Portrait Projects
Between June 2021 and June 2022, while the world was still reeling from the Pandemic that engulfed us all, my husband and I traveled the Great American Loop in our small motorboat. This 6000 mile journey travels along the rivers, canals, lakes and intracoastal waterways of the eastern United States. Along the way I met many people whose lives were linked to the water and I was curious how they fared during the COVID lockdowns. I asked them: “what did you learn about yourself during the Pandemic?”
J, Sailor, Green Turtle Bay, KY
Our experience wasn’t that different once COVID started because we had been on the boat for a while at that point. We took off from San Francisco, heading down to Mexico of January 2019. We got to Mexico in February of 2020 and we had to check into the country and nothing had happened yet, COVID was just beginning and people were like—have you heard about this disease? They called it Corona virus and it’s in China and I thought well I’m not going to China so I was like whatever. So we continued going down the coast and in a sailboat, you’re off at sea for long periods of time, especially on the Pacific. We were out of communication for about 3 weeks and we get to Cabo which is the Las Vegas of Mexico and there’s no one in the streets, the dock people stand off and telling us to stay on your boat and don’t get off and we were like—what is going on? We didn’t know anything—we had just come in. We started hearing from other boaters that were coming in – Holy Shit the world is shutting down!
We rented a scooter in Cabo and rode around and we went to a restaurant and it was just us and another American couple so we asked them had they just arrived and they said they had just gotten off of a flight and they were the only ones on it---and I asked what the hell is going on? Is it nuclear war or something?? And they said oh it’s this Corona virus and they are shutting everything down.
I was wondering well how bad is this thing---it was like something from a Mad Max movie.
We had originally planned on crossing the Pacific but we thought well we might not be able to get off of our boat once we crossed and arrived in Tahiti or wherever, so we decided to continue down the Sea of Cortez. And the more we traveled, the more remote the towns are. Mexico handled the situation differently than the US: they were driving around the streets in green jeeps and when they saw us walking together, they told us to separate and you know they have guns, so you separate and if you go to the supermarket, they stop you and they only let certain people in—they were really serious. You had to step on these pads and wipe your feet—they are on it! And of course we’re now to this COVID thing and we’re not sure how bad it is! Anyway, we made it to La Paz.
We felt safe on the boat but once on land, we could only stay in one small town at a time—you couldn’t leave that town to go to another town. They were contained so the boaters were the only outsiders coming in—we were hopping down the coast. So people were pretty stand-offish. There was one marina, not even a marina—it was just a place where the local fishermen were kind of aggressively waking our boat and we went to shore and there was kind of a gang of fishermen and they demanded what we wanted—I speak Spanish, it’s my first language, so I explained that we were just going to the local store and they were like—ok, then do that and get out. Which we did, of course. We did hear that a few yachties who were traveling together went there and they didn’t leave right away and so the people were throwing rocks at the boats. But overall Mexico was a fabulous experience and we were at sea for weeks and weeks not having a clue what was going on. So what we learned really was how to live together on a boat for a long long time. Because we couldn’t get off the boat! We were on there 24/7. The story she likes to tell is—we would have probably broken up if we weren’t stranded together!