Maxi 95 and Our Adventures
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:
Continue reading “A quick post, as in ‘‘Where the hell have you guys been?’’”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.
Continue reading “Waiting for (car) parts in Todos Santos Mexico.”Port Townsend, WA, 23-DEC-2022 – A phrase from years ago, which was repeated to me with annoying frequency, was that sailing was safer than driving a car. I’d never really given it any thought.
Back home, in Mount Sinai Harbor, every year or two a drunk would fall into the water at the Mount Sinai Yacht Club and drown. But as Jennifer and my sailing years progressed, we came into direct and indirect contact with people who died on the water.
Continue reading “Safety of Life at Sea – SOLAS – Death of a friend”
Today is the three-year anniversary of my Dad’s passing. I initially wrote this in the days following his death intending to publish on the anniversary of his passing. Life, as it does, got in the way. I wrote and edited portions in April 2021 at the Rocky Point house, the house I grew up in, preparing it for rent, reviewing the artifacts of a long life, and in quiet moments… just sitting and thinking. Time does not rest and months and now years have passed. I have left the dateline to match the day I started writing this.
Rocky Point, NY, 31-DEC-2019 – The first time I realized my father wasn’t perfect the world tipped on its axis. I can’t remember when it was, exactly, but I was an adult. A young adult, but an adult. I remember what I understood at that point in my life, my world view and my sexual experience, all of which frame a time.
My father died this past Sunday morning at Stony Brook Medical, as they are calling the university hospital these days. His heart stopped. It was related to blood thinners, with the nursing staff saying he must have clotted from too little thinner, and the on-duty MD saying it was internal bleeding from too much. Does it matter? He’s dead.
Continue reading “Babbo”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.
Continue reading “Caro Babbo gets a living room”Port Townsend, WA – 14-NOV-2022 – Traveling from Homer to Port Townsend was uneventful. We’ve been flying more and more the last few years, nothing like we did before I left the workforce, but we’re probably doing over 30,000 miles a year, each.
While Homer is seeing more and more private jets as the very affluent find the next place to colonize, for Jennifer and me traveling between Homer and the lower 48 involves multi-hour layovers in Anchorage. This time we got pretty lucky. Our flight left Homer at 10:15 PM arriving in Anchorage at 11 PM with a 1 AM connection to Seattle.
We took mass transit from SeaTac to Bainbridge Island and were in Port Townsend mid-day, Labor Day Monday.
Caro Babbo now has an inverted ‘‘V’’ on her skeg, which was not there when she went in the water.
When Caro Babbo came out of the water the aft lifting strap slipped further aft. Aaron, the man running the hoist, saw this and seemed to think it was okay. He has much more experience with this than I do, and I deferred to him. This may have been a mistake, as Caro Babbo now has two lines in an inverted ‘‘V’’ on her skeg, which, when we compare photographs, we see that they were not there when she went in the water.
Continue reading “Caro Babbo sleeps, John has nightmares”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.
Continue reading “Waiting for Haul out in Homer”Homer, AK, 22-AUG-2022 – I hear the words to Taps in my head this morning. Our trip is over. We’re in Homer about ten days early. The weather in South Central Alaska has been such that staying a distance away risked not getting here by the first of September when Caro Babbo will be hauled out.
It looks like the Pacific High (pressure system) did not form this year – from what we see now that we can download large weather maps. Massive lows are coming in from Japan and up the Canadian Coast.
We’re rafted up with a 40-something-foot Hunter sloop. The Harbor Master says we’ll be fine as no one ever visits that vessel. We’d rather be in a slip than exposed to the traffic in the harbor. We also have to cross the Hunter any time we want to get to the dock. On the other hand, this is about as private as we will get – no one on the dock can see into our boat. I’m not sure they can even see our hull.
Continue reading “Day is Done, Gone the Sun…”The problem is the two software programs we use, openCPN and Navionics disagree about when things happen and how much.
Between two and two-thirty this morning the vessels coming up through Whale Pass started coordinating with each other on VHF. About three, I started watching the vessels that broadcast AIS on openCPN.
The final burst of vessels came through around three-thirty. I would have expected that was either slack water (no current in either direction) or the current had started flowing the other way, but it was more than half before they first vessel heading the other way entered the pass.
I could have called to ask about current strengths, but I wanted Jennifer to sleep.
Around 5:30, the coast guard started a dialogue with a vessel in distress.
We can only hear the coast guard. The vessel in distress is too far away for us to hear.
The coast guard: you’re taking on water. Good copy.
How many persons on board and what is your GPS location?
Zero four persons on board. Good copy.
Your taking on water. Good copy.
What is your GPS location?
Understood. You’re taking on water, what is your GPS location.
Then a few seconds of silence.
The coast guard reads back the lat and long. It is four degrees west of us and one degree south.
Good copy.
Do you have personal floatation devices and are all persons wearing personal flotation devices.
I don’t know whether all was calm on the vessel, or whether it was mayhem. At this time I don’t know whether this is a pro forma call to the coast guard or whether the vessel is in danger of sinking.
There are a few more back and forths. The coastie isn’t budging until he gets all the info he needs.
Do you have a phone number?
The coastie responds, good copy, which to me means no. I expect they have a satellite phone, but they are such a hassle that the cost guard agrees not to bother with it.
Finally, the coast guard says his words, and they pan-pan rather that mayday.
Pan-pan pan-pan this is the United States Coast Guard sector Anchorage, United States Coast sector Anchorage. At 13.20 universal coordinated time, 05.20 Alaska daylight time a vessel at coordinates, then he reads them, had reported taking on water with 04 persons on board.
All vessels keep a look out for this vessel and render assistance.
We hear the coast guard speak with one vessel, and after a few moments, the Coast Guard names a second vessel and says you are on site?
Then, good copy.
Then the coast guard asks for a phone number, followed by a few moments of silence and good copy.
Then several more moments followed by the vessel has sank. A few more moments, can you confirm there are zero four persons in the skiff?
After a few more minutes, the official message that ends with all persons have been safely recovered.
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*It took days to figure out why Prince’s Raspberry Beret was playing though my mind.
Find our location at Carobabbo.com along with blog posts
I haven’t thought about that song in a long time. It seems a song of regret or resignation for what should be an event of joy.
We’re heading back to Homer. This trip is coming to an end. Jennifer tells me she never wants to do things like this again. She doesn’t want to be afraid anymore.
She wants to get back to PT, plant her orchard and garden and watch things grow. Simon’s song comes to mind.
Next year we’ll spend a few months bringing Caro Babbo back to the pnw, see if we can get a slip at Lee’s Landing and live a quiet retired life.
I find the concept of this difficult in the extreme.
How you gonna keep down on the farm once they’ve seen paree? To quote another song from a different era.
But even I’m not that far off from Jennifer. I surprised Jennifer when I said I wouldn’t mind coming back to Geographic Harbor and staying for a month. Just being here and living in this place.
It’s a difficult thing to sort out. Being alive and pushing whatever boundaries we each feel.
Next year, Jennifer will be the age I was when we made our first trip up the inside passage. It was such an adventure.
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Hans and Sylvia showed up yesterday afternoon. They sat out the weather in Hidden Harbor. We’ll learn today how it was.
Yesterday, while out and about, we visited a charter boat. A strange charter boat and a strange interaction. Well, there was nothing too off about it, but… I don’t know.
The vessel is a big old work boat. A hundred feet or so, with a deck full of heavy machinery and a portable building.
A 25-foot aluminum landing craft-style skiff was on the starboard hip.
Jennifer and I saw her after we went through a tight passage between a small island and the shore directly west of where we were anchored.
As we approached, two people climbed down from the ship into the skiff: a man and a woman. He was close to my age, she was in her thirties.
They were wearing various cloth and stick-on badges that play to all the fashionable concerns tourists to this part of the world feel they should feel: She had WWF sticker with a panda on it; He wore a jacket with the charter company’s logo.
Behind them on the semi-covered deck a group of men were conversing, some in foul weather gear, others awkwardly getting into it.
The man and the woman stood at the rail of the skiff waiting for us to come alongside. Jennifer asked if she could grab hold of the skiff. They said yes.
They didn’t say anything beyond that. Usually, sailors greet each other with a good day or what vessel are you from, they were quiet.
Jennifer asked who are you? The common response is to tell us about their vessel. Instead, the woman responded with their first names. John and, I think Teresa, Jennifer remembers Laura.
Jennifer asked if they were from the world wildlife fund*, the woman answered, ”I am, he’s not. ”
I asked whether he owned the boat or was the skipper. John responded he worked for the owners of the boat. He said ‘owners of the boat,’ not ‘owners. ‘
We asked whether they were a charter and how many people were onboard: seven guests and four crew. The guests had just flown in on a float plane we’d seen come in. It was an exchange of guests.
The two stayed very close to the rail of the skiff and never turned towards the guests. Very much a barrier between us and the guests. An odd interaction.
The woman asked if we were from the small little sailboat. We said we were.
John started to say something and they had an easy demeanor when they joked about who was the boss.
We spoke with John about bringing the boat down from Homer. I then remembered seeing her in the harbor on the east side.
It had been a very difficult journey dodging bad weather. Making short day hops during intervals between weather systems.
John came across as the real deal and his experience confirmed what we had been seeing. He said something that we know, but which is good to hear. We asked what the weather was actually doing out in the strait. He said he didn’t know. He was away from the strait; he only knew what it was forecasted to do. It was nice to hear it from someone else.
Jennifer and I agreed it was time to go, we’d been there for too many minutes and their guests were all suited up.
When John and the woman climbed out of the skiff, a man in his thirties wearing an ”I love dirt” cap from a landscaping company took their place. He was very eager to speak with us.
He asked about the dinghy. We answered his questions, but we were holding up the guests so we left.
Usually, additional crew will come speak with us at the same time we speak with anyone on a vessel.
After we were a distance away, the skiff came by with the young man driving from the helm station at the stern. The woman was seated in the row immediately in front of him. The remaining seats were filled by the seven guests.
As he passed near us, he slowed and looked behind himself at his wake.
He gets our eternal thanks for that.
I don’t know, it felt a bit like something out of a Bond film. Everything was normal, but our interactions had an odd affect.
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Today, we’ll join Hans and Sylvia on their four-person RIB and look at bears and explore. Jennifer and I would also like to visit the sailboat that came in last night. They anchored in the next cove over, quickly and with great confidence from what we could see on AIS.
We’ll learn the name of their boat, which shows as Catharpin Blue.**
Hans and Sylvia have invited us over for dinner. This sometimes affects Jennifer, the boat is so big and ours seems so small after a visit. I don’t want her to become afraid again.
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I don’t know what will happen in future years. I’ve never been able to see my future and we have a plan for 2023. 2024 is too far away for me to ever plan, so there is no reason to fret about it now.
A summer in Port Townsend might be a nice thing… And then sailing again?
😉
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*Worldwide wrestling federation came to mind, but then I remembered McMahon lost that trademark battle more than twenty years ago.
**Turns out it is pronounced Cat-harpin Blue. A catharpin is a knot used on square-rigged vessels.
Find our location at Carobabbo.com along with blog posts
