Aries 32 - Thistledown
so, I arrived in puerto vallarta. Or, actually, la cruz de huanacaxtle, in bahia banderas, just about 10 miles from puerto vallarta. There's a better anchorage here than there, and I can catch a bus into the city.
The trip down the coast was pretty cool. It was interesting sailing alone. I skipped ensenada, sailing right to turtle bay, or actually, first, cedros island just outside of turtle bay so I could check in. Cedros was just a little fishing village, but it was cool. I found that my spanish wasn't so bad, and I was able to communicate without much trouble.
checkin was increadibly easy, which makes me a little nervous that they skipped something. They had me fill out some form, stampted it, and that was it. I didn't have to go to the imigration or customs offices, I didn't pay anything... I asked if I needed to go anywhere else and they said, "no, that's it." I have to check in again here though with the port captain, so maybe he'll straiten it out if there are any issues. It occurred to me though that if worse comes to worse I don't even really need the zarpe. I could just hang out here and leave whenever and when I get to the next country, tell them I left from san diego. It's not like I have a stamp in my passport or anything, so why bother with exit papers? hell I probably didn't really even have to check in at all... who's going to check in mexico? I wouldn't do it in ecuador, they checked me there three times a day when I was there, but who cares here?
On cedros island some school kids came out in a panga, a little fishing boat, just to kind of chat and see my boat. It was kind of neat, and good to practice spanish.
In turtle bay I met some americans... I'm not sure how well you could go cruising around by boat without knowing english. I think english is probably more usefull cruising mexico than spanish is. anyways, I met one american living with his wife in a little house on the beach. They'd just moved there. He said "the deal was, I told her 6 years ago that if she married me, I'd move back here with her when I retired." He seemed a little... like he was still getting used to it. They were just cleaning up the house they were moving into. He said "this place is like an un-cut diamond... a little rough around the edges but with some polishing...." I don't know if I'd call it a diamond, but it was definately rough aronud the edges, and I think he was saying it like that to try to convince himself more than me. :-) He still hadn't learnt spanish, since she learnt english and they'd been living in the US. They "dated" via email, using some babelfish like translator. It's a very small town. He'll probably get involved a lot with the cruisers though, I'm sure it gets crowded there when the "baha haha" comes through (a cruisers rally).
Another couple I met was sailing north back to san diego to put a new engine in their boat. Aparently they got water in the cylinders, because the exhaust was too low and their boat was too overloaded. They called their boat a power boat even though it had sails, just because it's equiped like a power boat. They have air conditioning and two refrigerators and two radars etc etc etc. It's kind of funny because you sort of stereotypically expect the women to be the ones desperate for the creature comforts, but it was definately the man in this couple. As we talked about sailing she kept saying "see!, he's a *real* sailor." (refering to me). And he'd look at me and say, "ya know, she puts ice cubes in her drink too. she likes it." and she'd say "well if they're there!" ... but he'd continue "she wakes up in the morning and says "honey, is there enough power to run the microwave or do I need to turn the generator on?"
I could see doing it like that too if I was retired... I'm sure they have more money to spend on that kind of stuff, and, if you're retired, it seems like the goal is to relax and have a good time, whereas my goal is to sail around the world. A refrigerator isn't really going to help me get around the world. Their boat is financed, and so they have to have insurance, and so they're restricted in where they can go. I couldn't deal with those kinds of hassles in my situation.
He said "I told her that if we got married, we had to get a sailboat and go cruising when I retired." and she sort of finished the statment with "and I thought 'well, that doesn't sound so bad right?'" I thought it was kind of funny how both the couples I met talked about their marriages as some kind of a negotiation or "deal."
The sailing was interesting. I thought it would be a lot harder. I thought it would be really difficult waking up every 10-20 minutes 24 hours a day, but I found that it really wasn't so bad. Even waking up from an 18 minute nap, I remembered dreams, signifying that I'd had REM sleep. Sleeping around the clock, I never really got exhausted. People always told me before I left, "sleep will work itself out." I never believed them, but it did. I read a lot of books, and ate well, and practiced guitar a lot. I had a lot of time to think, and I've had a lot to think about. The trip to turtle bay anyways was easy in that way.... it was a little more tedious on the way here for some reason. It got a little monotonous... I didn't buy more fresh veggies in turtle bay, so the good food was all out... and I duno... maybe the sort of sensory deprevation of it was getting to me a bit. I was at sea for 7 days on this leg, seeing nothing but blue water all around me out to the horizon. It was hot, really hot. I didn't wear any clothes most of the trip down. When I finally woke up and saw land after crossing the sea of cortez, coming down to the mainland, it kind of felt like a shock... like "what's that doing there??" It was kind of lonely too being out there. I'm going to be spending a *lot* of time alone out at sea. I never intended to sail around the world alone.
My radar detector seems to be working better, probably from less interference down here. On the last passage, I left it on most of the time, and when it sounded there was usually a ship on the horizon. By the end of this most recent passage I was getting a little more lax on my watches... I think I'm actually pretty safe from being hit by a tanker, although it's good to at least be checking my course periodically. My windvane steers the boat based on aparent wind angle, so there have been times when I woke up and the boat was 90 degrees off course. I also woke up once and found the spinnaker wrapped around the forestay... which was a little frightening and frustrating... It took me a half an hour or more to get it untangled, and if the wind had been stronger it could have really been a mess.
People ask things like "is it safe." I think for the most part it is. I don't think a storm or hitting something is going to kill me, and worse come to worse I could just jump in the liferaft and press my EPIRB button. I could be killed by getting hit dead on by a tanker, but that's probably at least less likely than getting in a car accident in san francisco. Probably my biggest fear is falling overboard. I'd be in the water and the boat would just keep sailing away at 5-6 knots and there'd be no way for me to catch it, and eventually I'd be alone bobbing around on the ocean with nothing, just waiting to get hypothermia and drown. I wore my harness a lot more solo than I did with crew, which tethers me to the boat. It gets anoying though, and sometimes I think that having it on is too dangerous, because it gets tangled in lines when I'm frantically trying to do something like unravel a headstay wrap. I'm considering getting a few hundred feet of some kind of floating line with a buoy on the end to drag behind the boat. I could put a bunch of knots in it, and then if I fell over I could swim to that and theoretically use it to pull myself back onboard.
I do think I got a little sleep deprived, but it didn't feel the same as normal tiredness, since I could always lay down for another 15 minute nap, unless I had to hand steer or something. I jsut felt myself getting irritable... I'd get really frustrated and angry when I'd stub my toe or hit my head or the wind would die and the boat would violently rock. I think I sprained my finger trying to catch myself when the boat was kind of tossing me around. I might not have been fun to be around, although if anyone was around I would have got plenty of sleep so I guess that's irrelavent... and since no-one was around, it was just short little bursts of frustration occasionally... sailing can be kind of frustrating sometimes...
The spinnaker worked well. Sailing into this anchorage, I think it made the difference between getting in before dark or not. speaking of which, I didn't make it into cedros island before dark, and ended up heaving too all night just off the island before I could pull in and anchor in the morning.... that kind of sucked.
People always want to know about wildlife. I saw a bunch of sharks that were pretty big. I saw more dolphins, and more phosphorescenct algae or plankton or whatever. One day I walked up to the fordeck and found a half a dozen squid scattered about the deck, baked into the deck by the sun. One night I found some kind of flying fish or something or ruther flopping aorund on the side-deck. I didn't quite have the heart or motivation or hunger to kill/eat it, so I just threw it back overboard. It was small anyways.
I'm kind of anoyed by the whole fishing thing. I'm not much into fishing, I just have a couple of lures and thought maybe I'll try it... but I haven't bothered much, not since david left. By myself, it would be hard to eat a whole large fish if I caught something big offshore. I'd end up wasting a lot. but, just having the equipment is expensive. I probably paid $200 in fishing permits. Apparently just having fishing gear onboard means you need permits, and if you get caught they can take your boat. If every country is like this I'm going to have to get rid of the fishing gear. Looking in my "world cruising handbook" I did see some other countries that require fishing permits. In theory I can't be legal and not have the permits since my liferaft probably has fishing gear... I'm sure they don't open up my liferaft though. I keep the rest of my fishing gear in my ditch bag, so I'd have some more if I did have to get in my life raft. I also have a nice pole spear and spear gun, which I wouldn't want to get rid of... I assume those count as fishing gear. Maybe I should try my squid lure some more since there were so many squid. I do like calamari :-)
I lost my ATM card just before I left san diego, so my parents are sending it to me here. It might take a while to arrive so I'll probably be here at least a week or two. Maybe I'll work on the boat a bit. I'm still not sure exactly where I'm going from here... I have charts all the way down the coast to panama, and for the galapagos islands. I think most people are leaving here for the marqueses in mid march though. I'll have to be out of the islands and on to china or something by november or so, since the weather out there deteriorates around then. I think most people leave here in march so they have at least a few months to bum around the islands before they have to move on.
The boat is holding up ok. One of the spreader boots came off from the spinaker flogging against it. I wasn't sure how critical it was so I went up the mast and fixed it. It was just a chafe thing. I didn't have rigging tape so I used electrical tape. It was kind of scetchy... I had to take the mainsail down to use my mast mate, and so the boat rocked pretty violently. There were some pretty big swells at the time, so standing in the steps of my mast mate at the spreader trying to reach out to the edge of the spreader, I just kept getting thrown around and beaten into the mast. Sometimes it was all I could do to just hold on and wait a bit.
I haven't motored since I was in san diego. One reason people are telling me it's critical to have the motor is that you have to go into the atols in the south pacific with perfect timing with tides and everything, and it's narrow and you have to avoid reefs. Maybe I could get an inflatable dingy with an outboard as a side-tow though. Or maybe I just don't need to go into the atols?