In the past few weeks we’ve been anchored with about ten other boats. Almost all are crewed by married couples, three of the boats with children. There’s a Swedish boat with a lovely young couple aboard. Their little boy will turn 4 in a few days and they departed Sweden together three years ago. There’s a UK boat with an Austrian husband and English wife. A Polish boat with a successful businessman and his young crew member. A New Zealand boat with a family of four, wife a French Canadian, husband a Kiwi, and two teenage daughters who have lived most of their lives in France. An American boat with a lovely couple, she from Romania and he from Norway. They met during college in Southern California. A New Calidonia boat with a couple and their two teenage children. A US boat with a young couple from Southern California. A boat from Martinique with a lovely young French couple aboard. Another UK boat with a couple from South Africa. JollyDogs is a US vessel. I was born there and Isabel is from England. We’ve all been hanging out with the French Polynesian men and women who have been working on the copra crop.
It’s higher math for me, but I think I counted thirteen separate nationalities among those folks. We became cruisers partly because we wanted to experience various cultures around the South Pacific and beyond, but what we didn’t truly appreciate was how many cultures from around the world would join us out here. We’ve had a Danish fellow on board as crew for a short spell. Spent time with Canadian, Swiss, German, Australian, Dutch, Hungarian and Turkish sailors. What we’ve realized is that just by being a part of this cruising community, we’ve become part of a small tribe of folks from all over the world. We drink and eat together, kite surf and snorkel and spear fish together. We learn about one another’s cultures and learn to appreciate how different people’s life’s experiences and backgrounds shape their views of the world.
One of the recurring questions from non-US people is “what the heck is up with the US healthcare system”? Most other people are from countries that have a national healthcare system (NHS) that provides a basic level of support for all their people. They acknowledge the limitations of such a nationalized healthcare approach and openly admit that if someone wants to priority in line or to have a higher level of healthcare access, then they need to purchase supplemental private health insurance. Isabel’s dad Paul has private insurance and one would think that at 86 years old he might have to rely on that to get prompt care, as the NHS should probably focus resources on those who have the greatest chance of repaying the system. In my mind, young people and families raising children represent the future, and those solidly in the workforce and contributing to payroll taxes are the folks who are putting money into the system. Seems like old folks would get the lowest priority, but let’s not forget that they paid into the system their entire working lives, and if they leave their children a financial legacy England’s rather significant estate taxes may also infuse more cash into the system. If Paul is a reasonable example, the NHS actually does very well by the older members of the community.
The point our international friends like to make is that a healthier society is a more productive society. Workers without access to paid sick leave and free healthcare continue to show up at work, spreading illness; the worry of how they’ll pay keeps them away from the doctor and perhaps further lowers their own immunity to illness and infection. The recent Covid-19 pandemic might have served as a wakeup call, even in capitalist America.
Naturally this is a wedge issue between Republicans and Democrats. With an election this November maybe we’ll see if this issue swings some votes. We’re registered as “no party affiliation”, but for us it’s a no brainer.
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