Jimena (Thursday, 1 AM): I Don’t Understand

We're Still Afloat
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

Between 11PM and midnight, the storm just stopped. I don’t know exactly when. With no access to the Internet or SSB, we have no idea why the wind is gone. For an hour, we have been waiting on the dock or near the entrance to the bathrooms, ready for more. Now one by one, the boat crews and dock hands are allowing for the possibility that we are done. Someone will swing by the bathroom to check on us or to grab a bit to eat, exchange the forecast, and then admit that they are going to bed.

I made a quick check of the boat. In the stygian dark, she appears unscathed. I find this difficult to believe. Only a few hours ago, there was little question in my mind that we were going to lose her. Now as I empty pots and buckets and wipe down the floor, I marvel that the books are still on the shelves. The seas remain a roiling, boiling herky jerky, bouncing nightmare oddly more disturbing now that the wind and rain have vanished. I tumbled in the cabin and bruised my shoulder against the lockers while gathering extra bedding. There is no question of taking the children back to the boat tonight.

I would like to blame the incredibly hard bathroom floor for my insomnia, but I suspect the problem is mental instability. Monday night saw my family on a 16 hour bus trip from Tijuana to Santa Rosalia. Tuesday night I went to bed exhausted and worried about the coming hurricane only to be awakened at 3 AM by a phenomenally fierce, albeit short-lived chubasco. Since dawn I’ve been working outside in the storm or sitting with the children attempting to hold the center together. I spent most of that time soaked to the skin. Sheer physical exhaustion, lack of sleep, and the two beers coursing through my system should combine to knock me catatonic and instead here I sit in a hard plastic chair with a Tecate logo writing by the light of a dim LED. Maybe I have just forgotten how to relax. Maybe the sheer intensity of these three days has been such that my mind doesn’t know how to stop pick pick picking.

Toast After the Hurricane
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

I don’t understand it. I didn’t understand the ridiculously confused forecasts as Jimena moved from Cabo up the Pacific coast. It was bewildering to watch it repeatedly defy all predictions and models as it veered with almost sentient glee towards the most populous ports on the northern Sea of Cortez. It was impossible to get our heads around the ferocity of the wind even as it knocked us over on the docks and nearly sent us into the waters of the harbor. We were taken completely by surprise when the wind tunnel and deluge abruptly stopped, and now I just can’t get my head around the notion that it might be gone. I keep waiting for the other half, the part where the wind clocks around 180 degrees, and we do it all over again in reverse.

They tell me this is not what is going to happen. Alex pulled down a radar and track from EEBMike showing Jimena is on her way to Guaymas. What is left of my educated, rational self believes him, but my monkey brain is still jumping up and down, screaming and throwing shit at the wall. Monkey brain needs to shut up and eat the oranges.