Requiem for a Sultana

I’m trying to read under a Mexican palapa, but I’m distracted by the giant catamarans—like nautical space stations—powering by with paying passengers searching for something pretty to write on a postcard.

These cats fly neither jib nor mainsail, they’ve been reduced to tricked-out tourist conveyance traps—twenty-five bucks for a quick snorkeling trip. Technology has brought change to the tropics where all the new high-speed ferries are catamarans that bring a fresh batch of tourists from the mainland every 30 minutes.

I watch the masts of my Cheoy Lee, 50’ away, sway in the undulating wakes. My wife, Lora, and I are sailing for a year with our five boys aboard our boat Boisterous—hoping to augment their home-schooling with some third-world perspectives. The oldest is 14, the youngest just 3. Right now, two boys are inside the boat doing schoolwork. One is in the cockpit, and another is hanging in a hammock reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Lora, and the youngest are paddling a pink kayak toward a rusty steel wreck on a nearby reef.

Every hour I move my Adirondack-back chair a foot or so to stay in the palapa’s shade. I can see four or five boats anchored out in the Isla Mujeres harbor--about 7 miles offshore from Cancun. A black bitch and her two pups sleep under the dock, and several blue-green needle-fish dart about in the shallows. Overhead majestic frigate birds hover, looking like prehistoric pterodactyls with sharp elbows and split tails.

One hundred yards away the wood-planked Sultana Del Mar sits sadly against a dilapidated dock, her paint peeling and rust streaking down her sides like teary mascara. But in her youth, she too ferried tourists in her belly--tourists with pockets full of paper pesos--tourists diligently searching for a t-shirt to take home to Toledo, Ohio. In her heyday, the Sultana served as Hollywood’s whore, starring in the 1984 feature film, Against All Odds with Rachel Ward and Jeff Bridges. But that fact is lost on today’s Play-Station generation.

This is my sixth trip to this coconut island; three times I’ve arrived under sail--sunburned and salt-stained. Twenty years ago when I was a college student, the Sultana first ferried me from Puerto Juarez--her proud bow plowing turquoise waves. She conveyed schools of children on field trips, honeymooners and hippies, peasants and paupers. Back then a hotel room on Isla Mujeres was a mere $7—no phone, no pool, no pets; there were fewer taxis, tourists, and t-shirt vendors.

So there she sits, mostly rotten and utterly forgotten—all her memories and secrets soon to slip quietly into the sea. Later some of her planks might be scavenged to reinforce a tar-paper shack. Ah, but once starlets and directors trod upon her decks, where now only the dung of pelagic birds sits steaming under a tropical sun.

Rest in peace, Sultana, and thanks for the rides.

Isla Mujeres

Playing in the water is one of the nice things about spending time on an island. Give a bunch of boys a pile of sand, and they can play for hours, digging holes, burying each other, and making sand-castles.

At Marina Milagro Del Mar the owners provide kayaks, and it's nice to go paddling just before sunset. Each night there is a spectacular sunset.

There are several hammocks and palapas that are great for lounging and reading. The boys sometimes do their schoolwork there.

One of our boat neighbors, Christopher, generously loaned us his Hookah dive compressor. The boys watched several instructional diving DVDs, and then we practiced in the shallow water off the dock before taking the rig out in the dinghy and diving off the north end of the island. William and Henry loved sitting on the bottom in about 15' of water and watching the colorful fish dart in and out of small caves in the reef.

Harvesting Sea Turtle Eggs

Isla Mujeres is a breeding ground for three or four species of turtles, and there is now an effort to help them survive. Because of a number of predators (humans, dogs, fish, birds, raccoons, fishing nets) only about 1 out of 1000 turtle eggs hatch and live to reproduce.

Turtles can remain under water for up to five hours, and they can sometimes slow their heart rate down to about one beat per minute. It takes them 25-30 years to become sexually mature. Some species can live 80 years and can weigh over 1000 pounds.

Lora, William, and I volunteered to help harvest turtle eggs. We arrived on the beach late one stormy night and waited in the intermittent rain until one large female white turtle (white on the underside) slowly worked her way up the beach where she herself was hatched decades ago. With her flippers she started digging a hole, but she soon hit rock. She abandoned this hole and went down the beach 100 feet and dug another hole around 30 inches deep.

She straddled the hole and then sort of went into a trance while she laid 140 eggs. As she laid the eggs, we crawled up to the hole on our bellies and reached in to pull out the eggs two or three at a time. The eggs were placed in the backpack of one of a young volunteer, Jesus Ismael.

The eggs are slightly larger than chicken eggs, and they were a little soft. All of the eggs were put into a backpack. Later they would be taken to the turtle farm where they are buried in the sand in little wire cages. After the hatchlings emerge they are kept in tanks for a week or two and then released on the same beach where they were laid. The farm is not allowed to keep the baby turtles for more than a few weeks for fear that if feed, they will not be able to survive on their own.

It was quite an experience to watch this turtle lay her eggs on the same beach where she was born. There was something timeless about the fact that these turtles have been doing this for thousands of years, and that they have overcome huge odds in order to reproduce. Some sea turtles have a keen inner-compass that allows then to accurately navigate thousands of miles. It looked like the turtle was crying as tears rolled out of her eyes while laying the eggs, but apparently this is how she gets rid of excess salt.