Repairs and Upgrading

I’m changing

Port Townsend, 12-JUN-2023 – I’m changing. I think I’m changing back to whom I was; I am different. I know I feel the same things I used to feel, but I’m different.

Since the stroke, there have been changes in me. In the early days, the days would pass by without really an end to them. They were somehow continuous. Eventually, that stopped, but even now days don’t have the strong breaks that they used to. I seem to sleep heavier.

A quick post, as in ‘‘Where the hell have you guys been?’’

We’re traveling by car in Baja California Sur, Mexico. I travel alone and get stuck in sand while Jennifer travels on Steve and Liz’s Amel, Aloha

Loreto, BCS, Mexico, 20-FEB-2023 – Okay, let me answer a few questions and defer any answer about why I haven’t been posting as I said I would. Well, I’ll address that here: We’ve been having a good and exciting time.

To catch everyone up:

Waiting for (car) parts in Todos Santos Mexico.

Todos Santos, BCS, Mexico, 5-Feb-2023 – The long and the short of it is that Celica is parked in a dirt parking lot across from a group of restaurants outside of the town proper in Todo Santos Mexico.

Jennifer and I are on a trip from Port Townsend to Todos Santos to visit our friends Dennis and Lisa, stopping along the way to see friends, both boating and non-boating.

And my mind is preoccupied with repairing the Celica. A busted car on the side of the road where I don’t have the means to repair it bothers me. It eats at me. Lately, I let other people work on our cars with mixed results. Even the best return the car with things not quite right to be discovered by us a thousand miles away. No, this breakdown is unrelated to any work we had done, but the brake pads we had installed before we left are not seating correctly. It has little impact, but it is that worm in the back of one’s head.

The drive down was a contrast of the beauty of the country we drove through, the people we met, both new to us and old friends, and the disparities of the developing world where so little works and so much is abandoned – in the rural areas. Vibrant cities, supposedly cartel-controlled cities, like La Paz blot that all out. Anglo communities like Todos Santos, where real estate prices exceed Seattle, blot that all out. But it is there. We’re in a developing nation here in Mexico.

Caro Babbo gets a living room

Caro Babbo gets a cockpit enclosure made from fiberglass tent poles that weighs 6 lbs and fits in a small bag for stowage.

Port Townsend, WA, 15-DEC-2022 – There is function and there is social pressure. Sailing is rife with both. Nonconforming will bring interest from some and the need to point out one’s nonconformity from others.

Salling is also full of individuals who don’t do things the way everyone else does. Like anything from sailing to beekeeping, there are many successful ways to do almost anything, and ways that are better in general and ways that are better in specific circumstances.

Dodgers, biminis, and cockpit enclosures fit, like anything else on a sailboat, into this dynamic.

Waiting for Haul out in Homer

Homer Harbor, Homer, AK, 29-AUG-2022 – It happens whenever I live on a boat in a harbor for a while. The water loses the appearance of water and becomes solid like earth or a roadway. It has happened again here in Homer. We’re rafted up next to a Crealock 37 named Trinity. We look forward down a fairway towards the mouth where larger vessels tie up and raft together.

Other people’s boats

SEATAC, 17-JAN-2022 – I was speaking to John Riley not too many weeks ago. I was telling John that being away from my boat meant that I don’t have much to write about. John said, write about other people’s boats.

And so I shall.

Airplanes and Nail Polish

Homer, AK, 16-JUL-2021 — I’m here. I’m in Homer getting Caro Babbo ready to ”Splash” at the end of the month.

Splash is a very visual word and a bit joyous, making a big splash is what many of us want when we make it big. When launching Caro Babbo that is the last thing we want to envision. Splash is a sail boat falling from the TravelLift into the water, a crane tipping over and other very visual mishaps that must be pushed from my imagination.

Count down to Homer

Port Townsend, WA, 23-Jun-2021 – In 22 days I will board a Delta Flight from SeaTac airport to Homer, Alaska changing in Anchorage. Rental cars are scarce; I will pay $125 per day for a three days rental car in Homer. In Anchorage, there are none – Jennifer and I paid $13 per day for a rental last September.

I am flying to Caro Babbo. The surge of returning has taken a long time to build in me. I once saw an interview with Norman Mailer describing the effects of using a testosterone gel. He said he hadn’t felt that way in years. Norman is long dead, but returning to Caro Babbo sharpens my senses and gives me purpose.

There is never the return to her that doesn’t have some apprehension. It is the not the uncertainty in the back of one’s mind when seeing a lover after an absence: Have things changed? Will I still be loved?

No, returning to a boat, our boat, is the apprehension of returning to a house that has been shut up: Will everything still be there? Will there be damage?

Maybe it is closer to returning to a loved exotic car. All of the above for a house, plus will it start? Can I get parts for the repairs I must make?

Unique to a boat: once I get it running, will it sink somewhere with me aboard? Will the rigging fail and Caro Babbo become dismasted?

Commercial grade gear

‘‘Until something breaks’’ is the watch phrase of all sailors.

Homer, AK, 9-Sep-2020 – We’ve been reading, watching, and talking about equipment failures. A typical ocean crossing is 15 to 35 days. On every boat, things break during a crossing. It’s something sailors have come to expect and prepare for. I’ve also come to realize we, as sailors, expect this very expensive equipment to fail after a very short duty cycle.

In small harbors, where we hang around with commercial fishing boats, I try to envision a commercial vessel living with the meantime between failure (MTBF) measured in days of service. The bits and pieces of their boats are up to the task and not generally pretty: Stainless steel in some places, aluminum in others, and galvanized steel wherever that makes the most sense. We rarely see full-chain anchor rodes.

Caro Babbo Sleeps, John Doesn’t

Port Townsend, WA, 1-OCT-2020 – In Homer, AK, Caro Babbo, resting on stacked wooden squares called cribs, winterized, locked and watched over, sleeps. I on the other hand toss and turn. Dryland, people, culture, and COVID are difficult transitions.

Give me a few minutes to catch you up.