Caribbean
May 2008 Panama
wednesday may 21, 2008 (colon, panama)
Never in our brief and limited exposure to this world have we found a city so aptly named. Thus begins our 21st day of canal induced captivity in the Panamanian city of Colon.
It’s hot. A sticky, pungent, and clammy hot. Only once in the past weeks have we witnessed the temperature fall below 30 degrees. It’s rainy season now, and much like the city, the season has also been named accurately. It rains daily, as much as 6 inches at a time. The rain does nothing to lower the temperature, and raises the already suffocating humidity level. Of course you are forced to close all the windows and hatches on the boat when it rains so that’s when you can catch us at our most miserable; locked up inside our steam bath of a boat watching the walls mold while we squabble over anything and everything.
Here’s a few choice paragraphs about the place we pulled from a local newspaper article:
“COLON, Panama: In the slum city of Colon in central Panama, children run barefoot through decaying tenement blocks as sewage wells up through the streets. Colon, at the mouth of the Panama Canal on the Caribbean coast about 50 miles northwest of Panama City, has a split personality – one poor and abandoned, the other a prosperous player in the world economy. Colon’s plight is unique in Panama. Its free trade zone has attracted more foreign investment than any other place in Panama in recent years, but no other city has such extreme urban poverty.
Everyone acknowledges regenerating Colon is a huge undertaking. Colon’s local council estimates at least $50 million is needed to put up thousands of new homes, lay a completely fresh sewage system and build new roads. The government’s first step has been to declare Colon a social disaster area.
In the city’s center, people live in urban poverty as extreme as any in Latin America. Excrement fills some streets because few houses have sanitation systems, while the majority of buildings, many inhabited, are on the point of collapse. Unemployment stands at 40 percent, and weekly murders in the city of 200,000 people make Colon Panama’s most dangerous place.
Despite the new project and government pledges to improve the plight of the poor, Colon’s residents remain pessimistic. “I don’t think there’s any genuine hope for us, not in this world at least,” said Jose Luis Rosario, a local street tailor mending a shirt under an umbrella in the rain. —Reuters”
Nice huh? To be fair, there’s a certain charm to the place. We are anchored in the throat (or the colon, depending on how you look at it) of the world’s most famous waterway. Our neighbors are a smattering of international sailboats and mega sized freighters from all over the world. The bar sells 4 different brands of Panamanian beer for a dollar a bottle. If you belly up for a few you may have a Columbian prostitute to your left waiting to see if you are paying with singles or twenties. To your right, 7 feet of muscle from Greenland involved in human trafficking. Far from being just products of my imagination these are a couple of the real life characters we’ve met that form the fabric of this seedy port town. Not the stuff of glossy tourist brochures, but welcome and interesting real world grit. The kind of place we expected to find on a trip like this. It’s about as far away as you can get from the pet parade and beach church cruising lifestyle of the Bahamas.
When we aren’t collecting new friends from the criminal underworld or sweating out dollar beers faster than we can drink them, we are trying to find a new dinghy. Dinghies have few vital requirements but even the most difficult people would agree that keeping water out and air in are two of them. As previously described, ours has failed miserably on both counts. Miraculously the glue Jeff and I applied when we first arrived has been holding. Periodically Jaime and I reinforce the weld with a few more tubes of the industrial strength adhesive de jour; a ritual that has been getting us to and from shore safely. You would think a new dinghy would be easy to find here in Panama. After all, this is a key trading hub in the western Atlantic, a bottle neck for boats the world over. Not to mention the $10 billion-a-year free zone, a tax-free import and re-export center run by immigrant entrepreneurs. Shouldn’t there be boating supplies, equipment and accessories of every make model and description to be found? Not the case. There seems to be only one or two places in the country that you can find a new dinghy, and they have either ‘just sold their last one’ or if you are lucky enough to find one, they want several thousand dollars for it. There is something completely wrong with paying $3995 for an 8 foot long inflatable dink though. We won’t do it on principle alone. I would rather buy 500 tubes of glue, fill a bathtub with it and just dip our leaking, nearly bottomless dinghy right in… hmm, not a bad idea.
So our transit date for the canal is May 28th. It’s changed three times already though, so stay tuned. Getting that arranged was a cinch. Step one; hire a guy named Tito who does this for a living. We heard all kinds of opinions before we arrived about whether you should hire someone to help you or just do it all yourself. We hired a guy and I have to say it was the best 35 bucks ever spent. Tito has a gang working for him (which is almost literal; allegedly he takes these kids off the streets and gives them an alternative way to make a living). So Tito stays here at the marina and phones ahead to the various offices and agencies and tells them to expect us. Meanwhile I have a driver and a Spanish speaking rep whisk me all over town to get the necessary copies, clearances and stamps. We had business at immigration, the canal authority, and the boarding office. We collected a cruising permit, made copies of our passports for visa extensions which we then arranged at the visa office. I lost track of the number of forms and papers we went through, but with some help from Tito’s gang all I had to do was sign the bottoms of most of them so it wasn’t a big deal. And even better than that; because Tito was calling ahead and coordinating things with the driver we didn’t have to sweat it out in a single queue. That fact alone was worth the 35 bucks. We did all of this, had the necessary lines and fenders rented and were back at the marina within a couple of hours. So if you ask me about hiring someone to help, unless it’s the last 35 dollars to your name, do it.
The next day we had a guy named Carlos from the canal visit the boat to measure it up. He didn’t take his shoes off like the Cubans, but he was a friendly guy so we let it slide. His job was to check out the boat and make sure that it was canal worthy. He wanted to see that we had enough gas, took the measurements that our fee will be based on and stuff like that. When he was finished we received an official canal number, good for the life of the boat so if the slapdash ever goes through again they will have a record and she won’t need to be measured. We were slotted into the ‘less than 50 feet’ category so our transit toll is $500. There’s another $109 on top of that for the measurements and stuff and a refundable $891 security deposit. We also spent $135 on line and fender rentals, immigration, and Tito’s fee. So when we get the deposit back we are now into this canal transit thing for 744 smakaroos.
If you are reading this to prepare for your own canal transit, here are a few tips:
- Make sure to say your boat speed is at least 8 knots. They asked us 3 or 4 different times and if you slip up they will levy an additional $400 fee.
- You are required to have four 125 foot lines a minimum of 7/8ths diameter on board for the transit. No problem, you can rent these all over the place for 15 dollars a piece.
- To protect your boat you can supplement your fenders by renting tires wrapped up in plastic for 3 dollars each. Everyone uses them. We rented 10 which seems to be the average. They charge you a buck a piece to get rid of them once you are through, but you could also just give them to another boat waiting to transit the other direction if you wanted to save the 10 bucks and increase your boat karma.
- Put the security deposit on a credit card. If you pay cash it will take 4-6 weeks for them to process your refund and mail a cheque to your home address. With a credit card they just keep an imprint, same as renting a car. Oh, and MC is no good for this, the bank that keeps the deposit on behalf of the ACP will only accept a Visa or cash.
We have volunteered to line handle on a 46 foot catamaran. Every boat requires a professional pilot from the ACP (the canal company). You need to provide him with dinner, a bathroom and drinks, but his salary is paid for by the ACP. In addition, every boat must have 4 line handlers for the transit. They can be anyone but are not paid for by the ACP. The going rate to hire line handlers right now is $75 bucks a head (plus meals) so every time a small boat goes through they are looking for volunteers. Sometimes backpackers sign on to experience the canal from the inside or sometimes other boaters will volunteer as long as you will do the same for them in return. For us it will be a good opportunity to scope the whole thing out to get a little more familiar with the process before we take our own boat through. It will be my first time through and Jaime’s second. She already made the trip last week with another boat. We’ve read a bunch of canal related books (the best by far being David McCullough’s “The Path Between the Seas”) so while I’m pretty pumped to finally see it all in person, she gets to play the role of the cool veteran that’s already been there and done that.
We leave here on the boat tonight at about 8PM and go through first set of locks. We will anchor in Gatun Lake (the 85 foot canal summit) and stay overnight there. Tomorrow morning we descend 3 locks to the Pacific side and end up in Panama City sometime in the evening. We’ll probably take the opportunity to check out the Pacific side of the country while we are there. Maybe spend a day or two in Panama City and possibly sneak up the coast to a little surf village we want to check out called Santa Catalina. We still have a week to kill so why not try to make the most of it.
New business; we’ve had some requests to publish the poem referred to in Jeff’s April 29th log. For the duration of that passage each person wrote 2 lines every time they were on watch. Then you fold the paper over so that the next person can only see one line of the poem. The point is that you really have no idea what you are writing about until the end of the passage when you read the thing in it’s entirety for the first time. Just another stupid way to amuse ourselves during a long passage. Against our better judgment, here it is:
We the three that be at sea somewhere between here and there,
With the wind at our back the sun on our face and the salt of the sea in our hair.
The larders well stocked, a chest full of Rum, and bellies full of patty,
We hit the high seas with nary a care in our trusty slapdash catty.
A moon dodge at midnight got all the boys out of bed,
But as soon as the lunar crisis was averted, back to their bunks they fled.
Now under a merciless sun on our second day out,
Jeff looked to the sky and spotted a water spout.
“Those are real bad” so said captain Seth,
The significance lost on landlubber Jeff.
More importantly though was the lack of fresh fish,
Especially as it was the crews’ favorite dish.
A plunge in the deep had refreshed them all,
Their foray into the abyss proved worth the stall.
During the midnight watch with help of imaginary friends,
who assured captain Jaime they’d not meet watery ends.
With a mere three knots of wind on the nosey,
The sluggish pace was more of a mosey.
Now hundreds of miles from the nearest dry land,
Destiny and fate would play the next hand.
To the mighty Neptune we did solemnly vow,
To eat all of our veggies and try not to row,
And help little old ladies to cross the street safely,
But not the old whores who refuse to act chastely.
For if they drop their drawers on a regular basis,
Then there’s no way of telling just how far they will take this.
So call Superman Gumby and the Lone Ranger,
Mr. T, Bullwinkle, any old stranger
Contact Chris Parker and request 15 knots
More sail and less motor was in all our thoughts.
For adrift in the sea was not out intention,
So hear me now, look man, pay attention.
Without prejudice or pride I say unto thee:
It’s been 4 days without bathing and someone smells like pee.
It could be the towels that are starting to mold,
Perhaps just the leftovers that are getting too old.
Say what you will about that funky smell,
From whom it emanated ‘twas still hard to tell.
It was nothing a bucket bath with Joy wouldn’t cure,
We may all be stinky but our hearts are pure.
Boys plus no fish plus accidental jibe equals anarchy.
Which is an outcome greater than the sum of its parts, so you see?
Which reminds me of a story, one told long ago
About a big (sometimes) friendly giant and his boat ho.
Dodging water spouts right left and center,
‘Twas as if they’d intentionally been sent there,
To put on a show for the crew
After which I went for’ard for a poo.
A drink to the devil and damn all the rest,
How very pirate like, now that we’ve got that off our chest,
How about “shiver me timbers” and “Yo-ho-ho” then,
From a time when women were fearful and men were men,
When a twinkle in a lassies eye meant trouble a brewin’,
The twinkle was seasickness, it was over the side that she was spewin’,
And thus a kagillion miles from home,
began page two of the seemingly endless poem.
It’s now a mere 77 miles from land,
Upon our arrival we’ll expect a symphony band.
To celebrate a winsome crossing,
Filled with attack flying fish, lightning and waves a tossing.
We’ll break out the rum and all other libations,
If we manage to avoid complete ruination.
We are getting close now only 5 hours to go,
Signing off, Captain Seth, Working Ballast Jeff and the Boat Ho.
thursday may 22, 2008 (colon, panama)
Yep, still in Colon. A bit of sad news; only a couple of hours before we were scheduled to leave we learned that the captain of the boat we were going to be doing the line handling for had been mugged and stabbed three times with a twelve inch kitchen knife. He was with another guy and they were only a couple of blocks from the marina. A few minutes before it happened we were sitting around with them having a couple of beers talking about the trip. He’s now in the hospital here and is in rough shape but expected to recover completely. Most people have been waiting around here for weeks so you kind of get to know who’s who. Most of us have walked the same road so it really could have happened to anybody here which is probably part of the reason why people are pitching in to help out however they can. He´s a tough guy though, and if anybody can bounce back fom this it will be him.
Meanwhile Jaime has completely lost her mind. She has taken to eating lemon pie filling straight from the can and mutters incoherently while pacing back and forth across the boat. Not that I can blame her, the combination of heat and mind numbing repetition has us both feeling pretty cagey. You have to be careful about where you go and when so we end up spending way more time than we would like to at the marina. We haven’t been able to leave Colon because our transit date has been bouncing around. We wanted to be near the boat in case the opportunity to pass through early came up. So far we’ve only had false alarms that get our hopes up for nothing. Today our date has been moved again and we are now slotted for May 27th. With our luck that will probably end up being exactly one day before the parts we ordered to fix the head arrive. We couldn’t find the parts we needed here so we had to order them from Miami. Funny thing is the air freight to Panama is actually half the price of what it would have been to have the part shipped to us in the Bahamas so as long as they make it in time it will work out pretty good. Just the thought of not having to wipe up pee out of the bilge anymore is now an almost inconceivable luxury that makes us giddy with excitement.
More big news, I’ve got a line on a dinghy. It’s only marginally less crappy then our Zodiac but at 200 bucks the price is right. I’ve already had a quick look and it’s actually a good brand name (Caribe) and is small and light enough to fit under our davits. If the holes are small enough to keep us from falling through the floor we’ll take it. Tomorrow I’m going to meet the guy to have a better look. We’ll inflate it and make sure the pieces are all there and if all goes well we’ll be the proud owners of two ragged shitty old dinghies. Maybe between the two of them and a few more tubes of adhesive we can make one that’s half way acceptable. We can call it a Carib-diac.
Glory be. A toilette that keeps the pee in and a dinghy that keeps the water out. We are moving up in the world but promise to try not to let it go to our heads.
tuesday may 27, 2008 (colon, panama)
Ah, such friutless optimism. Well there’s no toilette parts waiting here for us to pick up and mysteriously, the dinghy we had our eye on is no longer for sale. We will have to put our Carib-diac plans on hold for a little longer and I will have to make another trip to the hardware store today for more glue.
The big news today is that today IS the day. We are 8 hours, 47 minutes and 27 seconds (but who’s counting?) from blowing this popsicle stand. We have our fenders, our lines, and two out of the three requisite line handlers. Jaime has been busy organizing the boat for our guests, a big job which consists of rearranging the cabins, making sure we have enough bedding, stocking up on beer and junk food and a million other things. I’ll hit the marina in a few minutes to start looking for a third amigo to round off the crew.
It should go down like this; at noon today we call the signal station to confirm the arrival time for our pilot. At said time, probably between 5 and 8PM, a large diesel belching ACP pilot boat will come alongside the slapdash and drop him off. By that time we should have everything ready and waiting (fenders, lines, line handlers etc). Our pilot will coordinate things with the locks and the other boats that will be transiting with us. When everything is ready we up anchor and get underway. Within an hour we should entering our first lock. From there we run the same itinerary that I outlined in the May 21st update, meaning we overnight on Gatun Lake and transit the remaining locks early tomorrow morning.
Our level of involvement and activity for the transit will depend on how we are positioned with the other boats. We will be rafted up beside two other yachts so will either be sandwiched between two or outside on the right or left. If you are on the outside your line handlers will actually have some work to do. On one side you are managing the lines that reach up to the top of the locks. On the other side you are managing the lines that attach you to the other boats. If you happen to be the lucky boat in the middle you might need to contribute with a little forward or reverse action from the helm, but otherwise pretty much just sit around drink beer and make fun of the other people for having to work so hard.
There’s no way to say for sure exactly when we will be passing through but there’s a website with live feeds from cameras mounted in the locks. Here’s the link if you want to check it out.
http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html?cam=Expansion
I’ll try to convince everyone to moon the cameras or something so that you will know that it’s us. Actually if you do happen to hit it at the right time we should be easy to spot. We’re the only 3 sailboats transiting from the Atlantic to Pacific side tonight and tomorrow morning. So if you see a group of 3 sailboats all snuggled up side by side, one of them will be the slapdash, probably the smallest of the three. Panama time is the same as American & Canadian EST (which is 5 hours behind GMT) and they do not observe daylight savings time. We will pass through the Gatun locks late tonight, and the Pedro Miguez and Miraflores locks sometime tomorrow between 11AM and 2PM local time (best guess).
In other canal news the newest member of the BC Ferries fleet, the Coastal Renaissance, is finishing its trip across the Atlantic after being built in Germany. It isn’t too far behind us and should be pulling into Colon sometime in the next day or two for fuel. Who knows, maybe we will be passing through the canal together. I’m sure that the ACP won’t make them wait 28 days for a transit date. You can check out their progress here.
http://www.bcferries.com/about/super_c_tracker.html
It’s all done up with a 2010 Winter Olympics color scheme. None of this will mean much to you if you aren’t from, or at least familiar with our home province of British Columbia, but since that’s our hood so we think it would be cool to see the thing before everyone back home. One more ferry related point of interest, if you remember the German couple that we traveled around with for a few days back in Cuba (Tim and Stefy), they were naval engineers and worked for the company that built it. They told us about the construction, the funny politics of a German company building a Canadian boat (things like having to redesign all the propellar markings on the side because the Canadians thought that they looked too much like swastikas) and the upcoming Atlantic crossing. They even predicted that we might be here at the same time.
So in 36 hours we should have passed under the bridge of Americas and be resting soundly in Pacific waters. Strangely, we will also be even further east than we are right now. It’s true, grab your atlases kids. Most people think you just go from east to west through the canal but thanks to that funny little jog between the Americas we will actually be traveling southeast tonight.
We’re not sure if we’re more excited to pass through the Panama Canal, a big trip highlight we’ve been waiting for, or just to be leaving Colon without any bullet holes or stab wounds. In any case it’s time for us to dress the slapdash up with our best black rubber bling for her big date tonight, and go shanghai us another line handler.
It was a dark and stormy night…
If you happened to be at the Panama Canal Yacht Club (the ‘PCYC’ to us canal refugees) at 5PM on Wednesday May 27th there’s a good chance that you may be a prostitute. There’s also a good chance that you would have seen a rather nervous looking Canadian guy dividing his time between looking at the clock in the bar and frequent trips to the payphone. Our canal pilot had confirmed his arrival for 5:30PM and instead of being on the boat where I should have been at this late hour I was at the yacht club helplessly trying to will our line handlers into walking around the corner.
A couple of hours ago things were looking pretty good. Everything was in place and Jaime and I were on our way back to the boat. The plan was to drop Jaime off so that she could get everything ready on board for our guests and I would zip back and pick up our crew. Then it started raining. I know, every time someone comes back from the tropics they tell you about how hard it rained at some point. We’ve all heard the same story. Not to sound too cliché, but this really was different. The sky turned black and the heavens commenced to deposit a solid sheet of water down on us that sounded like a cross between a forest fire and a million galloping horses. This side of Panama sees 2 and a half meters of rain per year, a significant amount by any standard, and tonight we must have seen 20 centimeters of that annual average. We were hopelessly trapped on the boat. Not because I was afraid of getting a little wet. No, this was a whole different thing. This rain actually hurt, it felt more like hail. Try opening your eyes the next time you have a shower. You know that layer of water that builds up over your eyes and forces you to keep them shut or blink repeatedly? Same thing. Looking out of the boat was like looking out the window of your car while you are going through a drive-through car wash (less suds though). After an hour or so it eased off and became a mere torrential down pour so I seized the opportunity and started bailing out the 6-8 inches of water that had collected in the dinghy, which for a change could not be blamed on the leaky hull.
I soon found Danny who would be coming along with us for the transit. He said that he knew another person that could round off the crew for us and left to go pick him up. Too easy. That was at about a quarter past four. Should have never let him leave because now we were short two crew. I asked Jan, a nice lady at the dock who is in the process of single handing her way through a circumnavigation, if I could use her VHF to update Jaime back on the boat. She obliged and overheard our conversation and said not to worry, that if we were short that she would not stand by and see us miss the time slot that we had waited a month for. I was blown away by the offer. Who volunteers for a two day trip in this miserable weather with 20 minutes notice? I thanked her but said that I was sure that Danny would be along any minute with our last crew member. I was probably trying to convince myself more than anything though.
Assuming it would take 15 minutes to get back to the boat I had another 10 minutes to spare. So I sweated it out, what choice did I have really, but still no Danny. Now we were 2 line handlers short 15 minutes before the non refundable time slot that we had waited 28 days for in this hell hole. I had no choice but to go back to Jan and ask if I could take her up on the offer. She didn’t hesitate and told me that she would have her things together by the time I could get over to her boat with my dinghy. A plan was forming; if we could close up the front cabin and convince the ACP pilot that the 4th line handler was present but sick in bed with some rare and highly contagious tropical malady then maybe just maybe… and while I was scheming and untying the dinghy who but Danny himself hopped out of a cab with his back pack and started running towards me. He was alone so we picked up Jan and headed for Salsa. Salsa’s Captain is another single hander. His name is Kirk and he had volunteered a few days in advance. Kirk wasn’t one to be deterred by a little spattering of rain so a few minutes later Jaime watched a full crew in a leaky dink pull up to the slapdash.
The pilot was right on time and it wasn’t long before we were pulling up the anchor and heading for our first set of locks. We had a great group; Danny the local tattoo artist, Jan the adventurer who regaled us with tales of her engineless arrival in Alaska, and Kirk the hard working smart ass who drank all my beer and stole my sunglasses. If he wasn’t trying to spoon me he was hitting on Jaime. Our kind of people.
Pretty soon we were rafted up beside Blue Jay and Orbit. These were two 45 foot plus mono hulls that had the combined effect of making the slapdash look tiny. We met the Blue Jay crew way back in Cuba. We actually had a slip beside them in the Bahia de Vita so it was pretty cool to be tied up along side them now, a thousand miles or so later, about to go through the Panama Canal.
It was a bit nerve wracking at first. We followed a freighter in, and watching those massive steel doors shut behind you is a tad intimidating. To top it all off you are handcuffed to two other boats so are at the mercy of others and not at all in control of your own fate. It didn’t take long to get used to the whole program though and the trip is actually a piece of cake. You have to be alert, but there really isn’t all that much work to do so there’s plenty of time to sit back and enjoy the ride.
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Back in the 1880’s the French took the first kick at the canal. They eventually failed though and the massive project was finally completed over 30 years later by the US in 1914. It’s reported that by the time the canal was completed over 27 thousand workers were dead, but in actual fact they really have no idea what the real number is since the deaths of most Black, Chinese and West Indian labor weren’t even recorded. At one point the death toll was so high that disposing of the bodies became a primary issue. They even began pickling the bodies in barrels and transporting them to medical research facilities and universities.
Panamax is the name given to the largest ships that can use the canal today. We passed one during our transit; it’s the photo of the tug pushing a ship with containers stacked seven high. These massive ships are designed and built to fit the locks with a few feet to spare. To give you a sense of scale, our boat would nearly fit into one of those containers. So if each one was a slapdash you could fit 76 of us that back row alone.
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There are 6 locks and each one is 1000 feet long and 110 feet wide. The lock gates are made from steel 6 feet thick and are over 60 feet high. When they swing shut it looks like something out of Jurassic park. 52 million gallons of fresh water from the lake are drained into the sea by the locks every time a ship transits the canals so they really count on that 2.5 meters of rainfall every year. Incredibly the locks can be filled or drained of that 52 million gallons in just 8 minutes. The lock system raises you up a total of 85 feet and then back down again to the Pacific.
The entire system is powered by nothing more than the flow of fresh water. It was also interesting to learn that only 25% of the hydroelectric power produced by the canal system is required to run it, they actually sell off the surplus power.
Last year a Norwegian liner shelled out 313,000 big ones for one passage, currently the most expensive toll on the books. The least expensive toll was 36 cents paid by some guy who swam through back in the twenties. Don’t get any ideas though, they don’t let you do that anymore. Around 14 thousand ships (or 40 a day) pass through and the average toll is around 50 thousand which kind of makes our measly $744 bucks look like mice nuts.
Despite the crap weather the passage more than lived up to our expectations. We were pretty stoked about the whole thing and had a bit of a canal party when we arrived in Gatun lake that night. We were moored up to this massive buoy. It must be for container ships or something because all 5 of us were able to stand on it for that photo. We had a great crew and owe Jan, Kirk and Danny big thanks. Jan and Kirk are both experienced sailors and between them had 6 or 8 canal crossings already under their belts so we were well taken care of. By the next afternoon we had passed underneath the bridge of the Americas and are now anchored in Flamenco Bay.
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April 2008 Cuba to Jamaica
tuesday april 1, 2008 (bahia de vita, cuba)
Well our express bus left an hour late, stopped every hour which gave them a good reason to turn on all the lights and wake everyone up, and nearly froze us all to death with the air conditioning. Jaime was wearing every shirt that she had packed and was actually pulling the seat covers off and trying to use them as blankets. We arrived in Holguin and negotiated a ride from a local guy back to the marina and were happy to find that the slapdash was still floating and in piece. We were just as excited to get back on the boat as we were to be leaving it 11 days ago. Funny how that works.
Most of the day was spent recovering from our big travel day and we didn’t do much of anything outside of napping, eating and reading.
wednesday april 2, 2008 (bahia de vita, cuba)
Now we are settled back in and trying to come to terms with our next trip. It’s our biggest yet and we’re both feeling a little anxious about it. From here we will head east. Once we round Cape Maisi we hang a right and point the slapdash towards Panama. We will pass Hispaniola on our left and Jamaica on our right. It’s over 800 nautical miles from here to Panama, a distance which will take us 8 or 9 days to cover. The plan for today is to get the website updated, try to find some propane and diesel, and do the laundry. In other words, get the boat ready. Then when the weather is right, we go for it. That could be in 2 days or 2 weeks; rounding Cape Maisi is allegedly a bit nasty (that’s where they just had that anti-cyclone thing) so once again the right weather window is all important.
We may be saying this a lot as time goes on, but Cuba has been our favorite country by far. It’s a really special place and we feel fortunate to have seen it before things change too radically. We have had a lot of mixed feelings though. On one hand it’s so refreshing to visit a country that has, in one way or another, remained almost immune to the effects of globalization. There are no chains, no franchises, and no box stores. On the other hand people here really haven’t had a say in that and it all comes at a price. The horse and carriage and the old cars that add so much color and character are actually economic necessities. It’s not like the Cuban people prefer to travel and farm like they did back in the middle ages, it’s because there is no choice. Life is tough for a lot of Cubans, but then you can’t help but envy the almost unbelievable sense of community they have. People aren’t locked away in their condos playing with expensive gadgets. They are out making music, visiting, hanging out, playing, painting… just doing stuff. They know their neighbors by name. It’s the kind of place where people still walk up to a building and call up to their friend who’s up on the third floor. It’s a proud, clean, and safe country. Even late at night in the poorest neighborhoods we felt completely safe. The lack of access to basic materials has led to some of the most creative and ingenious designs that we have ever seen. From the simplicity of a restaurant fashioning their cups from the bottoms of old wine bottles, to somehow keeping a 50 year old car on the road without parts, Cubans just make things work. They have access to great education and take full advantage. The adult literacy rate is 97% and we’ve never met so many professionals before. Everyone seems to have a degree or three. The problem is that using all that education doesn’t feed families. The bartender at the marina here has a Masters, is studying his 4th language and is an accredited Chef. The guy handling lines is a Teacher, and the guy doing dishes at the last casa we stayed at was an Engineer and Cartographer. Stories like that are everywhere in Cuba so it’s hard to say what is good or bad for a country. Sure there’s no garbage on the streets, that’s because littering is an unaffordable luxury. Everything is used, and reused, and then turned into a train. So many of these things form the fabric of Cuba now that it will be interesting to see how they mesh when the floodgates open. We’ve already seen a little kid toss a fine hand crafted wooden toy aside for a stupid 3 dollar Spiderman watch. It would be sad to see Cuba toss aside so many of the good things that have been borne from their hardships in favor of the glitz and tacky glam which will inevitably arrive. But how do you tell that to someone who’s making 25 dollars a month?
If you’ve ever thought of visiting Cuba, do it now. It may be a very different place in a few years.
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thursday april 10, 2008 (carribean sea)
Like a Canadian winter we are now below 20. To be precise, we are 1.45 degrees below 20, not in temperature though, location. Our position as I write this is 18.55 degrees north and 75.32 degrees west. That puts us approximately 68 nautical miles northeast of our destination de jour; Port Antonio, Jamaica. It is 11:38PM, Jaime is asleep. I’m looking forward to doing the same in 2 hours and 22 minutes, which is the amount of time I have left on my watch.
We left Bahia De Vita on Tuesday at 5:20PM, and by Wednesday night we had finished with our easting and were about to round Cape Maisi and head through the Windward Passage. With the exception of the first 12 hours, it has been a relatively smooth passage and we’ve had the added bonus of following wind and seas since we rounded the cape. Our only complaint is that it’s been a little too smooth, which means that the motor has been running a little more than we would have liked. Still, our progress has been respectable (105 miles on day one, and 115 on day two) and during that time we have managed to get some great sailing in.
A few days ago we met a couple of Torontonians occupying a catamaran called Padma. They sold everything and bought a boat in Florida last summer. Sound familiar? The parallels didn’t stop there; they’ve pretty much traveled the same route that we did making most of the same stops. Even so, we somehow managed to get all the way to Cuba without meeting them. When we finally did (meet them) it didn’t take them long to convince us that a stop in Jamaica would be a good thing. There’s a link to their site here. They were headed that way too, and since Jaime had been dropping hints about stopping in for a Roti for the past few days there was nothing to do but sign on for the trip to Port Antonio.
On a secret side note, Jaime will be turning the big three-oh on Monday and instead of marking the grand occasion at sea, her Mom and a couple of friends may be covertly meeting us in Jamaica. Not sure if it will work out, pretty short notice and all, but I’ll have to wait until we arrive to find out. I only had time to email our port of call and ETA and then had to leave before anyone could confirm.
Stars so bright that you can almost read by them combined with a phosphorescent light show have made the last couple of nights at sea spectacular. We divided the days up into six 4 hour shifts. Since I like to stay up late and Jaime likes to go to bed early the 10-2AM is mine. I’ll wake her up at 2 then take my 4 hours of sleep before the next changing of the guards at 6AM. It seems to be a pretty good routine and neither of us is feeling especially sleep deprived, yet. That said, last night we didn’t get much sleep because there were tankers everywhere (presumably making the Panama to US passage) resulting in a lot of course changes and sail adjustments so I stayed up with Jaime and took cat naps on the couch.
Yesterday we saw a huge pod of whales. We don’t know what kind they were, but counted at least 20 of them. They stretched out for approximately a kilometer and were slowly ambling along in the same direction as us. We’ve heard all kinds of crazy killer attack whale stories from boat people, but fortunately this big posse wasn’t the least bit interested in us. We also passed through a couple big schools of fish that made the surface boil, and are occasionally assaulted by rouge kamikaze flying fish. Flying fish are really cool, we see them all the time but have yet to figure out why every once in a while one separates his good fishy self from the rest of the crew and somewhat shortsightedly decides to slam itself into the side of our boat.
Off to do my rounds now. Sometime tomorrow afternoon we should be cleared into Jamaica with another one of Jaime’s hand crafted courtesy flags flying neatly from the starboard spreader.
friday april 11, 2008 (port antonio, jamaica)
After going through the usual sequence of questions and self doubts that follow us to every new country visited (Where do we go? Who do we call? How do we clear in?) we found ourselves tying up alongside a dock in Port Antonio. Port Antonio is on the north east side of Jamaica, and it was 2PM.
Arriving in this fashion is a little disorienting and always exciting. We called several times on the way in, and as per usual had no response. Our strategy in these scenarios has been to approach the dock with the quarantine flag up and just find a suitable place to tie up to unless we are told otherwise. So far the strategy has worked for us, and it wasn’t long before we were being welcomed to Jamaica over the VHF. A voice thick with the accent we had been waiting for also told us to sit tight, and that the doctor would be along shortly to inspect us and the “ship”.
Our journey ended without incident or mishap with the exception of a couple of more interesting animal encounters. We were welcomed to the Jamaican territorial waters by a bunch of Dolphins, a new breed for us. They were bigger than the ones we were used to, and had tiny little dorsal fins. We haven’t seen any for a while so they were a welcomed sight, always a good omen. But the whales, dolphins, sharks, turtles, lion fish, alligators or any other encounter we have had took a back seat to the most unlikely guest that visited us today.
It was shortly after 6AM and I had just taken over from Jaime after my 4 hours of sleep. With pillow wrinkles on my cheek and eyes still adjusting to the light a little swallow settled to rest on the back of our boat. Of course there have been birds on our boat before. Usually we do everything we can to keep them and their nasty habit of shitting on our sail covers away. What made this one special is that we were still far from land. This in itself this made the encounter out of the ordinary, but even more strange was that he seemed to be totally at ease with me sitting only a couple of feet away. I said hello and welcomed him (or her?) aboard. Fully expecting the bird to fly away at my first move, I was surprised to find the little guy still sitting there watching my every move when I returned from the cabin with my camera. Snap, snap. A few pictures later you would think that he would be gone any second, but he wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere. I put the camera away and settled into the helm seat, happy for the feathered company during my watch since Jaime was fast asleep by this point. Then he really made himself at home. When I turned around to check on our new mate, he gave me a look, flew over, and landed right on top of my head!
Totally absurd. Here I was sitting on a boat out in the Caribbean Sea with a little swallow sitting on my head. Sleep is a precious commodity so I didn’t wake Jaime up, still I knew the story wouldn’t hold water without some proof so I got up (slowly at first) and started moving towards the cabin. He was cool with that, so I walked down to the cupboard and retrieved the camera. Then I sat back down and snapped a self portrait. Throughout this whole procedure the swallow didn’t even flinch. After a while he left just as suddenly as he appeared. Funny that a common little bird could be such a trip highlight, but don’t judge until you have been at sea for three days and while still out of sight of any land have one come along and plop down right on your head.
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Early in the afternoon and without a trace of wind we were sweating buckets in the sweltering heat when we first sighted the lush green Jamaican shoreline. I’m not sure if was just the sensory deprivation of being out of sight of land for a few days or what, but the green mountainous view that raised up out of the water in front of us was absolutely incredible. Neither of us said much, we just sat there and stared. I’m convinced that there’s no better way to arrive into a new country.
The check in process was a snap compared to Cuba, only 3 officials and 8 forms to complete. Jaime set to work at completing the required paperwork and I busied myself with securing the boat and sandwich making. A couple of hours later we were off the boat and getting reacquainted with our legs again. The best was yet to come.
We moved off the dock and picked up a mooring ball out in the bay. That way we get to use all the amenities of the marina at a fraction of the price. The amenity that was of particular interest to me was the wifi signal. While Jaime was using another highly regarded amenity, the shower, I plugged in to see if we should be expecting any surprise visitors. Success! Jaime’s mom (Laurell) had replied to the message I sent from Cuba and said that she would be arriving in Kingston this morning. She would look for a connection and would probably be here right about… now! I looked over my shoulder half expecting to see her walk around the corner. She didn’t, Jaime did. So I closed up the laptop before she could see what I was looking at and we went back to say hello to Chris and Anita on Padma (the Torontonians we met in Cuba). I whispered to Chris that we needed to be on the lookout for Laurell. A red headed Canadian woman traveling alone in Jamaica shouldn’t be hard to spot, and in fact while Jaime was trying on a pair of Anita’s shoes (we forgot ours on the boat) I looked across the water and saw a red headed Canadian woman traveling alone standing on the road looking into the marina. I chanced a wave, and got one back. Just like that we had found Laurell. I signaled her over to the entrance, muttered something to Jaime about needing to use the bathroom and ran off to meet her. Jaime walked off of Padma after having found a pair of shoes to borrow for the evening, and looked down the dock in our direction. I’ll never forget the sequence of facial expressions which followed. The squint, the frown, the deep thought look, hand goes to face covering mouth, followed quickly by a not so muffled scream while hopping up and down on the spot. Pretty cool.
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Laurell had arrived in Port Antonio a few hours earlier. She had endured a day and a half of travel which included a cancelled flight and an unplanned overnight in Atlanta so fit right in to our sleep deprived frame of mind. After dinner nearby we were all valiantly but unsuccessfully fighting off unconsciousness. It was a big day and an early night. We slept like stones despite the nearby reggae bar doing its amplified best to keep us up.
sunday april 13, 2008 (port Antonio, jamaica)
“At the close of the 19th century, Port Antonio burst onto the international stage as the banana capital of the world.”
That was the opening line from a borrowed Jamaican guide book we used to plan out the next couple of days. Finally, we have fulfilled our life dream of visiting the primary purveyor of elongated yellow fruits and can now die happy. From our spot here in little West Bay we also have a great view of the picturesque Navy Island. It was once owned by Errol Flynn, an old school Hollywood star and formerly renowned international playboy. Believe it or not, these two things are in fact both related and relevant to our story.
In these parts old Errol has been credited (most likely for marketing purposes) for turning a traditional Jamaican mode of banana transportation into a pleasure cruise. Bananas grown in the surrounding jungles were loaded onto home made bamboo rafts and then piloted down the river. Once they made it to the harbor they were loaded onto waiting ships for exportation. At some point Flynn wondered why bananas should have all the fun and chartered one of these bamboo rafts for himself. It turned out to be a great way to see the inland river valley and far more importantly to the horny Errol, an excellent backdrop for cavorting with young starlets. Soon rafting the Rio Grande became a popular diversion, and today we found out why.
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We hired the singing Captain Reebo to take us down the river on his bamboo raft. It was a fine day. Meet Reebo and sample his songs on our videos page. There’s a link there which will take you to a you tube video. While you are there you can also check out our short videos of the pigs from Big Major, and the reptiles from Allen’s Cay.
monday april 14, 2008 (port Antonio, jamaica)
Today Jaime turned… er, 28 (ish). Together with Laurel and the Padma crew we marked the occasion by feasting at a little place perched on the side of a hill. So small that it’s nearly impossible to find and the bright pastel colors combine to make Dickies look a lot like a gingerbread house. I think it seats a maximum of 8 people, but tonight the five of us had the whole place to ourselves. The meal was a long and drawn out affair and the portions were anything but small. Four courses and a cake later we rolled ourselves down the hill and back to the marina. If you ever find yourself in Port Antonio and want a nice dinner out then hunt around for Dickies, it was well worth the trouble it took to find.
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wednesday april 16, 2008 (port Antonio, jamaica)
The big story in Jamaica has to be the roads. We thought that our last driving experience was bad but without exaggeration, Jamaica’s roads make Cuba’s look like the autobahn. We rented a car and explored some of the surrounding area. We had a destination in mind but had to change our plans when after a few hours we had barely made a hundred kilometers. Death defying rental car slamming pot holes, narrowly averted head on collisions, open trenches, and cliffs aside our anything but quite ride through the country was great. Sure we nearly met our fiery deaths a half dozen times, but the country really is beautiful. We lunched at a roadside jerk stand and then drank Red Stripes with the locals of a tiny little town that we found up a hill towards the Blue Mountains.
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friday april 18, 2008 (port Antonio, jamaica)
This morning we were up early for our drive to Kingston. Laurell’s flight was at noon and even though it’s only a hundred kilometers away we needed to leave ourselves plenty of time to negotiate these crazy roads. The drive would give us a bit more time with Laurell and a chance to see more of this island that we seem to like more and more every day.
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After sad farewells we set off to find Bob Marley’s house. We did, and it was worth the trip. His old truck is parked in the yard, bullet holes still line the walls of the room where he was nearly assassinated, and there are all kinds of personal effects throughout the house including his famous Gibson Les Paul. There are gold, platinum and diamond records all over the walls, and out in the garden we even found some of his personal crop still growing happily.
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sunday april 20, 2008 (port Antonio, jamaica)
It’s time to start thinking about leaving this place. Tough to do, we have a sweet set-up here and have been enjoying the relative civilization. Perhaps this is a good time to shoot down all the crap printed about Jamaica in the cruising guides. A little background, Jamaica is routinely trashed by a bunch of idiots (most of whom have never been here) for having hard to deal with officials, and sky high crime rates. The officials at the Errol Flynn marina in Port Antonio were friendly and fast. The facilities here are extensive, well maintained and cheap. As far as crime goes, we’ve been here over a week and the most dangerous situation we’ve encountered has been driving the weather beaten roads. Oh, and Jaime came dangerously close to choking on a chicken foot that she found in her soup. I’m not saying that you should sling a camera around your neck, stuff your fanny pack full of cash, and take a midnight back alley stroll through Kingston… then again, if you are one of these clowns that still insist on scaring boaters away from Jamaica with biased and unsubstantiated bullshit then do us all a favor and go for it. Oh, and don’t forget to wear your brightest white socks under your sandals, they match the floral print shirt so nicely.
wednesday april 23, 2008 (port Antonio, jamaica)
Time to go to Panama. We’ve changed the oil, filled the water jugs and made an appointment with customs. We needed a couple of extra forms though because we’ll be leaving with one more person than we arrived with. One particular bumbaclot (bad word we learned in Jamaica) named Jeff arrived with a backpack full of licorice and Tim Horton’s coffee. The marina called us on our VHF to let us know that he was here so we hopped in the dink and picked him up.
I’ve known Jeff (aka: mofo, bastard, bumbaclot) for at least 10 years or so. We’ve worked together, invested (badly) together and a few years ago hiked the West Coast Trail together, so we knew he would be a good third slapdash crew member for our longest passage to date.
We are planning to leave here around noon today and expect light winds and calm seas all the way. It should take 5 days. Our destination is the Boca Del Torro marina in Colon. Once we arrive we will find out the truth about rumors of massive delays for yachts transiting the Panama Canal. We’ve heard that people have been waiting for up to 8 weeks and that it’s getting worse every day so who knows. It could be a big problem for us but we won’t worry about it too much until we have the facts. Not saying we doubt the sources, but if there’s one thing we’ve learned on this trip it’s that most times we are better off to just go and see for ourselves (ie, Jamaica).
Oh, I should probably mention that we visited and swam around in the Blue Lagoon. I thought it was just a nice looking swimming hole but apparently this is where an old movie was filmed or something. That’s the first picture in the sequence below. The second picture is of our first look at Jeff in 10 months, and the guy on the bamboo ‘ship’ is Clive. Clive is the resident Rasta man that comes by every day with banana deliveries. He’s promised to deliver us some mangos and papaya before we leave and we were stupid enough to pay him in advance (don’t ask), so we’ll see if old Clive comes through or not.
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Jeff will be ‘guest writing’ the next installment of slaplogs while en-route to Panama. We thought it would be a good idea to have a fresh and unbiased perspective on things for a change, and since he fancies himself as a bit of a funny guy we’ll give it a go. Stay tuned. We won’t be able to update the site until we arrive in Colon, but once we do I’m sure you will have extensive, if not somewhat twisted and deranged coverage of the passage through Jeff’s eyes.
“a slaplog hijacking” by Jeff J (port antonio, jamaica)
Well, I guess I’ll get started by saying that if Seth says I fancy myself a funny guy, I’m willing to go with that. I would have been happy with any words at all as long as he didn’t end with “he fancies himself.” We are going to sea after all…
My sum total knowledge of sailing involves being able to maneuver a 20 yr old sailboard across a lake, and my knowledge of this trip came entirely from an email saying it will be about 500 miles and take about 5 days (or so) to complete. I randomly doubled this length of time and booked myself a return flight from Panama 10 days after departure. I left Calgary in a blizzard early Saturday April 19, the day after my birthday, with permission to take off on an adventure being a present from my wife. I left seeking adventure and it was soon to begin. An aborted takeoff in Dallas and resulting 2.5hr wait onboard a plane with no aircon lead to a missed connection in Miami and an unplanned overnight there. Seth, Jaime and Slapdash are nowhere in sight and already I’m one day behind my anticipated schedule.
Made it to Kingston about noon on Sunday April 20 and was able to clear customs and immigration, haggle over the $100 cab fare to Port Antonio 115km away, and was on my way all within ½ hr. 3 hrs later I arrived in Port Antonio, the road is in serious disrepair, found the Errol Flynn marina and walked to the end of the dock where I could see Slapdash safely moored a couple hundred feet away. I can now assure you that the condition and size of the dink have not been exaggerated. Jaime and Seth puttered over with smiles on their faces in what appeared to be an already at capacity little inflatable, and Seth had developed a curious habit of bailing constantly as if it were a subconscious behavior. It was great to see these crazy kids again. They have been the source of much fun and frivolity in my life and as it had been 8 months or more since we’d seen each other, we were overdue for more.
The next 2 days were spent enjoying Port Antonio, a friendly little town, eating some tasty local food such as salt fish for breakfast, stewed fish and patties for dinner, and ensuring that the Red Stripe was in season. 11 days after arrival, Seth and Jaime finally cleared immigration to enter the country, pretty sticky on the regulations, these Jamaicans, and we confirmed our use of some local colloquialisms with Ian, the immigration officer, including the previously mentioned term ‘bumbaclot.’ For clarification, bumbaclot is a Jamaican curse term, akin to an obstruction in the bowel, or clot in the bumba. We learned that it is a generalizable term and that if a Jamaican calls you any type of clot at all, it’s just bad. We now take pleasure in calling each other various types of ‘clots’ whenever one of us is perceived to be the weak link in the system. It was also the time to get the boat ready for the crossing and for my training program to learn how at least some of the stuff onboard worked. My training was a progression of steps that went from (1)pass me a paper towel (2)find the wrench (3)suck on this waterline (4)this is the seacock. Let me be clear that items 3 and 4 were completely separate events. Having graduated from training and thus earned the prestigious title of ‘moving ballast’ it was decided that we would make ourselves ready to leave tomorrow.
wednesday april 23, 2008 (port antonio, jamaica)
“I’ll take heading to sea with no preparation at all, for $500, Alex.” A 160’ yacht rumored to belong to Alex Trebek came into Port Antonio and managed to screw us 3 times in succession, all before the start of the double jeopardy round. They blocked us out at the fuel dock, with their uptake of 5000 gallons apparently taking precedence over our planned order of 30 gallons, then proceed to dock in the spot Seth had scouted where we could scam some free drinking water, which also happened to be the only place we could use the marina’s pressure washer to clean up Slapdash before departing. Seth was preparing to affix the captain of ‘Sweet Pea’ (Alex’s boat) with the infamous Lennea Glare, when she turned out to be an attractive young woman and Seth realized his glare was likely to be mistaken as mere ogling. A few more chores, including hoisting Jaime to the top of the mast to change a light bulb, and we’ll be ready to go. The final chore is to plot our course into the GPS, and it is at this moment that I am to learn that our route is in fact 640 miles and with winds expected to be lighter than optimal, chances of making my return flight in Panama are now approximately 50/50. This additional distance also raises the possibility of future fun as we will be heading out with a max fuel load, giving us about 500 miles of cruising ability. Some where out there are the Trade Winds, which have reliably carried sailors along for hundreds of years, and we are relying on them to make up the 150 mile gap between fuel capacity and distance to destination. At 3:00pm we untie from the mooring ball, Seth has the mainsail up before we even get out of the harbour, and we’re comfortably motor sailing at 4-5 knots. We gobble down the last of the Jamaican patties for dinner (third meal of patties in a row) and the serenity and lack of activity produces for me a recurring picture of Bart Simpson at the detention blackboard writing over and over “there is no monotony in sailing.” Flying fish are our frequent companions as we cruise still within sight of land, and we are treated to pleasant a Caribbean sunset. A few hours later it is determined that I may in fact be capable of moving beyond my current station in life as ‘moving ballast’, and that I am ready to take on a regular watch shift beginning tomorrow morning. Our watch routine will be Jaime taking 2:00-6:00 both am and pm, with Seth taking both 10:00-2:00 shifts, and me getting both 6:00-10:00s.
 22-Apr-2008 14:58, PENTAX Corporation PENTAX Optio S5i , 7.0, 14.6mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 80 |
23-Apr-2008 12:48, PENTAX Corporation PENTAX Optio S5i , 4.3, 5.8mm, 0.001 sec, ISO 80 |
23-Apr-2008 12:27, PENTAX Corporation PENTAX Optio S5i , 4.6, 6.8mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80 |
thursday april 24, 2008 (lost at sea)
Awoke today with a touch of the leprosy. Rest easy though, it was later determined to be merely the result of sunburn which I acquired back in the ‘pass me a paper towel’ phase of my training, and that I would not be losing any of my preferred parts.
I also discovered that according to good sailing etiquette, it is apparently perfectly acceptable to sail your friends and their boat a couple miles off course on your first shift at the helm, and your questions about how to prevent this occurrence in the future will be cheerily answered, friendly pats on the back will be exchanged, and all will be well. Thus began my second day at sea, and subsequent reclassification back to ‘moving ballast.’ The seas remain calm and the winds too light to be of much help, so we continue to motorsail. We engage in conversations, catching up on the events of the past year, and sharing short and long term future plans, fluid as they may be. About mid-morning I ask Seth about a curious dark grey line in the clouds off the starboard side. Seth immediately identifies the funny little line as a waterspout, which happens to be the ocean version of a tornado, consequently the most feared weather phenomenon asea, and immediately adds more throttle to ensure we leave it behind. The spout behaves exactly as the book Seth is now referring to says it should, and after about 20 mins, the bottom of the funnel breaks off and it fades away, becoming little more than a point of interest. Occasionally the subject of the gap (between fuel capacity and distance to destination) comes up, but it remains lighthearted conjecture at this point.
22-Apr-2008 14:42, PENTAX Corporation PENTAX Optio S5i , 2.6, 5.8mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 200 |
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21-Apr-2008 16:51, PENTAX Corporation PENTAX Optio S5i , 3.1, 8.2mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 100 |
A mere 20 hrs into our journey, I achieve a major milestone. In a marvel of combined seamanship and ergonomic mastery, immediately following lunch I am able to fall asleep right at the table. Jaime, still feeling queasy, had to manage 8 dangerous feet of undulating hallway to her cabin to accomplish the exact same feat, and Seth, being on watch, had to take 3-4 steps out to the cockpit and could merely nap. Look at me – I’m a sailor now!
Later in the day we engage in what appears to be the most common activity known onboard a small sailing vessel, the range of solar evasion techniques. The sun here is hot and relentless. Afternoon temperatures in the cabin have ranged in the 33-37C area thus far and floor areas exposed to direct sun are too hot to walk on. Outside on deck the views are spectacular and the breeze makes the temperature quite bearable, but Evil Sol will fry you to smithereens in a matter of minutes. So, we engage in an ongoing game of putting up and moving a specially designed group of 6 mini tarp/sunshades and thereby create moving pockets of shade that we huddle into. I am making this perhaps sound worse than it really is, but for the first time in my life I really do consider the sun evil. Late in the afternoon we engage in another solar evasion technique, a first for both me and my more experienced crew mates. We shut down Beaker (the engine) and decide to go for a swim. Now, I have been passed over as being too full of venom or gristle at the tourist buffet table by sharks in most of the world’s oceans, and I am fairly confident that both Jaime and Seth being much younger and more tender would be the clear choice for the discerning shark, but let me tell you that there is something eerily unsettling about standing on the back of the boat readying yourself to take the plunge into 6000-10,000’ of water. I was surprised to find Seth and Jaime both feeling the same way, seeing as they are both very experienced divers. I was about to take the leap of faith when Seth, ever the thinking captain, decided we should throw a rope in first, to grab in case there was a current and we started to drift away from the boat. The rope proceeded to sink almost right away, but at least there was a chance I would get entangled if I was to drown right away, and given the nature of our relationship, that may have been Seth’s intention all along. We all went for a quick dip, one at a time, and none of us dared stay in the water for more than a minute at most.
I forgot to mention that at this point we are a motor cruiser only. The lack of wind lead to a lowering of the sail to prevent it from chattering about and causing unnecessary wear and tear. The ‘gap’ continues to be bantered about, with a bit more detail entering the discussion, such as possibly heading to Providencia, a tiny Columbian Island a mere 150 miles away (I remind you that our current speed is about 4 knots per hour) or simply shutting down and being becalmed – waiting for wind. Somehow getting becalmed does not lead to calm thoughts. We know those damn trade winds are out there somewhere. I now rate my chance of making my return flight on Tuesday as 75/25 decidedly against.
In the evening we are treated to glowing seas that appear to be molten metal, pick a really expensive metal of your choice to make it more exotic. This is the upside of these unusually calm conditions. Around dinner time we have our first encounter with some unknown denizen of the deep. Our depth finder typically flashes nonstop, indicating that it is too deep to measure. While sitting at the helm I happen to noticed that it was now registering a mere 58’, and let J&S know. Seth promptly springs to his feet, throttles the boat back and looks around for some uncharted land mass. There obviously is none, so we conjecture that the sonar has picked up a school of fish, or more likely some huge creature we come to call Leviathan.
friday april 25, 2008 (lost-er at sea)
Awoke today with a touch of the scurvy. It’s OK though, turns out to be the same sunburn as before. Full recovery is assured.
At 6:00am we get a visit from a pod of dolphins. 7 of the little guys splash and play at our bow for about 15 mins. I end up sitting in the bow seat about 3’ directly above them to enjoy the show. Sailors are big on omens, and apparently this is a good one. Sailors seem to be much more forthright about the good omens and seem to keep the bad ones secret so they can pull them out after the fact when things go bad. The rest of the morning passes uneventfully. The wind has died off almost completely, 2-4 knots, and mid-morning Seth simply states what we have been considering about the ‘gap’. If nothing changes, tomorrow by noon we will shut off Beaker to ensure we have enough fuel for emergencies and to perform docking maneuvers upon our eventual arrival somewhere, still hopefully Panama. There is no high drama or emotion, this is simply a statement of our current situation made to ensure we’re all on the same page. I now rate my chance of making my return flight at about 10%.
In the afternoon we engage in the next on the list of solar evasion techniques, which Seth refers to as ‘trolling with live bait.’ While the previous afternoon we were all freaked out about going for a swim while the boat was stopped, there is no hesitation what-so-ever in hanging off a slippery wet stanchion at the back of the moving boat, 4’ from a churning propeller. Turns out the greatest danger here, assuming you don’t let go, is the losing of your swim shorts. This danger is evident enough that I am quite sure that if I wasn’t here, there would be no shorts involved.
Leviathan visits us once or twice during the day, with random depth readings of as little as 23’ showing on the sonar. About 5:15pm our trip changes flavour as we are visited by wind, glorious wind. At 6-8 knots, it is still too light to shut off Beaker completely, but we are able to raise the sails and throttle back to save fuel, while actually increasing our speed. Calm thoughts of not becoming becalmed abound.
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One of the main duties of the person on watch is to scan the horizon looking for freighters. There is some urban myth folklore amoung the sailing crowd about small vessels being run over by these giants of the sea. OK, maybe a couple of the cases have actually been documented, but based on my vast knowledge of all things oceanic, I maintain that it’s all a hoax. The combination of this myth, an idle mind, and riding on the coat tails of the highly successful Pirates of the Caribbean series, leads to the following leaked press release document designed to create a media buzz:
Slapdash Pictures presents the soon to be released docu-drama, Freighters of the Caribbean.
Cast of characters: glamorous young Hollywood couple. Tall slightly dorky male lead played by Jeff Goldblum (remember him as Seth in The Fly?). Sweet and sexy female lead played by Jennifer Anniston. Ruggedly handsome and mysteriously unexplained additional male crew member played by (insert your current favorite dreamboat here).
The Plot: Crew is huddled out of the sun on small sailing vessel. Anomaly is spotted on the horizon.
5 mins to determine that anomaly is real and not imagined.
10-15 mins, crew repeatedly stares at anomaly in attempt to identify it.
Commence use of technology (ideal opportunity for dazzling special effects) meaning pull out binoculars. Verify that anomaly is in fact a dreaded ‘Freighter of the Caribbean.’ Initiate defensive maneuvers – watch ship closely for next hour or so to determine if we are on collision course.
Begin glaring at freighter to let them know we will not be sunk without a fight.
Relax defenses when it is determined that we are not on collision course with the evil freighter – crew remains seated in the positions they have held throughout the entire scene.
Suspense builds as this riveting scene is repeated every 12-24 hours. Then, in a plot twist reminiscent of Hitchcock at his finest, it is determined that the Slapdash has never actually been in any danger from the evil freighters, and the world of Slapdashers everywhere is safe. Truly the feel good story of the year. Ok, so there’s not all that much to do when you are considering being adrift at sea. Back to reality, whatever that is.
Jaime whips us up some delicious pasta with clam sauce for dinner and we end the day sipping some ‘dark and stormies’ (rum and ginger beer –mmm delicious) and me entertaining (?) the crew by playing along to some blues on my harmonica.
saturday april 26, 2008 (closer to nowhere)
Awoke today with a touch of the rickets. Only danger is in annoying other uninfected crew members when flakes of skin waft into their food.
When I get up to take over watch before 6:00am, Jaime greets me with the update that the throttle has been pulled back even further and we are maintaining good speed. At about 9:15am the wind picks up enough to finally shut off Beaker, and instantly we have become a sailing vessel. It’s a cool experience – way less noise and it seems more authentic somehow. The sails are arranged in a wing and wing configuration as we are running with the wind, and little Slapdash manages a more than respectable 5 knots from 12 knots of wind. It seems we will in fact make it to Panama at some point.
We pass part of the afternoon trying yet another solar evasion technique, the joyous bucket bath. The procedure basically involves gearing down, huddling on the back step of an undulating boat, dipping a large bucket into the ocean while avoiding have the drag of the bucket pull you off the moving boat, dumping the pleasantly warm sea water (water temp has been 80-85C) over yourself, rubbing your entire body with Joy dish soap, rinsing and declaring yourself clean. Joy is apparently the only soap that lathers in salt water.
Leviathan continues making sporadic visits. The winds have picked up marginally and we are making good steady progress, 4-5 knots.
Jaime has been seasick the entire trip. She seems fine when outside, but suffers whenever she goes below deck for anything except sleep. It may be getting to her more than she lets on. Last night at their shift change at 2:00am, Jaime accused Seth of wearing her jacket and then hiding it on her. This was an obviously delirious statement (take a quick peek at their pictures again if you need to) because the size difference between them is substantial. Seth does not wear Jaime’s clothes, not for lack of want, but because he can’t. I’m guessing that Seth did not sleep overly well knowing there was a crazy woman at the helm.
sunday april 27, 2008 (another day closer to nowhere)
Battled the dengue fever through the night. It has affected my vision to the point that when I arose and did a complete sweep of the horizon, I could not see any visible objects. Recovery will be complete, but may take a few days.
Sailing etiquette installment #2. It is generally acceptable to perform advanced maneuvers such as the ‘heave to,’ where the sails are positioned to work against each other so effectively that a vessel can be stopped completely and hold position even in strong winds, (a bit like a fire drill or emergency evacuation procedure) on your friends boat. It is more appropriate, however, to advise the captain prior to commencing such maneuvers, and it may be wise to choose a time other than during a required change of course for the first attempt. Such minor indiscretions are likely to be met with direct words of correction, a few friendly pats on the back, and the subtle corrective measure of assigning the primer ‘basic sailing skills’ as required reading.
Today I have decided to resurrect the ‘earth is flat’ theory. Having observed several freighters appear on the horizon exhibiting the noted property of the top being visible prior to the bottom, I suggest to you that this is a flimsy piece of evidence on which to base such a grandiose conclusion that the earth is round. Residing in Calgary, I have frequently made the observation that the tops of the Rockies are more readily visible than the bases. Rather than make some willy-nilly leap of logic and say that this is further evidence of the earth being round, I suggest to you that a more appropriate thesis would be the simpler and more directly supported statement ‘from a distance it is easier to see the tops of objects than the bottoms.’ Combine this with the mysterious complete disappearance of 100% of the freighters off the horizon, and using the admittedly same leap as the earth is round people use, the conclusion that they sailed off the edge of the earth is no greater a stretch. More over Isaac Newton, there’s a new kid in town, and stand back from the edges, my friends.
Leviathan makes his daily visits on the sonar, but is still afraid to show his ugly mug lest we affix him the affeared occular horribilus. The day ends as usual, with dinner, a great sunset, and rounds of dark and stormies. Jaime sails us through a small squall in the night, but other than hearing the rain patter on the deck I don’t even know this has occurred.
monday april 28, 2008 (your guess is as good as mine, caribbean sea)
Last night it was the malaria. Awoke this morning to discover that it may not have been the fevers at all, and rather, that sleeping in an oversized plastic coffin with tropical temperatures may have been the source of my night sweats.
Cloudy and cooler today – only 27C in the cabin at 6:00am when I start my watch shift. We are currently sailing on a beam reach with 1 reef in our mainsail and the head sail currently flying in a genoa configuration. We are headed 174 degrees due south with 10-14 knot winds hitting us abaft at 120 degrees, generating 3-5 knots of speed over ground. Not bad for a landlubber who a couple of days ago could not have told you the difference between a main sheet (it’s actually a rope) and a bed sheet. All of this information I am now able to glean simply by gazing out to sea. That and the mere coincidence that my good friend Otto the autohelm lies directly in line of sight between me and the sea.
We are now just over 100 miles from Cristobal Marina in Colon, Panama. Last evening Seth called an audible and switched destinations to Cristobal because it is 50 miles closer to the entrance to the canal, and due to the confusion geometry, is also 40 miles closer to us. We will now make landfall in Colon, purportedly having one of the highest crime rates in Panama. I have stopped reporting my chances of making my return flight as for a while now they are effectively zero.
A camouflage painted helicopter made a mysterious fly-by at 9:00 this morning, but apparently we do not look enough like drug runners to warrant being blasted from the water. We are starting to see tankers fairly regularly now, but as of yet no evasive maneuvers have been required. Lots of glaring, though. No dark and stromies before bed tonight, but the real dark and stormies were soon to come and find us.
At about 9:00pm I start to close the windows as it is beginning to rain. Seth pops out to see what’s going on and Jaime comes out right away too. Within 2 minutes we are in a full scale squall and the winds have gone from the 10 knots they have been averaging to 25 knots. We have both sails out fully, and apparently that is not a good thing. It is not until the whole event has ended that I learn how not good it can be. We get the headsail in during a bit of a lull but there is not time to address the mainsail and during a gust which registers 46 knots we perform an accidental jibe (good thing I had us practicing a couple of days ago) and the force is so great that a rope tied to the boom actually tears a cleat right out of the hull of the boat. It would be nasty if it hit someone, but the cleat clatters to the deck without hitting anyone. We release the mainsheet and spill most of the wind from the mainsail, and are back under control. In the middle of all of this a couple of lightening flashes add to the fun, more so as we are basically the only tall metal pole within a hundred miles. When I say ‘we’ did all of this I mean Seth did all of the dangerous stuff, Jaime capably took the helm to allow Seth to do dangerous stuff, and I mostly stared into to sheeting rain to make sure we didn’t get run over by a tanker. The worst of the squall lasted only 15 mins or so, but a lot had to happen in that short time frame. In an obvious example of ignorance is bliss, I was actually quite enjoying the whole episode. It somehow makes you feel like a real sailor of old to face the stormy seas. I was glad it was happening, it really added to the whole experience. It wasn’t until after when things had settled, that it was splained to me that having full sails up in a squall can flip a boat or brake it’s mast off etc. Hmmm, I’m marginally less happy it happened now, and poor Slapdash will need a bit of a patch at some point.
27-Apr-2008 09:03, PENTAX Corporation PENTAX Optio S5i , 4.3, 5.8mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
29-Apr-2008 08:33, PENTAX Corporation PENTAX Optio S5i , 4.3, 5.8mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
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tuesday april 29, 2008 (some little piece of plastic with a wire running into it and the letters GPS on it says we’re close to Panama, but I think we’ve been going in circles for days)
Awoke with sailor’s malaise. Not much matters, just get us there.
It remains cloudy and it rains off and on most of the morning. There has been lightening in the sky non-stop since the squall last night. There are multiple tankers around us and we have switched back to motoring as the weather still looks sketchy. Seth raises the yellow quarantine flag as part of arrival protocol, not in honour of my many afflictions. I mention to Seth that I think our imminent arrival into Panama would be a classic if it happened in a downpour and we had to traipse into some little office where a cigar smoking official in a Panama hat stamped our passports. Did you know that I can predict the weather? About 15 miles out, the skies close in on us, visibility drops to less than a mile, and tankers which now surround us appear and disappear from view eerily. The skies commence to open and it pisses on us just as I asked for, but the timing is a bit off. If we were at anchor this would be great. Instead we are motoring blindly just outside a bay in one of the busiest shipping lanes on earth. We spot the markers to the harbour entrance but visibility drops again and we are forced to circle around for a while using an anchored red freighter as a reference point so we know where we are. For a couple of hours now we have been standing or sitting in the pouring rain, reigniting my thoughts of the Vikings and I am proud to stand and stare into the rain despite how ridiculous and probably unnecessary this is. When the rain lets up a bit we follow a tanker through the markers and the breakwater into the beginning of the famed Panama canal.
Woohoo! A couple of high fives are exchanged and other than finding a place to anchor, I assume the adventure is quickly coming to an end. We set anchor at about 3:00pm and Jaime whips up some bacon and eggs. None of us has eaten except for a piece of bread and cheese hastily gobbled down in a lull in the storm. Arrival procedures require that only the captain is allowed to go to shore until we have cleared customs and immigration. We are about to lower the dink so we can at least consider when that can take place, when Seth notices a 3 foot gaping hole in the front of little dinkus. This is not that good. Basically, 3 feet of the floor of the dink has become detached right at the bow. We are ½ km from shore and now have no real way of getting there, and other than Seth, we’re not allowed to go to shore anyway. After a bit of pondering we decide to pull the dink up onto the deck of Slapdash and attempt to patch it. Removal of the outboard and hoisting all go according to plan. Then, out comes our high tech repair kit consisting of rags to try to dry things off with and a tube of ‘gorilla glue,” the kind you can buy at any hardware store. We smear the entire contents of the glue on the patch/seam and then add another entire tube of some other miracle adhesive for good measure, spreading the goop around with our fingers. It seems almost farsicle that we (Seth again) will actually have to trust this to keep the dink afloat on a mad dash to customs in the morning. We cover the glue with duct tape and cover the whole dink with a tarp to try to allow some chance of glue setting as another rain storm approaches.
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With that being all we can accomplish for today, we settle back inside and have time to enjoy what we have accomplished. Sailing 600 miles of open sea in a small boat is adventurous and it takes a lot of work. We finish the last of the Red Stripe, a bottle of wine and unveil the poem we have been writing since Port Antonio. The person going off at the end of each 4 hr watch shift has added 2 lines to the poem, and folded the paper so that only the last line is visible. You have no idea of the context or what has been written other than the single visible line. We laughed at our efforts and were surprised that sections of it almost flow. We sat up and looked at most of Jaime and Seth’s photos thus far, and it was a fitting way to see that we had added another chapter to their tale.
wednesday april 30, 2008 (technically we’re in Canada)
Psychosis threatens the entire crew this morning. Panama and all it has to offer (chief among these offers is land) remains about ½ km away, and as we still have no way to get there, it seems to be constantly taunting us.
Our fresh provisions are getting low but Jaime manages to whip up breakfast and she is obviously much happier to be stationary and inside a breakwater where the boat moves much less. Seth and I inspect our ridiculous attempt to patch the dink to find that lying upside down on the deck of Slapdash, it appears completely patched and seaworthy. We re-launch the dink and Seth crosses his fingers and toes and heads for the marina to do the customs and immigration stuff. As captain, he is officially the only one allowed to go to shore until we are properly checked in. A couple hours later he radios back to us that he may be able to complete the check in process without us, but it will take a couple more hours. Jaime and I are mostly surprised to hear that the dink is still afloat. I am hopeful that Seth will be able to contact my wife Brenda while he is ashore, as I obviously did not make it back to Calgary last night as intended, and I have not been able to contact her with any update. I do have the benefit of previously lowering the bar of expectations on a trip to Mexico with Seth and Jaime where I left for 3 days and eventually made it back in a week.
Well, my friends, all things good and bad must end, and so it is for my time aboard the mighty Slapdash. I came seeking adventure and leave well satisfied. Was it a life altering event? Naw, probably not. Have I become an expert sailor having made 600+ miles at sea? No, definitely not. Did I get my fix of a new kind of fun? Yep. Did I re-cement a couple of important friendships? Sure hope so.
For those of you not fortunate enough to visit Jaime and Seth, rest assured that they are in good hands – each others. Despite being ill the entire length of our sail, Jaime remains smiley and never misses a shift at the watch. While ashore, her ability to make fast friends among locals and other travelers means they will never lack companionship. It is important for Seth to be good at whatever he does, and he is already a very competent sailor. Despite remaining a large annoying human, the wandering life has resulted in him talking more slowly, rarely glaring, and exhibiting a remarkable level of new found patience (lucky for me). They will return home one day to be better friends to all of us.
Jeff J
Working Ballast, First class
Appendix 1: Critters We Encountered (relax we’re not Darwin and the Beagle)
Flying fish – fish with wingfins that flee by flying
Sea grass – our most common catch on the fishing lines we dragged almost the entire 600 miles. Being plants, not much of a fight.
Dolphins – small 4’ olive green speckled guys with white tips on their noses. As playful and enchanting as advertised.
Sea gulls – same shithawks here as at home
Barn Swallows – small fast moving swallows named for their tendency to land on Seth’s head, which is big as a barn.
Frigates – large dark birds with pointy elbows. The kind that can soar for hours without flapping their wings. No frigging idea if they are actually frigates.
Blow up jellyfish – little purple jellyfish that can inflate their jelly sac (looks like a sandwich bag) and thus create a sail to move them along in the wind. Very cool.
Leviathan – sea monster of ill repute
March 2008 Bahamas to Cuba
sunday march 09, 2008 (georgetown, bahamas)
“Do you have any balloons?”
“No”
“Do you know what the second brightest star in the night sky is?”
“No”
“Have you got a black tie?”
“Of course not”
“How about a pair of white boots?”
If you planned your schedule carefully here in Georgetown you could attend Beach Church, play a sporting round of bingo, try your luck at a geriatric Bridge tournament, and even have a conversation with total strangers like the one we quoted above. All in one day. We exchanged those words with a nice older couple in a dinghy after they knocked on the side of our boat and told us that they were participating in a scavenger hunt. A scavenger hunt? It’s not exactly rum, sodomy and the lash on the high seas any more folks, but I guess it works for some. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pining for the lash (or sodomy for that matter) but it’s safe to say that our daydreams a year ago weren’t filled with thoughts of bead polishing seminars on an exotic beach. Nor did we lay awake at night dreaming about the day that we would be able to risk life and limb in order to see a group of 60 year olds dress their dogs up for a parade in an exotic port of call. So what are we doing here?
The height of our efforts to date has brought us here, to Georgetown. It’s known to some as “Chicken Harbor”. There are several hundred boats here. Most seem to be from somewhere on the U.S. East coast or Quebec and apparently most don’t go any further. Thus the poultry inspired nick-name. There are organized events here daily. Every morning the pre-arranged “activities” are announced on a very structured VHF radio show. To our surprise they even transmit portions of the broadcast in French due to the high number of Québécois here. Speaking of which, people here think all Canadians here actually have an affinity for wearing red speedos because of them. We being from a non speedo wearing western province are shocked and appalled and would encourage, no, fervently petition any of our French speaking countrymen to PLEASE leave the speedos at home! Hey Quebecors we love you but please trade in the banana hammocks in for a respectable pair of board shorts. You’re giving us a bad name.
Back to the last few weeks’ adventure. Way back in Warderick Wells we assailed our long list of boat chores with gusto. After tearing apart the leaky toilet I discovered that the base needed replacing, and that Charles was a true friend. Who else but a true friend would offer to help with a job like that and then show up with tools in hand? With a band-aid solution in place we decided to move on to more exciting pursuits. That was pretty much it for our list of chores. Maybe “assailed” was the wrong word then, I guess we sort of nipped at our long list of chores.
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Ghoulish tales of ancient ship wrecks and headless corpses abounded here. There’s a spot on the island named “Boo Boo Hill” where in addition to a great view, you were supposed to be able to hear shipwrecked lost souls wailing away about some injustice. We didn’t hear any lost souls but there was a cairn (I think that’s the word) at the top where it has become tradition to leave some kind of memorabilia with your boat name on it. There’s a great stack of markers made from wood, rope and stone that have been left by visiting boaters. We found several from folks we had met along the way. Kinda neat. Back at Wild Ride we set to work with Charles and Giselle to create a commemorative plaque worthy of our cat clan. After chisels, sander, router, paint and an immense group effort had been applied to a lucky scrap of wood that we had rescued from a fire pit, our masterpiece was ready. The Wild Ride, Some Days a Diamond (www.somedaysadiamond.com), and Slapdash crews made the long and arduous hike (okay, more short and easy than long and arduous) up to Boo Boo Hill. We planted the sign with much champagne and the flashing of flash bulbs. Hopefully it survives the hurricane season.
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We left Warderick Wells on February 18th and made our way to Compass Cay. On the way we spent a couple of hours snorkeling around an area labeled on our charts as The Aquarium (for good reason), and visited another plane wreck nearby, which no self respecting Bahamian Cay would be without. There really must have been a lot of bad pilots, or crappy planes around here back in the day. After a night at Compass Cay we made our way to Staniel Cay and were pretty excited to meet up with Dave and Jan from Zing. They welcomed us with champagne and we snorkeled at the famous Thunderball grotto (see: James Bond). That night new friends were acquainted with old and to make everyone feel at ease I decided to throw myself off the back of the boat. Dave and Jan had everyone over (8 of us in total) and after several rounds of southern hospitality a few of the guys visited the back deck to “check the props” (take a leak). Long story short; in very dramatic fashion I ended up in the drink before my fly was down. The catamarans I had been frequenting have steps cut into the aft hulls. Zing (a Saint Francis 43) did not. I also maintain that I had been savagely pushed but the story has never gained popular support. I was able to retain a small piece of dignity by going on the same night to play a perfect round of “OH Hell!” after my refreshing dip.
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The next day Charles and Giselle came by and picked us up for a visit to Big Majors, a nearby Cay inhabited by a bunch of tropical pigs. The sight of a pig swimming (yes, swimming) up to our dinghy while still 30 yards from the beach looking for a handout is not a sight we will soon forget. Ahh yes, a white sand beach, clear blue tropical waters and… swimming pigs? Quite the juxtaposition. Oh, and just for the record, pigs are excellent swimmers. We shot some video, one day I will get a page set up on the site with some of our video clips. They are just the crappy shorts taken with my digital camera, but give you the general idea.
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Over the next few days we worked our way down the Exumas stopping at Gaudin, Black Point, Mooshu and Rat Cay. With Zing we were now part of a 4 catamaran armada. The routine was almost unbearable. First of all, every stop was more incredibly breathtakingly stupidly picturesque than the last. Abundant lobster and spear fish earned us a nightly potluck on one of the boats to consume the days take with good friends. We were able to sample Grouper, Yellow Tail Snapper, Wahoo, Mahi-Mahi and of course lots of lobster. It was almost more than we could take. How awful.
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On February 25th we arrived in Georgetown. We were expecting our friends, Pat and Jessica from Vancouver, to meet us here and they did. The night before they had arrived we set our anchor and watched a massive lightening and thunder storm just miss us. A big front was moving through and since Pat and Jes were coming on a boat from Nassau we were worried all night about them. Apparently we had both missed the worst of it though and their long 12 hour boat ride from Nassau was uneventful save the air condinitioning being cranked the whole way. I guess the crew wrapped up in sleeping bags and left the passengers to half freeze. They were a little bleary eyes but there to meet us on the dock at 6:30AM on Thursday Feb 28th.
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A little background on Pat & Jes. Jaime and Jessica had worked together in Vancouver and had become fast friends. Pat is one of the smartest guys I know and has decided to hang himself from skyscrapers to make a living. We were pretty excited to see them both. The first couple of days were difficult though. Pat and Jessica were introduced into our new life in an uncomfortable anchorage with 25-40 knot winds. Fortunately things were looking up. After a couple of days mostly spent indoors and scurrying around to different anchorages to find shelter, we were all enjoying the type of weather you would expect to find in the Bahamas.
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Pat and Jes were here for a week. We introduced them to some of the crazy friends we had made along the way. Since they are crazy too they all got along famously. One particular night we were at a local establishment and were shocked to see yet another crazy crew from Slapdash past. Jaime had spotted De Dutch that we had sadly left behind in Key Largo and had been looking for ever since. It was an unbelievable reunion. They generously invited us all back to their boat for drinks. We told them that there were 8 of us and they didn’t even flinch. Soon afterwards all 10 of us were on the JoHo getting better acquainted. It was an extraordinary evening. Here was this big group of people who were all far away from home together on a boat in the middle of a harbor getting to know each other. Every person there was really special to us in some way, and here we were all in the same place at the same time. Incredible.
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Over the next couple of days we explored the islands with Pat and Jes and wondered why with all these hundreds of boats here that we could still find secluded anchorages and great restaurants that only the locals seemed to patronize. Everyone seems to cram themselves into 3 or 4 anchorages, and don’t wander too far for their food and drink either. I don’t want to be too hard on these folks though, the majority seem to be genuinely good people. It just seems a little strange to us that so many fall into this super structured floating suburb of a routine… for months!
Within the same week we found ourselves saying goodbye to dear friends. It’s always amazing to us how fast you get to know people when you travel with them like this. A couple of weeks seems to equal a year or two at home. That made it especially difficult to part ways with Dave and Jan from Zing, Tom and Carol from Some Day’s A Diamond, Charles and Giselle from Wild Ride, and John and Jolanda from JoHo. We are all going our separate ways, but are certain that we’ll see each other again somewhere down the road. Actually we may see Wild Ride sooner than later. We learned a day before they were to leave that they may be planning to cross the Pacific at the same time we are. They’re taking a different route but we hope to see them in Panama sometime in the coming weeks.
Speaking of Panama, we’ve got some decisions to make. Our unavoidable delay leaving Florida has left us with fewer options. We still plan to cross the Pacific this year, but getting to Panama in time will require some creative route planning. Our original plan may not be feasible anymore. We are going to talk this over during the next day or two and make a fast decision. Stay tuned.
tuesday march 11, 2008 (georgetown, bahamas)
We’ve spent the last couple of days finishing off the list of chores that we started nipping at back in Warderick Wells. The next leg of our trip will be through the Ragged Islands (or Jumentos). They are very remote and almost totally uninhabited. The only population is on one small island near the end of the chain which consists of 90 people living in Duncantown. So we needed to make sure that anything we might need is already on the boat. This meant a lot of trips ferrying fuel, water, groceries, laundry etc back and forth in the dink.
We will get underway today sometime. After we leave Georgetown we probably won’t have internet access until we arrive in Cuba. From Cuba we’ll need to make a straight shot to Panama in order to make it in time for a Pacific crossing. All that’s left for us to decide is whether to turn right or left once we get to Cuba. That’s the plan d’jour anyway. We had seriously considered spending an extra year visiting all the central American countries before we crossed but traded that for more time in the South Pacific. We made the decision thinking that it would be easy for us to get back to Central and South America some day, but the little islands in the South Pacific could be a once in a lifetime thing.
So, one more visit to town to drop off the garbage, update the website and send off some emails and then we’re on the move and on our own again.
wednesday march 12, 2008 (hog cay, bahamas)
With the website updated and the boat all shippity shape we yanked our chain and slipped out of Georgetown at 2:00PM yesterday. We wanted to position ourselves for the trip to Water Cay by shaving off as many miles as possible before dark. The best case scenario was to get through Hog Cut at slack tide and anchor on the other side. Then there would be nothing but 25 miles or so of water between us and our first stop in the Jumentos. Passing through Hig Cut is an option for us due to the shallow draft of our boat, but we would still need to pass at high tide since there were a few spots showing only “0.9” (meters) on the charts with a hard bottom. No problem since it was beginning to look like our impeccable planning would see us through the cut at high slack tide. Slack tide is the time between water rising and lowering, and since there can be a strong current through this narrow passage timing was everything. Jaime confirmed this since she has taken on the role of weather and tide reports, she is the slapdash meteorological department. For those who have sent us emails wondering if Jaime ever screws up, or if I’m the only one falling off boats and getting creative with diesel and water cocktails, please pay close attention to the next paragraph.
We approached the cut and everything seemed fine. There was virtually no current, we were lined up perfectly and even though there was only a few minutes to spare before sunset it looked as though we would be on the other side of this cut in no time. We started cautiously feeling our way into the channel when I noticed that the rocks were showing a lot of algae which would be pretty unusual at high tide. At this point Jaime was sick of me asking her to confirm the timing of our passage so I checked myself. The timing was spot on, but she had the tides reversed. Oops! Now we were completely committed and passing with the lowest possible water. We discussed our options and decided to raise the drive leg, retract our rudders and sail through. This would reduce our draft to a mere 18 inches, and even with the rudders retracted we’re able to maintain a small degree of steerage. So we bumped and scraped our way through a passage under sail at low tide that many boats opt to avoid even at high tide. There were some tense moments but we eventually cleared the narrow winding channel and felt pretty good about ourselves. We even anchored in time to enjoy the sunset, each with a margarita in hand.
This morning we raised the main and sailed out of the anchorage but this was short lived. It wasn’t long before the wind was on our nose again. We motor sailed into 16-20 knot winds and toughed out a choppy and uncomfortable ride to Water Cay. When we arrived and dropped anchor we were facing wind of 10 knots and a current of 1.5 knots. But the funny thing was that the boat just drifted right into the wind and current. It was very odd. Even when the tide eventually shifted we stayed in the same spot. Our only reasonable explanation is that there must have been some kind of opposing current in the little pocket that we were in. With 100 feet of chain out we just floated right over top of our anchor the whole time that we were there. We didn’t even need to drop an anchor, we could have just killed the engine and floated there for as long as we liked.
We’ve been warned innumerable times to stay out of the water at Water Cay because of the sharks. Although its uninhabited this is apparently a common spot for fisherman to stop and clean their catches before heading home. We’ve heard this a million times though so don’t usually put too much stock into shark tales. After we were settled into our anchorage I geared down and got ready to splash of the back deck for a traditional evening swim. Jaime was sitting on the back deck so I jokingly asked her to keep an eye out for sharks while I dove in. A few seconds later I surfaced to the sound of Jaime’s startled voice telling me to “get in the boat now!” After practically leaping straight out of the water I was back on deck about a tenth of a second later. There was no shark but it was easy to see why she thought it was. The biggest Barracuda we’ve seen yet shot straight out from underneath the boat as soon as I hit the water. He was well over a meter long and as thick as a scuba tank at the middle, obviously well fed. I don’t know what it is with the Barracuda here, we’ve seen them on plenty of dives all over the place but never this many, never this big and never this aggressive. I finished my bath with a bucket that night watching the Barracuda while he floated almost motionless just off the back of the boat, like he was taunting us.
Later on we took the dinghy to shore and explored for a while. There was a beautiful little cove with a nice beach, and we had the whole place to ourselves. This was more like it.
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thursday march 13, 2008 (nurse cay, bahamas)
We were on our way to Nurse Cay today and decided to do a little fishing along the way. This morning the same big Barracuda was still hanging around the boat, and we half expected him to follow us out of the bay. He was persistent and big, but still no shark. In fact, other than a few Nurse sharks we haven’t seen any at all. That all changed today.
I had two lines out, one hand line and one rod and reel combination. I’ve never used bait and just troll along with various lures. It wasn’t long before we had fish on both lines. In as much time as it took me to get to the rod and set the hook, maybe 15 seconds, I was watching 4 sharks absolutely demolish the fish on the hand line. This lasted at least a minute, and was only 20 yards off the back of the boat. Water was churning and foaming around a writhing ball of fins and teeth. It was terrifying. We have never seen anything like this so were pretty engrossed in the show. I almost forgot about the second fish until the rod suddenly doubled over and was nearly ripped out of my hands. The feeding frenzy had now moved onto our second fish. Jaime took this opportunity to pull in the hand line and there wasn’t a scrap of fish left on it. We expected the same for the second but in his enthusiasm one of the sharks had taken the hook as well. I watched helplessly as 400 yards of line spun off the reel. Luckily with only a few wraps left on the reel he stopped his run and I began to bring him in. Jaime was at the helm maneuvering the boat and I was playing a seemingly endless game of taking in a bunch of line and then watching it all spin back out. This went on for the better part of an hour. Eventually we had the culprit beside the boat. Now what? It may not have been the best decision, but I was determined to get my hook back. We had already lost our dinner to these guys so weren’t about to lose our tackle as well. It was easy to get caught up in the moment, but my resolve weakened a little once he was snapping and thrashing against the side of the boat. Nevertheless with a combination of patience, gaff, and vice grips I managed to return with line, lure and fingers still in tact.
After the shark episode we also landed a small Barracuda and a Bonito. Then something really big hit the rod and went on a lightening fast run. I have no idea what it was but it took over 400 yards of line off the rod without stopping in about one minute. That put an end to an exciting day of fishing.
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We approached Nurse Cay in water so clear that we could see the shadow of our boat 40 feet below us on the ocean floor. We were going through an uncharted area so Jaime was watching for coral heads and rocks but with water this clear we were never in any danger. We enjoyed another quiet evening in a completely secluded and picture perfect bay. The beauty of our surroundings is beyond my capabilities to describe, but I’m sure you have no trouble imagining the blue water, the white sand, the crashing surf and the incredible sunset. But to take in the beauty of those surroundings while being serenaded by farm animals is something that you would truly have to experience to appreciate. Why this island would be inhabited only by a crowing rooster and a bleating goat is completely beyond me.
friday march 14, 2008 (duncantown, bahamas)
The Ragged Islands are tiny specks in our chart book, and at the end of those specks on a tiny speck is a tiny speck. With me so far? The tiny speck on the tiny speck at the end of the tiny specks is a place called Duncantown, population 75. And what this town lacks in size it makes up for in character. It’s far removed and is in fact closer to Cuba than any other settlement in the Bahamas. We’ve been looking forward to visiting this elusive little speck since we heard about it, which was before we left Vancouver. It didn’t let us down.
We arrived just before dinner and were so excited to see town that we had barely set the anchor before launching the dinghy. We had a 2 mile channel that leads into town through the mangroves to transit before dark. In our haste though, we ended up forgetting our little map of the channel and started getting hopelessly lost. Luckily we saw a local running back and forth from the mail boat and decided to follow him. A bit of a geography lesson on Duncantown; the water that surrounds the island is too shallow for the mail boat to come right in so they have to run their skiffs back and forth all day long, up and down this long channel, full to the brim with the town’s supplies, mail, etc. Since these guys do this all the time we thought we’d be in good hands. Since the tide was almost out though (our new specialty) we almost ended up having to get out of the dinghy and walk through the murky swamp. Turns out we were following a particular local that didn’t mind churning up the bottom with his boat as we followed cautiously, picking our way through the shallows. We arrived dry and resolved to find the proper channel for our return trip.
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We were greeted upon arrival by a group of happy locals. Not so sure why they were so happy because they were unloading a pallet of plywood. But they were glad to see us and tell us where to find the nearest bar (de green one up de hill mon). So up de hill we went where we wandered through Maxine’s grocery, meeting Maxine of course who gave us a short discourse on the ins and outs of Duncantown. Then off past the house with the goat on the fence, and beside the house with the peacocks on the roof we found de green one. The bar looked more like it had been closed for 5 years but we wandered in anyway and met Raphael. Since we’ve been in the Bahamas for over a month we figured that we would have the vernacular pegged. Not so. But after a few Kaliks we were getting on track.
The house beside de green one (with the peacocks on the roof) was Raphael’s, the bar owner. We asked about food because in our hurry we had left the boat before eating anything and it was now about 7PM. He started making a few phone calls (one of those old rotary phones) but couldn’t track down any food for us. Not to be so easily defeated he went next door to his house. After a few minutes he came back with his wife Marjorie who asked us if fish and rice would be okay, since she was making some anyway a couple more plates would be no problem. Our protests went unheard and a little while later she returned with a whole grilled snapper and fried rice for each of us. We devoured the generous portions and I pretended to suck out the fish eyes, something our hosts insisted upon. It’s a bit of a delicacy I guess, either that or they were just entertaining themselves at our gastronomical expense. Maybe it was the exotic surroundings, the company or maybe it was the Kaliks, but fish eyes aside we both agreed that it was the best fish we’ve had. Throughout the evening locals were circulating through the bar and every one of them stopped to chat with us about life, fish stories, boats, and my new favorite subject; sharks. We met a group of fisherman that were anchored out in the bay and they generously offered to guide us back to our boat through the now darkened maze of mangroves. They idled their skiff navigating by moonlight and taking care not to get too far from us. Easier said than done, our dinghy has only one speed (slow). By some incredible feat of navigation they found the random marker (aka: a tiny nondescript piece of metal sticking out of the water) in the middle of nowhere and turned us safely towards our boat. We traded a good dead for a good dead by teaching them how to find the North Star, something that Tom from Some Days A Diamond taught us about 3 weeks ago.
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saturday march 15, 2008 (ragged island, bahamas)
We spent our time today getting positioned and ready to go for our overnight Cuba crossing. We think it will take about 15 hours. We finally got to meet up with Meander after all this time passing each other in Georgetown and through the Raggeds. We’re feeling lucky that we met them at the end of the line so we would have some company for the crossing.
While Seth did all things enginey I set to work on ‘sewing’ a Cuba flag. If you know me at all you know that I do not sew or do most anything domestic. But I had learned a trick from Yolanda on Joho on using fabric paint on old bed sheets. No sewing = no bleeding = no swearing.
Besides catching up with Meander, we found out where all of the elusive West Coasters are hiding. We were visited by 2 boats from Seattle. They are a rare commodity out here and I think they were equally shocked to see our home port when we rolled in. Kittiwake and Slow M’Ocean spent some time chatting with us under a scorching hot sun.
sunday march 16, 2008 (ragged island, bahamas)
By 5:30PM we were using the last of our daylight to navigate our way safely off the Bahamian bank and into the deep water separating us from Cuba. Conditions were perfect and before long we were sailing under the Genoa with 15 knots of wind pushing us towards our destination.
Just before sunset we turned around and caught this, which would be our last glimpse of the Bahamas. We watched the little Cays slowly sink into our wake, and then it was dark.
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Jaime too the first shift and I took over at 10PM. We would do 4 hour each until we arrived. This would leave us both with some time to try and get some sleep. There was a lot of big ship traffic so we needed a watch on at all times. During our shifts we would chat with Meander, avoid ocean going container ships, and pick away at the brown bag lunches that Jaime built. When things get rough it can be a very unpleasant job to prepare food, so it was nice to have some sandwiches made up in advance for a quick eat.
The moon and stars were incredible which made it easy to see the flying fish skimming along the surface beside the boat. I started my second shift at 6AM and we reduced sail so that we wouldn’t arrive in Cuba before sunrise. When the sun came up we were about seven miles off shore and I had my first glimpse of Cuba. It was quite a sight to see the green mountains raise up from the horizon. I sipped on my coffee and watched Cuba get bigger and bigger…
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monday march 17, 2008 (bahia de vita, cuba)
We arrived at Bahia De Vita just before 9AM. Our calls to the Guarda Frontera (Coast Guard) went unanswered so we just made our way into the marina pretty soon they hailed us and I finally got to put my scripted response to good use. “Estamos el yate de vela Slapdash de Canada” or something like that. I have no idea what their reply was, so I just said “si, gracias” and headed for the marina. The marina is in this incredible little pocket bay with protection from all sides. It’s the best natural harbor that we’ve seen, but once we saw the docks we realized that we were going to be tested again. I think I’ve said this before but its tough to arrive after a passage and still have the hardest job ahead of you. We would need to bring slapdash in backwards perpendicular to a concrete dock. There’s a mooring ball about 80 feet from the dock, we needed to fix a bow line there and then back into our spot trying not to hit the boats that were on both sides of us or the concrete dock behind us. I was at the helm and Jaime was at the bow keeping tension on the line to keep the bow from swinging around while I backed in. Everything was going well until Jaime looked back and said “that’s it”. Like I said, the mooring ball was 80 feet from the dock, but our line was only 30 feet so there was still 50 feet of water between us and the safety of setting a couple secure stern lines. It was a precarious position, and we noticed that our neighbors were casually gathering their fenders up just in case. Jaime tied in a second line while I used the engine to keep us centered and pretty soon we were making progress… for another 30 feet. Now we were only 20 feet from the dock. I threw a stern line to the dock and then went forward to help Jaime attach our third line. To our relief (and our neighbors) we were finally able to reach the dock and secure the back end of our boat. Other than taking a little longer than it should have I would say that we pretty much nailed it. We felt better after watching several other boats do exactly the same thing. I guess they set the mooring balls so far out so that they can accommodate any length of vessel, but it would have been nice to know in advance. Come to think of it, maybe that’s what the Guarda Frontera was trying to tell us?
We’ve heard all about the complicated Cuban check-in process so already knew that it would be a long day. They lived up to their reputation, we lost count of the amount of officials we had on and off the boat that day. First the doctor, then customs, immigration, harbor master (2), some guy who sprayed insecticide in our bathroom, and a dog to sniff around the boat. They all asked pretty much the same questions and each had multiple forms to be filled out. It might sound like a nightmare, but we actually had a lot of fun with it. We weren’t allowed to take any pictures, which is too bad because at one point I think we had six people on the boat. Every one of them was great. Very friendly, very polite, applauded our attempts at completely butchering their language, and even took their shoes off on the dock and hopped aboard in their socks. Once we had satisfied all of the criteria (we didn’t have the plague, weren’t smuggling drugs or humans, weren’t infested with bugs etc etc) we were invited to take down the quarantine flag and officially welcomed into Cuba with flowers and a complimentary cocktail. The total cost of clearing in was about 100 dollars to be paid out in varying amounts to 6 different officials, and not one of them asked for immediate payment. They said that they would be around so we should just come and find them once we were all settled and comfortable, at our convenience. They still had a job to do, but sincerely tried to accommodate us in any way that they could. You usually think of clearing in as a big hassle and usually it is, and here they had more documents to complete than most countries, but when we think about the experience we mostly remember friendly people and laughing all afternoon.
wednesday march 19, 2008 (bahia de vita, cuba)
Back in December I snapped a tooth on a corn nut or something and made some comment about getting a filling in Cuba. Today I made good on that statement, and learned that I should be more careful about running my mouth off like that.
By 10:00AM I was on my way from the marina to the clinic in an ambulance. It was actually looked a lot like a station wagon, but they called it an ambulance for some reason. Since I had been assured that this ambulance would be cheaper than taking a cab I didn’t mind. We arrived at a small but tidy clinic after a 20 minute drive. The driver told me that he would wait around to take me back to the marina once the dentist was through with me. The dentist introduced himself, asked me to take a seat, and fired up his drill after nothing more than a perfunctory glance at my broken tooth. I was a little taken back by the efficiency of it all, this being my first bit of dentistry in a foreign country. At home there’s the waiting room, the magazines, and the soft music. After you are finally seated you visit with at least a couple of pleasant assistants before the doctor swoops in and makes his grand appearance. The time span between showing up for your appointment and hearing a drill fire up that’s actually meant to be used on your face can easily be an hour. But let’s not forget the anesthetic. You know, the liquid content of the two or three needles injected sometime between getting comfy in that big chair and before any real work begins? The stuff that’s meant to save you the unpleasant bit of gut wrenching agony generally associated with having your teeth drilled and leaves you a drooling mess for a couple of hours afterwards? Yeah, well they don’t have that here. The speed with which you are seated and work commences is to minimize the time available for you to consider the implications of a stone cold sober dental treatment. Because if you did have the time to consider the implications of a stone cold sober dental treatment, you would likely be running for the door before the dentist could say “just a little wider please”. None of this trickery was necessary for me. It’s not that I have a great tolerance for pain or because I’m a masochist or anything. It wasn’t necessary because as I’ve already mentioned this was my first non-Canadian dental experience and in my wildest dreams I wouldn’t have guessed that the drilling and filling I was about to enjoy would be without any freezing.
I think I was in a mild state of shock because the next thing I remember was the dentist saying “rinse please”. No fancy nurse with fancy implements like water picks and suction tubes here. Nope, there was a little cup and a porcelain bowl beside the chair to be used for this purpose. What the system lacked in sophistication it made up for in being an opportunity to escape the drill. The water was cool and refreshing and like a live wire in my now exposed nerve endings but I lingered over the bowl swooshing it around in my mouth delaying as long as possible. After a considerable amount of swooshing I spat, and for some reason expected to see water come out of my mouth which left me completely unprepared to watch my own blood swirling around the nice white bowl. I nearly fainted. On the brighter side my consequent light headedness served as a mild anesthetic as I squirmed in the chair, gargling and gagging on little bits of teeth and blood for the next ten minutes. Then another perfectly pleasant “rinse please”. I think this was the extent of his English, which was probably a good thing because the language I was using between rinse and torture cycles could have peeled paint off the walls.
It was about an hour in total I guess. Certainly one of the most unpleasant hours of my life but in the end I had a perfectly good filling, and a solid bite. As much as I wanted to brutally murder the dentist from time to time during that hour, I have to admit that for a guy who has to work on his patients without using any freezing, he did an incredible job. Oh and the best part, I paid 40 bucks total which included the ride both ways, a huge filling, a lifetime phobia of dentists, and some other minor adjustments.
While I was gone Jaime spent some of her time painting a little man and a little woman on the outside of a building at the marina. The building contains showers and washroom stalls, which before Jaime’s handy work had been unwittingly been used as unisex showers and bathroom stalls most of the time. It seems that some time (somewhere between a week and 8 years) ago the signs were stolen along with all the faucets and shower heads and it’s been confusing boaters ever since. The next time you are in the Marina at Bahia de Vita and are able to tell whether you are entering the Woman’s or the Men’s toilette without having to look under the door you can thank Jaime.
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thursday march 20, 2008 (bahia de vita, cuba)
Over a few 80 cent beers we finally decided on some rough plans. We would team up with Tim and Stefy, the German couple that pulled in beside us last night, and share a car to get us started on some inland travel. The marina is cheap and since it’s very sheltered will be a great spot to leave the boat for a couple of weeks. We’ll work our way to Santiago by car, and from there head West by whatever means available (Tim and Stefy are only taking the car as far as Santiago).
We spent the afternoon in Guardalavaca which seemed to be a pretty touristy place, a bunch of hotels and a nice beach. Not all that exciting. Fortunately our evening would make up for the dull afternoon. Have you ever had a pig slaughtered for your dinner? Now Jaime and I, along with 5 Germans and 2 Argentineans, can say that we have.
I’ll have to be a little vague about the details since it was technically illegal according to some law or another (we were in fact later questioned by the authorities about our nocturnal activities) but the short version involves a pig on a spit, a gregarious multinational contingent of 9, some generous Cuban hosts and a few bottles of rum. We all had a great time, except for the pig who didn’t say much at all but under the circumstances we could hardly blame him.
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friday march 21, 2008 (baracoa, cuba)
With pork hangovers we made our way to Holguin with Tim and Steffi. The drive was spectacular, mostly because of the constantly changing scenery, but also due to the fact that we were all ready to do a little traveling without being attached to a boat.
Holguin was only a couple hours away and made for a nice spot to lunch. There was a maze of roads into town, all easily navigated due to the help from a nice local guy on a bike wearing bright orange pants. He met us at an intersection on the way into town, picked up on the confused looks we were all wearing on our faces, and motioned for us to follow him. Easier said than done. Our guide dodged horse and carriage, dozens of bike taxis, chickens, goats, school kids, street baseball games, antique cars, street soccer games, tractors, trucks, and cows like he had been doing it his whole life (which of course he had been). If it wasn’t for his orange pants we would have lost him a dozen times, even so he still had to stop and wait for us more than once.
We arrived at the town square and the orange pant wearing daredevil introduced himself as Carlos. The Germans were in need of a church and we were in need of some beer. Carlos helped us both find what we were looking for. Then Jaime and I hung out with him for a while. He was a chef and was happy to practice his English on us while waiting for his shift to start. Carlos was really proud of his town and showed us all the sights, which included this place where a nice lady gave Jaime a manicure and asked for 5 pesos, so we paid her 20 (about a dollar). That seemed crazy until Carlos told us that even at 5 pesos each she could still earn more than a doctor if she was able to do only 5 or 6 a day. We’ve since heard a variety of different amounts that the average Cuban Doctor officially makes, but most figures seem to settle somewhere between 20 and 40 dollars a month.
A bit about Cuban currency. There’s the Cuban National money, or pesos, which the locals are paid with and use for some things. There’s Convertible Pesos or CUC’s (called cooks) that the tourists are supposed to use and just for fun, the Euro is accepted in a lot of tourist places here as well. There’s about 25 pesos to a CUC, and the CUC is worth a bit more than a Canadian dollar. There’s a 20 percent fee levied on changing the USD, and they haven’t accepted it anywhere here for the last few years so don’t even bother with that. You will have to pay for anything which is government controlled (mostly everything – rental cars, hotel, marina, busses, a lot of restaurants etc) in CUC’s but there is a market for the local money too. If you can get some pesos and find a place to use them you can travel incredibly cheap. I changed 20 CUC’s into pesos and it nearly lasted us the whole trip. You can use pesos for things like local restaurants, farmers markets, or roadside stands. For example, we would pay between 40-50 pesos (50 pesos = 2 CUC’s) for drinks and dinner for both of us, and a lot less if we were just eating peso pizza or some other Cuban version of fast food from a roadside stand. It’s a little confusing at first but it doesn’t take long to get used to the system.
Our new friend Carlos promised the best mohitos in Cuba, and we would later have that promise repeated to us about 37 times a day over the next couple of weeks. According to our rigorous testing though, this was the one mohito promise that was actually kept. It was in the beautiful bar and restaurant where Carlos worked. There was an inner courtyard complete with trees, flowers and fine marble pillars everywhere. Jaime thought the bartender looked like Humphrey Bogart and I suppose that added to the exciting ambiance. This was the kind of polished place that back home we would have expected to pay 30 bucks for a couple of cocktails, here we paid 4.
We met up with Tim and Steffi back at the car at 2:00PM. We wanted to get to Baracoa before nightfall so we needed to get moving. For spending such a short time in Holguin we saw all kinds of great things (like a hundred year old printing press still being used), made a new friend, Jaime got her nails did, we ate some great peso pizza, and had (in our opinion) the best mohitos in Cuba in a beautiful setting. I’m sure the Germans were sick of hearing about all of this since all they had time for was a church service. Actually that’s all Steffi had time for, since Tim is an Atheist all he had time for was reading a newspaper while he waited for Steffi outside the church.
Within a couple of hours it became obvious that we wouldn’t make it to Baracoa before nightfall. It was obvious because the sun had set and we weren’t even in Moa yet. Moa is a little more than half way though, and we thought that staying there might be a better idea than continuing along on the goat trail of a road in the dark. I referred to the guidebook to see what it had to say about Moa. It said this:
“Important economically and horrendous ecologically, Moa is a big ugly mine.”
And that’s only the introduction! The single small paragraph devoted to this poor town goes on to say;
“Unless you are a mining technician or an environmentalist investigating impending ecological disasters there’s absolutely no reason to come here. ‘A better world is possible’ proclaims one of the billboards as you leave the town behind. Absolutely.”
It was tempting to check it out, but the fine red dust that was coating the road along with our car, clothing, and lungs convinced us otherwise and a few hours of slow progress later we were feeling our way into Baracoa.
saturday march 22, 2008 (santiago, cuba)
“Casa Particular” is a Cuban label given to a private residence that provides food and boarding for a fee. They cost less than a hotel room and in our opinion are infinitely more interesting. It’s no wonder then that we ended up staying in one every night that we were away from our boat, except for one. The one exception would be the night that we spent on a bus. Our first Casa Particular turned out to be the nicest. We had a great hostess and her home was beautiful. 30 foot ceilings, tile and stone, 3 dollar breakfast, a huge patio, and faux red leather furniture, it just doesn’t get any better.
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Turns out that we picked a good time to visit Baracoa. If we had been three days earlier we would have been witnessing an anti-cyclone (whatever that is) whip up the sea into a huge frenzy and pummel the sea front wall, road and buildings. 40 buildings were destroyed and a big chunk of the wall was knocked down, that and a small dead pig lying on the road provided the only evidence that there had been a massive storm. The town is known to be pretty mellow anyway, but I guess the recent storm had people even a little more subdued than usual.
We hired a couple of bici-taxi’s and got a tour of the town. Even though we were paying at least double the normal fare, it was still only a couple of dollars so we felt really bad for our driver who was probably 19 years old and only a 150 pounds soaking wet. Eventually he let me convince him to trade places and I peddled him around for a while. People thought this was pretty funny. They weren’t laughing so hard after I kicked him off and stole his bici-taxi though. I found this an especially difficult way to make a living so eventually quit and went back to the sailing/traveling gig.
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We checked out the baseball stadium. Cubans seem to take baseball very seriously, and they are incredibly good at. We’re no experts but 15 minutes of watching these kids play was all it took to convince us that they could give most major league teams a serious run for their money.
At some point that afternoon we decided that it would be a good idea to carry on to Santiago. On the way we passed through the now infamous Guantanamo. We checked out the huge communist style sculptures there which are evidently designed to make you feel very small and powerless. They reminded Jaime and I of the sculptures we saw while traveling through China. Steffi and Tim said they reminded them of the Eastern Block. We saw the Hotel Guantanamo and since water torture isn’t really our thing we decided to carry on to Santiago. Actually this isn’t ‘the’ Hotel Guantanamo of course, it’s just ‘a’ Hotel Guantanamo. If you look closely at the picture you can actually tell the difference. Note the subtle lack of barbed wire and German Shepards. Now the guide book didn’t say for sure but I think you can even stay at this Hotel Guantanamo and have a nice breakfast without being systematically tortured and held indefinitely without trial.
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On the way to Santiago we were all impressed with the constantly changing scenery. We went from agricultural farm land to striking coastline complete with huge crashing waves, through dessert to lush rolling hills with jungle-like vegetation. It was all very cool, and then we ran over a chicken. It was a stupid suicidal chicken that literally threw itself against the side of our car as we passed by. There are chickens everywhere in Cuba, it’s the one thing you can count on. Check any restaurant or roadside stand and they will invariably have pollo frito (fried chicken), and it’s usually pretty good. We were at one restaurant where the lady stood there and shook her head at every selection we made from the menu. She let us go through the whole thing like this before we finally got to the last item which was of course, pollo frito. It was a 3 page menu and that was the one thing they had. Why she didn’t just tell us that in the first place I have no idea but I just wanted to illustrate to you the fact that if nothing else, you can always count on a chicken being readily available in Cuba. I guess it was just a matter of time before we ran one over. We backed up to check on the chicken, it was of course very dead. There are always a lot of people on the roads in Cuba, in fact they sometimes even outnumber the chickens. Fortunately we didn’t hit any of them, and fortunately there were a few on this particular stretch of road that were happy to take this chicken off of our hands. With that bit of unpleasant business behind us we carried on for Santiago.
We made a few more stops. One was to buy cheese off a guy who was holding up a plate full of it on the side of the road. Apparently it’s quite common to do your cheese shopping like this in Cuba because we saw at least a half dozen of these guys. They were all holding up the same platters with the same cheese. We bought all kinds of roadside treats like this, and apart from the cheese I couldn’t even begin to tell you what any of it was. It was all quite unrecognizable to us but still quite good and none of it made us sick. Jaime and I have been hauling all kinds of loot around with us since the US for distribution in Cuba, and we were happy to start dolling some of it out. Hitchhikers, roadside cheese peddlers, little old ladies and barefooted families in the mountains like this one were all surprised recipients of some kind of manufactured capitalist goods. If nothing else it was a good icebreaker. I’m sure that everyone we met would have been just fine without the stuff, but it made us feel like we were giving something back, even if it was in such a small and insignificant way.
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We arrived in Santiago, located a Casa Particular, dropped off our bags and headed straight down to the Grand Hotel which was a treat and overlooked a nice 16th century plaza. We were starved and thirsty after a hot and dusty travel day, and the Bucanero went down like water. Like every other place in Cuba, there was of course an incredible band. After more rounds than I can recall and entrees for both of us, we departed the restaurant with the live music and unbeatable view at about 1AM after paying our 23 dollar bill. Cuba? Si.
sunday march 23, 2008 (santiago, cuba)
Today the Germans left and we explored Santiago by foot. There’s so much life here that it makes us wonder if anyone ever stays home. The nearly half million residents in Santiago always seem to pack into the streets, and everybody is busy at something. Street games include soccer, handball, baseball with a stick and bottle cap, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. People are selling stuff, people are buying stuff and old men are in the park on a bench talking about old ladies (or baseball) over a shared bottle of rum. T-shirts are apparently a popular gift to bring to Cuba, because you see every variety, genre, language and era emblazoned on them. We saw everything from the cowboy in the country wearing a Canadian national olympic hockey team shirt to the old lady in Santiago wearing a “Gnomies are my homies” shirt. Vibrant color, endless sound, laughing, kissing sounds (mostly for Jaime), whistles (also mostly for Jaime) and an incredible 6 piece band hiding behind a nondescript doorway on a nondescript street inviting you in to listen to them jam. These things are all typical, very typical. We absolutely loved it.
We had dinner at the former Bacardi residence (yes, the Rum people) and ordered way to much food by accident. It was a relatively upscale place and since we couldn’t understand the menu very well we decided to use the prices as a rough guide. They were so low that we assumed that it was an a-la-carte thing and ordered an entrée, a salad and a side each. They turned out to be full entrées despite the ridiculously low prices, so we ended up with two of those plus 4 side dishes on the table. It was really embarrassing having all this food on the table so we tried to scrape all the sides onto one plate and stack the empty ones underneath. I can just imagine what we must have looked like to the locals but the funny thing is that the waitress didn’t even flinch when we ordered all this food. We must have looked really hungry.
After dinner we stumbled upon an impromptu street party complete with live music and dancing. Apparently these incredible bands just find a little square, set up and play all night. People hear the music, grab a bottle of Rum and join the party. It’s really amazing, and now we are certain that the houses in Santiago are the most unused buildings around. There wasn’t one time day or night that we didn’t go outside to find the streets, squares and parks packed. We rounded off the evening by hanging out in a park and people watching, which is apparently the thing to do in this neighborhood because we had a hard time finding a seat.
From toddlers taking their first steps, to dozens of little kids running around like uncontrollable hellions (the knee to waist height varieties). Teenagers posturing, flirting, and for a lucky few kissing. Young couples, young families (somebody had to bring all those kids) and the same old men still sitting around, presumably with a new bottle of Rum. Some were still talking about old women and others had moved on to playing dominos or chess. The square was like this huge outdoor living room full of a big extended family. No fights, no drugs, and everyone seemed to know each other. We’ve never seen anything like it and were really envious. We found the same kind of thing all over Cuba.
At the same hour in Vancouver the downtown parks are full of drug dealers, junkies and prostitutes. Even the cops don’t go in alone, never mind letting your kids muck around unsupervised.
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monday march 24, 2008 (bayamo, cuba)
Off to Bayamo. We took a horse and cart to the bus stop for one peso each (5 cents). At the bus stop we caught a truck, I think it was an old Russian military transport. Along with 55 of our closest friends we paid our 5 pesos and crammed into the back. There were rows of small steel benches to sit on and we were lucky because our truck that had a canvas top. Some didn’t which would have been miserable today because it rained gatos and perros (working on my Spanish).
There’s a bit of a transportation problem in Cuba. That’s why people subject themselves to being stuffed in the back of a 50 year old military transport and suck diesel fumes while being mercilessly jostled all the way to their destination. It’s also why the horse and carriage, oxen and cart, Chinese bicycle, and 50’s vintage automobiles are all extensively used modes of transportation. You can find every variety in the small rural towns to the largest cities. Sure you could pay 40 CUC for the same trip and ride in the comfortable, air conditioned and almost always empty tourist busses but that would be forgoing one of the most fundamental of all Cuban experiences. Crappy transportation is as Cuban as Rum or the cigar. To miss it would be like going to La Habana and choosing a Coors Light over a Mohito. Only a Coors Light probably wouldn’t kill you. The Cuban train system with the abysmal safety record just might.
There weren’t any other tourists on the military transport truck, and I can’t say that the Cubans looked especially happy about being there either. But here’s a little secret, they aren’t that bad. As long as you are making short hops (we limited our longest truck day to 5 hours) and if it doesn’t rain, which it did. When it rains they fold all the side flaps down so you are in what feels a lot like a big canvas covered tomb. The roof leaks everywhere and you continue to get fumigated and jostled around relentlessly. Minus the diesel fumes, it would be a lot like the log ride at an amusement park, except that this one lasts for hours. But as far as 20 cent travel goes, it was great!
We finally bounced into Bayamo where we went for hamburgers and a movie for which we were charged 2 pesos (10 cents) admission. We thought this was a great deal until we saw the movie and realized that we had been overcharged. On the way back to our Casa we met a young Cuban guy called Raul that knew more about Canadian politics that we did. Those of you who know us may have laughed at that statement because we admittedly know only slightly more about Canadian politics than the Canadian politicians do (and that’s not very much at all), but this guy was really something. After he finished explaining how our parliament worked to us, we weren’t at all surprised to learn that he was a political science major. We had Raul up there on a pedestal for a while, until we found out that he was at the same movie that we were, and that he liked it. Then we weren’t too sure about him at all.
Bayamo was beautiful. We chanced upon this cobblestone pedestrian street that was lined with galleries, music shops and art classes. The street itself was full of sculptures, even the benches were pieces of art. The lamp posts each had a big tube of paint sculpted at the base, which I won’t even try to describe, just look at the picture and you’ll see what I mean. It went on like this for blocks and we were completely enamored. This country is full of surprises.
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tuesday march 25, 2008 (camaguey, cuba)
This morning I was chatting with the owner of our casa while he smoked a Cuban cigarette. They only cost him something like 40 cents a pack, but I guess they leave off the filters. They are nothing more than pure unfiltered tobacco, and everyone here smokes them. I’m sure that even the blackest lunged chain smokers at home would have a tough time with one of these, but this guy always had one dangling from his lips.
While I sipped my Cuban coffee and he hacked his Cuban butt, two young guys were going up and down the metal staircase behind us. First they carried up a coil of green and yellow wire. Next it was something that looked like a medieval sewing machine on wheels made from the decayed parts of a scrapped soapbox racer. I asked the chainsmoking casa owner about this, we were communicating quite well by this point using my 12 words of Spanish, his 8 words of English and our impeccable international hand gesturing skills. In response he flapped his right arm up and down 3 times, swung his head over towards his left shoulder and said “mmmph”. If you had impeccable international hand gesturing skills like I do you would already know that this translates exactly as; “Thank you for asking. I was hoping for the opportunity to show you what those young men are doing. Please, follow me up those stairs. They lead to the roof top and once we are there I’ll be able to show you precisely what they are up to.”
So I did.
On the roof were the same two young guys, who are not likely to become two old guys. They had spliced that green and yellow wire that I had seen them with a little while earlier directly into the overhead power line. No shit. Then they took the free end, the one supplied with all that current from the overhead power line, and attached it to the medieval sewing machine on wheels made from the decayed parts of a scrapped soapbox racer. The medieval sewing machine on wheels made from the decayed parts of a scrapped soapbox racer actually turned out to be a crude home made welder made from parts of cannibalized automobiles and household appliances. The wheels actually appear to be old bearings from some long dead and gone piece of farm equipment (a theory later confirmed by the chain smoking casa owner through a series of hand gestures far too complicated to describe within a set of parentheses).
They were constructing a frame made from salvaged rebar on which the chain smoking casa owners’ wife would eventually hang plants from. I was amazed to see that they had a welding mask. They only had one though so they shared it. The guy with the mask would do the welding, the guy without the mask would cover his face with a rag, hold the piece of metal being welded and do his best not to look directly at the spark. I knew that it would be difficult scene to convey accurately so I took a lot of pictures. There’s a close up of the green and yellow wire being sliced into the main line, a close up of the machine itself, the welder and his apprentice, and then there’s my favorite, the one with the dog in it. There’s so much going on in that photograph. That guy in the red shirt which has a Fidel Castro quote on it, he’s the chain smoking casa owner and yes, there’s actually one between the index and middle finger of his right hand (the shirt says something about mankind craving justice I think, but remember that without gestures my Spanish is limited to 12 words). That dog in the picture was actually the size of a wolf. He looked like a cross between a German Shepard and the Werewolf of London and he’s left Werewolf of London sized shit all over the roof. The welders were either welding, stepping in Werewolf shit or yelling at the dog to stop sniffing the bare wire connections that were scattered all over the place. I don’t know whose dog it was but there was evidence that he had been shitting there for a while and may have actually lived on the roof. In the foreground you can see the welding machine, yes, that sewing machine on wheels made from the decayed parts of a scrapped soapbox racer, that’s actually the welding machine. You can see that they have attached it to the yellow and green wire which runs directly to the overhead power lines. What you can’t see is that the guy doing the welding is actually suspended three stories off the ground. He’s kneeling on the same metal grate that covers their courtyard, that’s where the chain smoking casa owners’ wife currently hangs her plants. You also can’t see that he is in fact wearing flip flops. No shit. The last thing to point out is the ladder, that sturdy looking thing held fast by the 4 foot chunk of questionable rope. They dragged that ladder up the same stairs onto the roof so that they could weld the really high bits. By this point I had seen enough, and left before they dragged that rickety bullshit ladder through the Werewolf shit over to the edge of the 3 story roof to hand weld a chunk of metal with a home made welder which had been Mickey Moused into an overhead power line while wearing flip flops. We’ve done some crazy things in our time… but these guys were seriously deranged.
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Jaime was downstairs using the first internet connection that we’ve seen in Cuba. Apparently the chain smoking casa owner was a “friend of the state” or something like that. He was allowed to keep a PC in the house but only foreigners were allowed access to the internet. For that privilege we paid 5 CUC’s per hour. When I came down from the roof I asked Jaime how it was going. She was trying to update the website and said that it was going good except that every few minutes the screen would go fuzzy and the lights would buzz and then go dim. I explained what was happening on the roof, and we decided to leave.
We trucked our way from Bayamo to Las Tunas where we caught another truck to Camaguey. It poured rain on the second leg so we were once again subjected to the canvas tomb of doom. We arrived just outside of town and had to catch a ride with a local guy who was selling seats in his 20 year old Lada for $7.50 each. We had just spent 5 hours on the trucks and it was still raining so we were in no mood to haggle. Besides 15 bucks was actually a pretty good deal considering that the truck had randomly stopped 30 kilometers from our destination. We said goodbye to the kid from New York we had met on the truck and hopped in. He (the kid from New York) was doing a good job of blending in. He was making his way to Habana as well, sponsored by a language class through NYU of all places. He was a cool guy and we were both glad to see an American sneaking through the country, more of them should. Funny thing about that though, the three of us were told to keep a low profile and not talk to anyone. We weren’t supposed to be traveling this way and apparently the driver could get into trouble for transporting us. We were to be very sneaky. After that little pep talk he lead us onto the truck in front of everyone. So here’s 50 plus locals waiting in the rain to board while these three stupid gringos are ushered in front of them… yeah, real low key there buddy. I’m sure that nobody noticed.
Camaguey sucked. I’m sorry but it did. Maybe it was the rain, maybe it was the dog shit everywhere, but it did. Get this, three or four hundred years ago pirates had a nasty habit of sacking this city. They would leave their boats at anchor somewhere and come all this way inland just to rape, rob and steal in Camaguey. The people of Camaguey eventually tired of being robbed and raped and stuff so they came up with a very clever idea. They designed the city to be utterly impossible to navigate. The city is actually purpose built to be confusing as hell. Streets wind and turn through narrow passages and join up with other streets in the most confounding manner imaginable. I guess the idea was to frustrate the marauding packs of pirates to the point where they just gave up and moved along to do their raping and robbing in the next city. I guess it worked because the totally exasperating concoction of streets and avenues are still in place. Even the locals had no idea how to get from one place to another. There are probably pirates that came, got lost, and never left. We are no pirates but after 5 hours on a truck to get here, the rain, the dog shit and then walking around endlessly trying to find our bloody Casa, we were ready to move on to the next city too.
I’m sure that there are people who have had an incredible time in Camaguey. I’m sure that they have wonderful museums, charming people and a fascinating history. I’m sure that you could even get caught up in the quirky pirate baffling city design, but we didn’t. Circumstantial or not, we hated Cameguey. In fact, it was the only place in Cuba that we didn’t like. Did I mention the hustlers? The place is crawling with them. Every turn you take you are greeted with some sleaze ball pretending to be your friend in order to sell you some fake cigars, a room, a taxi, recommend a restaurant… oh, and of course you are from Canada, what a remarkable coincidence that every single person in Camaguey has a brother, sister, or cousin in Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal.
We fought our way through the throngs of scammers and bici-taxi rip off artists and managed to find a cool bar in a 200 year old building full of pirate artifacts. We drank cheap beer and talked about our next stop. We know just how those pirates must have felt.
wednesday march 26, 2008 (camaguey, cuba)
We missed the truck. Then we missed the train. We were so desperate to leave that we decided to pay the premium and ride the tourist bus, by then we had missed that too. We resigned ourselves to a second night in Camaguey.
We visited a cool farmer’s market and met a taxi driver who was trying to pass himself off as a former medal winning Olympic Cuban boxer. I checked his I.D. and took his name down so that I could check up on him, but we haven’t had internet access since Bayamo so I can’t confirm the story yet.
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One more saving grace before we close the book on this place, we found an incredible Italian restaurant. The service was impeccable, the food was above reproach, and they had a clean toilette. This is like the holy trinity of Cuban restaurant standards, but then they pulled one more trick which totally blew our minds. After having such a lousy time we had decided to treat ourselves and found this, the nicest restaurant in town. In this department Camaguey is no slouch, it’s the third largest city in Cuba (after Habana and Santiago) and is known for its restaurants. We had ordered a nice bottle of wine, we ate our fill and we both visited the restroom just because it was the first nice one that we had seen. Then the bill came. It was 17 dollars. Now this was an uppity kind of place. I don’t know who the people were at the tables next to us but, unlike us, they were well dressed, polished, snooty and had coiffed hair. We could only assume that they were not just the bastard offspring of marauding pirates but the Camaguey elite, and yet here was our bill, only 17 dollars.
thursday march 27, 2008 (habana, cuba)
In our attempt to sample every mode of Cuban travel available we decided to ride the rickety rails from Camaguey to Habana. In our attempt to get out of Camaguey as soon as possible we were at the train station by 5:30AM. A couple of hours later we were on our way in relative comfort. Comfortable relative to a 50 year old Russian truck that is. For example, the bathroom was a hole in the ground. You could actually see the tracks whizzing by, but they had a bathroom. It was a 9 hour ride so we were in Habana late the same afternoon.
We spent 5 days in Habana and felt like we only scratched the surface. Opportunities to lose ourselves in the madness abounded. The downtown area can be divided into three main sections, Habana Vieja, Centro Habana, and Vedado. You don’t need much of a plan, just pick an area and then wander around. We stayed at a few different Casa’s and would just strike out from there to see the neighborhood. There’s something to see around every corner. Art, museums, street musicians, restaurants, seedy bars, peso pizza, dance, festivals, boxing, rum and cigars; Habana has it all.
There’s over 2 million people and the city covers over 700 square kilometers. Entire guide books have devoted their pages to this one city. Most nights we would just pick a place to eat and then get ourselves lost after dinner. Without fail we would find ourselves watching a great band, get caught up in a block party, watch some incredible dance troops that just happened to be performing in some random spot, or just sit in a square and people watch. A couple of times we didn’t have anything to do, so we literally just listened for some music. Then we tracked it down to the source and found some huge event taking place, from thousands of people at a huge festival to a few dozen watching some very strange (but very talented) form of interpretive dance. We found some really crazy expensive hotels and drank coffee in the lobby. Everyone told us that Habana can be hard on your budget but we found plenty of beautiful Casa’s and not once did we pay more than 25 CUC’s for a nights stay. At one we stayed up all night and drank Rum with the night watchman. He invited us over to his place because his wife spoke some English, and that was even after he got in trouble for Rumming it up with us.
You would need to try very hard to not have a good time in Habana. It’s a city that lives up to it’s hype.
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monday march 31, 2008 (habana, cuba)
So far we have traveled by boat, horse, bike, car, truck and train in Cuba but still haven’t taken a bus. Tonight we will cross that one off the list too. Our bus leaves at 8:30PM and goes all night to Holguin. We should be there by 8:00AM tomorrow morning. This will be our last day in Habana. We had breakfast at the Casa, and took one last wander around. After we had each collected one piece of art to commemorate the occasion we made our way to the terminal.
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February 2008 Bahamas
friday february 01, 2008 (bimini, bahamas)
We were up pretty early today, about 7AM but still felt like we missed a memo or something. The marina was like a ghost town. At least 20 boats must have cleared out of here before dawn so it looks like we’re in charge around here now. It will be a short term in office though, we had decided yesterday that we would get out of the marina today too. We just didn’t know that there was a mass exodus planned.
After taking what will probably be our last land showers for a while, we devoured a nice breakfast and cleared out. Even though the marina cost less than half the average Floridian marina we would have still preferred anchoring out, and probably would have if it wasn’t for customs and immigration. It turned out to be a good thing everyone had left, my ‘maneuvering in tight quarters’ skills were a tad rusty for some reason. Slapdash only has one engine so it doesn’t handle like the bigger cats, which usually have an engine in each hull. We didn’t hit anything, but were glad there was nobody watching because we looked pretty clumsy.
We exited the harbor with a whole lot more confidence now that we had already done it once. The breakers and sandy beach didn’t look quite as menacing as they did when we arrived. Our destination today was Honeymoon Harbor on Gun Cay. It’s a little harbor on an uninhabited Cay, and wouldn’t you know it, there’s a big wreck on the way there. We saw on the way in and wanted to check out, how convenient. I did a little research on it while we were in Bimini and it’s had a really colorful past. Here’s what I found out:
The S.S. Sapona is a 287 foot concrete hulled cargo steamer that was built in North Carolina and launched in 1920. In 1924 it was sold to some crazy Rum runner who used her as a floating warehouse to store his contraband during the prohibition. That didn’t last too long though, only a couple of years later he ran it aground during a hurricane. He lost the ship and all its cargo and died penniless. Then during World War II the Air Force and Navy started using it as target practice. They stopped the bombing shortly after the legendary “lost squadron of Flight 19” disappeared somewhere in the Bermuda triangle after a practice bombing mission on the Sapona. Maybe its cursed or something.
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We dropped our anchor a hundred yards or so from the wreck and after a ham sandwich (Bimini Bread is damn good) and a beer we launched the dink. The wreck is sitting in less than 20 feet of water so we just took along our snorkels, masks and fins opting to save our tanks for a real dive. We snorkeled all around the wreck, and were able to get inside. There were tons of fish and the water was super clear. It was as good if not better than a lot of dives we’ve been on. My only complaint is the lack of lobster. I was hoping to bring one or two home for dinner.
While we were there two more catamarans pulled up. Turns out one of them had been following the slapdash website and recognized our boat. He called us up on the VHF to say hi and congratulate us on finding our anchor. It was a little out of the ordinary to be recognized in the middle of nowhere like that, but we were glad that they did. Not only were they really great people but they had caught a Dorado on the way over the Gulf Stream and were nice enough to share some of their catch with us. Later that night they invited us over to their boat for beers and pizza. Needless to say the Some Days are Diamonds crew are total aces in our books. When we showed up, the couple from the other cat were there too. They are our age and have just set off on a circumnavigation too, so we were pretty pleased about the whole day and hope to see more of these folks along the way.
saturday february 02, 2008 (gun cay, bahamas)
We are really looking forward to getting down to the Exumas, so decided that it was time to move along. Today we would cross the Great Bahama bank. The trip will be twice as long as the Gulf Stream crossing, which means our first over night sail. There is a bail out point between here and Nassau though so if we need to we can divert and anchor for a while.
It was really calm this morning and what little wind we had was right on the nose again. I’m not sure what’s going on but it seems like whatever direction we point this boat determines where the wind will come from that day. Motoring in the calm seas gave us a chance to catch up on some boat chores though. We locked our course into the autopilot and started scraping, scrubbing, wiping and polishing everything we could find. Within a few hours slapdash was sparkling clean again and looking pretty sharp if I do say so myself.
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It’s been a pretty relaxed passage. We’ve only seen a couple of boats which is a big contrast to the commercial traffic in the Gulf Stream. Towards the afternoon the wind picked up though and things got a little choppy. The mood is still pretty mellow though; I’m writing a log, Jaime is reading a book and we both had time to work on our tans. Every so often we scan the horizon, check the course and heading, and then go back to our diversions. It’s a much better trip than on the ICW because then someone had to be at the helm steering at all times. There’s nothing but beautiful blue water as far as we can see for 360 degrees around us. The view won’t change until tomorrow afternoon sometime. We are looking forward to our first night underway, unless you count that night in Florida when we motored around in circles trying to fix our steering. We’re hoping for a little less excitement this time.
monday february 04, 2008 (new providence, bahamas)
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We made it! Things got kind of rough shortly after I finished that last log. Once the seas kicked up it was tough for either of us to do anything but stay in the cockpit and steer the boat. The wind was stronger than forecast, and as usual right on our nose. It was a long night but by mid morning on Sunday things were either calming down or we were just getting used to it. Either way, aside from the lack of sleep life was pretty good. We took turns taking cat naps on the couch, and during one of my watches I put a line out just to pass the time. It seemed like I was just catching sea grass every 5 minutes though, so I started thinking it might be more trouble than it was worth and considered packing it in.
Our progress was slow. We only managed about 4 knots the whole time so the passage took longer than expected. I fixed up a gourmet lunch of franks and beans and by the time we finished it Nassau was finally in site. About three minutes later the rod I had forgotten about jumped to life. It bent over and started playing out line with that “bzzzzzz” sound that every fisherman hopes to hear. For a second Jaime and I just looked at each other so I’m not sure who was more surprised; her, me or the fish. I grabbed the rod and set the hook. After a minute of reeling, a beautiful Mahi Mahi leaped into the air, their shimmering blue and green colors are unmistakable. He shot into the air a couple more times during the fight and things on deck started to look a bit like a like a Mexican fire drill. I really didn’t expect to catch anything, setting the rod out was more of a diversion to pass the time so nothing was ready. Jaime was running around gathering things like gloves, gaff, and vodka (we read somewhere that a capful will stun a fish instantly and make it easy to land). Once he was in gaffing range I passed the rod to Jaime and only after the third sloppy attempt did I finally have a good hold on him. She passed me the vodka and I poured him a welcome aboard shot. It seemed to have no effect other than to really piss him off. Apparently Mahi Mahi’s are angry drunks. I’ll spare you the gruesome detail of what happened next but I was finally able to dispatch the fish and hang him from the davits. Our methods were far from text book but not bad for a couple of recently reformed city slickers, after all the fish was on the boat now. Jaime brought out another book we’ve been saving for the occasion and read the step by step instructions out loud as I went to work preparing our dinner. A few minutes later we had enough filets for at least 6 meals, one of which would be consumed upon our arrival into New Providence.
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We kicked the boat into gear and got back on track. We were pleased to see that the whole event only set us back by 30 minutes or so. Land was clearly visible and we started looking for a suitable anchorage. At that moment I happened to look up and saw an instantly familiar teal and blue logo on the tail of a 737 making its final approach just over our heads. It was a WestJet flight, the company where up until a few months ago I had worked for the past 11 years. I wonder if the crew was anyone I knew. Could WestJet’s newest flight attendant Mike Byrom be onboard? By the way, congratulations Mike! See what happens when you pursue your dreams? Anything is possible. You go girl!
I digress. We pulled into our chosen harbor and couldn’t believe our eyes. This is by far the most picturesque anchorage we have seen so far. Clear blue water with colorful colonial homes lining the shore. Complete with a powder white sand beach; this was real postcard material. About 4 seconds after the anchor was down we were both in the water splashing around and enjoying some hard earned R&R. I dove down to check that the anchor was set and couldn’t believe how good the visibility was. The sand beneath the boat was as white and powdery as the sand on the beach.
We toweled off and opened a bottle of wine. I threw some generous slabs of 2 hour fresh Mahi Mahi filets on the BBQ. Then on a wine high with full and satisfied bellies we just sat in awe of our nearly perfect surroundings. Not long after the sun went down we passed out and slept like we were dead. A perfect way to end a tough passage.
wednesday february 06, 2008 (new providence, bahamas)
We’ve basically just been hanging around and enjoying this amazing anchorage for the past couple days. I’ve been diving like crazy trying to find the lobster. The reef is amazing but I’ve been completely skunked on the sea bug front thus far. I’m pretty sure Tiger must own one of these homes on the beach though because I’ve found a dozen golf balls and we must be 300 yards from shore.
There’s a big marina nearby which clearly caters to the mega yacht crowd. So it’s a little below our normal high standards but we decided to visit anyway. We pulled into the fuel dock and were met by a super friendly dock hand by the name of Vaughn. They are obviously more accustomed to selling thousands of gallons of diesel at a time, but he didn’t even bat an eye at our request for just 50. Same thing when we filled up our water tanks. It took about 50 gallons to top us off which was such a trivial amount to them that they didn’t even charge us for it. We also wanted to make a run to the nearby grocery store while we were there, but were informed that they charge 40 dollars per hour to stay at the dock. That was for the first 3 hours, after that you would be billed for the full day rate which was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 dollars a foot. There was no way we could afford that just to go pick up a bag of groceries, but Vaughn had no intention of sticking to the policy. He whispered to me that they couldn’t charge us anything as long as we were still fuelling, so I should take my time. Then he handed Jaime the keys to his golf cart to speed up the trip and gave her directions to the grocery store. Jaime was back before I finished with the fuel and water, but Vaughn wasn’t finished with us yet. When the time came to pay up he asked me to hop in with him for a ride back to the office. On the way he gave me a tour and pointed out the Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery homes (like I said, a little below our usual standard). We took our time on the way back which gave Jaime plenty of time to put the groceries away, get the boat all sorted out, and even send a few emails. We were about to cast off when a 200 foot mega yacht came around the corner. This thing was huge, their fenders were about the same size as our hull. Our bill was probably less than one percent of the average and here we were being treated like royalty. Needless to say Vaughn got a great tip, and the boat was ready for another crossing.
We decided to make a trip across the island to visit Nassau and its famous Atlantis hotel, resort and casino. After asking a few locals we found the bus stop and to our shock it arrived right on time. We soon found out why. The guy drove like a desperate criminal. After 20 harrowing minutes of watching the countryside blur past us we were deposited in the center of downtown Nassau. Happy to be alive we got on with checking out the city. To our dismay this wasn’t much of a city. The neighborhood along the waterfront was more of a kitschy facade of all the usual shops and restaurants that cater to the sunburnt fanny pack wearing contents of the nearby cruise ships, and there were thousands. What an ugly sight. Tense and claustrophobic we fought our way through the masses towards the bridge that led to Atlantis. We’ve had some experience with these crowds and knew that their range only extends about a kilometer from the boat. If we could get outside the perimeter we would be safe. Sure enough just outside the fake storefronts the real city came into view, a sight that scares most of the cruise ship crowd back into the safe confines of their carefully fabricated dollar dissolving matrix. They have no doubt been warned about the extreme dangers of wandering too far from the waterfront. The only real danger of course is that that they might actually spend their money somewhere that feeds the local economy instead of the big cruise ship companies.
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We crossed the bridge to Atlantis and were relieved that we didn’t decide to anchor in Nassau harbor. We had a good view of the whole harbor from the bridge and between the cruise ships, the commercial traffic, the garbage, wakes and ripping current it looked like a horrible place to be. We spent the next few hours wandering around Atlantis. Big even by Vegas standards the whole resort is pretty impressive and the aquarium, which was the main attraction for us, was incredible.
We couldn’t resist a visit to the casino floor. Red felt like a good color today and with one spin of the roulette wheel I managed to pay off Jaime’s slot machine debt and pretty much cover all of our expenses for the day.
On our way back through town the cruise ship had obviously left. The town was deserted, there were steel sliding doors covering up all the cutesy shops and the only people sharing the streets with us now were a few drunks and druggies. We didn’t recognize the place; and you would have to see the transformation yourself to believe it. It went from Disneyland to South Central in just a few hours.
Unfortunately the bus schedule was outdated and had stopped running, which was hard to believe because it was only about 8PM. We had to hire a cab and it cost us the rest of our winnings to get back to the boat. A pretty good day, but what a contrast. We were happy to be back on the paradise side of the island, the side that nobody from a cruise ship will ever see.
thursday february 07, 2008 (new providence, bahamas)
We were up at 0’dark hundred again getting ready to begin the next leg of our journey. Today we would work our way south and east out of New Providence and cross the Yellow Bank on our way to Allan’s Cay in the Exuma chain. The day before we took a few bearings off nearby markers which enabled us to navigate our way through the reef in the dark. You could hear the surf crashing nearby and we knew from seeing the channel in the daylight that we were only a few yards from the reef line. It probably wasn’t much of a thing, but we seem to be gaining a cautious competence.
After a rough wavey start, things settled down and we were able to motor sail most of the afternoon. Keeping the speed up enabled us to arrive before sunset. This was obviously the first acceptable weather window in a while because there was a glut of sailboats making the passage. At one point we counted 18 masts on the horizon. Unfortunately we were probably all heading for the same place so we knew that it would be a crowded anchorage.
We made our way through the channel to Allan’s Cay at about 5PM and as expected the place was packed. We considered just going on to the next Cay but it was close to sunset and we didn’t really want to chance an arrival in the dark. We decided to just feel our way into the anchorage and check things out. To our complete surprise the South end was thick with boats (about 20 all clumped together) but further into the natural harbor there was a section that Jaime found on the chart that was completely unoccupied. We thought there must be something wrong with the spot but dropped our hook in six feet of water anyway. It set really well and we just stared over at the big crowd in disbelief. Boats were still coming in and people were actually starting to raft up because there was no more room and here we were with this whole pocket all to ourselves. We thought maybe people had been reading the website and were scared to anchor anywhere near us, but whatever the reason we felt like rock stars with our own private spot while everyone else was packed in like sardines.
friday february 08, 2008 (allens cay, bahamas)
Allan’s Cay looked something like we imagined the Galapagos Islands to look. Maybe it was the rocky islets, maybe it was the scrubby brush, but probably it was all the lizards. This place is infested with Iguanas. We have no idea why but when you land your dinghy on the beach several dozen will come to greet you. They are looking for a handout of course, and we were happy to oblige.
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After being entertained by a bunch of Godzilla wannabees for a couple hours we decided that we had finally escaped the ordinary. A tiny island in the middle of nowhere overrun by lizards just felt a little more exotic than streets lined with Senor Frogs and TGI Friday’s.
On one of the beaches we found Tom and Carol, the people from Some Days a Diamond that we ran into back at the Sapona. I’m sure they thought that they were finally rid of us but we showed them. Later Charles and Giselle from Wild Ride arrived and we had everyone over for Banana Rum and Mahi Balls. Bet you didn’t know that fish had balls. To my immense surprise everyone asked for a refill on their glasses of banana rum. I thought we were going to be stuck with that bottle for years, and had to reluctantly admit that Jaime was right. I’ve been teasing her ever since she bought it, who drinks banana rum for crying out loud?
saturday february 09, 2008 (highbourne cay, bahamas)
Before leaving Highbourne Cay we had to get some bread. Sounds simple enough but you would have thought we were organizing some illegal arms trading or something. First you had to tune your VHF to a certain station, then you asked for “Cool Runner”. Soon someone answered back and you place an order with the mystery voice. Plans are made and agreed to by both parties. “Meet me by the marina at 1000AM, and make sure you are alone”. Cool Runner was an hour late but a golf cart finally showed up and we were able to trade our cash for fresh bread. There’s a store at the marina so Jaime decided to pick up a couple of things. We were on our way back to the boat with two tomatoes, two small loaves of bread and a can of pop. The bill for these modest supplies? Twenty dollars. Ouch.
The three boat flotilla was on its way to Normans Cay only a few miles away. There’s a tiny cut which provides access to “Normans Pond”, a natural harbor with protection from all sides. The entrance is shallow and intricate though so many boats just pass it by. Apparently it’s like a big lake once you are inside though, so a perfect hiding spot to ride out the coming front.
Some Days a Diamond took the pole position and broke trail for the rest of us. Tom did an incredible job of jostling his way through the cut, but once inside he bottomed out. The tide was on its way out and there wasn’t enough water to carry us through. We decided to anchor outside the cut for the night and try again at high tide the next day.
I used the free time to resume my sea bug hunt. After a couple of hours I was convinced that there was no lobster in the Bahamas and that they must import them from somewhere else. The sun was getting low and threatening to put an end to my search when my fortune finally changed. A couple of wiggling antenna sticking out from beneath a rock gave up the location of my first lobster, then my second, then my third! Within 20 minutes I had three big lobsters speared and safely in the dinghy. It would be way more than we could eat so after showing the bugs to Jaime and posing for the requisite photo, I headed over to see Tom and Carol. Tom showed me how to clean and cook the catch and for his trouble received one for the grill. Wild Ride had already eaten but couldn’t resist the offer and cooked up the second bug. Then back to Slapdash where Jaime had a pasta and sauce waiting for our share of the bounty. It was big. One tail was almost too much for us. Almost.
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After dinner we were spoiled on Wild Ride with a movie night. It was as close to the silver screen as you can get on a boat. This wasn’t roughing it. Our cinematic experience was complete with surround sound, twizzler’s, popcorn and all the latest flicks. For a while there we almost forgot that we were at anchor somewhere in the Caribbean.
monday february 11, 2008 (normans cay, bahamas)
We all made the passage into Normans Pond without incident. We’ve been exploring old ruins, caves, and seem to be surrounded by incredible beaches. We’ve heard about a small airstrip on the other side of the island and a place right beside it that will sell you beer and burgers. There’s also the remains of an old wrecked DC3 in the bay over there, so two more reasons than we needed to hop in a dinghy with Charles and Giselle to go exploring.
We passed Tom and Carol on the way there. They had made it most of the way but turned back because the tide was on its way out and they were concerned about being stranded on the other side. The water was also pretty rough since the front is now in full swing and winds are holding steady at 25 knots. The draw of burgers and beer proved too strong for our party though, and we decided to push on. We had no trouble getting through the shallows and found a good beach to land the dinghy. On the way past we spotted the plane wreckage and decided to visit it on the way back, once our bellies were full of beers and burgers.
The beach we landed on was right beside a whole bunch of ruins for us to explore. It was pretty creepy. There were all kinds of houses, overgrown roads, shops, machinery and many more signs of former habitation just laying around. Everything looked like it was just abandoned a few decades ago and left to rot. As we made our way further across the island we had lots of opportunities to check out different ruins and speculate about their demise. It was more than a little creepy and hard not to think that we were trapped inside an episode of Lost or something. The plague, civil war, top secret government tests, ritual cult suicide, and a mass alien abduction were all theories we constructed, but as is often the case here, the facts turned out to be just as colorful as any fiction we could dream up. Turns out that before the hay day of the narcotics trade, this island was developed as a dive resort. It did reasonably well and people started building homes here. They put in an airstrip and built cabins for the divers. Both sides of the island were developed with paved roads throughout. Then one day a drug lord named Lehder and his crew moved in. They literally took over the place. People would come home only to find a bunch of guys sitting there with big guns and even bigger bags of coke all over the place. The island was so remote that there wasn’t anything anyone could do but leave or be killed. People abandoned their homes and the island fell into a state of disrepair. The guy who runs the only restaurant here now is the nephew of one of the old developers and they are trying to get things spooled up again.
We would have to settle for his account of the history of the island as our only reward for trekking all the way over and finding the place though, they were closed! No amount of begging and pleading could convince him to sell us a burger because they had some private function going on. A bunch of guys in private planes had flown in and were using the place to have a meeting. Hmm, now what kind of guys fly private aircraft to an abandoned island in the middle of nowhere with a history of drug smuggling to have a closed meeting?
We hiked back to the dinghy and made our way to the old airplane wreck. Apparently this was one of the few legitimate cargo flights made to the island and it wrecked its landing gear on landing. They pulled up and tried to bank around to make another approach but the wreckage had severed some hydraulic lines. The resulting crash killed both pilots on impact. The DC3 was almost totally intact. It was really shallow so we just snorkeled around for a while and were all pretty amazed that, except for the tail, the plane was all in one piece. If it wasn’t for the big crater made from the impact you would have a hard time believing that the pilots didn’t walk (swim) away.
Tired and hungry we were all happy to be headed back. The wind had picked up again and now we were under an almost constant wall of water. Pretty soon we were all wearing our masks and snorkels in the dinghy just to make the ride a little more comfortable. We only had to put up with that for a few minutes though because pretty soon we ran out of water all together! As Tom had predicted the tide had dropped leaving us on the wrong side of a big muddy flat. There was nothing we could do but commence with trying to drag the dinghy across the mud flat. Picture if you can the four of us in mud up to our knees, and sometimes our waist, trying to drag a four hundred pound dinghy several hundred yards while laughing hysterically. It was an absurd situation to say the least, but after a couple hours of hard work we finally made it. By the time we were back at the boats we were all exhausted, half starved and more determined than ever to get a damned burger. Now it’s personal.
wednesday february 13, 2008 (normans cay, bahamas)
Sometimes when the tide pulls water from the bank through a narrow cut, it will face a stiff breeze coming from the opposite direction. These conditions create what is known locally as a “Rage”, basically big confused and dangerous waves. All the Bahamian cruising guides warn visiting boaters about these conditions too. For example: “On a day with strong winds but relatively small seas on the bank a Rage can easily overcome the most competent captain and his vessel part way through the channel”.
Today we experienced a Rage first hand. We would climb up the 8-10 foot waves until the bow was sticking up into the sky and then come crashing down the other side into the trough. Then we would begin our slow climb up the side of the next steep wave and do it all over again. We had a lot of fun and Jaime even rode out some of the bigger waves from the deck. We couldn’t have been happier with how Slapdash handled and were glad to gain the experience. Wild Ride passed through ahead of us and took these great shots as we passed through the channel.
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After we had returned to claim our much earned beers and burgers yesterday there wasn’t much left for us on Normans Cay so we were all happy to be underway. The next stop was Shroud Cay which turned out to be a terribly exposed anchorage. We rolled, bounced and pitched around all night long. Charles and I mounted a hunting expedition outside of the park to do some hunting which more than made up for the rough anchorage. A couple of hours later we returned with a two huge lobsters and a big Grouper. Once again Tom patiently showed us how to prepare our catch and we made plans for a feast. The grouper was amazing and easily fed all six of us, so we saved the lobster for tomorrow. We were sitting around full to the brim and the conversation still centered on how we should prepare our next meal. We decided on Lobster penne, and with that business settled called it a night.
friday february 15, 2008 (warderick wells, bahamas)
We had a fantastic sail to Warderick Wells. We haven’t done any exploring yet but this place is supposed to be beautiful. We are on a mooring ball here, its really cheap and worth the money to be inside the sheltered bay. We will probably spend a few days here to explore and catch up on a big list of boat chores that we’ve been neglecting.
Jaime is going to fill all the gel coat cracks (she counted 21 of them), and our head is leaking so I’ll have the pleasant job of pulling that out to see what I can do. We also need to clean the connections on our VHF because apparently we aren’t transmitting very well. We are overdue for an oil change and the drive leg needs some attention. There are a couple of leaks in the cabin that need to be addressed and maybe I can finally get around to patching the big hole in our dinghy. Oh, Jaime will be making another trip up the mast too. A couple days after she changed the anchor light our running light went out. They have a rare (and expensive) internet connection here so we will finally be able to update the website and post the last couple weeks worth of slaplogs.
So we’ll have our hands full for a while but what a great place to stop and catch up on things. Oh, I should mention as well that our technical difficulties continue to plague us. We lost our last batch of emails, probably 20 of them. The laptop we were using has developed an attitude again and we aren’t able to access our profile. It sets up a temporary profile every time we log in so we have the basic functionality but we can’t get into our outlook account so are afraid that we’ve lost some of your emails. We reply to every email we receive so if you have sent us one and haven’t heard back, that’s why. Sorry about that, we love hearing from you so please try again.
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