No pirates on the horizon today. Motorized ones faded out a few years after the global monetary system went down. Now our little foraging catamarans can either outrun them or thread intricate channels in the reef they cannot follow. The Panamanian government has ceased to have any kind of teeth anymore as the revenues have evaporated from lack of shipping through the canal so we’re armed well enough these days.
It’s not perfect, but it works for us. Our ranks have grown to about 20 full time floating abodes, in various stages of 12 volt electrification, but that fades each day as we run through our cache of spare parts. We hope more trading schooners start coming through but, for now, the piracy scourge is still pretty thick and the hardier asian varieties still give us some trouble, as well as the odd band of ex-military sorts from up north. They find the currents and winds begin to become problematic for them just south of Mexico so we don’t get as many as folks farther north do, but, for now, we exist mostly on what we have stored and what we can find locally.
Our particular craft is a big catamaran baseboat:
It allows us to get into some pretty shallow coastal waters and thus out of the reach of most prying intentions of the dwindling petroleum boated crowd and the larger sail vessels. Ventilation is key here in the occasionally sweltering tropics and we spend a lot of time out on deck.
Our little hood here shares a collection of smaller foraging boats which double as pleasure craft. The internet is a pleasant memory and we still gather on some weekends to watch archival digital media but, mostly, our days are filled with fishing and skin diving, tending guerilla gardens on shore, maintenance chores, and for a few of us, surfing.
Occasionally we get a hardy soul who sails right in to visit. Some require some recovery time, sheltering from harrowing watches amidst a comforting enclave of anarcho-mariners, and others simply want to trade and visit before shoving off for parts unknown. Selfish types generally get what they deserve and don’t stay long but some linger for months.
This particular vessel just spent a year hanging out farther north, tucked in behind the Osa peninsula of southern Costa Rica, in a similar community, and decided to shove off to see what is happening in the south pacific. They checked into our little burg to rest up a bit before jumping off for the horse latitudes crossing to the southern tradewinds.
The Osa community is rumored to have developed into a small trading port of sorts and may have up to 2000 people living there now, with all manner of small businesses open and thriving. One sells cargo bicycles she builds from recycled parts. She is rumored to have put 7 on a recent cargo schooner bound for ports farther south.
We lost a local last year, a 13 year old who succumbed to infection from a reef scrape, during a low point in our local stockpile of antibiotics with none coming in by trade. Our community has learned a lot about local natural remedies but none helped in this case. Life is often harsh, indiscriminately cruel and arbitrary, and we’ve come to regard a emphasis on prevention as far superior to treatment.
Still, life is surprisingly good here…… far better than we at first envisoned. Things were rough during the sorting out process when the delivery of goods and services froze up following the monetary meltdown and the pandemic. We’ve heard pockets of power players still manuever about each other globally, but, apparently, on a far smaller scale now as we haven’t seen a trace of any formal governmental or military presence in months.
Life has adjusted to daily natural rhythms and we all seem far healthier than before the troubles began.
The waves still flow in timelessly. The fish stocks seem to be increasing slowly. Life ain’t shabby, amigo!!
The blue marble still spins about the solar furnace in indolent nonchalance, mildly itching from a benign infestation of viral bipeds. They may be wiped away by a melting down radioactive core somewhere soon, but, for now, they are tolerable. The trades still waft through the palms. Life is short, and precious, and now, in this more simplified yet savage time, we do our best to make it the best we can manage with what we have left.
What better option could exist, for NOW?
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