Life Afloat

Retrospective

- Ann 3 Comments

A few follow-up comments from past blogs:

The last holdout colony of ants, the ones who lived under the hatch turtle, I believe have been vanquished. I was starting to think we had developed a super-breed, Maryland plus Guatemala plus Honduras, but a couple drops of the Terro that I brought back from the US did the trick. In fact I believe that at this moment, the boat is free of any sort of animal, other than the two of us.
UPDATE: actually, no. Yesterday I saw a cute little gecko-like animal, not more than 2″ long, scuttle under the water tank/.Long may s/he live.

The lionfish, an invasive species from the Pacific that moved into this ocean after Hurricane Andrew and onto my radar as we were diving and snorkeling in Roatan last year, are around all these islands in substantial force. At West End Roatan, riends report that they sight dozens each time they dive. But still, only park management is allowed to shoot them. From Lighthouse Reef the same report except there’s no one out there to keep you from vigilante-ism; additionally the comment that there are numerous fish in the 3-4 pound size. And there’s a public relations campaign encouraging eradication (method unspecified) in Providencia, a Colombian island.

Lionfish are said to be tasty, but the risk of being pricked and poisoned by a very unpleasant venom contained in the dorsal spines is off-putting. Perhaps we could get a marketing genius to align lionfish with fugu, the poisonous pufferfish that the Japanese play Russian roulette with.

Last December I was jauntily invoking Johnny Depp and the pirates of the Caribbean, as we spent the night, by ourselves, in an isolated anchorage, Diamante Lagoon, on mainland Honduras. So this last item is harder to write about, as it involves murder. The victim was a man we knew from the Rio Dulce, and admired, a very smart and mellow person. In fact his picture is in the blog as a participant in the 4th of July blind dinghy races. Milan Egrmajer was killed there, by pirates, about the time we were rounding Cabo Gracias a Dios.

Well, I’m not feeling so jaunty any more. In fact part of me is really angry, at the entire country of Honduras for being such a dysfunctional, poorly governed place with so many guns and one of the highest murder rates in the world. I’m angry at the entire system, the mindset, not just at the gunman and his associates (which maybe just goes to show how irrational an emotion anger can be). The rest of me is having to persuade myself that the law of averages is still on my side.

Often in Honduras I had the feeling that we tourist gringos in our ‘enclaves’ were ‘protected’ by private interests. The management of the shipyard pays for protection; drug cartels keep the lid on bad elements who might otherwise bring unwanted attention to the area; local merchants or whoever benefits from our presence hovers over us. You could say it was ‘market economy justice’; we were protected by economics more than by rules of polite conduct. We certainly need looking after in places like Honduras; we bumble around, looking rich, ignorant of all local politics and issues, putting ourselves in the middle of situations we know nothing of, oblivious to their ramifications, and powerless to change the circumstances.

So Milan was shot point-blank by one of four men in a lancha which had approached his boat, Adena, asking for help. His poor daughter, down from Canada for a trip to Panama, managed to frighten them off with a flare gun. She then spent what must have been terrified hours trying to get help. What news reports I’ve had access to are amazingly discordant in essential details and the comments attached are appalling in their lack of sympathy and their misunderstanding of the circumstances.

It’s just a terrible situation all around.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/12/10/myda-egrmajer.html

Cabo Gracias a Dios

- Ann 1 Comment

The trip ‘around the corner’ and down towards Colombia and Panama is not one that we were looking forward to, being 160 nautical miles to windward and then a run through a reefy area off the Mosquito Coast. But eventually the day came where the easterly tradewinds were trumped by the northwest and north winds of an approaching cold front, and it was time to go

We left Guanaja in company with another boat. Well,’travelling with’ in the sense that Pluto travels with Mercury – this catamaran arrived half a day before we did. Here’s a little video they took of us on our first day out.
Or not, lots of trouble uploading this six-second video clip.

This video is just a little experiment; can anyone see it? You need Flash.

Then, a white smudge that I kept peering at thinking it was a small boat heading our way turned into a waterspout. Luckily, it didn’t reach to the clouds until it was past us, and stayed a respectful distance away.
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This part of Nicaragua is the Mosquito Coast, and from what people say about it, it sounds like a last frontier, out beyond the reach of the law. It’s not a recommended destination due in part to drug-related activity. Plus the charts are outdated – islands have been reconfigured in recent hurricanes. I’ve read that it took Christopher Columbus 40 or 50 days (accounts vary) to work his way around this cape, hence the name Gracias a Dios. Good weather windows just aren’t that big, he didn’t have any charts, and not much windward sailing ability either. But I’ve also read that he had a fortuitous wind shift. I think Christopher Columbus probably had lots of opportunity to say Gracias a Dios.

Our last night out, approaching Providencia, was disconcertingly dark, like the inside of a coal mine. Shower clouds around the horizon blotted out the starshine; moonrise was about half an hour before sunrise. We were dawdling for daylight, so sailed off the wind under bare poles, drifting at about 1 kt down the west side of Providencia. Sunrise at the sea buoy, on through the channel, and ready for another adventure, after a little nap.

Out of LaCeiba for good!

- Ann 1 Comment

Funny how what once was tolerable seems less so the closer it gets to the end. That’s how we were feeling as we slipped away from La Ceiba Shipyard early Wednesday morning with a huge sigh of relief. The woman who made Doug’s lunch every day was starting to mark his styrofoam trays ‘delgado‘ ‘skinny’, so it was clearly past time for us to resume our normal life.

We motored toward French Harbor, Roatan, and then, actually got to sail at a tolerable rate of progress. And then, we caught a fish. It seems like years since we’ve hauled one in. PHOTO OF FISH IN BUCKETPhoto & Video Sharing by SmugMugAs you might recognize, this is a red-meat fish, not to everyone’s taste. We have a special marinade that we call ‘fishkiller sauce’, made with garlic, ginger, soy, oil. Makes anything taste good! Also, if you saw how fast a tot of alcohol to the gills stops a fish, you’d think twice about your own next shot! We used some of Thelma’s Canadian Club which has been languishing in various bilges for quite some time.

And then, anchored in the familiar harbor, I got to go for a swim. We visited some friends, I finished a good book (Margaret Atwood, Payback).That evening it rained and we caught nice drinking and shower and washing water. Could life get any better?

Well, no. Doug was eager to move east towards Guanaja despite the looming rainclouds of a widespread frontal trough. It rained and rained some more, the west wind never materialized (thankfully, neither did the lightening). As befits a shake-down (trickle-down?) cruise, we found leaks running behind the chart table, past acres of wiring, under the refrigeration compressor and out onto the cabin sole.

But the weather cleared decently on our final approach to the anchorage at El Bight. Flow analysis easily revealed the source of the leak – the chainplates – and now they’re all goobered up again. I caught more rain, started another book (Reefer Madness, Eric Schlosser, also very interesting) and life is fine again.

Being tied alongside a dock is nice for a change, but it’s great to be on the hook, where the humidity generally blows on through the boat rather than congealing on every interior surface. Even my wooden cooking spoons were growing fur! The solar panels and wind generator are back at work, trying to keep up with our ever-increasing power needs.

We’ve even got an invite for Thanksgiving dinner, which will be on Friday, since the supplies get off the boat late on Thursdays. Of course, we can’t commit until Thursday night – gotta check the weather, you know – but I hope we get to go. It’s the first invite I’ve ever had where jello shooters are on the Thanksgiving menu. Remembering that fish, I’ll probably stick to beer.
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On the gadget front: I’ve got a fondness for cunning little things that work with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of ‘elegance’. Here we have something called Super-Siphon. It’s just a shaped piece of brass, with a pretty blue marble inside, attached to a plastic hose. If you want to start a siphon going you just stick it into the ‘out bucket’ and jiggle it until the flow starts. Neat, eh? And it really works.
*one definition of cunning Executed with or exhibiting ingenuity.

And We’re BAACK!

- Ann 2 Comments

Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMugDoug returned to Honduras a couple weeks ago, rarin’ to go on the bottom job, and a few other things he had in mind. I stayed in Maryland, emptying, cleaning, painting and renting the house, selling the car, doing things my way! Neither of us got as much done as we had hoped, but that’s to be expected. After the usual self-inflicted last minute rush, it was a relief to spend a few hours in anonymous airports, spacing out.

My first night on the boat, which was still out of the water, I woke up in that disconcerting, middle of the night place, not knowing where I was. It took a long time for pieces of information to drift in: this is not a feather bed, I was on an airplane recently, where was it going? oh, and a bus too…that’s Doug over there…it’s the boat and my toes are pointing east-ish. Finally I got myself drilled down to LaCeiba Shipyard, where I find myself today.

But not for long, I hope. We need to get the sails back on, the cover stowed, if it ever dries out, the interior wiped down with vinegar. We need groceries, a fresh cruising permit, maybe some refrigeration gas (or, no refrigeration!) After a summer of sort of minimalist living, I feel like we need to get rid of some stuff here too (books!). And then we need to get moving.

The sooner the better – this political season was shocking!