller I turned and walked away from the deck to find some work in the Exuma Park where we were volunteering for the last few days assembling several massive water tanks into a system that would provide fresh water for the park. Just yesterday you could hear the clanking sound of the Jack hammer and see Johannes shaking to it's rhythm, or you could see me climbing from the 16500 gallon tank completely soaked and almost out of air after cleaning it from the inside. Now I am all choked up but it isn't from the lack of oxygen. St. Jude took Johannes away. For good. And it's hard to really believe that he is gone.

Lunch brake, I am rowing back to the AfterBlue, alone, tying up the dinghy to the boat, no words spoken cause no one is around. I am looking inside the boat, bunch of plastic bags lying around - a testimony to the hurried packing. I am forcing myself away from starring around empty now cabin eating alone some leftover grits without any conviction, trying to occupy myself, terribly sad. Being alone isn't what I imagined it would be. Having all this space to myself doesn't bring any comfort. Gosh, I had broken up with some of my girlfriends and was easier than this. It's weird. Very weird.

We had a great trip together. Five months mostly afloat. Mostly great times if somewhat fragile when it came to facing issues of sharing small space with another person. We got into fights. Of course we did. Not often. Once in New York, when I almost turned the boat around, once in Nassau when we hardly spoke for couple of days and, well, some two days ago we screamed at each other, an empty jar of peanut butter laying on the floor, unaware of it's sudden importance. Our friendship survived this all, yet made us face some realities of living on the small boat and some more personal issues as well. Ironically one of our two CD's that we do have, Coldplay was wailing over our speakers: "nobody said it was easy... it's such a shame we have to part..." Without any anger or resentment, embracing each other like brothers, we said our good-byes vowing to stay in touch and visit each other when opportunity comes to do so. Maybe even another cruise, much shorter, of course, and maybe on the boat that would provide some more privacy when needed.

We left each other different men than when we met. Sea does that to you, being with someone else so close does that to you as well, maybe even more so. I watched St. Jude leaving her mooring and both me and Johannes waiving frantically to each other for the last time. End. Feels like that. It will not be the same. Not in the least. Yet I am strangely excited. Sailing solo brings new challenges and risks yet I am eager to face them. I've never done it before, but lots of people do it all the time. New adventure begins. Something dies so new can come to life, sort to speak. Hope to share this with someone. Care for a little bit of sailing?

(M)