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Lots of boats come to Oriental, some tie up at the Town Dock for a night or two, others drop anchor in the harbor for a while. If you've spent any time on the water you know that every boat has a story. The Shipping News on TownDock.net brings you the stories of the boats that have visited recently.

Cruising with family and non-standard pets
April 2, 2009

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W

orms happen on boats. They show up in galleys, usually as unwelcome hitchhikers in the food supply. But one cruising family is intentionally carrying a healthy supply of the bugs on board. And crickets, too. They are part of the care and feeding of special crew on “Osprey”, a 45-foot Adams steel sailboat.

Kaeo with Bandy, a gecko who likes worms and crickets

“Osprey” stopped in at Oriental in November with the Clarke family, Wendy and Johnny, their son 11-year old son, Kaeo and 8-year old daughter, Kailani, (who is more often called, Bird.) Also on board were Kaeo’s gecko lizard, Bandy, and Bird’s hermit crabs.

All were on their way to the Bahamas, but for the beginning of that trip, much attention was paid to Bandy’s comfort — and life support. Geckos do well in warm places such as the islands where the Clarkes were headed. But it would be more be than a few miles and more than a few days in cool weather before they got there, so special measures were called for.

SV “Osprey”

For instance, while “Osprey” was in Oriental, a hot lamp ran constantly in Bandy’s small terrarium. Johnny Clarke said that much of the juice coming from “Osprey’s” wind generator and solar panels went toward keeping Bandy warm (and alive) til they got to warmer climes. Kaeo’s enthusiasm for reptiles far outpaces his father’s; Johnny figures Bandy is “the most expensive gecko in the world.”

Judging by her wide tail — something Kaeo pointed out — Bandy was happy and well fed. But that took some work as geckos have a particular diet. “All the bugs you do not want,” Wendy Clarke says, “we need to have in a controlled manner”.

Geckos eat live crickets. (Four or five every three days, says Kaeo.) They’d bought a bunch of them in Norfolk and they were not the non-chirping kind. Since then, Wendy said, the boat was full of chirps at night.

Anticipating that there may be a time when live crickets were not available, what’s a mother to do to keep her son’s beloved pet fat and happy and, most importantly, alive? Wendy’s tried a number of things.

A hot lamp for Bandy, the gecko.

“I have freeze dried crickets, in case we get in a real bind,” she said.

Before leaving Annapolis, she experimented even further: “I’ve even gone so far as to buy canned dead crickets and tie a tiny piece of thread to their leg to make them look like they’re moving.” (Apparently, it ain’t the cricket, it’s the motion that geckos want to see in their prey.) Bandy “won’t go for it if it’s just dead in the dish, so you’ve got to make her think it’s alive,” Wendy said.

“You sit there and you twitch it a little.”

If Bandy caught on to the not-really-live crickets, Wendy had an alternative cuisine lined up. Bandy, she said, “can live for several months on meal worms.” Also, wax worms. Containers of both were tucked in to “Osprey’s” refrigerator .

The well-stocked galley refrigerator and meals fit for a gecko

While these extraordinary measures were taken while cruising down the East Coast in the late fall, Wendy says she put her kids on notice that “when we get to the islands, their job is going to be to dig up mealworms and crickets and cockroaches.”

Bird (Kailani) plays with some inanimate pets

Getting to the islands — if not the bugs there — has been the goal for the Clarke family for the past few years. Wendy has been chronicling those preparations and travails on the back page of Cruising World magazine since 2007.

Reporting back to Cruising World, Wendy takes in coffee and wifi at The Bean.

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Posted Thursday April 2, 2009 by Melinda Penkava