Archive for the 'South America' Category
Fragile
Clark November 14th, 2007
Feeling a bit better. I’m still sleeping about 15 hours a day and feeling fragile, but seem to be on the mend. Now I have my loyal manservant John (not Juan, but John) to do all the heavy lifting: he scrubs, he pushes the shopping cart, and right now he’s cleaning the bottom of the boat. I’m embarassed to say how little I pay him per day, but he seems delighted, and he’s supporting a family of four. The bird shit situation is just too dire to take on alone.
We brought her into the dock for a whole day of scrubbing, and this at least got off all the loose stuff and cut down the smell. At to the permanent cement, I’m still at a loss. I thought I was onto something with the vinegar (I bought 3 gallons) but after leaving vinegar-soaked towels on deck overnight it only partially softens it. I’m pinning my hopes on a product called Disolve-It, made by Bird Barrier, but I have yet to hear back from the manufacturer.
Bad to Worse
Clark November 11th, 2007
My first meal in Peru gave me food poisoning. Bad Pollo a la Brasa!
I’ve had a 103 fever, and other associated symptoms of food poisoning, all weekend. In my delerium the birds were pecking around on deck just above my head and I kept hallucinating that they were pecking me. Also, in a bizarre electronic anomoly, the stereo kept turning itself on and off at intervals with Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief coming on and off at low volume. I thought I was hearing things, but it turns out it was real. Some of the songs on that album are dark, really dark.
My fever broke midday today, but I’m still weak. I’ve reserved a slot at the dock tomorrow for assisted bird shit removal, but the prognosis is bleak. It just won’t come off.
That was, without contest, the worst weekend of my life.
Back In Lima/Condesa Turns 40
Clark November 9th, 2007
I thought the worst thing that could happen to me today was over when I cleared security at LAX. The shoreboat took me out to Condesa to find her covered in bird shit! I didn’t know this kind of thing was even possible. It’s a tour de force of bird shit…like enough to fertilize a square acre.
It took me three hours just to clean the cockpit and side deck so I could pass from shoreboat, through the cockpit, and into the boat without tracking it everywhere. It’s like half an inch thick, reinforced with thousands of feathers, and requires a chisel, rather than a scrub brush, to get it off. I went to get my bucket off the aft deck to start cleaning operations, and look what was inside:
Ha! One point for our side! Of course I was trying to keep the birds off while I was cleaning, yelling at them and banging the lifelines with a stick, as if keeping a couple more birds off will make any difference at this point. It’s really serious. This stuff is like cement. It won’t clean off, even after letting it soak for an hour. I’ll be surfing the Internet for the magic bullet…vinegar maybe?
A sorry state for Condesa’s 40th birthday: She was launched from Essex, England forty years ago this month. As you can imagine, it doesn’t smell too hot either…and the flies.
Still In California
Clark October 30th, 2007
I’m still in California and still not doing any sailing.
My flights got cancelled (never fly Aeromexico) and my computer is still in the shop (NEVER buy a Dell) and it doesn’t make sense to leave until these items are resolved. At Aeromexico I at least seem to be in touch with someone who cares and understands: This only took two weeks of utter frustration. At Dell I’ve been given the runaround by their ‘customer service’ department in Calcutta, India: Lots of time to chat, but not much on the resolution front. Now I’ve escalated to an American and it’s World War Three. They’re breaching their warranty and it’s off to small claims court. Conclusion: Life is simpler, and more interesting, at sea.
Here are some Commerson’s Dolphins in Patagonia, my favorite of all cetaceans:
Peruvian Earthquake/Tsunami News
Clark August 27th, 2007
An email from the manager at the Yacht Club Peruano:
Clark:
I just give me time to write some lines to you, “Condesa” as you wrote is OK, there weren’t an
damage looking your boat from outside. We experience a huge earthquake here at YCP La Punta but in this side of the bay we hadn’t receive the wave “Tsunami” after the quake, those harbours that face south were hit by a “Tsunami” depending how far were them of the epicenter. In our case we have a subsee in Paracas (250 km south) and they receive severous damage with the quake, and at least 4 waves (first after 10 minutes past the great movement, and other scattered in 6 hours). Thanks God nobody was hurt.
At home my wife, son and me were a little scared and nervous, no material damage, but we are recovering, I was at the office (old House) at that moment.
I know you are OK and I am sending some photos
from your boat.
Best regards.
Jaime Ackermann
Yacht Club Peruano
Back from Honolulu
Clark August 20th, 2007
We’re back safely from a quick and dirty passage from Honolulu aboard Adrenalin. We were far to the north by the time the hurricane hit Hawaii, but we saw it on our weather maps. Likewise, Condesa seems to be safe after the earthquake/tsunami disaster in Peru (I left Condesa in Lima). Or at least no news is good news. This is the fourth time Condesa has been in-country and nearby a deadly earthquake/tsunami during her circumnavigation. I repeat, for the second time this year alone, what am I, a tsunami magnet?
There were two things that were very different for me about this passage from Hawaii on Adrenalin. First, sailing a race boat; second, sailing as a job.
Adrenalin is a Santa Cruz 50, and I believe it would be called a sled, meaning it is light and fast and can plane when sailing off the wind. It was definitely fast at times, but her relatively flat bottom made her pound when going to weather. Most of this trip was going to weather. We left the Waikiki Yacht Club, rounded Diamond Head and Koko Head, then headed north through the Molokai Channel for a full week on starboard tack. There were four of us aboard: Steve from the Big Island, Marie-Pierre from Saskatoon, my sister Cynthia, and myself.
The boat could have gone eight knots to weather, but anything above five led to such a violent pounding that I worried for the boat, rig, and our nerves. I wore ear plugs the whole first week. Since we didn’t have much in the way of sail inventory, we ended up sailing several days under a double-reefed mainsail and storm jib just to slow the boat down to where a bone-jarring pound would only happen every two minutes or so.
When we hit 36 degrees North we changed to port tack and started heading directly for Newport Beach, more or less. There were days of reaching, days of sailing closehauled, days of motoring through calms (with a quick stop for a swim), and days of sailing downwind with the jib poled out to windward. But the most exciting part was about 15 hours of 25-30 knot winds on a broad reach. The autopilot couldn’t handle it, so we took one hour turns at the wheel, surfing down waves at 15-21 knots. This is what a sled is built for, and it was nothing less than exhilarating blasting through the night under a cloudless, moonless, starry sky, planing down waves in a tumble of white water with fifty feet of race boat in front of us and a tight grip on the gigantic wheel. I saw some big smiles from time to time when I’d poke my head into the cockpit.
We pulled into Newport Beach at sunrise. After sunrise landfalls in so many ports around the world it was like seeing my home port for the first time, probably because I have never been awake at sunrise in Newport Beach.
As to sailing for money, it’s great! I got to leave my old boat with its buggy autopilot, cranky electrical system, and touchy toilets to get on a half million dollar?, million dollar? race boat where I could spend hours troubleshooting a buggy autopilot, cranky electrical system, and carry bucketfuls of raw sewage from a clogged sewage system. Same old crap. The important thing is that I know how to fix all this crap. In fact, I have often said the battle is won and lost in the boatyard, meaning that knowing how to sail well is well and good, but the real difference between a good vs. a troublesome voyage is having everything ship shape as far as gear and systems. On this voyage aboard Adrenalin it was my tinkering abilities, which are perhaps above average, that kept us going. My sailing abilities are only average when compared to others who sail boats like these, but they were good enough to get us across the Pacific with just a few broken battens and a little sail chafe.
Our most time-consuming problem was messing with the cranky watermaker. It went on the fritz just after I used most of our water to wash out a mattress that had been soaked in seawater after a mysterious leak. I was feeling like a real moron after leaving us with five gallons to last four people for ten days. After much messing about we got it to spit out some fresh water from a service port.
I had some trepidation about sailing as a job, about turning my passion into profession. I thought it might taint it in some way, but just the contrary. I actually learned a lot, but I credit the good psychological result to the nature of the passage: a bluewater passage with nowhere to stop. It might feel different to be professional crew sailing among the cruising set, stopping in the same places but not being able to stay, and to be passing places by to stay on the schedule. For this passage it would have been exactly the same were we cruising or making the delivery.
Here is Adrenalin when we stopped to check the oil and take a mid-ocean swim. We were completely becalmed and had been motoring for many hours.
Leaving Honolulu
Clark July 29th, 2007
We’re getting ready to set sail from Honolulu to Newport Beach on my new boat…well, it’s only my boat for a few weeks, but I’m feeling the pride of covetous ownership nonetheless. This is my first gig as a professional delivery skipper. Adrenalin is a Santa Cruz 50 in top fighting shape from just finishing the Transpac, so she’s a veritable rocket ship compared to Condesa. Should be a fast ride of two or three weeks. On that note, I will be incommunicado during that time, so you will have to entertain yourselves for a while.
Condesa Memory
Clark July 19th, 2007
Rounding the Cape of Good Hope and heading into Capetown
Stunned in San Francisco
Clark July 17th, 2007
The photo accompanying the last post was done by a friend (Mick!) in good fun. Thanks to those who jumped to my defense, but in reality I have no shame, and plus it’s true.
This website is about sailing and I’m not doing any sailing. However I will be sailing in about ten days when I fly to Honolulu to bring a Transpac boat back to California. That trip should take a few weeks. In the interim I am trying to adjust to life in the urban world, here in my borrowed apartment in San Francisco. Here are some of my impressions of the Brave New World after sailing the hinterlands for so long.
1. Everyone is really busy. Time is allocated and compartmentalized in fifteen minute increments. There is little time to just hang out and see what happens.
2. There seems to be an inordinate number of people wandering around muttering. There are wandering mutterers all over the world, and I’ve done my own share of wandering and muttering, but there seem to be more of them here. At first there really seemed to be a lot, but then I learned to weed out all the people who were talking on mobile phones with hands free headsets. Still, the disenfranchised and the slightly nuts are on the streets in force. Avoid Haight street after 10PM.
3. Computerized dating is OK. During my last visit to California it was still somewhat stigmatized. Now couples openly declare that they met on match.com, eharmony.com, jdate, you name it.
4. You’re in trouble without a customer loyalty card. What ever happened to just handing over money in exchange for goods and services? It’s all very fair that they reward you for your information, as this helps them manage their inventory by tracking consumer behavior, but they really make you pay through the nose and feel like a schmuck if you haven’t got the card, even at the drugstore.
5. People are pretty polite. When I’m away I tend to think of Californians as angry people stuck in traffic. By world standards people here are quite considerate and friendly. On the road there is very little horn blowing and screaming of obscenities, and most drivers will let you into a line of traffic if you’re the one pinched out. Clerks and attendants, even the ones who aren’t pandering for fat, American-style tips, tend to greet people with a smile and send them off with ‘have a nice day.’
