February 22, 2010.

Most boats that head down to the Jumentos spend anywhere from 2 weeks to a month here. Some of the boats continue on, traveling south, while others head back up to Long Island to reprovision before heading back down this way. We’ve been down here for close to 2 months so we’ve seen a changing of the guard as one group of cruisers leave and another group arrives.

This latest group has me a little concerned. We met the crews from more than a dozen boats at a beach gathering last night and I noticed something a little bizarre. The majority of them were wearing watches. Wrist watches. WTF? Is there a meeting they don’t want to miss? Something on the telly? Are they all on medication? One couple wears his and hers Rolexes, yet they have to run here and there before they run out of water because they don’t have a watermaker. Is there something I’m missing? I just don’t get it.

I haven’t worn a watch in thirty years so there was nothing for me to give up when we moved onto the boat. When we’re underway the chartplotter displays the time so we can chart tides and arrivals. We have multiple clocks below so we are cognizant of the time of day.
Once we leave the boat, time just loses its importance. When we go hiking we walk until we’re done. We hunt until we catch what the larder will hold or until we get too cold. If we’re hungry…..its lunch time.

Once you get used to not being dependant on a timepiece its remarkable how close you can estimate the time of day by simple observations. I can usually guesstimate the time of day within 20 minutes by glancing at the sun or even by observing the tide against the shoreline. It’s not that hard and if I’m wrong, so what, besides if nobody was wearing a watch how would anyone even know I was wrong?

While I’m making observations, indulge me while I make one more. Cruisers that are still dependant on tobacco are fairly rare in our experience. I can think of only a handful of smokers out of the hundreds of cruisers that we’ve met. Yet in this group of timepiece wearers there are about 10 of them that smoke. Is there a correlation between time dependence and tobacco addiction? Is it coincidence that they seem to be traveling in a pack?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. We finally got the chance to hit the cut between Hog and Maycock Cay. We landed 4 lobsters, a Schoolmaster, a Hogfish and a gorgeous 10 pound Mutton Snapper.