|
PORT CLINTON—BUG-ER!!...continued |
|
BACK to Masala Home Page |
|
BACK to Masala Cruise Log |
|
The vast dome of the sky is inky black yet studded with the brilliant pricks of the stars, dazzling in their intensity. The flat, watery world is glassed out, a perfect surface for reflecting back the images of a billion constellations. The low-lying land forms a darker ring around us. It’s like existing inside a giant diamond. A deep thrumming vibration comes from the anchor chain as the inrushing tide streams past it, Masala surfs in the flood. Bio-luminescence arrows off the chain and radiates out from the bow, lighting up the black water with brilliant explosions of purple light. A deep silence presses in, enough to make your ears ring, but occasionally punctuated by the staccato “huff” of hunting dolphins and grazing Dugongs. Sharp-cold air, not moving, or perhaps the slightest breath against freezing skin. Ice-cold feet on deck, warm below. The Universe leaks into your soul. |
|
When the sun comes up the night Universe vanishes and a new world is revealed. Time to go fishing. Only one bite, but we soon have a good Spanish Mackerel in the dinghy. |
|
Right: Spanish Mackerel steaks with coconut rice vegetables |
|
The calm weather had a nasty down-side. Normally we’d come up into a protected mangrove anchorage like this one, for shelter from strong winds. The winds keep the bugs away. Not so this time. We being the only hot blood in a thousand square kilometres, word went out and the No-See-Ums descended. |
|
By the third morning our lovely white decks were brown. Not a square centimetre remained unoccupied by these blood-sucking nasties. They may be small as a pin-head, but they bite like a horse and leave a raised, itchy lump worse than a mosquito bite.
At night they crawled through every crevice to get inside the boat to feed. Despite excellent insect screens, the underside of the companionway hatch, the walls and the ceiling were a seething mass. Never before have we experienced such an attack. We sprayed the screens, walls and ceiling and hunkered down for the night, determined to leave in the morning. |
|
Out on deck next day, our feet squelched on millions of bodies. Three-quarters of the blighters were dead. Their carcases stuck to the paint. Wiping them with a rag merely smeared them in. We up-anchored and moved back to the coast, sailing up to the delightful Pearl Bay, as far from the mangroves as we could get. |
|
Left: Leanne enjoying relief from the bugs at Pearl Bay |
|
Early next morning we had a light shower of rain. Donning togs, we grabbed some rags and went outside to wipe down the decks. The slimy bugs now smelt like rotting fish. An hour’s work and some hot sunshine baked the stink away, and our decks were white once more. Yuck! |