Blogging – Page 3 – Caro Babbo

Time is on my side, yes it is…

Big Bay, Shuyak Island, Alaska – July 16th, 2023 – We left Homer five days ago. It has been rainy, dark, except for two days.I’ve been sleeping 12 hours a day after the first two days. Jennifer has encouraged this much sleep, I was resistant the first few days, but gave in. We’ve been making about the same distance as normal, but we’ve only managed to sail about three hours one day. There just has been no wind, except when there is tons of wind from the wrong direction.Jennifer says I’m healing and have to let that happen. It is happening in that I can feel, or did feel changes in the first part of the trip. I presume I’m back because I’m not really feeling those changes anymore, or perhaps it’s because I’ve had one hell of a sinus infection and vertigo which either masks the changes or hides my feeling them.

The boat work in the yard went well. The engine mounts did not seem to need work; it was the screws holding in the cutless bearing that were the problem. I bought a tap and reamed out the holes, and the screws went all the way in. They did not the last time I worked on this.

The boat itself needed normal things. I rebuilt the water maker which works much better now. Continue reading “Time is on my side, yes it is…”

We’re going!

Port Townsend, WA, 19-JUN-2023 –We met with my cardiologist yesterday… Yes, I’ve said it, my cardiologist. I now have a cardiologist for the rest of my life, and who knows what other doctors, but that’s the way it is. It’s better than the reverse.

…We met with my cardiologist yesterday who told me everything is fine as far as going on the boat, and getting away from things. I do have Afib, and I seem to be constantly in Afib.

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.

We’re ready.

Port Townsend, WA, 26-May-2023 – We bought tickets to go to Anchorage. We’ll fly up on the 26th of June and return in early September.

Jennifer will fly up the same day as me, which didn’t really click until I spoke to an old high school friend, Roberta Guzzone. Jennifer is flying up with me on those dates, she’ll be with me for two weeks while I get the boat ready to go into the water because she wants to be around me in case something happens. It’s an odd feeling.

I did a teleconference with a nurse practitioner at Harborview Medical Center. The nurse practitioner is from the stroke facility. I am, it seems, completely recovered from the stroke. I know that’s not completely true because I have a slight lisp when I say certain words that have an S in them. It’s not anything anyone else notices but I can.

Allegro, non-troppo

Written before the excitement, which does nothing to change the larger directions we are all chasing.

Port Townsend, 3-MAY-2023 – It’s been a heck of a year since we returned from Caro Babbo last fall.

I’m back from almost 3 weeks of bouncing around Europe seeing old true and good friends. Just before I left I started to feel the pressure of tasks to be accomplished before Caro Babbo can go in the water. I set all of that aside, other than to book my flight, then jetted around Western Europe seeing friends. It wasn’t a return to an old life, we’ve all more or less left that life. Franz, with another 10 years before he wants to call it quits, has decided he’s had enough of the newspaper industry and being a CEO. He starting a new venture with a new love and exploiting an untapped Italian market for which there are government monies looking for a place to go.

Ann is still in Paris having left Dublin 40 years ago. She’s called it quits and lives the Parisian life of leisure and magazines. Elena flew down from Moscow, she’s a travel writer, we traveled for a week around Milan and Lake Garda: travel if you can with a travel writer. I don’t need to say more.

One, Two, Three Strokes, you’re out at the ol’ ball game.

Port Townsend, WA, 8-May-2023 – Today feels like it is the end of the day that happened. But it’s not. That day was six days ago.

I remember sleeping much closer to Jennifer than I normally did, she was comfortable and quite warm. She had her hand on me, across my shoulders, then it felt a little uncomfortable. I also felt I needed to go to the bathroom.

Jennifer’d been gone for days, and I had been gone for weeks prior to that, so we hadn’t seen each other much in the last two months. It was nice to have her near, and very comforting that she should put her arm around me when she was sleeping. I scooted over leftward to the edge of the bed. She must’ve been closer than I thought because I could still feel her hand on me.

Fame: ‘‘Dennis and Me saw this boat on the back page of Wooden Boat Magazine…’’

After a few minutes of repeated mentions of Dennis, I asked, ‘‘Who is Dennis?’’

‘‘Dennis Conner, everyone loves Dennis.’’

I responded, ‘‘I lived in San Diego when he lost it.’’

He parried, ‘‘Won four, lost two.’’

Port Townsend, WA 14-MAR-2023 – What was unsaid, of course, was that Dennis Conner was the first American to lose the America’s Cup. It was said that the head of the first skipper to lose the Americ’s Cup Trophy would take its place at the New York Yacht Club.

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.

Safety of Life at Sea – SOLAS – Death of a friend

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.