july, 2005

hi folks,

winter (june, july, aug) in northern brazil is lovely, warm days, cool
nights, few mosquitoes, nice breeze, just ideal. brazil seems to be full
of scandanavian tourists, way more than americans.

home in colorado
----------------
i went home for a month in mid-june, first to my nephew weston's graduation
from college.  the bank of dad and evi is finally closed with all of my nieces
and nephews making it through.  as weston's grandfather said at the ceremony,
"i'm not sure who is more relieved, weston, you or us". then home to colorado
to meet my new grandson and celebrate my granddaughter's 6th birthday.

being home in boulder was a bit of culture shock.  things are expensive,
stores are full of every imaginable product, little kid birthday parties
cost hundreds of dollars, and the fruit is pretty and ships well but is
tasteless.  

i snuck down to florida to visit my friend jeannie and we had some
good talks and meals.  my favorite was a bottle of good champagne
and handfuls of nuts and a walk in the evening when it wasnt so hot.
her nieces were visiting and i almost convinced one of them to crew for me.
also visited west marine and sailorman a huge store full of used boat
junk.  they had a spade anchor just like i have on the boat and it was cheap.
marked at $250 when i had earlier paid about $565.  i offered $175 and 
got it for $200.  got it home to colorado and looked at it more closely
only to find that it was too small for my boat.  called sailorman and
they agreed to take it back, it had been marked with the wrong size,
and even paid the shipping back.  it was just too good a deal to be
true.

i thought having a second kid would loosen up the purse strings of my
over-protective son and daughter-in-law so i could do some fun things
with my granddaughter.  but the new baby seemed to have the opposite
effect on them and i spent a frustrating few weeks trying to be a real
grandma. gave up and will try again next year.

while i was home a family of foxes moved in under a part of the lair
(my cabin in the woods).  i spent a week trying to evict them.  first
i filled in their doorway tunnel and for good measure i peed all around
it to "mark" it as my territory.  for a guy, peeing a perimeter around
a pile of dirt is easy.  for a girl its a disaster - hopping around in
squatting postition, trying not to pee on your feet, trying to regulate
the flow so there is enough for the whole perimeter, etc. etc.  luckily
no one was around to witness my futile attempts to convince the foxes 
that this was my house and not theirs.  they stayed away until sometime
after midnight and then dug out both the tunnel i had filled in with
dirt and rocks and also made a front door coming out under my entry porch.
my next tactic was to get cayenne pepper and spread it all around and inside
each of their tunnels.  third and final tactic was to get lye and put it
down all 3 of their entrances to the crawl space under my bathroom and
entry way where they are living.  not sure if it worked, but i know that
neither human pee or cayenne pepper have much effect.  must remember to
ask my son to check on it, i left the day after the lye treatment to 
come back to the boat in brazil.  at first i thought maybe we could
co-exist since foxes eat rodents and might keep the mice and squirrels
away, but then i realized that my wiring and pipes are under there and
if its open to the outside i will have problems with frozen pipes in
the winter.  my neighbor feeds the foxes so there are a lot of them
as food is easy and the litters of pups are not one, but more likely
2-3 each time.

got a ride to the airport with my son, but didnt realize that he had
made his wife mad by wanting to take me.  she, with a new baby, wanted
him at home. when i arrived at their house ready to go to the airport
he was holding the baby and not yet dressed.  a myriad of chores that
he had to do before leaving emerged and we were about 45 minutes late
in leaving for the airport.  then i realized i needed to go to the bank
and get a wad of cash to take back to the boat.  wads of cash that big
take a bit of time at the bank and we were another 10 minutes late in
leaving.  then we were talking and not paying attention and missed the
fast way exit to the airport (another 10 minutes delay), so when i 
finally arrived at the airport i was too late to check in any baggage.
and they wont let you fly with your checked baggage on a different
airplane.  i had two huge bags, so carryon was not an option.  my
ticket was with frequent flyer miles so i expected a hefty penalty
for having to change it.  but i got a miracle worker of a united ticket
agent and after about an hour she had me booked on a flight the next
day.  so i took the bus home and was actually able to go to my 
granddaughters birthday party (she's 6).  i took the bus to the airport
the next morning and arrived in brazil about 2 hours before 3 visitors
from hungary who were spending their vacation on the boat with me.

back to the boat
----------------
we all came back to the boat together in a taxi the next day.  the
taxi was actually cheaper than a taxi to the bus station, 4 bus tickets
and then another taxi to the boat.  it was hard finding a taxi big
enough for 4 people and all the luggage but we managed.

the boat was in fine shape, a bit mildewy but otherwise fine. peter,
my other crew for the trinidad trip was already on board.  a third
crew member, eric had bailed the week before.

sailing to natal - try #1
-------------------------
after getting the hungarians settled into boat life on the river at
jacare in northeastern brazil, we set out on our first sail, about
80 miles to the town of natal on the northeast corner of brazil. i
had decided to go a day earlier than originally planned (mistake #1)
because my outboard engine got fixed a day early.  i made a yummy dinner,
pesto pasta and salad which we ate on the way out the river to the
ocean (mistake #2).  the seas were lumpy, but subsiding.  zita was
steering and her mom zsuzsa who had never been on a boat before was
sitting in the cockpit.  she asked for a long sleeved shirt and before
adam (the third hungarian and my crew to trinidad) could get it for
her was sprawled over the side emptying the contents of her stomach
(my lovely pesto pasta) into the ocean. i hauled her back into the
cockpit and gave her a bucket to barf into so she wasnt leaning over
so far.  as soon as zita stopped steering she too was seasick.  i
got a second bucket and sent them below to lie down and close their
eyes.  that worked for zsuzsa especially.  80 miles is an overnight
sail so we would be there early in the morning and they would be
ok when we were in a calm harbor.

we then chose watches and adam wanted the early evening instead
of the early morning.  i would do the middle of the night watch.
i like a fool assumed that adam remembered all about watches
(mistake #3) from when he sailed with me in the med last summer
(sardinia to spain).  had the wind vane steering set up, had the
gps on and he knew how to read it and tell his course.  i went down
for a nap but got up every hour or so to check on things as i cant
really sleep the first night of a passage.  about 10pm when i got up,
adam said we were heading right for a boat in the distance.  and we
were, and we were too close and it was a fishing boat with unmarked
nets all over the place.  we turned away, but not soon enough and
were soon tangled in their nets.  they were mad and came after us,
coming close and yelling something in portuguese.  peter understands
some portuguese but you didnt need much to know that they were very
angry and wanted their net back.  the portuguese word for fishing
net is the same as for hammock and one that i knew (rede, pronounced
hedge-gee).  we said tomorrow, since we didnt want to try to deal 
with a tangled net in the dark.  they said ok, but wanted us to 
anchor.  we said it was too deep for us to anchor (100 ft) but we took
down our sails and with the fishing net as a sea anchor were only
going about 1/2 knot so would only drift about 5 miles overnight.
so we drifted - very bumpy and lumpy and hard to sleep.  waves
kept slapping over the stern making a huge noise and putting water
in the cockpit.  the fishing boat fished all night staying close 
to us and at first light came back to retrieve their net.  a 
fisherman stripped to the waist, put on a mask, grabbed a knife,
and jumped into the water.  one dive later he had the net in his
hand and while holding the knife in his teeth, tied a rope on the
net.  and just like that they were gone.  we didnt even have time
to ask them to free the rope that supported the net from our
propellor.  i was prepared to pay them to do that, but they were
gone before i could even ask.

adam went into the water to determine what if anything we could do
and said that the styrofoam float from the fishing net was
jammed into our propellor, but that it was too rough to dive down
and free it with the boat bouncing all over.  we were only about
20 miles from cabedelo where we came out into the ocean and still
65 miles from natal so decided to sail back (against wind and 
current) because if we had to go in at night at least it was a
channel we knew and had been in before.  it had been blowing about
20 but by mid morning it was down to 10 and the main was at the
second reef point from the night before.  peter wanted to put the
whole main up and i balked because my nieces and i had not been
able to get it up and i didnt think his extra strength would help.
there was something else wrong with it i thought.  but peter is
persuasive on sailing things cause he has more experience than i
do, but i'm catching up.  anyway i said ok (mistake #4) and he
pulled it on up about 2 feet and then about 2 inches more after
it got really tight.  then said, well i guess you were right, lets
pull it down.  but we couldnt get it down (or up).  its hard to
trim a reefed sail properly but one that is between reef points
just flops and spills air and doesnt sail at all well.

so here we are, 2 seasick passengers, a rope around the prop
so no engine, a main sail that is a mess that we cant take down.
between a rock and a hard place for sure.  after a bit we realized
that the seas had subsided with the wind and that we could probably
go in the water and free the prop.  peter dove on it and was able
to get the float off the prop and the rope off it as well.  yeah.

then we motor sailed back into the port at cabedelo arriving just
as it was getting dark.  we anchored past the commercial ships
in the harbor and i went up the mast on the bosuns chair to try
to free the main.  i usually go up on the main halyard but it was
in use holding up the stuck main, so i used the spinnaker halyard
with my staysail halyard as a safety.  got up there and found that
a screw holding the mast track to the mast had backed out and the
forcing with the winch had made the top sail slide go over it but
the next one didnt because we stopped forcing it.  so i screwed
the screw in and the main came down.  we had torn it at the top
with all our forcing.

then we pulled up the anchor and motored back to the anchorage
where we started out from the day before.  once inside the river
zita and zsuzsa recovered and were fine.

i thought i had learned that if it takes more than my strength
then something else is wrong, but i guess not.

trip to natal - try #2
-----------------------
we rented a car and drove to natal with a stop in pipa.  success!
pipa is about half way and a touristy town on cliffs above a nice beach.
we stayed in a bed and breakfast place (in portuguese, a posada) right
in the middle of town and had a wonderful meal at a restaurant whose
name translated means mouth watering.  and its food sure was.  peter
stayed in pipa the next day to look at real estate and the rest of us
drove to natal.  natal boasts the biggest sand dunes outside the sahara
and it seems to be true.  we hired a dune buggy to drive us into the
dunes to have a look.  its like a roller coaster with no tracks.  and
they go up and down the steepest slopes i ever saw.  definitely double
blacks if you equate them to ski slopes.  i got to sit in front and
had a seat belt so didnt have quite the thrill of the others who were
in the back.  was really neat and at the end of the hour we werent
squealing with fright at even the steepest ones.  we drove back to 
pipa and the next day left going by way of peters real estate finds.
neat condos built on the dunes above a nice beach and not too pricy
by american standards.  then we continued down the beach road (the 
word road is an exageration and a dune buggy would have been a more
appropriate vehicle) and were supposed to take a ferry that holds
only 1 car or maybe 2 and is powered by a human paddling, but somehow
thought that the road we needed didnt use the ferry and got totally
lost in the sugar cane fields of northeastern brazil.  finally stopped
and asked someone who spoke french, so i was able to really understand
and found that we were within 2 miles of a paved road all along but
didnt understand the portuguese well enough to know it.  

zita and zsuzsa left, their vacation over, a fun time on the boat 
except for the disastrous sail/drift toward natal.

sailing to natal - try #3
-------------------------
after good success with the rental car, we embarked with wonderland
once more headed for natal.  this time it was peter, adam and me and
also pamela, a local brasilero. ran aground getting out of the harbor.
adam was steering and i had told him to head for the big water towers
because coming in thats what the guide book says to do.  we were close
to the channel and well outside the marker for the sand bank (we thought).
but sand banks move.  peter told adam to steer more left toward the
channel markers in the distance but to watch his depth.  it was about
9-10 ft and then all of a sudden we slurped into the mud.  had the
main up and were able to power out of it and head back toward my towers
like the book says.  i took the first watch this try, peter the middle
of the night, and adam the morning watch that is mostly daylight.  we
do 7-11pm, 11-3am, 3-7am with sundown at about 5pm and sunrise about 5am.
had a good sail, going 6-7 knots with just the main at the second reef 
point.  started with it all the way up (it goes all the way now) and
then reefed before dark.  arrived off natal about 8am and were tied to
a mooring at the local yacht club by 9am.  peter had asked me if i wanted
to let the mooring go and use our anchor because he never trusts a
mooring he didnt put down.  i said naw, lets eat breakfast.  big mistake.
i decided to make french toast for breakfast and was down below doing
that when we noticed that we were in the middle of the channel with a
small freighter bearing down on us.  yikes.  i started the engine without
looking to see why we were in the middle of the channel.  then i noticed
the line from the mooring in the water behind the boat and asked adam to
pull it in.  he did but i didnt give him time, but put the engine in gear
after i saw the line disappear from the water back by the prop.  this
of course yanked the line out of his hands and it promptly wrapped 
around the prop.  fortunately we were out of the way of the freighter
but in the way of the car ferries taking people over to the sand dunes.
we anchored, the car ferries manuvered around us, and adam went in the
water and cut off the mooring line that was tangled in the prop.  at
some point the marina folks came out with a message for pamela to call
home - her mother is over-protective and a bit of a worry wort.  they
didnt realize that we had dragged and were telling us that we couldnt
anchor in the channel or the captain of the port would come tell us
to move.  pamela's portuguese finally convinced them that we knew not
to anchor there, but had an emergency and would move as soon as we
dove on our prop.  it took adam about 10 dives but he got it and we
started the engine and all was well.  it made a funny squeaking noise
for a bit but then was back to normal.

having pamela along for a day of exploring natal was wonderful,
understanding what people say to you, for example the marina people
about checking into natal and then out of brazil, is really handy.
turns out that when you enter brazil you get everything for 90 days
and are expected to renew it for another 90 days.  we knew that about
our visas because the brazilian embassy in dakar where we got our
visas told us.  we found out we had to do it with the customs paper
when we tried to checkout of salvador off hours and a person not used
to doing the checkout followed all the steps and discovered that we
had expired in may.  and we found out now that the health paperwork
that says things like "did anyone die on board" or "do you have rats
on board" also has to be redone after 90 days -- we were 90 days late
on that one.  but pamela helped me fill out the forms and we got it
all fixed.


the brazilian people
--------------------
it has been a lovely 6 months in brazil.  with 4000 miles of coastline,
6 months is a bit short for trying to see much of brazil, but we did
a fair bit, visiting from ilha grande 100 miles south of rio all the 
way to the northeast corner, with a side trip to the amazon.  the
brazilian people are totally helpful and friendly.  here are two examples
we experienced recently.

1) we asked a lady where to find the federal police in joao pessoa when we
wanted to check out for our first sail to natal.  she not only told us
where to go but walked with us to show us where it was.  we had to wait
till 2pm to go there so wanted a restaurant.  she took us to a favorite
of hers, but wouldnt eat with us.  then she disappeared and showed up
5 minutes later with a little change purse with a zipper.  she had seen
me pay for something with my little purse that closes (sort of) with 
velcro and wanted me to have one that didnt leak coins onto the ground.
we had of course ordered too much food and wanted to give some of it to
the street kids who hovered around any restaurant that would let them.
we told her we wanted to give the leftovers to the kids and she made 
the restaurant let them sit down and eat instead of chasing them away.

2) we were trying to get home in natal by bus after taking pamela to the
bus station to get her bus back home to jacare and the bus we needed,
#34 didnt come and didnt come.  someone had told us that #38 also worked
so we got on asking about going to the "porto" and the "iate clube".
the driver said to get on and then about half way home he stopped his
bus in the middle of traffic to talk to the driver of the bus beside 
us.  apparently he was negotiating for that bus to take us because it
went closer than ours did.  so at the next stop, he got out of his bus,
took us to the other bus, and got us on at the back so we didnt have to
pay again.  and when we were near the yacht club, our new bus driver
made a special stop for us and pointed out where the yacht club was.

we are leaving brazil in the next day or two, our 6 months is up today,
french guyana and trinidad here we come and maybe even surinam (dutch
guyana). 

i have been spoiled by my nieces who were very good crew and lots of
fun.  the boat dynamics are different now. no nieces to speak portuguese
and more importantly to understand it. had to provision myself, what
a pain putting it all away. cant count on people knowing all the steps
in getting ready to sail, have to remember to tell them. have to remember
them all myself.  need a checklist (or a sharper short term memory).
and nobody to find out where the good music and dancing are and drag
me out till 3am occasionally.  i miss them, but its time for them to
get on with their lives.  anyone on this list with daughters between
college and life and enough $$ to survive for a year without working?
if so have them email me.  sons would work too.

hugs.

-evi