Ean Has Fun While Jane Has None

Dear Ean,  Thanks very much for your live(ly) report and the reminder that you are off having fun (and showers and cable TV) while I am having none.  Here is MY report.

Picked up the new Raymarine control head from Air Facility yesterday - only $27 for shipping/handling and customs - how cool is that?  Had a couple of drinks with Rick at the Balboa Yacht Club, talking about how unlikely it is that we will actually get the control head installed sans hitches.  Oh, yes, there will be hitches, Rick warns.  You know how he is - ever the optimist.  But if you're lucky, the hitches will be unhitched before you get back.  

Steal THIS, panga-gang!

Then I had a couple of drinks with Ron and Heather, and I think I must have seemed a little pathetic, so Heather encouraged me to ramble on at great length about my Navy days - ha.  I mentioned about the drinks, right?

Shared a taxi from Balboa back to La Playita with an Aussie couple - they were headed for pizza night at La Eskinita.  They're staying on a mooring at Balboa, they told me, because they think it's a tad bit unsafe down here- four dinghies stolen from Las Brisas! Don't ask me about the fourth dinghy - I think it's just the cruisers' coconut telegraph, telescoping the bad news from the wrong side of the tracks causeway.


So, home sweet home!  I had a healthy dinner: some chocolate chip cookie dough and una copa de vino blanco con es-SKWIR ( that's a glass of wine with Squirt - in case you've forgotten all your español, now that you're in los estados unidos).  And then I went to bed.  But I didn't actually go to bed.  I was feeling a bit creeped out, I have to admit, being ALL ALONE out here.  And no way to raise the dinghy by myself.   I not only locked up the dinghy - I actually locked the door.  I even closed some random sea cocks, to ensure that the boat would remain afloat, and tried to check our anchor waypoint, to make sure we hadn't dragged.  Yes, it's true that we haven't budged from this spot for months - but still.  Then I realized that we put the waypoint not on the chartplotter, but on your iPad, which you are probably using to read this blog post, over yonder in los estados unidos.  So will you check it for me?  Have we dragged?  

New dinghy lift motor: fun, fun, fun all the time!

Finally fell asleep at about about three in the morning, after a fearsome lightning storm and lots of rain.  I slept with the fan running, even though it wasn't hot, after all the rain.  I wanted the white noise to cover up the sound of the panga quietly approaching the boat... of the swimmer slipping into the water and boarding JOY to cut the dinghy free so it could drift off.. of the panga picking up the swimmer and putting the dinghy under tow, once safely away.... None of that actually happened of course. But I'm going to thank Heather, when I see her, for all this helpful imagery about how dinghies get stolen here in Panama.

Tonight, though: no worries about the dinghy.  Juan and his amigo (did you catch that guy's name?) have finished installation of our shiny brand new dinghy lift motor.  The dinghy, as I live and breathe, is High and Dry.  Steal THIS, panga-gang. 

So... All is well on JOY... except... the cats miss you.  Not enough humans here to serve their needs.

Raft-Up: Keeping My Head Above Water

(photo by www.photositesag.com)

Sundowners aboard Juffa, a Fountaine Pajot Lavezzi, parked across the fairway from us at the Marina Santa Marta. Great conversation, great stories, a tour of their boat, and some great advice (Thank you, Caroline and Bill, for your hospitality). Eventually, we had to bid them good night. We had many garments to dry before we slept.

They had pulled into their slip bow first, starboard side to the finger pier. On their cat, just as on ours, the swim platforms at the stern end of the hulls are almost always the best boarding and de-boarding points. They were tied not more than 2 ft. (about a half meter) from the pier. Jane went first: grabbed a stanchion and swung/jumped off the boat onto the end of the pier. My turn. No life jacket. I'm so used to this feeling, the pressure in my chest, the buzzing in my ears, I hardly notice it now. More, I notice how embarrassed I am by it. I handed Jane my empty beer can, grabbed the stanchion, sat on down at the edge of the swim platform, stretched out my leg as far as I could and slid off, closing my eyes at the last second, hoping that I'd correctly gauged the gap. I did. The pier wobbled a bit under my weight, but I was OK, safe. We walked back to JOY, parked stern to, the bottom step of her swim platform not more than 8 inches (.2 meters) from the dock. Still, as I stepped across the  chasm, narrow as it was, there was that familiar moment of apprehension when I was more aware of the blackness that separated ship from shore than how easy it would be to step over it.

This month's "Raft-UP" topic is "fear" and when Jane and I discussed which one of us should take it on it was no contest. Jane is singularly unqualified to talk about fear; she doesn't have any. She is, with the exception of adolescent boys overstocked with testosterone, the most fearless person I've ever met. It is so annoying. That's not to say she doesn't get afraid in scary situations; she just doesn't have any abiding fears. Fear isn't something she has to negotiate with on a daily basis. Me? Yeah, I'm not like that.

I'm not saying I'm riddled with fears, that my life is ruled by them. It's not. It's ruled by only two. The lesser of which is a--fear doesn't even begin to cover it--dread terror of an accidental encounter with water. Nah, go ahead laugh; it IS funny in an absurd sort of way. I think it's pretty funny, too, when I'm not scooting around on my butt and remembering the occasions when I've gone under, the terror of flailing helplessly, sure that I was about to die.

I am often asked, as you might imagine, how I ended up being a cruiser when I can't swim and have an aversion to water. I've been asked this so often that now Jane and I respond in unison. "Well, first I (he) couldn't swim, then we bought a boat." More inexplicable yet is that this whole sailing around the world idea was originally mine. I can't imagine what I was thinking, really. Maybe I was just kidding.

Anti-Inspirational Poster #002

"Creo que tengo un brazo roto." (Segunda Parte)

I am using one of Ean's big pirate bandanas as a sling.  Under the sling, my arm is bare. Our extensive first aid kit, painstakingly prepared especially for our sail around the world, includes 14 assorted sizes of band-aids (some waterproof), three tubes of anti-bacterial ointment, and a half-roll of Tums, but stops short of really sophisticated medical equipment, like ACE bandages. 

It's been about 30 hours since the twist-crack (read about it in la primera parte); we are docked at Marina Santa Marta, and we've started the check-in process through Dino the agent.  It will take a few days to complete all the customs and immigration paperwork, but the very helpful and kind Dino tells us that we are unofficially cleared to enter Colombia.  Welcome to Santa Marta!  We avail ourselves, first, of a Colombian ATM.  And now, finally, we are ready to take care of our "emergency."  It is just before noon, and we take a taxi to La Clínica Prada, which we've been told is open on the weekend for las urgencias.

"Creo que tengo un brazo roto." (Primera Parte)

Taxi fare to Clinica El Prada:    4000 pesos ($2.50)
Urgent care consultation:       51,000 pesos ($30)
Medical supplies/equipment:  44,800 pesos ($26)
X-ray:                                   57,100 pesos ($34)
Orthopedic specialist:           370,900 pesos ($218)

Lessons learned during the Haiti-Colombia leg of the Big Joy Sailing School: well, priceless, of course.

I've been asked: What the hell happened?  Words to that effect.  So here are explanations for the non-sailor (1) and the sailor (2).

Strictly on a Need to Know Basis

We are here in Great Inagua, the southernmost island in the Bahamas chain.  It's a 215 nautical mile trip from George Town, Exumas, our last port of call, on a direct route. It can be considerably longer (413 in our case) if the tradewinds are against you, which they guaranteeably are at this time of year.

Like most cruising crews, we've developed a hierarchy of policies concerning passage making. They are predicated on the relative probability of events occurring to us and the consequences thereof.  Our default policy is to sail, rather than motor, regardless of wind direction because we are, after all, on a sailboat. However, this policy can be and is superseded by a number of factors.  Time of year is one.  We're in what is known as the "hurricane box," a set of longitudes and latitudes that is especially prone to hurricane activity in the months of June through November.  Hurricanes are not nice to boats generally and our insurance company, who isn't in the business of being nice to boaters doubles our deductible for any damage caused by a named storm, let alone a hurricane.  So our default policy gets supplanted by Amendment #3: Unless It Is Hurricane Season.  (Amendment #1: Unless There Is No Wind, is the default amendment to our default policy.  Regardless of what season it is, if there is so little wind that we lose steerage when under sail alone, we fire up the engines.)

...and Nearly Nary a Drop to Drink

There's a story told of a man who lives in a small house with his large family. Things, as you might imagine, are pretty crowded. But he loves his family, of course, so he takes it all in stride.

One day, his wife announces that her parents will be moving in with them indefinitely. Well, if he had been feeling crowded before, now he's climbing the walls. In desperation, he goes to see his rabbi.

"Rabbi," he says "I don't know what to do. My home, as you know, is pretty small and I've been blessed with a large family. Things are pretty crowded, but I love my family, so I try to take it in stride. My in-laws moved in with us recently and now we are bursting at the seams. I never have a moment to myself. We yell and curse one another from morning to night. I'm about to lose my mind. I love my wife, but I don't think I can take her parents living with us much longer. Rabbi, what should I do?"

Parts 3, 4, & 5: (Still) Planning Our Escape, Managing Risk in a Small Sailboat

Quick recap.  Part 1 discussed the hurricane box and our plan to depart wherefrom.  In Part 2, I wrote that we were planning to head for Cartagena.  Now a month has passed, between that post and this one.  If I would have written a Part 3, I would have explained that we changed our minds and decided to go west of Cuba, instead of east.  We planned, then, to hit Isla Mujeres (an island off Cancun), go south to the Bay Islands off Honduras, and then back north a bit and into the Rio Dulce (Guatamala).  In Part 4, I would have said, "Guess what, we changed our minds again!" Our new new plan, then, was to give Rio Dulce a miss, but still take a route west of Cuba: Isla Mujeres, Bay Islands off Honduras, islands off Nicaragua that belong to Columbia, and then the San Blas Islands of Panama (more properly referred to as Guna Yala). 

So that brings us up to date and ready for Part 5.  Yep, you guessed it, we're going back to our original plan: Cartagena here we come. 

Part 2: Escape from Marathon and Hurricanes

A quick recap from Part 1.  Assuming (hoping, really) that we can eventually overcome the inertia that is keeping us here in Marathon, we will spend the hurricane season south and west of the "hurricane box."  We're thinking to visit Cartagena, Colombia; Guna Yala, Panama (aka the San Blas Islands); and Rio Dulce, Guatamala.  Mas o menos.  We will aim for Cartagena first, then let the winds and currents push us to Panama and then to Guatamala.

If we could plot a course straight to Cartagena from here, it would be just a squooch east of south.  We would sail about 900 nautical miles, and Bob's your uncle.  But we must contend with Cuba.  Okay, we don't really have to contend with it, we just gotta go around it.

Part 1: Planning Our Escape from Marathon and the Hurricane Box

As of tomorrow, we have been in Marathon for seven weeks.  Holy Mackerel.  We have got to get out of here.

So we've started to plan our escape.  Yes, it's about making lists and doing a few more boat chores and projects... buying those last couple of crucial items -- the spare propeller for our outboard, the extra can of non-stick baking spray (do they have Pam in foreign lands?)... reading all our new owners' manuals, so we understand (to some small extent) all the new stuff we have on board.  But it's also about deciding: Where shall we escape TO??

This is "the hurricane box," as plotted by Ean