Cruisers

There is a complicated interface between local residents and cruisers. John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts (The Sea of Cortez [1941]; The Log From the Sea of Cortez, [1951]) spoke of it from their experiences during their six-week journey collecting invertebrate marine life in the Sea. They reflected on how different the reality of life was for each party, but how, for all people, “it is through struggle and sorrow that [they] are able to participate in one another—the heartlessness of the healthy, well-fed, and unsorrowful person has in it an infinite smugness.”

We have found our interactions to be many things—pleasant, informative, gratifying, confusing, disconcerting, uncomfortable, and curious. Our Spanish improves, poco a poco. In some anchorages, local residents come asking for water, offer to take your garbage for a small fee, or provide fresh fish for “whatever you want to give me.” Everyone is polite, business-like, and straightforward.

Even so, at times, there is an undercurrent of discomfort on both sides…unspoken feelings: "What is a 'fair price'?” “I hate to ask like this...it is beneath me to do it, but you have so much, what can you give me?”

There is much we can give…but the relationship where that which is given and received strengthens all involved is elusive.

We talk with shopkeepers, fishermen, marina staff, and others about their work and lives, listening to their stories, finding out who they are. We answer their questions about what it is like to live at sea, from details of daily life (“Tiene una estufa abordo? Un ventilador? Hace fria afuera?” “Do you have a stove to cook with? A fan? Is it cold?”), to feelings (“No le da miedo estar afuera por la noche?!” “Doesn’t it scare you to be out on the ocean at night?!”).

This sharing of stories of our lives, the very mundane as well as struggles and sorrows, is a first step in participating together.