Video – Caro Babbo

The Video Version of 2024

Port Townsend, WA 24-OCT-2024 – I belong to a Zoom group that started as fans of James Everson’s sailboat Zingaro.

I spent a few weeks on James’ boat in Aruba and would do a two-minute video every morning detailing what had happened the night before and the view from the boat.

This year, given it was our last time in Alaska and we were covering ground we’d never cover again, I asked the group if they’d like me to make two-minute videos in Caro Babbo. I was quite surprised when they said yes. I made them for a while and stopped. No one seemed interested. I asked a second time after stopping for a few weeks and everyone said yes again so I restarted. In this playlist are 52 videos made on the trip down. They are in chronological order and you’re welcome to watch. They are raw video: no editing of any kind, though I did stop and start recording in some videos.

Last Port Before Home

Eagle Island, WA, South Puget Sound, 26-SEP-2024 – In my past posts, I’ve tried to keep you up-to-date with where we’ve been as a setup for talking about the people we’ve met. People who I thought I would keep in touch with. People I thought were fascinating and worthwhile – a small subset of the people we’ve met.

Thirteen days in Seward

Puffin Cove, 60º 11’ N 148º 20 W, 27-JUN-2024 – Tom, who so nicely pulled our mast, told me not to rush things, I’ll be in Seward for three or more weeks and he hates guys who have a date in their mind and work hard to make it. Tom was very nice loaning his building jack to raise the deck, using his bucket truck to remove the mast, and bringing me the blank RectTube to build the new compression post, but I always have a date and I work hard to make my dates.

Never say, ‘‘All is Done.’’

Seward, AK 18-JUN-2024 – Monday, or whatever the next day was that we left, things took an immediate left turn when the V-Belt on the water pump disintegrated. The light on the instrument panel for Electric came on. No alarm, but there it was. It would overheat next.

We opened the table to look at the engine. There was the belt completely off and lying there. I had two more belts in a white envelope on the settee, so I opened the package and put the belt on.

I should have foreseen this. The belts I’ve been buying are not metric. The V on the pulley in cross section is deeper than the belt. I need to tighten the belt after a few hours and I did not. I replaced the belt and made a note to check it when we stopped again. Jennifer pointed out I should check the impeller belt as well, even though it should have the correct V. That night I checked and both were loose. I tightened each and all is good.

I’m still here

Port Townsend, WA 16-NOV-2023 – I’ve lost my sense of time: the unique feeling of how many days passed, or when something happened in the past, has left me. I attribute it to the stroke, but who knows? Like Billy Pilgrim, I’m adrift in time.

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.

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.

Summer 2022 prep starts NOW.

30-MAR-2022, Phoenix Arizona, USA – The preparation and crush to prepare for this summer sailing starts. It is no different than last year. The amount of work I expect that will need to be done before Caro Babbo can go in the water is much less than last year. But the number of non-boating tasks and leisure things that we are trying to get done before I fly to Alaska is an order of magnitude larger.