Living & Learning Aboard the Good Ship Learnativity

Vanuatu Here We Come!

Just took the Customs officials back to the Lautoka wharf and now have all my official outbound clearance papers stamped and signed so I have officially left Fiji!  WOW!  What a set of awemazing experiences and people!  Every bit of it good and I can only recommend that if you’ve never been or not recently, do your best to get here to see and experience for yourself. 

I’ve not got the dingy and everything else all lashed down and stowed, the fridge, freezer and cupboards are full with one last round of great fruit, vegies, meat and wine from Fiji.  It was a gorgeous sunrise this morning and other than a lot of ash falling from the sugar cane burning going on it is a perfect day to set sail.  Wind looks good according to the forecasts and we’ll see what it is like once I get out clear of the reefs to the west later on today.

Thank you Fiji for treating Ruby and I so extremely well and the lifetime of fond memories we are leaving with.  Thanks to each and every one who so sincerely and fully befriended both Ruby and I as you are what truly stands out from all our experiences.

While there is a bit of melancholy in leaving a place I’ve been in for so long and got to know so well, I’m equally excited about getting back to sailing, anchoring in secluded bays, new people and experiences and being back out on the open ocean again.  Should be about 4 days passage from here to Aneityum or Anatom island as it is sometimes known, the southernmost island of Vanuatu and about 480nm from here in Lautoka.  Winds look like they will cooperate so it should be a pretty much straight run from here to Anelghowhat Bay and I’ll keep you posted with updates along the way.  Be sure to check out the new SPOT Adventures site at http://www.findmespot.com/spotadventures/index.php/view_adventure?tripid=312876 (see previous posting for details) which I’m hoping will make it easy for you to see our tracks along the way as they are automatically uploaded to the map and satellite images.

And with that, we are off!  Vanuatu and more amazing experiences up ahead and glad to have you along for the ride!

Wayne & Ruby the Wonderdog,
aboard the good ship Learnativity
currently anchored near Lautoka Fiji
17 36.061 S, 177 26.442 E

Regular Email:    [email protected]
Email when @ sea or remote via sat phone:    [email protected]  (Yes! This is the correct spelling OCENS)
I typically retrieve and answer Emails to this account via our satellite phone at least once every 24 hours.  You can send as much text as you like but are asked not to send any attachments such as photos.
FaceBook page:        www.facebook.com/wayne.hodgins
Learnativity blog:    www.learnativity.typepad.com
World Phone Voicemail:        +1-501-492-9634   (has voice mail that is forwarded to me via Email)
Text Messages:  (to my sat phone)
send short 140 character Text msgs via Email to:  [email protected]

Other contact info:
Skype:    Whodgins
Twitter:        WWWayne

I LOVE BOOKS because I LOVE LEARNING!

While I have no desire to live forever from an immortal standpoint (thank goodness!)I do have a deep desire to learn forever so I could read every book I would want to and feed my insatiable curiosity forever. However, I live very much in the present and this picture if of the recent presents (pun intended) I received in the boxes which arrived the other day from my trip to the USA and Canada last month which you may have seen in the previous blog entry here.

Many of you know that I have become a complete convert to eBooks and prefer to do pretty much all my reading on my eReader (Kindle) tablet (iPhone), smart phone or laptop.  I’ve talked about that at length over on my Off Course – On Target blog if you are interested in more details but the reasons are essentially that my eBooks are now as good or better than paper from a pure readability standpoint, they have reached the level of transparency so I can forget I’m reading on a digital device and get lost in the story, and then they give me a built in OED dictionary I use so often as I read plus a organized collection of all my highlights and notes taken while I read so that I have this to refer to and use after I’ve finished each book or even as I’m in the process of reading it.

However as you can see in the picture these ones I’m highlighting today are all paper books because they are not yet available in Kindle or eBook format and I’m not going to let that stand in the way of me reading them especially when I get the opportunity such as here in Majuro to have them shipped to me.  Here is some of what am I reading that you can see in the picture:

DRAWING on the RIGHT SIDE of the BRAIN:

Yes, that’s right Wayne is going to try to learn how to draw, go after his more creative side and learn to see the world more fully through the eyes of an artist.  Well, that’s my intent and motivation anyways.  As you may be able to see I have both the book and the workbook for Betty Edward’s acclaimed “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” and these are maybe the ones I’m most excited about as they represent an another journey I’ve long wanted to take, that of learning how to draw better and more so learning how to see the world better.  I’ve only read the first chapter so far and I don’t know if I’m more excited about learning how to draw or all the ways in which drawing and Betty’s experiences for the past 20+ years inspire and ignite my passionate pursuit of topics such as how to become a more “whole brained” person and how this all relates to learning in general.  Both are all part of this grand voyage I’m on for my own self improvement on a more quantum and spiritual level and I couldn’t be more excited about all of it.

Knowing how I like to use myself and my life as a grand experiment and my recent penchant for uncharacteristically  putting myself “out there” and sharing everything, I will undoubtedly share with you some of my drawings along the way so you can see first hand how I’m doing and hopefully the great progress along the way.  I

TOUCH!

I will also be using this as an opportunity to test the use of the touch screen on my iPad and my stylus to do some of the drawings.  Some of you will know that I’ve long been fascinated by and talked much about how we can discern and extract the essence out of our historical and well proven practices and human elements and carry them forward into the future as we combine them with the most modern of technologies and innovations.  The combination of drawing and touch screens is one of my most cited examples.  We have been drawing since we lived in caves and I see no likelihood or desire to stop doing so as far into the future as I can see.  However the transmogrification into the digital world and the apparent readiness of touch to be added to our human computer interactions and interfaces is extremely exciting and already upon us. I want to have the experiential learning of doing so and be able to share this all with you more knowledgeably and hence the new books and the new voyage.  Wish me luck!

 

Rudy Rucker’s Trilogy: The Ware Tetralogy

This is another long time coming read for me and will likely need to wait till I’m back into full time sailing mode rather than my current boat work mode, but I finally have it onboard with me now and can’t wait to dive into each of these four books; Software, Wetware, Freeware and Realware. If you aren’t familiar with these a quick search on any of these titles will give you a good overviews and you’ll quickly see why I’ve been wanting to read these for so long. I had the distinct pleasure to be at Autodesk in the early years when we were working with Rudy and James Gleick on things like Chaos Theory so my interest goes a long ways back.

I took advantage of being back in the USA and in Florida to be able to raid my carefully stowed few boxes of books which I keep ashore as they are too bulky and valuable to have on the boat all the time. I was looking for and found three that I’ve been wanting to read or reread which were:

David Bohm’s “Wholeness and the Implicate Order” and “On Creativity”

David is one of my mentors and a great inspiration to me for over twenty years since Jimm Meloy, one of my many great “bosses” at Autodesk, first put me on to him. You can read a brief tribute I did about David and his work several years ago over on the Off Course – On Target blog. Again, I’ll let you read up on these books if you’re intrigued which I can’t imagine anyone not being but that’s just me. David is one of the great minds of the past century in my humble opinion and he has helped me understand so much about how things work, not just from the theoretical physics side of which Bohm is one of the most highly regarded scientists ever to be in that field, but also his more spiritual and holistic views on life, learning and how we think.

Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” and “The Universe in a Nutshell”

Inspired by my recent reading of Martin Gardner’s great collection of essays in “The Night is Large” (thank you, thank you, thank you Erik for that great gift!) I’ve become ever more fascinated by what would seem to be the one single constant in the universe: time. And I’ve also been learning about celestial navigation with the purpose less so for the actual navigation abilities it gives me in a catastrophic failure of all my digital navigation on board and the use of my sextant, but more so for the development of a true working understanding of how the whole universe works in a full three dimensional way or perhaps more. I’ve had Hawking’s books for a long time but as usual I let serendipity and synchronicity determine when the call to read them will come. It came, I’m reading!

Finally on the sailing front, I was able to pick up two books which will be extremely valuable to my ongoing education about all things sailing to which I am such a complete novice.

Tropical Cruising Handbook by Mark Smaalders and Kim de Rochers

You can maybe just make this one out over in the distance on the on the far side of my cockpit table where I took the picture above. A friend had this when I was in my beloved Fiji last year and rather than be a cruising guide which I depend upon for all the local knowledge about islands, bays, inlets and the like, this one was a fabulous collection of detailed and well illustrated explanations of things like weather systems, anchoring , navigation and health and wellness in the tropics. I couldn’t put it down nor remember enough of it so I ordered a copy for myself last year and finally have it in my eager hands now.

Offshore Cruising Encyclopedia by Linda and Steve Dashew

This is one of the “bibles” of we blue water or off shore cruisers and I finally have my own copy now. I’ve become a huge fan and student of Steve and Linda and have learned so much from being a regular visitor to their setsail.com web site where their prolific writing and photography is freely available and constantly being added to as they sail the world and more recently have moved over to power boating. In all cases they have designed and built their own boats and what is so great about them is they explain every detail about each and ever decision they make in the process. Plus they are the “real deal” living aboard and sailing or powering their way around and all over the world many times over and for many many years. Now into their seventies they are still going as strong as ever, still pushing the envelop more than ever and I’m looking forward to learning even more from them within the pages of this old classic of theirs.

I will leave for another posting the MUCH longer list of books that are patiently awaiting my attention on my Kindle and end with this additional photo of my paper books. I thought I was just taking a second photo in case the first one didn’t turn out so well and zoomed out a bit as Ruby the Wonderdog decided she needed to be in the picture. But I’m putting it in here as it will give you a microcosm view of my life right now as there is so much of it in this one photo. For example if you look just behind Ruby you will see the recalcitrant oil pan you may recall from the previous posting now awaiting an adapter I need for my oxy-acetylene welder to weld in a new section of the bottom. There is my dear Ruby of course, and all of this is taken the cockpit where I am typing this up and where I spend the vast majority of my time when I’m aboard and not down in the engine room or otherwise busy with boat jobs.

So there you have it folks, the update for today from the good ship Learnativity here in the tropical NE Trades and crystal clear waters of Majuro in the Marshall Islands. Wish you were here and you do too!!

 

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LTY Morning Update: Monday April 27, 2009

Location:    anchored @ Hanga Roa, Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
Position:    -27d 08.625' S    -109d 26,087' W
Wind:         8-12 kts N True
Seas:          swell = ~ 1.5m @ 8 secs  N
Weather:    early AM showers and cloud, burning off for another clear day
Sea temp:    78.9F
Air temp:    76.8F 
Humidity:    74%

Had a very good day ashore yesterday afternoon and evening.  Met up with Charlie and Elaine, two of the people I’d been introduced to before getting here. Charlie is an archaeologist/geologist who has been coming here to Easter Island for over 30 years and Elaine is a retired high school teacher who is here for 3 months teaching science in the local schools.  I met up with them at the beautiful hotel Otai and we spent the whole afternoon getting to know each other, talking about Easter Island.  They had a WiFi connection at the hotel so I was able to get connected and start the long process of downloading all my Emails from the past 2 weeks, updated weather reports and otherwise catching up with things online.  It is a very slow connection, I believe there is only one line into the island and being Sunday afternoon my guess is that everyone was online and so it was slow but it was a connection!

Charlie and Elaine are both from Wyoming and I also met up with some of Charlie’s students who are here doing various projects on the island.  Four of us went out for diner to round out a very good day ashore.  The stars here are quite phenomenal.  Both because there is so little light anywhere near here that you get no interference and the stars are all very bright and contrasted against the blackness of the sky, but also because these are very different stars being down here below 27 degrees South of the Equator.  The famous Southern Cross is very visible for example and I need to get out my various star charts and programs to learn a bit more about all these new stars and planets that I get to see from this vantage point.  One of my major and fun areas of learning (one of thousands) on this adventure is understanding the whole set of spatial relationships between the earth, moon, sun and stars. I’m working on learning to use my sextant as part of this and as always I continue to enjoy and be fascinated by the fun combinations of the very very old with the new.  In this case here I am, about as wired up and high tech as it gets with GPS, sat phones, chart plotters and the like and yet balancing that out with celestial navigation, sextants and sight reduction tables.  Fascinating stuff and so much to be learned and understood in the process.

After diner Ruby and I went back to our dingy and headed out to Learnativity which continues to be solidly anchored off Hanga Roa and spent a bit of time when we got back to admire and study the night sky a bit more.  However it wasn’t able to focus on those incredible stars for too long as unfortunately I seemed to pick up some food poisoning from the meal and started to feel strange shortly as I was leaving the restaurant.  As I got back to LTY, my eyesight began to go all crazy, no peripheral vision, seeing lots of purple lines like broken safety glass overlaid on everything I looked at and a very upset stomach.  Got rid of some of it out one end but didn’t vomit and it eased up a little, but then a fever like condition set in, making me very cold and shivering.  So I drank a lot of water, dug out my long unused comforter and went to bed early.  The fever continued all night alternating between cold and hot but I was able to get some sleep and kept drinking lots of water and by 6am the fever had broken and it had all passed and I feel fine again now.  Guess I need to stick to my own cooking! <g>

The anchorage was very rolly last night as the swell is now coming in from the North and the wind is more from the East so it puts us broadside to the swells and the boat rolls back and forth from one side to the other, sometimes heeling us over 30+ degrees.  When you’re laying down it is quite pleasant and like being rocked to sleep but certainly makes moving around a challenge. 

This morning it was a similar weather pattern with light showers and cloudy skies about 4-6am and then it starts to clear off as the sun rises.  So I’m back up in the cockpit, doing this morning update for you and enjoying the sun as it breaks through the remaining clouds.  I’ll head ashore later this morning for more exploring and also to start checking out facilities here.  If possible I’m hoping to find things like a Laundromat, some car batteries to replace my failed starter batteries and ideally a sail maker or even a sewing machine that I can use and try to salvage and resew my large spinnaker sail that blew out shortly after leaving Galapagos.  Fortunately the wind was good and strong the whole way from Galapagos to here so I didn't need or miss the spinnaker too much until the last day.  But it will likely be lower winds and more downwind sailing for the next month on the way to Pitcairn, Mangareva (Gambier) and French Polynesia so I’m very much hoping I’ll be able to find a way to salvage the spinnaker and have that to help keep us sailing in these conditions.

Charlie and Elaine and some of his students are all very intrigued by the notion of traveling by sailboat and so I’m going to bring them out to see Learnativity late this afternoon.  And I’ll be looking into tours and renting vehicles or horses to get out to some of the sites on the other parts of the island. 

I’ll be back to you with an update tomorrow to see how successful I was at finding the various facilities on shore.

Wayne

Year #2 Begins: Headed for the Equator & Ecuador

With apologies for the distinct lack of postings of late, I wanted to post this quick update and some hopefully useful information a few hours before I head out into the open ocean on my way to cross the equator and visit Ecuador.  Details on contacting me are at the end of this posting, here is a quick update on what’s been happening and where I’m headed next.

I’m finally all set to go on the next leg of the voyage of the good ship Learnativity! Rather auspicious timing as yesterday marks the one year mark (March 3, 2008) when Skyler and I sailed out of Bodega Bay to start this incredible voyage.  And what a year it has been!  One of non stop adventures, never a dull moment and nothing but great times with great people in great places. Who could ask for more?? Not I, though I do expect that this next year will be another one at least as diverse and packed with life, love and learning.

And so, with this being day one of year two, Ruby and I are now off on our next leg of the grand adventure, heading for Isla del Coco, Ecuador, Galapagos, Easter Island, Pitcairn, Gambier, Tuamotus, Tahiti and everywhere else we can find our way to in Polynesia before the hurricane/cyclone season starts, which is usually about end of October.  A few days from now we’ll cross the equator which will be a fun event that we’ll celebrate in some special ways as we cross and then make our way to the marina at Puerto Lucia near Salinas Ecuador.

We started our morning today very early and with quite the adventure trying to get diesel fuel and be able to leave Puntarenas Costa Rica on the high tide. We have been docked in a river estuary that I VERY shallow with many places that are above ground at low tide and being rater deep ourselves we can only get in and out at high tide. I thought everything was all set to fill up with diesel at the yacht club at 7am but when I got there I was told that that didn’t have any! Unfortunately the manager who I had made all the arrangements with was not in yet and wouldn’t be till after high tide, which was at 07:45. After much discussion, I found two local people who happened to have their boat at the yacht club and they agreed to guide me to a refueling spot that the fish boats use along the estuary. So aboard they came and off we went as the tide was starting to go down, it was now about 08:30. The boat grounded out three times trying to get into two different fuel spots but we finally made it in sandwiched up against a flotilla of local commercial steel fish boats and were able to fill up all my tanks for the upcoming long trip. It was now after 9am but we made it out into the bay without much more incident. From there we sailed down Golfo Nicoya to the last inlet, Bahia Ballena where I’ve been several times before and knew there was a WiFi spot so I could post these updates for you before setting sail for Ecuador.

My routing will be from here in Bahia Ballena at the mouth of Golfo Nicoya Costa Rica (  9°42'57.43"N  85° 0'46.33"W) to Isla del Coco (  5°31'41.09"N  87° 3'39.45"W) where I’ll likely stop for a day or so to get a bit of sleep and see some of the incredible underwater life, and then head for Puerto Lucia (  2°13'2.02"S  80°55'21.50"W) in Ecuador.  When there I will get to visit with some great colleagues who I’ve worked with at the university in nearby Guayaquil, Learnativity will get hauled out and have her “bottom” painted with the antifouling paint I was finally able to pick up here in Costa Rica ($300/gal!!) and then we will be off to Galapagos, Easter and a string of islands throughout Polynesia.  Of course I’ll be “parking” Learnativity somewhere, likely Papeete in July to fly back for Lia’s wedding on August 1st, and then will continue on through Polynesia, Samoa, Tonga, etc. before heading South to New Zealand.

For the upcoming sails, I really can’t even take much of a guess until I get out there as to how long it will take as wind and currents now dictate the schedule over the open oceans.   Straight line distances coming up, rarely what you sail of course, are about 320nm from Bahia Ballena to Coco and then another 700nm to Salinas, so about 1000nm overall.  Ideally I can usually do about 120-140nm/day which would make it about 7-8 days, but with this route and these distances and the typical lack of wind I’m not likely to go that fast, so my guess is more likely two weeks or so to get to Ecuador. 

Wayne & Ruby

Aboard s/v Learnativity

Bahia Ballena, Golfo Nicoya, Costa Rica 9°42'57.43"N  85° 0'46.33"W

Safe in El Salvador: third time's the charm!

El Salvador (your geography lesson of the day)

The Republic of El Salvador is Central America's smallest nation (about the size of Maryland), yet it is young and densely populated (3.8 million). Since its civil war ended in 1992, El Salvador's emerging economy has been strongly devoted to democracy, fabrication for export, agriculture and international tourism. The Salvadoran currency is the US dollar, Spanish is the official language, and the capital city of San Salvador has the main international airport.  Geographically, El Salvador is the only Central American nation without a second coast on the Caribbean side. Its Pacific coast is 270 miles long.  The Gulf of Fonseca on its SE coast also borders Honduras and Nicaragua.  El Salvador's coastal plane is narrower than Guatemala's, and its Pacific underwater shelf is wider and provides excellent sportfishing (marlin) and commercial shrimping. The coastal range of 20 volcanoes and mountain peaks is divided by the valley of Rio Lempa, which forms the dangerous Lempa Shoals in coastal waters.

Try #1:

We arrived in Bahia Jaltepeque (hahl-tay-PAY-kay) also known as Bahia del Sol (13°18.03 N 88°53.54 W) right on schedule at about 13:30 on Thursday May 29th** about 73 hours after leaving Puerto Angel Mexico and traveling about 477 nautical miles.  Considering the delays with spinnaker wraps, water pumps and skirting storms we did pretty well.

** HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY SKYLER!!!!!
This also gave me time to call Skyler and wish him a VERY 21st special birthday.  My fantastic son, with whom I'd just had the experience of a lifetime spending the past four months with was now officially and "adult" and VERY much a fine young man.  Fortunately we had a lot of time before he left last week to spend celebrating his coming of age and it was great to also get in this phone call with him on his big day to wish him well.  He was spending it with Lia and Brian in Pomona and then they were all flying up to Petaluma on Friday to have an even bigger celebration with Diana and his Auntie Doreen.  Disappointed not to be there of course but OH! so proud of my wonderful son!!

As you can see in the map (click to enlarge) the entrance to Bahia Jaltepeque is almost completely blocked by the shoaling formed from the silt and sand coming from the inlets.  This was very evident as we approached by the very substantial rollers and waves breaking all along the coast and quite common in this area.  So the marinas offer free pilot services which means that a local who knows where the channel is that is deep enough for keel boats such as ours (the dotted line on the map) comes out to meet you in a panga (small fiberglass boat) and guides you in.  Thanks to my land based crew (thanks again John) the marina new we were arriving and I contacted the marina via the VHF radio to tell them that we had arrived.  Unfortunately the approaching storm was kicking up quite a bit of wave action and their panga was up the river on the inland side helping someone else so I was instructed to anchor out off shore and wait till about 6pm for them to contact me and try to bring me in before dark.  So I set anchor in about 42' of water and waited.

It gave me time to catch up on some of my logs to record the trip across and try to grab a few winks after 3 days without too many, but it was a rough wait as the wave action and the way the boat set to the anchor in the wind was such that we were rocking and rolling rather severely from side to side.  Nothing at all dangerous, the boat is fine in such situations but it is very tough on the anchor gear and on Ruby and I as it pitches about. 

I contacted the marina again about 6pm and was told that the panga was still not back and it was too rough for us to get in anyway and we'd need to anchor out for the night and they'd try again in the morning.  Not what I wanted to hear and so I checked the weather forecast for an update and decided we would be better off at sea and heading for the marina we originally wanted which was only about 28nm South in Bahia Jiquilisco.  We could arrive there first thing in the morning and have their pilot panga meet us and guide us in.  So I made some dinner (roasted chicken, rice and veggies if you are interested) and got a bit of shut eye with Ruby as the waves rocked us not so gently to sleep.

Try #2:

Up at 11pm there was a good full on rain storm in progress so we started up the engine, let her run for a good while to make sure all was well and then pulled up the anchor and headed out.  Sounds pretty easy when I type that, but see if you can picture this:

I'm out at the front pulpit (very forward point on the boat) where the anchor windlass and control unit is located, "dressed" in my skivvies and clipped in with my PFD harness to keep from being thrown over the side as the bow of the boat pitches up and down about 15' burying itself in the water at the low end and pointing to the sky at the top of it's bucking routine.  (I had a slightly different enunciation at the time as I recall).  I've got my trusty mini flashlight in my mouth pointing it down over the side to be sure we maintain the right angle and that the chain is coming aboard properly and it is raining so hard that the light can barely shine through to see.  Now I had about 250' (80m) of chain out in these conditions and depth and it takes quite a while to bring that all in, plus you need to do it in stages with the boat in forward to help it along in the right direction and trying not to have the electric windlass taking the full brunt of violent action of the chain as it tightens up with each cycle up and down.  Quite the picture! 

But it all worked quite well, got the chain and anchor all aboard, made my way back to the cockpit and motored away from the shore and out to sea to try to get a bit better conditions and make our way to Bahia Jiquilisco.  Alas, such was not to be as the water flow alarm went off again and had to shut down the engine!

A bit early this time, just before midnight and not 2am but still NOT good.  So there I was, out in some very busy seas, no engine and headed for a rather nasty shore about 2nm away.  The waves and wind were such that we were still making about 1.5 kts of forward progress which is just enough to let the rudder steer and so I pointed our way back towards our previous anchorage point and watched the depth meter till it went below 50' so it was shallow enough to anchor in and went back up to the front and dropped the anchor again, hoping it would hold.  It did, making me quite glad that I'd spent the time back in Bodega Bay getting it all in order and thanks for the help getting that nice new CQR anchor Maurice!

The anchor ensured that we would not drift to shore but it also meant that we were now REALLY rocking and rolling with the wave and wind action.  And down below to the very warm (120ºF) engine room I went again to see what it was this time and it went about like this:

Good news:  I found the problem, relatively quickly

Bad news:  it wasn't going to be a quick fix.  Remember that boat engine lesson you got in the last chapter about the water exhaust system in boats?  Well, the water pump impeller is made of about 12 rubber "vanes" and most of these had disintegrated which plugged the water lines which raised the exhaust temperature which expanded the air which burst the seams of the fiberglass water muffler.  Both the water pump impeller and the water muffler needed to be replaced.

Good news:  these two problems had actually happened once before when Skyler and I were on our way down from San Diego and so I was both an "expert" at the both of these replacements AND happened to have a shiny new water muffler (thanks John!) on hand and the foresight to stock quite a few impellers as they are quite common to give out. 

Bad news: it was going to take quite a few hours to do all this and being in the engine room was not only hot but I was being thrown around like a peanut inside a can being vigorously shaken by a giant! 

Good news:  I figure I sweated off about 10 pounds and helped to develop some new muscles and maintain my girlish figure! <g>

Bad news:  it was ROUGH down there and I got beat up and bruised quite a bit.

Good news:  I had found the root of the cause of the previous water flow alarms (see previous post), fixed them and they worked!  Started up the engine, no alarms and fantastic water pressure throughout and lots coming out the back.

Try #3:

So at about 04:30 on Friday May 30th it was back out to the bow (bring up that previous picture in your head) to bring up the anchor one more time and we headed off one more time bound for Bahia Jiquilisco and Marina Barillas.  The 28nm journey went quite well and we really made good time with a very large following sea moving us along at over 8kts most of the time!  We arrived at the pilot meeting point about 09:20 Friday morning but I couldn't raise the marina via VHF.  However with a combination of Emails (thank you Blackberry) and sat phone text messages with my land based crew and the very helpful manager of Marina Barillas, Heriberto, we were able to let them know I was there and the panga pilot arrived about 10:30 to guide us in.  Similar to the Bahia del Sol/Jaltepeque previously this entrance is almost closed off by the shoaling and breakers but the pilot expertly guided us past them and our depth never went below about 20' (6m) and our draft (depth under the water) is only about 7' (2.2m) so we had plenty of room to spare. 

As you can see from the map (click to enlarge) and the dashed line we followed, this marina is located quite a ways inland and about 10 miles up the river inlet.  The marina is actually above the top of this map and is located on a U shaped bend in the river.   While we are still about 3º shy of the latitude where we'd like to be to completely out of the hurricane zone, a better hurricane hole is hard to imagine.

The transition from the ocean to the river inlet was truly an amazing experience for me.  One minute we were out at the meeting point in the rolling seas, then we were passing the spectacular breaking waves which were thunderously crashing on the shoals and minutes later we were in the serene silence of the river inlet that was mirror flat and bright.  As we passed the point you can see on the map labeled "minimum depth" (no problem) we entered the river inlet itself which is completely lined on both sides by mangroves.  The only sound was that of a soothing symphony of dozens of birds.  None of them visible but very much present with their wonderful songs serenaded us through this serene scene of tranquility. 

The trip up the river continued this theme of quiet tranquility.  We were now clearly in tropical climates and vegetation and quite a contrast to the arid landscapes that had become so familiar in Mexico.  The banks of both sides of the river were thick and solid with mangroves and behind them a full canopy of larger palms and other trees.  What I believe to be some type of swallow were all flying and landing all over the deck, appearing to be looking for good nesting spots and quite liking the looks of our front furling drum.  And while we didn't see too many other birds on the shore they made their presence abundantly clear with their many calls and jeers as if to be welcoming us, or perhaps not, to their property.  We passed a number of local fishermen out in small dugouts, canoes and small fiberglass boats.  Some casting nets but most seemed to be jigging for small fish by rapidly jerking in a light line and hook.  Along the banks were occasional small shacks, usually about 5-10 families it would appear and otherwise it was mile after mile of mangroves. 

We continued to follow the panga pilot on the perfectly flat and calm river for the 9 miles and about two hours later we rounded the corner you can see at the very top of the map and could see about 60 mooring balls floating in the river, about 12 of them with a sailboat tied up to them and behind these was a fleet of large commercial fishing boats rigged for langoustine, shrimp and some tuna by the looks of it.  We'd arrived a Marina Barillas!  12:40pm Friday May 30th, 2008.  And though it was like nothing I'd seen before I liked the looks of this spot!

This turned out to be a good reminder to trust your instincts and I'll tell you all about wonderful Marina Barillas, our new home port for a while, in the next installment.

Learnativity Out at Marina Barillas 13.15.795N  88.29.198W El Salvador

Goodbye Guatemala; we hardly knew ya!

Hi folks, been a busy week to say the least and so not able to get you any updates since we left Puerto Angel and Mexico last Monday, March 26th headed South for San Jose Guatemala.  As you may recall from the previous postings and Emails this is a potentially tricky leg of the journey south as we have to sail across the Sea of Tehuantepec which is notorious for sudden severe storms at any time of the year and particularly now at the start of the hurricane season.  There were some storms brewing down south near Panama that were looking like they might produce the first tropical storms of the season and were headed North.  But for Tehuantepec area our weather forecasts said it looked good for the next 3 days and there were some much better protected areas in Guatemala and more so in El Salvador so we decided to take advantage of this clear spell and go for it.

As per the previous posting I sent out just before we left Puerto Angel we were supposed to go to the next port of Huatulco about 5 hours sail to the South, in order to properly check out of the country as Puerto Angel did not have a Customs or Immigration office, however we still had our official check out of the country papers from La Paz when we had originally left there last month for the Marquesas, or so we thought before we had the rudder seizure problems.  So we pulled up anchor at 12 noon on Monday, waved goodbye to the lovely anchorage at Puerto Angel and set sail to cross Tehuantepec on a heading for San Juan Guatemala. 

The rest of the day (Monday) went very well with not much wind at all so we motor sailed at about 6.5-7 kts/hr thanks to some following seas that have been helping us for months as we continuously headed South.  I don't envy the folks who are going in the opposite direction headed back for the US or Canada.  Not the time of year to be doing that if you can possibly help it as the winds and the seas are all against you. 

We were again joined by lots of dolphins and here you can see Ms. Ruby at the bow checking them out as they crisscrossed our bow.  She was a bit concerned because these dolphins were quite the show offs and were jumping way out of the water just to show us how acrobatic the could be.

The sail went well for us even when there wasn't much wind we had the seas (waves and current) going our way which makes both the ride and the speed MUCH better.  That evening however we started to pick up a lot of storm and squall action on the Radar and so we spent the night dodging these but were able to maintain our course to San Jose pretty well and we made good progress for the rest of Monday and Tuesday.

Radar Rules!

For those who don't know it, I didn't either till sailing, storms show up quite well on Radar, I believe it is the concentration of water in the air that they pick up.  I have a very good 4kw Raymarine Radar system I installed on Learnativity last year and it has been in use pretty much every day we've been underway.  Amongst its features, you can set up a "zone alarm" either a cone shape or a full circle of whatever size you like and whenever anything enters that zone the alarm goes off.  While I scan the horizon about every 15 minutes for a visual check you can appreciate how valuable this feature is to have to help alert you to what's around, especially at night when some boats are not lit.  Now we were using one of its other features which is this ability to see where the storms are around you and using this I was able to watch the shape and direction of the storms ahead and change course if necessary to go around rather than through them.  Its not so much the rain but the wind gusts and lightening that you worry about and try to avoid.  So with lightning lighting up the horizon all around us we were able to sail through the night without much trouble, keeping the wind below 20kts and no lighting directly around us.  One down side during storms is that they pretty much dominate your Radar screen and so you can't see any of the blips that are ships!  So a keen eye out for ship lights is more called for.  Fortunately traffic has been amazingly light the whole trip and this evening we only passed 3 other boats, all commercial freighters and none closer than about 4nm from us. But with the great natural light show all around and being able to successfully dodge and dart around the storms themselves it was quite an enjoyable sail actually, just not much time for sleep. 

Wednesday morning I was able to get updated weather forecasts (thanks John!) via sat phone text messages and Email downloads.  The storm we'd been watching was in fact starting to turn into the first tropical storm of the season but it would not reach our area, if at all, until about Thursday.  So as the weather, the boat and I were holding up well we decided to sail right past Guatemala and take another day to continue on to El Salvador.  While disappointing to miss out seeing Guatemala the priority was getting south and to a well protected "hurricane hole" if needed to wait out any storms that made it this far north.  So El Salvador it is, full speed ahead Captain!

Spinnaker Wraps are NOT a new dessert topping!

With the wind light and directly behind us I put the spinnaker up to help give us a bit more speed and get to port ASAP.  Spinnakers as you may recall from previous posts are those large billowy sails you often see in dramatic sailing photos and you can see Learnativity's big blue and white spinnaker here.  They work great but are a real handful, especially when you are single handed as they can be a bit temperamental when the wind shifts or dies as they collapse and start to flail all around the rigging on the boat.  And sure enough this happened and so I spent an exciting few hours late Wednesday afternoon dealing with a dreaded spinnaker wrap.  This is NOT a new dessert topping I assure you, but rather a nasty mess where all that lovely blue and white nylon wraps and twists itself all around itself and your rigging.  After a few hours I was able to get it off the rigging and pull the sock down over the spinnaker sail which was twisted into quite a mess.  But I could at least now wrestle the sail down onto the deck and stowed into the bag as we lost our light with the sun going down.

Water Flow; NOT!

It is said that all the nasty problems when you are out sailing occur at about 2am and sure enough at 2:40am on Wednesday the engine alarm (a giant red school fire alarm bell) went off and the indicator lights for lack of water flow was on.  Not good!  Fortunately I had the main sail up and we had enough wind to maintain a forward speed of about 2 kts which was enough to let the auto pilot keep us going in about the right direction while I went below to figure out the problem.  Without going into too many details, you might want to know that marine engines use what is called a "wet exhaust" system where you pump sea water into the exhaust system to cool it down as it exits the turbo charger and then goes out through large rubber exhaust hoses to the back of the boat.  The temperature coming out of the turbo charger is about 600-800º F this would pose a problem trying to route such high temperature pipes through the boat, which in my case is over 25 feet, so by injecting cold sea water into the exhaust pipes you drop the temperature to about 100-120º F and can use large 4" diameter rubber exhaust hoses to transport the exhaust gasses and water that are not hot at all on the outside.  (got it?  there will be an engine quiz at the end of this posting!)

The alarm that went off was from a flow meter that is inline with the hose from the water pump that is pulling sea water in from the ocean and through to the exhaust, indicating that there was no flow of water going through, hence no cooling of the exhaust, hence big problem!  Removing some hoses I found  a bit of sea grass and what I thought at the time was an old bit of rubber from the vanes of the water pump impeller blocking the water from flowing through the inline oil cooler and so I cleared that out, put it all back together and fired up the engine again.  No luck!  The alarm was still going off.  Back down in the engine room (temperature about 120ºF BTW) I was able to determine that there was indeed no water getting through to the exhaust, but not figure out why.  The pump was pumping, hoses seemed clear but it wasn't making it all the way through to the exhaust water muffler.  Blocking off the hose with my finger it suddenly seemed to prime itself and pump water well so I hooked it all back up, started the engine and Voila!  no more alarm!  So at 07:10 we were back underway though we had lost a lot of time and distance towards our destination. 

Look out El Salvador here we come!

Conferring with my charts and shore based "pose" via sat phone I redid the calculations for the port I was heading for in El Salvador, Marina Barillas (13.15.74N 88.29.19W) and realized that we would not be able to get there till Friday and that might be cutting it a bit close with the tropical storm potentially headed north.  Instead I changed course and headed for the closer port and marina at Bahia Jaltepeque (hahl-tay-PAY-kay) also known as Bahia del Sol (13.15.9N 088.53.0W)  We would be able to get there by Thursday just after noon and give us lots of time to get in through the breakers (more on that later) and docked well before dark, which was now happening by about 7pm down here. 

Look out El Salvador and Bahia Jaltepeque, ready or not the good ship Learnativity is on headed your way!