september, 2006 

hi guys --

these status reports are becoming yearly instead of monthly, and therefore
way too long.  but here goes. if you want off the list, just email me.

antigua race week, may-jun06
----------------------------
antigua race week is a week of races around the british island of antigua
where they speak a version of english that sounds mixed with french and
maybe african.  there are two divisions, A and B. A is the really racy boats
and B is the more normal boats.  They use different courses so us normal
boats don't get in the way of the real racers.  In our division B there 
were several classes, each with a different starting time.  We were in the
cruiser1 class, for the most part, boats under 45 ft that were like me.
We started in the middle of the pack so there were slower classes ahead
of us and faster classes behind.

john always engineered us a good start, but we weren't exactly in racing
form.  we were more like a motor home entered in the indy 500.  most boats
had stripped down to having nothing extra on board.  we had our dinghy, 6
anchors, full water tanks, full feul tanks, 2 bicycles, etc.  at the first
marker we had to round, i looked back and saw at least 20 boats trying to
pass us, on the inside, on the outside, everywhere.  miraculously we didnt
hit anyone and no one hit us.

we were also hampered by our sail trim at first. going upwind we were getting
passed by everyone.  john was used to sailing his race boat that can go 30%
off the wind and would inadvertantly pinch till our speed slowed to almost
nothing.  after the first couple of races we figured that out and did better.

in one of the races, the race committee decided they wanted to get to the
bar and they pulled the finish line at 3:50pm when the race rules said they
would wait until 6:00pm.  we were about 2 blocks from the line when they
just up and left.  i called on the radio asking what was going on and was
told rudely to "read the rules".  and sure enough, burried in the pages and
pages of rules was one that said after half the boats in each class have
finished they can pull the finish line and quit.  and you are supposed to
tell them what time you would have crossed it and they take that time. we
did that and they corrected us from a did-not-finish to a real time.

there was a skippers party one night and although john was our skipper, he
wasnt a party guy so anne and i went.  it was lots of fun with very yummy
food.  at the end of the races there was a banquet and we arm-twisted john
into coming even though you had to pay for it.  they assured us there would
be food and drinks.  turns out it was the awards banquet and the word banquet
was used figuratively. lots of rum punches and no food for about 2 hours,
then finally tiny appetizers.  we found out afterwards that you were supposed
to eat first at a restaurant, then come and drink rum punches till you drop.
it doesnt take many rum punches on an empty stomach to get me to drop.

during the banquet my oars for the dinghy were stolen.  this was serious as
the sunken engine was still acting up a bit.  now these werent state of the
art oars, one was a paddle from brazil and the other was homemade from a piece
of acacia cut in the cape verdes where my last oars were stolen.

new crew - jun06
----------------
after race week was over, i got new crew, jim lane a former student who had
worked on wall street for 8 years and wanted to give up the nyc rat-race and
come sailing for a bit.  jim knows sailing better than i do, but some of his
info is 25 years old when he had a 32 ft. island sloop with no engine and 
no electronics.  sailing things havent really changed in 25 years, but boat
fixing materials have. jim is also a perfectionist and way more careful and
complete in fixing things than i am. i seem to be a do-it-good-enough person,
so we have a few issues.  i am inexperienced in things to the point of always
waffling on decisions about big changes and this drives jim crazy. maximal
consumer with all the toys vs. minimalist do-it-the-hard-way me.

my nieces as crew have gotten me into the cook-good-meals-onboard mode of
eating and jim has just had 8 years of eat-out-because-if-you-work-late-the-
boss-pays eating. so rotating the cooking chores doesnt work, at least not if 
we are at a dock. this will have to change on a passage or anchored at a
deserted island.

almost as soon as jim arrived with his new fancy 17 inch screen laptop, it
broke, the screen just died and he had to jump thru hoops to get it fixed.
it was a dell and in reading the fine print, dells warranty is only good in
the usa.  so jim had to send the computer to his mom and have her broker
getting it fixed and fedex'd back. we decided to sail to st. maarten further
up the island chain and so had the computer sent there.

tot club - jun06
----------------
the tot club in antigua meets daily at a local bar and recreates the british
navy tradition of having a ration or tot of rum every day.  to join someone
must sponsor you and you have to come 5 times and manage to down a pretty
large tot of straight rum.  i cant do it so managed to get my ration cut down
to a tiny bit most of the time.  each day they read from a british naval
history book that tells what happened over the years on that particular day.
then there is a toast as you down the rum that changes each day.  the one
i remember is "sweethearts and wives, may they never meet" which seemed a
bit sexist but they didnt seem inclined to change it to "lovers and husbands,
may they never meet" as i suggested.

st. maarten and saba - jul06
----------------------------
we sailed to st. maarten as the dutch side of this divided island is called.
the other side is french and called st. martin.  on the dutch side they speak
english and use the us dollar, on the french side they speak french very fast
and use the euro, but take it at par with the dollar at most places.  best
exchange rate in the world.

st. maarten has lots of marine stores and boat yards and is a good place to
get things fixed and work done on the boat.  at first we anchored in
philipsberg, the capital of the dutch side, but its a rolly anchorage 
and not great. retrieved jims computer at fed ex and it worked.

we sailed to saba another island in the dutch antilles.  it has one bay
where you can anchor and several moorings that are free.  we took a mooring
and now have a new understanding of a rolly anchorage.  in the morning we
would get up and find that stuff had fallen off counters and out of bookshelves
from the rolling. saba has wonderful diving and snorkeling and is mountainous
in the interior.  its an old volcano with very steep sides coming right down
to the water.  we went ashore at a place called the ladder that is a bunch
of stairs going straight up the side of the mountain -- something like 800 
steps.  explored the island walking on the hiking trails and also got a taxi
tour.  the islands only road is called the road-that-couldnt-be-built because
when they wanted a road, dutch engineers came out to look at the land and
design the road and they gave up and said it couldnt be done.  the island 
found its most clever engineering type and sent him to road-building school.
he came home and designed and built their road around the island and also
built a small airport on the only flat spot there was.  we climbed to the
top of the volcano in the mist and clouds so didnt see the spectacular view
that the postcards capture.  it is the highest point in the dutch kingdom.
on the way down, i found a fruit called a momi-apple and carried it all the
way back to the boat.  it was huge and yummy.

saba has a strict building code.  all houses must be saba cottages, which
means small, white, red tile roof, porch, shutters on the windows.  you
do get to choose the color of the shutters, but thats about all.

we sailed back upwind from saba, heading for st. barths, the so-called 
playground of the rich and famous.  i was using the motor to charge up our
batteries and also help us point high enough to make st. barths without
having to tack.  we had slept in and didnt start till noon, trying to make
st. barths 25 miles away.  about halfway there there was a terrible squealing
noise coming from the engine.  i shut it off and wondered what it could be --
sounded like the propellor shaft not getting enough water to cool and
lubricate it, but could have been the fan belt.  without the engine
we couldnt make st. barths easily and in daylight and i thought that st.
maarten would be a better place to get things fixed, so we sailed back to
st. maarten instead. used the engine to anchor, this time in simpson bay that
is more protected than philipsberg and there was no squealing.  after a 
couple of nights in simpson bay, we went thru a draw bridge into an area
called simpson bay lagoon where it is totally protected from swell, large
enough to have a nice breeze and far enough from the mangroves to have no
mosquitoes.  wonderful sleeping.

toilet maintenance - jul06
--------------------------
my toilet maintenance typically involves pouring vinegar in once a week to
disolve the hard crusty white stuff that forms when pee and sea water mix
and sit for a while as they do in the toilet hoses if you dont pump enough.
then i add cooking oil that lubricates the rubber valves and leather pump
thingie.  and this is enough.  we had rebuilt the toilet a year or two ago
so i thought it was fine, although turdlettes would never go down properly.

i was pumping the head one day when the handle fell off in my hand. i thought,
no sweat, i know what it is, the key where it fits on the shaft must have
come out and i know how to fix that.  but it wasnt the key, the connecting
rod that hooked the shaft where the handle fits to the piston had broken.
took it apart and went with my broken piece to budget marine without much
hope of finding a new part. was pleasantly surprised when they had 3 of them
hanging on the pegboard. i noticed when taking it apart that the piston
itself was cracked so ordered another.  took them 2 weeks to order it because
the regular person was on vacation and the person covering for them was
incompetent. this meant that 4 guests from hungary, adam bednarik and his
family would arrive and we wouldnt have a working head.  bad plan.

when the part still wasnt there the day after they arrived, i put the head
back together with the old piston. the only instructions that come with the
rebuild kit is an exploded parts diagram.  for the engineers turned boaters
this is fine, but you have to read carefully and not everything is shown 
clearly. jim noticed that in our previous rebuild we had put two parts in
upside down so that the valve that made the head basically a one way street
letting stuff go out but not backwash was not working right.  putting it all
back together correctly (except for the cracked piston) has made it work
perfectly. no more turdlette problems.  and of course as soon as i got it
all back together the new piston arrived.  it's in the spares kit now.

dinghies - jul06
----------------
in anticipation of adam and his family coming, i bought a bigger dinghy and
new yamaha 15hp engine.  the dinghy is stowable with a high pressure floor.
the new engine is too big for the dinghy but i plan to get a new dinghy
when i get to venezuela, so it seemed ok to have a slightly too big engine.
havent fully tested that hypothesis, since i have jim as crew and he can
wrestle a 100 lb engine around, but i can't. a 15 hp engine on a squirrelly
inflatable is an accident waiting to happen. 3 days into ownership, it 
happened. we had put a fender in the dinghy to use as a seat when you were
alone in the dinghy so you could center the weight. jim was heading home
about 11pm when the fender slipped, the engine revved, the boat turned and
the dinghy flipped cutting the bottom on another boats propellor and soaking
the new engine in salt water. a sheepish jim came home in a borrowed dinghy,
asking me to come with him to help tow our dinghy to shrimpies bar and
dinghy repair shop.  they flushed the engine out that night, we rented their
rescue dinghy, and had them also repair the cut in the inflatible floor. the
dinghy proved very hard to repair, shrimpies failed and so did the avon
dealer, so rather than fight with it, i bought another used inflatible floor 
dinghy and had the yahama dealer who we bought the engine from go over it.
i am now the proud owner of 3 inflatable dinghies and 2 sunken engines. geez.

visitors - jul-aug06
--------------------
adam bednarik from budapest, hungary, who lived with me the year he was 11,
has been avoiding summer jobs by coming and sailing with me (the med and 
brazil). he has just graduated from college so this was his last chance to
take the summer off sailing before starting life with a real job and short
vacations.  he came with his family, so the boat was full with 4 of them,
jim, and myself. i was already nervous because this year was advertised as
a bad hurricane year like last year and i was way too far north for comfort.
but adams family flew in/out of st. maarten, so i decided to just run south
if a storm threatened, hoping to have 3 days notice to make it south.

we sailed to st. barths, the so-called playground of the rich and famous.
its also a french island and had the best ice cream in the caribbean. very
fancy shops too. we anchored in a nice bay on the north end of the island
where the snorkeling was good.

sailed back to st. maarten for adams family to go home. he was staying the
rest of the summer and would fly from wherever we ended up back to st.
maarten and home.

boat chores
-----------
did a few boat chores before heading south. we had met a boaty fixit guy,
lindsay, in st. maarten and joined his after work beer club.  he is an engine
meister and so i asked him to come out and look at my engine just to check 
things over. he said it looked pretty good, but that my air filter was filthy,
loose, and rubbing on the fan belt.  hmmmm, i didnt know i had an air filter,
my engine manual didnt mention it in the maintenance section or show it on the
diagram. at lindsay's suggestion i replaced my broken one with a real one 
from a NAPA store.  the real ones that would fit the space between the air
inlet and the feul tank needed a 2.5 inch hose. my air inlet was 1.5 inches,
but i found 2 pieces of hose in lindsays crate of spare hoses and was able
to clamp the new one on.  it even looks professionally done.  another hose
behind the air filter was quite cracked and i changed it at the same time.
and jim replaced the fan belt the air cleaner had sabatoged.


finally heading south - aug06
-----------------------------
i was finally ready to head south. i checked the grib files and they say the
weather is ok, no tropical activity except for 2 tropical waves to the east
and not expected to intensify for the next week.  so we go and as we are
passing st. barths and are within range of the cell towers there, my
blackberry gets an email from john mcginley, my weather buddy, saying to
go into simpson bay lagoon in st. maartens and wait it out.  wait what out
i email back.  the answer from lynda, his wife, comes almost immediately
telling me that tropical storm Chris, with winds of 50 mph and expected to
intensify is a few hours away and oh, by the way, grib files suck and are
very inaccurate.  oops.

it was too late to turn back and go back to st. maarten. the next really
protected harbor to the south was antigua.  we were headed to martinique,
at the south end where there is a well protected harbor. the position of
chris and the expected path put us in the SW quadrant, which is usually
the mildest quadrant of a storm in the caribbean.  the storm will cross
our path at night of course.

we went thru bands of squalls with sustained winds in the 20s, maybe a gust
to the 30s. reefed main and less than full jib. the wind turned and came
from the south, so the storm was mostly past us, but we want to go south.
being a lazy sailor (or is it a smart one) rather than beat, we pull into
antigua to wait till the wind changes. falmouth harbor is big enough and 
open enough to get into at night, even for cautious old me. antigua was a
pain for the paperwork last time i was there, but they actually told me not
to bother to check in since i had just come in to get out of the storm. we
left the next day for marin on the southwestern coast of martinique -- the
next hurricane hole on the way south.

in martinique, we climbed volcano pele that errupted in 1902 killing 24998
of the 25000 people living in st. pierre. there were 2 survivors: a prisoner
in a jail cell mostly underground and a man working in his basement shop. the
prisoner went on to join a circus and show off his burns over most of his body.

my french is ok to read signs in a museum or to speak with is definitely
marginal to understand the speedy, swallowed answers to my questions. susha,
my niece flew into martinique to join us for a couple of weeks.

our next stop was the island called bequia, one of the nicest islands in
the caribbean.  except for the market where the sellers are quite aggressive
and wont leave you alone.  next time i will buy my veggies elsewhere.

we went to the tobago cays, part of st. vincent and the grenadines to go
snorkeling.  you anchor with the open atlantic in front of you, protected
not by islands and land, but just by a huge reef.  its quite scary looking
if its windy and rough as it was.  too windy in fact to feel comfortable
snorkeling.

we went to grenada for adam to fly back to st. maarten and then home and 
for susha to fly back to martinique and then home to portland.  susha made
it fine, but adam had a terrible adventure.  he started work sept 1 in
his first real job in budapest, so was scheduled to leave august 23 or so.
his routing was grenada to st. vincent to barbados to st. maarten or something
like that.  but his plane had a mechanical problem and was late leaving.
although he had a 4 hour layover in st. maarten, his connecting flight was more
than 4 hours late, so he missed his air france flight and they were closed
when he arrived.  he was labeled a no-show and they didnt want to honor his 
ticket.  liat, who flew him there put him up in a hotel and fed him, but
only for one night.  air france was fully booked the next day, and the next,
and also said his ticket was worthless.  he had no credit card and only about
$300, not enough for a new ticket st. maarten -> budapest and not enough to
hang out for a long time and wait for a way home.  finally air france decided
to let him fly by paying an extra $200 or so, i wired him some money, and
he got home a day before his job started.  

jim and i had planned to sail on to venezuela, but my frequent flyer ticket
home was good from grenada or trinidad, but there were no seats from 
caracus, so we sailed to trinidad.  yeah, arrived about sept 1, finally
out of the hurricane belt by september, the worst month of the season. whew.


road trip with my brother tom - sep-nov06
-------------------------------------
sept 5th i flew to raleigh, nc to meet my brother tom and do a road trip
visiting all our east coast relatives we hadnt seen since we were 10.
it was a wonderful trip, we saw the houses where we grew up, lots of cousins,
and some pretty fall leaves. during the trip tom had some back pain that
came around to his chest. he thought it was a pulled muscle. when he got
home at the end of september and went to the doctor they talked about a
compression fracture of a vertebrae. finally at ellen's (his wife and a
nurse) urging they did a CAT scan. october 11th he was diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer that had metasticized to his liver.  its an aggressive
and uncurable cancer. the only treatment is to manage the pain with morphine.
i was in peru hiking to macchu pichu at the time, finished my hike, came home,
and have been with him and his family since late october. so sad, he was 
about to retire. 

hugs.

-evi