The Jaguarundi
A story about functional fight and flight
November 18, 2024, 19:42, flood tide, waning gibbous, Late Fall
High 69ºF/ Low 56ºF, dark, pressure 1016 mb, 4.37 feet
A high-pressure system sat over the East Coast for most of October and early November. It’s rained three times since then, each a relief from the dry, heavy, cloudless days. The first rain came on Thursday of election week. We were sitting on the porch when the air became exceedingly still and Scott mentioned it might rain. My sister pulled up a radar map with a wiggling band of rain as the high and low pressure battled it out around and overhead. The low moved over Richmond a short while later, and the rain arrived. We went to the sidewalk to be in it and noticed a lost cat flyer stapled to the telephone pole near our home.
The missing cat reminded us of walking around the marina in Cartagena looking for our cat, Cypress, who enjoyed prowling the docks and perching on neighboring boats.
After sailing around the continent with ours, we are fairly good cat catchers, so we decided to walk around and check for the kitten that may be scared and on the move. We didn’t find it, but it turned up a day or two later. We enjoyed the rain, the mission, and the night. We saw a mother and young daughter watching the steady shower through the window and a few other weather lovers walking around. All the signs for mayoral and school board candidates were getting soaked, and it felt like a new, uncertain chapter was beginning.
These days, I am “showing up” a lot more in my daily life—for work, friends, family, community. My writing voice can be elusive within that rush, but it seems essential to keep integrating my experiences at sea and sharing learnings of resilience.
This story of the jaguarundi is one of our top tales, but I’ve never written it down.
Here goes!
In October 2022, Azimuth was docked in Turtle Cay Marina in Nombre de Dios, Panama. Our friends Jill and Andy had tipped us off to this provisioning stop before the even more remote San Blas islands and crossing to Cartagena, Colombia. The town is home to 1000 folks and located on the Caribbean side of the country and Canal. Nombre was founded in 1510 as a Spanish colony and accessible by boat or dirt road. The marina coordinated twice-weekly produce shopping from the bed of a pickup truck and online orders from a large grocer in Colon. There are two reefs to snorkel on either side of the peninsula, many walkable paths, and a restaurant.
In other words, the living was simple and easy.
We caught up on the boat project list, and two friends tracked us down in the jungle for separate visits to the islands. We hired a weather router to help us plan the timing of our passage(s) back to the US and let a few months pass for more favorable conditions.
The weather in the lower altitudes of Panama is often hot and sticky, and we got in the habit of sleeping with every hatch open in hopes of airflow. We had long since given up the comfort of blankets while sleeping and had gotten pretty good at resting in adverse conditions—whether physical or mental bumpy seas. The slow pace of our life in Turtle Cay allowed for lots of battery charging ahead of the Caribbean crossing.
One day, we woke at 4 AM to a horrific yowling sound.
I bounded out of bed, which was more of a backflip from the v-berth, and rushed to the companionway, which was basically our door between the inside and the outside of the boat.
I got to the ladder and grabbed Cypress’s hips just as she was lunging to fight a strange cat who was baring its teeth at us from the edge of the cockpit.
My swift movements or perhaps banging arrival caused the uncanny cat to flee, and Scott popped out of the forward hatch just in time to get a better look at the jaguarundi and yell.
This was all perhaps fifteen seconds, but it has played out in my mind countless times.
Cypress sounded the alarm. We played defense. When I scooped her up, she was almost inconsolable—so amped up to protect the ship. I’m reasonably certain that a tussle with the jungle cat would have proved fatal for our feline friend, fierce as she is.
We kept this story close to our chest. It felt like just another moment living on the edge in the wilds and it also felt irresponsible. My heart still thumps thinking about grabbing her hindquarters in the nick of time, thinking about how ferocious she was in protecting us, thinking about how far we’d all come from the animal shelter in the closet of a PetSmart in a San Diego suburb—thinking about the wild cat who had undoubtedly seen her on our daily walks through the jungle to the beach and perhaps meant no harm.
We slept with the hatches closed for the rest of our stay in Turtle Cay and sweated through the heat and humidity even more than before. I didn’t appreciate it then, but this was hardening me for a similar heat of Virginia summers outdoors. From there, we came close to sinking on our crossing to Cartagena. We then made a mostly uneventful eight-day passage to Mexico and numerous final hops from Florida to Virginia in coastal and inland waters.
My biggest takeaway from our 777-day voyage is that stress and fear never help.
If things go from bad to worse, trust that you will find another gear to do what needs to be done. If you can’t, perhaps it’s comforting to know it is out of your hands.
Our life at sea danced at the edge of calamity often, but in many ways, it was more resilient and peaceful than how we live on land. We could turn seawater into fresh, cover our energy needs with the solar and battery storage system onboard, and transport ourselves on the wind. We kept a month’s food supply and provisioned from various markets everywhere we went. Now, if the systems turn off, we are out of water and power and shortly, food as well. We rely on the specialization of others more than ever without having to interact much, plucking items from the internet to our doorstep at rapid speed, and all the while, division seems to continue to increase by the day. It’s enough to make a sailor land-sick.
I’m seeing lots of folks frozen with the grief of the election and appointments, on top of war, storm season, and endless everyday tasks. I’m seeing others fighting online and gearing up for Thanksgiving confrontation. I’m noticing that I’m stuck in flight — buzzing in a flurry of activity, weaving myself into community at a potentially unsustainable pace after being out to sea. I am no expert in the nervous system, but I’ve become acquainted with mine after standing watch for 5,000 miles and staying as present as possible for the stops in between. I’ve learned that I can do it scared if I need to, but fear doesn’t help.
The Can Do List is back!
Follow up on missing pets. We might not find them, but their caretakers will be happy to know more are looking.
Spread leaves onto garden beds. I snitched a few bags my neighbor had put to the curb and used them to blanket the soil I am building.
Fill a milk jug or two with water, just in case.
Scott is looking for his next gig. Do you need photo, design, or UX help? Hit him up.
A good reminder that fear doesn't help! I wish we could all be more self-sufficient, as you were in your time at sea. I worry that our systems will collapse, and then where will we be? But there it is, fear. Hard to keep it away in these times.