october, november, december, 2005 hi folks -- it's been so long since i did one of these status reports that it's likely to exceed the size limits on some mailboxes. but here goes. boat chores, part 1 ------------------- this fall has been boat chores galore. somehow i thought i had bought a boat that was new enough and in good enough shape to escape the huge maintenance cycle i was seeing other boats go thru. dream on. my main chore between andy's first visit to take my rigging off and the next visit to put it all back together again was to clean all the parts. i never quite realized just how many little stainless bits and pieces there are on a mast or how boring it is to clean them without a stainless cleaning grinding wheel. another chore was to wash all the ropes that were both dirty and salty. took several days but i got them all washed -- water to remove the salt, joy dish detergent to remove some of the dirt, and downy fabric softener to make them like new. what a change, they are wonderful to handle now. sidetrip - panama canal ---------------------------- in the midst of my cleaning chores i got the chance to sail to panama on another boat that was headed to san francisco, trying to get there for thanksgiving with his wife and family. the boat was called imigrante and had joe, the captain and nicolas a crew member he had picked up in brazil aboard. joe had sailed around the world twice, once each way, so i figured i could learn a bunch by sailing with him. nicolas had said he knew how to sail and had good common sense and lots of experience, but these werent true. the boat was a 35 foot true north cutter, a very solid boat. both joe and nicolas smoke and ran out of cigarettes a few days into the trip and still a week out of panama. they also eat only canned food, no pasta, no rice, but lots of generic spam on board. when i agreed to go i raided my supplies and brought fresh veggies, potatoes, onions, and rice and also little necessities like parmesan cheese and feta cheese for salads. i made a boiled/steamed dinner the first night with spam and lots of fresh veggies. second night was garlic mashed potatoes, beet salad and a green salad. next suriname cabbage and beans and a tuna casserole with our last salad. i told them when we run out of fresh food, they have to cook. can't imagine a passage without pasta or rice. only hope was to catch a fish. my final dinner was corned beef and potatoes and onions with a greek salad. i announced that we were out of fresh stuff to cook and it was their turn. no one cooked dinner. i snacked and i guess they did too. my last supper was almost the last of the trip. after a day without cigarettes, both guys were a bit stressy but handling it well. nicolas smokes and joe doesn't normally, but has no resistance if someone around him smokes. joe is pretty short with nicolas, some due to cigarette stress I'm sure and some due to the fact that nicolas doesn't seem interested in learning how to run the boat. joe is a marginal teacher and hard for me to understand so must be very hard for nicolas whose first language is french. nicolas seems to have no common sense and needs the answers to all questions to be "figure it out". he grossly misrepresented his sailing skills and experience and is more a passenger who plays with the radio all the time than a crew member. saturday we had a bit of a scare - the engine stopped while I was asleep. i awoke to joe taking feul filters off, blowing out hoses etc. suggested there could be something around the prop, but he discounted it. when he couldn't find anything wrong with the feul system, he said that's the only thing it could be. i said what about something on the prop. he said that would make the engine stop slowly and it had stopped fast. i said not on my boat when I wrapped a jib sheet around my prop. he grudgingly went to his stern and looked down and there was a definite plastic bag around the prop. got it off and we were back in business. turns out nicolas had tried to suggest that to him in the very beginning but joe cut him off and wouldn't let him finish. we almost caught a spectacular mahi mahi. hooked it, but then joe was showing off a bit, taking pictures as he dragged it alongside. he had a big plastic bucket he wanted to put the fish into so it didn't get the deck bloody. he gaffed the fish in the gills. it was big, > 4 ft for sure and maybe 40-50 lbs. joe dropped the hook to put both hands on the gaff and the hook came out. then he tried to put a 5 ft fish in a 2 ft high bucket and it just didn't work and over the side went the fish. i was disappointed for sure. we put the lure out and got a second much smaller mahi mahi an hour later. saved some for sashimi, cooked the rest in butter and lime juice and made rice. yumm. joe gets totally dysfunctional when things go wrong -- no cigarettes, light adverse winds, loosing a big fish, engine stopping, etc. and takes it out on nicolas. nicolas is sometimes wrong, sometimes doesn't understand, sometimes doesn't listen, but generally gets along. maybe it's when joe stretches out the pain pills he takes for a bad back or needs to take another one, not sure, but it's a pain in the butt and on a 34 ft boat, it's hard to get away from their bickering and hard to control my urge to tell him to lay off. maybe being a girl on a single-handed or guys boat brings out the captain blye characteristics. i recently suggested that whenever he got mad at nicolas and wanted to yell at him that instead he think about a good screw and then when the good sex thoughts had overcome his rage, talk to nicolas. impossible to do probably, but might make him smile before lighting into nicolas. the trip should have taken a week, but thanks to hurricane wilma who was sitting to the north and swirling winds up to 300 miles away, we had strong headwinds for the last 300 miles and it took 11 days. sailing close to the wind with stretched out sails is not a true-norths strength. when I went off watch at 4am one day we were 97 miles away. when I got up at 8am we were going 110 degrees off our intended course, off the wind, and 98 miles from panama. joe wanted to get south closer to land and out of the wave action. after a couple of hours of it i convinced him to tack and we were only 25 degrees off course and tight on the wind. made 3-4 knots in roughly the right direction all day -- the end is in sight. i need to remind myself not to jump on any old boat to sail somewhere, but to checkout the crew a bit more carefully than i did this time. lesson learned and i did learn some cool sailing things, like when you are using the pole to sail downwind, add a third jib sheet so you can use the pole or not as the wind changes by having 2 sheets on the pole side. joe also put a block on the end of the spinaker pole to help with chafe and i think i will do that too, i have had chafe on my jib sheets from the spot where they go thru the jaws of the pole. at the marina in colon panama on the caribbean side of the canal the cuna indians hang out and sell handicrafts. the cunas are the smallest race in the world, averaging about 4 ft tall. but their baskets and quilting called molas are wonderful. i did all my christmas shopping at their displays at the marina. the marina is in a bad section of colon and it's advised to take a taxi everywhere instead of walking. i did a mix of the two, fortunately the cabs were cheap, usually just $1. didnt get mugged, but it was dodgy. a day after we arrived, a british single-hander, david mitchell, whom i had met in trinidad sailed in. he has a 48 ft boat all to himself and i asked if i could sleep in his cockpit to get away from imigrante with joe and nicolas bickering like a dysfunctional family. he offered a forward cabin and i stayed on his boat the rest of the time before traversing the canal. we became good friends. when i met him in trinidad i learned that he was going to sail in the fiords of chile and asked if i could come sail with him for a couple of weeks. he said no, that he liked to sail alone and clearly thought i was a bit cheeky, to use the british phrase, to invite myself along on his trip. but i pestered him to death and eventually he relented and said i could come for 2 weeks as long as i would leave and go backpacking or something if it didnt work out. but after staying with him for a week in panama and helping with a few of his boat chores he decided i wasnt so bad and said maybe 2 weeks visit in chile wasnt long enough. yeah. going thru the panama canal is an awesome experience. big ships make it in a day but yachts cant go fast enough to make it comfortably so they leave in the late afternoon and go to the middle, gatun lake, and anchor there for the night and continue the next day. there are 3 locks in series between the caribbean side of the canal and gatun lake, each raises you about 25 ft. you are tied other boats and to the side of the canal by 4 lines that are managed on the canal end by workers and on the boats end by line handlers. it's good to be a middle boat as the side boats can be used as fenders by the middle boats. we were tied to a powerboat, so we were both sort of middle boats. i was a line handler as were 2 other yachties and we had one professional. the pro was a good idea, he knew what to do, and he spoke the local dialect of spanish as well as good english. i strongly recommend that anyone transiting the canal go first as a line handler for another boat and then have at least one professional line handler on their own boat. ours was named rudi. another useful thing is to rent the lines. they must be 7/8 inch minimum and about 150 ft. long. we used an agent called stanley and he supplied the lines which were not only the right size but were floating lines so you were not likely to get them in the prop. we also were told to lock the wheel or the force of the surges of water as the big ship ahead of you drives out of the lock can whack your rudder so hard it comes off. it costs $600 for a boat of 50' or less to go thru the canal and that includes the pilot who must go with you. the pilot joins you before you start, gets off at the lake, and comes back early in the morning. we had to leave at 6am to get to the locks on the other side of the lake in time. they are the going down locks. the locks have webcams so if you know when a boat is going thru you can watch them on the internet. boat chores, part 2 ------------------- andys second visit to finish the rigging was scheduled based on the welder getting the new masthead finished. i had been visiting the welding shop almost daily and saw no progress beyond a couple of test cuts to get the old one out. i was threatening to come with my hacksaw to get some progress since andy had a limited time frame. the welder promised next wednesday and i took him at his word and told andy to get his ticket. by the weekend i was nearly paniced with no progress. went by early monday morning to remind the welder that he couldnt finish by wednesday if he never started and was pleasantly surprised to see that the masthead was cut out and pieces to build the new one existed. and magically by wednesday it was done. when andy came we tried all the new parts, sheaves, ropes, etc. and only one small thing had to be done to the new masthead, plus some filing to make all the surfaces smooth so as not to chafe my new rope halyards. we lost one of the messengers for a halyard, but got it back when the mast was up and a line with nuts on the end would hang down so we could grab it. was good we lost one because to get it back we had to remove the exit, a stainless part that guides the rope that has gone down inside the mast, to the outside. these exits were worn because my old halyards were rope and wire and the wire had cut its way into the exit piece. got them repaired at the welding shop and we were in business. it's a lot harder to put it all back together than to take it apart. but by the time andy had to go home, the new stays and halyards were in, the rigging was tuned (tightened to the right tightness) and the windlass installation was underway but not done. as a last minute thing the morning andy left, we rigged my new anchor only to discover that the jib furling drum was too low and the new bigger anchor would not fit. drat. should have checked that ages ago when we still had time to fix it. now i have a full page of instructions on how to raise the furler 4 inches. have put off doing it so far, sounds hairy and a bad thing to make a mistake on. another boat chore i did between andy visits was to rebuild my sailomat wind vane, that i had ignored and not cared for in the 3 years he has been steering for me. it needed a new bearing that andy brought with him. the instructions were to superglue it into the housing. the bearing was a cylinder cut the long way and the place it fit was cylindrical too. we tried to use rubber gloves to be sure not to glue our fingers into the bearing but the super glue seemed to melt the rubber gloves and we ended up with a piece of glove glued in next to the bearing. hopefully it wont get in the way or will wear out soon. andy and i worked long hot days and as a treat the last night went to see a movie on a brazilian friends boat. it's a brazilian movie and was excellent, if you ever get a chance to see "central do brazil", dont miss it. side trip - antarctica ---------------------- in an email exchange with david, the british singlehander i met in trini and re-met in panama, he suggested that i could come with him on a 2.5 week cruise he had booked to antarctica via the falklands and south georgia. he had already paid for a double room and hotels along the way, so the cost should be a bit less than the $12,000 that he had paid. i have never spent that kind of money on a vacation for myself and half heartedly started exploring the possibility. 3 days before the cruise started i finally got everything together, my boat arranged for (it had to be moved at the end of november), a flight to santiago, chile where the excursion began, the go ahead from the cruise company (people usually book 2 years in advance), and the biggest hurdle to convince myself to spend that much money on me. the money turned out to be less than half what david had paid, not sure why. i made my ticket to santiago leave 2 days early and joined my son and his family in orlando florida for a trip to disneyworld and thanksgiving dinner on the beach with my friend jeannie. trinidad is hot and sticky and my supply of winter clothes for antarctica was not the best. but some layers of sweaters and fleeces together with my ski stuff that my son brought from colorado did passably well. the ship provided warm parkas and wellington boots. from santiago we flew to ushuaia, argentina, the southernmost city in the world. the ship had arrived late and was not ready for us to board until evening so we toured the tierra del fuego national park near ushuaia. saw lots of sailboats anchored at ushuaia, it's the first safe haven after boats come around cape horn from the pacific. the ship had 180 guests and 170 staff - crew, hotel type people, naturalists and scientists. not sure how big it was, but it felt big with about 6 levels and at least a block long. it had been a russian research ship for the antarctic that was turned into a eco-tourist type ship. first stop was stanley in the falkland islands where we took on feul, some kind called heavy feul that i had never heard of. i walked around stanley and dinghied around the harbor. many famous old whaling and explorers ships (eg. darwins beagle) had visited or died in stanley. we stayed there just one day and then went to south georgia that has a permanent settlement of only 13 people, but very rich fishing grounds. they manage the fisheries and seem to be doing a great job. the fishing folks are all foreign and pay pretty large fees to fish there. they have to follow the rules and have a british advisor/spy on board to make sure they do. the rules involve quotas and also control the time of year that the boats can fish. a big problem with the long line fishing boats is that they catch birds instead of fish, primarily albatross. they used to catch thousands per boat per year, now the whole fleet caught only 2 last year because the time of year that fishing is allowed was changed to not include the albatross breeding season and the lines are now weighted differently and contain bright orange streamers that scare the birds away. this is a win for both the birds and the fisherman who catch less fish if birds are taking the bait. the weather when we got to south georgia was too bad to go ashore at gitvicken, the settlement. it was blowing 70 with gusts to 82. as we were hovering around in the outer bay, a sailing schooner was slowly making her way in. no sail up, 3 masts, going slowly but steadily toward the inner bay where the wind was better. the wind is kataibatic or some word like that that means it slides down off the glaciers and hits the relatively warmer water and zooms offshore. we did go ashore at a couple of other spots on south georgia and saw the place where shackletons men waited for rescue while he went in the lifeboat for help. the ship had zodiac inflatables for going ashore. they sure made my dinghy alice seem like a toy. the wildlife and icebergs were awesome. icebergs come in several types, some flat and gigantic, others tall and skinny. they usually start off the flat type and then as they melt underwater and become lighter there, they get to be unstable and tip over leaving a smooth part that was underwater and a rougher part that used to be totally above water. we saw icebergs all the way from the falklands till we were back in the drake passage on the way home. the big ones the radar sees too, but there are little ones that are often near a big one and are called growlers. these the radar can't see and so at night the crew uses spotlights to be sure they don't crash into one. even a smallish growler at 14 knots would be quite a bang and if it hit something like the ships stabalizers could do real damage. we saw lots of whales including a blue whale mother and baby. blues are endangered and this was the first one seen by these naturalists in the last 5 years in the antarctic. we also saw fin whales, minke whales, humpbacks, and killer whales. the fin whales were in groups of two-three-four and seemed to like following the ship, they almost seemed to be playing with it like the dolphins do. they are fast and could keep up with the ship when it was going about 12 knots. it almost looked like they were scratching their backs on the ship itself, they were so close. saw 7 kinds of penguins, my favorites were the young king penguins that were molting. the adults are the usual black and white and about 2.5 ft. tall; the young ones are the same size but covered with fluffy brown fur. when they molt it doesnt happen all at once and they often look like hippies or punk rockers for a bit. quite comical. the rule was that we could not go closer than 15 ft to the wildlife, but if you sat still, they would come to you and get quite close. one baby seemed intent on eating davids boot as he was kneeling taking pictures of another group of babies. we were at the breeding season for some species and toward its end for others, so saw both babies and eggs. penguins carry their eggs on their feet and keep them warm by scrunching fur from their lower bellies down over their feet. not counting penguins we saw over 60 species of birds, my favorites were the storm petrils and the albatrosses. the storm petrils were black and white and swooped all around the boat; the albatrosses were just plain huge. as long as there was wind, the birds followed the boat, but when there was no wind it was too hard for them to fly following us, no wind currents to glide on. saw fur seals, elephant seals, and crabeater seals (who dont eat crabs by the way). fur seals are aggressive and will chase you, elephant seals are huge. words cant do justice to the stuff we saw, i will have to get my web page into better shape picturewise. on shore the only buildings or signs of human habitation are either current research stations or old whaling stations. antarctica is governed by a treaty that says no one can grab any of it now, all claims are held in abeyance and everyone follows rules about protecting the environment. only its incredibly harsh climate make this world wide cooperation actually work. we landed on some islands in the antarctic peninsula and also on the continent itself. i got as far as 65 degrees south. and there you would expect really horrendous weather in the infamous southern ocean, but aside from a few days in south georgia we had wonderful weather, clear, not too windy, not too wavy, and spectacular scenery. the ship returned to ushuaia and again a charter flight took us to santiago, chile. argentina is still mad at the british over the falklands war and won't let charter flights from santiago to the falklands fly over argentine air space so the trips have to start in ushuaia instead of directly in the falklands. i flew home to trinidad from santiago via miami and got bumped in miami. this was fine as they gave me an $800 travel voucher and a shuttle to ft. lauderdale where i have friends who needed a visit. arrived home to the boat the next day, but my baggage didnt. one bag made it fine on the earlier flight, the other was no where to be seen. i checked several times for the bag and finally today, almost a month later got a call from american airlines saying they had found my bag. all tags had been stripped off it and they only found me because there was an old university of colorado business card in it and they called the computer science department who emailed me. it had apparently gone to port au prince instead of port of spain and then to guatemala and finally to the american lost bag center in texas. so my foul weather gear, antarctic jacket, favorite bra, nieces xmas presents, etc. are not lost forever. caribbean --------- i made the decision to stay in the caribbean for a year and go thru the canal in january 2007. am trying to map out a route that doesnt send me upwind too much and lets me do carnival at the end of february and antigua race week in april/may and get to somewhere safe for hurricane season (officially june-nov). thinking of the rio dulce in guatemala for hurricane season. need to do the san blas islands of panama, the bay islands of honduras, the abc (aruba, bonaire, curacao) islands off venezuela/columbia and some others off venezuela. need to sit down with the pilot charts and see which way the wind blows and how strong to plan a sensible circuit of the caribbean that starts in trinidad (as soon as the boat chores are really done) and ends in panama. some sailors i meet say to skip everything on the list except the san blas islands and spend the whole time there. sometime in the next year it would be handy to learn morse code to get my full ham license and spanish to be able to talk in all these cool places i plan to visit. christmas in tobago ------------------- my brother and his family came for christmas in tobago, a sister island to trinidad that is smaller, more laid back, and supposedly more caribbean. we rented a room there for my brother tom and his wife ellen and the 4 kids and i stayed on the boat, anchored about a mile away in pirates cove at charlottesville. its a lovely anchorage, a bit deep for me (35 ft) and a bit of a dinghy ride to the dock in town. to sail to tobago from trinidad is a hard slough, all upwind and upcurrent. we motorsailed for 24 hours to get there, 85 miles away. spent 4 days sailing back and stopping each night at a different anchorage. highlights of the visit were: boat trip to little tobago; drive along the northwest coast of tobago; trip to asa wright nature center on trinidad; trip to the caroni swamp on trinidad; infinite hands of bridge. little tobago island is off the southeast coast of tobago, it's a nature preserve with lots of birds and a nice reef to snorkel. the boat taking you out there is glass bottomed so my brother who cant snorkel because his beard makes the mask leak could still see the reef and fishies. we drove the northwest coast of tobago in a loaner rental car. the road was appropriate for a jeep and so navigating it with a rental car loaded to the gills with 7 of us was exciting and scary. i drove having had a bit more recent experience driving on the wrong side of the road. we went about half way along the island and saw truly spectacular views. after sailing back to trinidad, we went to the asa wright nature center and the caroni swamp. asa wright is at the end of a small road that rivaled the one on tobago for its challenging blind corners, skinnyness, and steepness. but fortunately i wasnt driving this time, we had hired a maxi-taxi (van crammed full of seats that is used for a shared taxi or minibus). saw lots of birds, very colorful and hiked a short trail in the rain. at the caroni swamp we saw snakes in the trees overhead and waited opposite an island where thousands of birds come home to roost at dusk including the scarlet ibis, grey heron, and white egret. they all like a huge tree on this small island and must be sitting within inches of each other. the scarlet ibis feeds in venezuela during the day and then comes home at night to this one little island in the caroni swamp. it was quite spectacular except for the noisy, smelly outboard on the tourboat. we played cards a lot, mostly bridge or doublekopf a german card game for 4 people. my sailing over the last 2.5 years with 2 nieces left us one short for cards, so we took advantage of the 6 bridge players out of 7 of us for the holidays. david had traded me a book when he was in trinidad, one called "shadow of the wind" by carlos ruiz zafon. i read it and loved it. over xmas 3 of my 4 nieces and nephews read it and so did my brother. for him it was his first fun book in almost 20 years as he had been too busy being a single parent of 4 kids and then a dual parent of 9 and a contractor work-a-holic to boot. its the kind of book that you have to get through, but that you need to write down quotes from almost every page and certainly every chapter. i strongly recommend it if you are a reader, its an adventure story and a tribute to literature with a bit of humor and philosophy thrown in. weston, my nephew, left at 5 this morning, the last of my visiting family. now there is no excuse left not to get on with those boat chores, rustle up some crew and take off. last night weston and i went to the movies to see cronicles of narnia. he had worn a tank top and the movie folks would not let him in without a shirt with sleeves. i asked if i was allowed no sleeves and when they said yes, we traded shirts and went on it. i was freezing in the air conditioning in his skimpy top, almost undecent as well, but we got to see our movie in spite of the trinidad movie dress code. hugs to all, come sail with me. -evi