Creeping animals - Horrible things that nobody tells you about boat life part 3
“AAAAAAH!!” Linde screams as if someone is trying to murder her. “Mum, I think I saw a cockroach.” I step inside the boat and find her hiding on the couch, pointing towards the sink in the kitchen. Of course I don’t see a thing. Apart from a shitload of dishes to wash. But no creeping, crawling or flying animal. “Nope sweetie, don’t worry, must’ve been your imagination running wild.” Linde doesn’t look reassured at all. And neither am I.
Sailors supermarket
We’re stuck in Panama because of Covid. Confined on our boat for a few weeks already. The only way to get groceries to prevent starvation is to order them from Henry. He’s a local guy on the island of Contadora and normally runs a restaurant. But without tourists there’s no one to serve so he’s had a career change and now runs a supermarket for sailors. It’s very convenient. For him, that is.
This is how it works: you whatsapp him your wish list. If you’re lucky he replies within a couple of days with a list that makes you wonder whether it’s actually your list. “Yes, I did order carrots and onions. But not 5 kilo’s each. Hmmm… Ah, he doesn’t have any green beans or salad, nor courgette, peppers or tomatoes. I see, that’s why he decided to put some more carrots and onions on our menu.”
You get used to it after a few weeks. And to paying a shitload of money for three wet boxes filled with all sorts of suprises. There’s no choice. Henry’s the only ‘supermarket’ around.
Chasing groceries
Henry has a sort of tugboat which he sails to Panama City every week or so. He fills it completely with food, sails it back to Contadora and divides the food to the best of his ability. Sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes you’re not. You don’t really know what you’re gonna get until D-Day. He sends you a text in the morning with a location and a time. It’s like a secret rendez-vous. He tends to change the location about ten minutes before the agreed time. Not because he’s afraid of getting caught but because only then he finds out that the swell is too bad on one beach for dinghies to land so we have to divert to another beach. It almost reads like a book titled ‘Chasing Groceries’.
All sailors have been waiting for Henry’s salvation whatsapp. So when our phones finally beep, we all jump in our dinghies and race as fast as our outboard allows. Anxious to get our carrots and onions. And beers. Oh no, alcohol has been banned during confinement.
After a few minutes we spot Henry’s truck on the beach, his colleague is offloading our precious cardboard boxes. Henry, wearing face mask and gloves, calls the shots and shouts orders to us. “Zouterik”, he yells. “Yes!” We almost run to the truck, pay Henry’s way too high bill and struggle to put the boxes with with gold in our dinghy, before we race back to Zouterik.
Cardboard hide outs
Now there’s one thing you need to know about sailboats and cardboard boxes in exotic locations: never, never, NEVER allow cardboard boxes on your boat. Cockroaches and other creeping little animals tend to hide and lay their eggs in there, causing a new flock of pets on your boat. And those are not the cute little pets you wanted.
But imagine being stuck on your boat with nowhere else to leave the cardboard boxes. Do we have a choice? No. We simply have no other option than to put them on deck, unload them and then get rid of them as soon as possible. Which sometimes takes a couple of days before the next garbage run is being organised.
Cockroach hotel
And that’s where it must have happened. Months later, after arriving in French Polynesia, I also notice the first creeping animal. And another, and another, and multiple others. And complete herds of cockroaches in the kitchen at night when I go to the toilet. They’re disgusting and we try to kill them with bug spray, cockroach hotels, poison and smoke pots. Nothing helps. They just keep multiplying themselves until they outnumber us by hundreds, maybe even thousands. Help, Zouterik has become a cockroach hotel!
We don’t dare to invite anybody on board anymore, too ashamed and disgusted. On the other hand, they’ve become part of our daily lives, our inventory, almost like real pets. We’re not afraid to kill them anymore, attack them with our bare hands because that gives the best chance of being successful. In killing, that is. And we never forget to wipe the surface afterwards, because when you’ve brutally killed them, they leave their last will by laying some eggs to make sure that their offspring will haunt you soon.
Extermination strategy
When we arrive on Tahiti, we’ve had it. We google ‘cockroach extermination Tahiti’ and find a company that promises to attack and kill the little buggers in no time. I’m in the marketing business myself but never before have I wanted to believe a promise this bad! On D-day, two men arrive, fully dressed in white, wearing face masks, gloves and protective material. This looks promising! They must use heavy poison if they’re dressed like this.
When we come home after the prescribed 4 hours, we hardly dare to look. Will they really be gone? The first few days we still see some drowsy cockroaches, stumbling around like they’ve had too much to drink. We call the company, they think it’s necessary to come one more time for a final blow.
Final promise
And finally, after half a year of living with an ever increasing number of little pets, I find no crawling animals in the kitchen anymore when I go to the toilet at night. Linde doesn’t scare me anymore with her screams. Oh, the sheer bliss of coming home in the dark to NOT find creeping animals everywhere. We count our blessings and promise each other one thing: Zouterik will never ever see a cardboard box again!
