Aries 32 - Thistledown
Friday, April 14th, 2006... mass-emailing number 7. old emails at: /sailing/aries32/weblog/
well, time to go. I'm still in la cruz de huanacaxtle, just outside of puerto vallarta. I've been here over a month, mostly waiting for my ATM card to arrive in the mail. It's here. I just have to do a couple more things, and I'll leave. I might leave tomorrow, or maybe the next day.
I think everyone else has pretty much left. None of them have any wind now though, unless they've reached the trade winds. There's a high preasure system (no wind), that's just ending now. Obi is still in cabo, but he's leaving tonight at midnight (actually 12:01) because it's considered bad-luck to leave on a friday. If I leave tomorrow or sunday, I should be ok... and after a few hundred miles I'll be in the trade winds with good wind. I'll stay north of the equator until around 130 degrees west, and then I'll go due south, across the inter tropical convergence zone (doldrums), and head for ... the marqueses.. or wherever. some south pacific island. unless I change my mind once I get out there, and turn south sooner for the galapagoes... could happen... but probably not now.
I cleaned the bottom of my boat somewhat this morning. It was cold and dirty and I cut my hands a lot on the barnacles. I'm glad I don't do that for a living. It sounded like a good idea before I left, to get dive gear and clean boats for money while traveling, but on second thought.. I'm not so interested. The water was also disgusting. Today is wasn't too bad, but I almost moved to a different anchorage before doing it. There's a sewage plant that pumps out into the anchorage, and people in the anchorage pump their toilets directly into the water. It would be somewhat easier with dive gear, and some kind of bouyancy thing. It was difficult to keep myself under water. I think it was also more difficult being in a rolly anchorage... the boat kept bouncing around. I noticed that my zincs are worn down / gone, so I need to go buy new ones today. I hope the water isn't too disgusting tomorrow morning, so I can put the new zincs on. I can only do it in the morning, because it's far too windy in the afternoon, and the boat bounces around much too violently. I want to take a shower right before I go too, so I'm not leaving already covered in salt. I started to try to pull myself down the anchor chain to inspect the anchor, but as my ears started to hurt I came back up. I don't want to develop an ear infection just as I'm getting a few hundred miles from shore... so I'll try that again when I arrive in a new anchorage, rather than when I'm about to leave. Maybe I should take a dive class first so I can learn to equalize.
I'm going to go to walmart to buy a bunch of food today, and take a cab back. I also need to fill my water tanks. Yesterday I cleaned the primary tank out with bleach, and the water tastes much better now. When I bought my first jerry jug for fetching water from shore, I got a 3 gallon one because I wanted to minimize how much space it would take up. The five gallon jugs just seemed too big. I still have the three gallon jug, but I've since bought four of the five gallon jugs, for a total of 23 gallons of water in jerry jugs. My main tank is about 30 gallons, and I'll buy a bunch of 1 gallon bottles of water too. I'll have about 60 gallons of water for the passage. I'm estimating a need of 1 gallon per day, and I'm expecting the passage to take 30 days. This should be more than enough, but will allow for any problems that arrise, like if my main tank leaks, or if the passages takes significantly longer, or if I want to take a bucket bath once in a while. I should also be able to catch some rain water, and I could build a destiler in an emergency. People have been telling me that food in the south pacific is very expensive, so I'll buy more than just enough for the passage.
I was a little worried about filtering water in mexico. The water tasted bad enuogh in san diego. well, it turned out not to be a problem at all here. Even the locals drink bottled water. Since I'm filling my tanks from bottled water, I've got better water than I had in san diego. It's cheap too... a 5 gallon jug of bottled water is about $1.50 US. I'd rather spend the money and have good water than drink that crap in san diego.
I haven't done a whole lot of work on the boat while I've been here. I bolted pad-eyes to the deck so I could lash down my life raft, and I painted the trim on the decks, mostly to cover epoxy so the sun wouldn't kill the epoxy. I fixed one patch of rotten wood in the deck. Other than that I've mostly just been hanging out, using the internet too much, wasting time, practicing guitar a lot, and practicing spanish.
My anchor rode was 40' of chain shackled to 250' of line. They say you need a lot of chain in the south pacific, because rope rode will chafe on the coral reefs. I replaced the chain with a brand new 125' length of chain that I bought from nicholas. He helped me splice the line directly to the chain too, which is a little better.
I got sick. I had diareah for a week or so. It sucked. I didn't really want to go to the doctor. I remember when I had giardia I had to take stool samples etc and I didn't feel like dealing with that here. I drank a lot of tequila, and that cleared it up for a few days, but then it came back. No joke, tequila really can kill stomach bugs. I know one guy who got worms once and killed them by eating lots of raw garlic and chilli. Eventually I went to the doctor though, and it was very easy. He asked me about my symptoms, and wrote me a prescription. The visit was only $10 US, and the antibiotics and diareah medicine were another $20 US.
Most people use inflatable dingies. I didn't like the idea of having to patch an inflatable when it inevetably popped. I make the sacrafices of deck storage space, a big heavy awkward dingy, more dings on my hull from the dingy banging against it, and lack of capacity in the dingy, so that I don't have to inflate it, and so that it won't pop. well. from dragging it up onto the beach everyday, I wore through the fiberglass until I had a nice long rip in the hull. I had to patch the fiberglass, and patching some hypalon or pvc probably would have been easier. part of the patch had to go into the slot for the daggerboard, so now it's much more difficult to setup and break down the sailing rig too. I bet my epoxy and glass cloth cost more than the special hypalon glues people complain about too.
I do really like my dingy though, and would have trouble getting rid of it. A few nights ago, I was hanging out on a boat named sulu that was getting ready to sail to tahiti and australia. They were australian and sailing the boat home. We drank a little tequila, and after the owner went to sleep, me and the other guy decided to sail my dingy to bucerias, a neighboring town. We left around 2am, and arrived around 4am. There wasn't a lot of wind, so it was slow going. There's a holiday going on now in mexico, where people from the cities come out to the beaches, and sort of celebrate spring. They camp out or sleep in their cars. When we arrived in bucerias there were tents all over the beach, and some people drinking in the street and playing music from their car. We walked to a farmacy and bought bread and ham and cheese and jalapanos. We made sandwhiches, hung out for a bit, and then sailed back. We left bucerias around 6 am and got back to the anchorage around 8. We got soaked breaking through the waves trying to leave bucerias, making it a cold wet ride back, but it was fun. He fell asleep while I sailed back. It had the feeling of some kind of tom sawyer / huck finn adventure.
I have learnt a lot of spanish while I've been here. I'm getting much better... I'm able to have decent in-depth conversations and hit on girls now rather than just the basic ordering food and getting around. I'm pretty excited about this. It's a really interesting feeling... to communicate in another language and have it feel natural. I'm not really excited about moving to a bunch of islands where they speak french. I don't really care about learning french... I'd rather keep practicing spanish. I considered sailing south, to the galapagos, and then to chili. I don't have any charts for chili though, and if I went that way I'd have to continue the "wrong way" around the world. Going around the horn would be down-wind, but near the equator the rest of the trip would be fighting against the trade winds.
I'll need to leave the south pacific by next fall, because that's when the bad weather rolls through there. I'll probably go north, up to the south china sea. I want to go to china, but it looks like it might be difficult/expensive to get permission to sail into ports there. I may go to macau or hong kong instead of sailing to mainland china... or maybe I'll go to taiwan or something. I think they also speak chinese in malaysia, and some of the other countries in the south pacific. I want to go somewhere where they speak decent mandarin chinese so I can study/practice. I'll probably also go to thailand or something...
I feel like the past month or so has been plauged by women troubles. Things have completely gone to shit with sola, and I haven't been in much of a mood to pursue anyone else. I'm feeling pretty frustrated with women in general. I feel a little lonely down here, and I'm about to be alone at sea for about a month. I may actually feel less lonely though if I'm actually alone. I haven't been in a great mood. Hopefully I'll meet some cute island girl in the south pacific... but that might be difficult since I won't really be staying in any one place for very long. I'm not really interested in having crew anymore for this trip, at least not long term non-female crew. I've decided that I like sailing alone, and it would be difficult to carry enough food/water for two people for the long passages anyways. I would like to have a partner of the female variety though if I can find one, and shorter term visitors of any type would be cool.
Someone here said soon after I arrived, "the time to go is when you don't want to leave." If I ever did get to that point, I've come full circle. I certainly want to leave now. I think that what he said would be the ideal though. If I don't want to leave, and do, at least I'm left with fond memories of a place, and a desire to come back. In an essay on travel, Emerson said "my giant goes with me wherever I go" ( http://www.memecentral.com/emsr20.htm ). I want to be leaving without a giant... but I have to go now. The weather will change soon. It's time to move on.
With regard to the above mentioned essay, I don't travel with "the hope of finding something greater than what [I] know." I'm not even trying to "find myself" as some people like to say when they're traveling. I'm traveling to study/learn what I can. My mother asked if I'm really happier doing this, or if I'd be happier just living and working in the states. She also asked if happiness is overrated. I don't know if it is, but I'm not doing this to find happiness. I'm not trying to "be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness" ... I'm trying to study spanish, and later chinese. I'm trying to maintain free time to study chemistry and biology, and to learn about foreign cultures, and to challenge myself with an interesting experience. I'm doing it to give myself time to think. It's like a self-taught university. You go to school to learn, not to seek happiness.
A few days ago I went book shopping. I went to five bookstores in two cities. I spent about $300 US on books. I wanted to have good reading material for the passage. I bought some books in spanish too, so I can practice. I bought a french dictionary for when I arrive in the islands. I wanted to get some religious texts like the bible and koran, but I couldn't find any in english. They were sold out of bibles, and the bookstore owner said they wouldn't ship the koran to mexico for some reason. If anyone wants to come visit me in the south pacific, I'll probably have a long shopping list for you before you come... There are lots of things I'd like to buy that I haven't been able to find down here.
anways, again I'm spending too much time on the internet. I need to go shopping and hopefully get out of here. write me... it'll be nice to have some non-spam emails to read when I arrive somewhere.
oh, and I got some of my roll-film developed. I still don't have any pictures developed from mexico, but I have some pictures developed from when I was sailing with david:
/sailing/aries32/batch5.1/