- September 2005: Not much to report. Our cruising anniversary and other general musings
September 2005: Not much to report. Our cruising anniversary and other general musings
This journal entry is going to be a bit jumpy. There's loads of stuff in here, and I jump around a bit to get it all in. We've always tried to be totally honest in our Journal entries, to keep friends and family up to date, but also to give an accurate picture of what's going on. With that in mind...
Well, since we've been back at the boat there really isn't that much to report. It's amazing how quickly time has flown by. We keep saying that we'll make a trip inland, but we have yet to make another since Antigua. Our days are relaxed, but we're going a bit stir crazy. We're still at Barillas, having hoped to move Costa Rica at the beginning of October. What we hear from locals and others that have been here before, however, it's not a great time to head south if you're not already south. Sounds kind of odd. But with nightly thunder and lightening storms off the coast, passages can be hairy. So we're settled here until mid to late October. Sigh.
By the way, before I forget, another musing about Central America in general. There is not much spicy food here like in Mexico. In MExico, one can find multiple hot sauces on a table as condiments. Many dishes are also prepared with chilis of some sort. The Central American folks we've asked have said that generally the people here don't care for spicy foods. We find (especially Abe, but surprisingly me more than I imagined) our taste buds are craving some spicy stuff!
Back to our regularly scheduled program... The good news is that while we're waiting for weather, we're getting boat work done, albeit slowly. We get up at 8 or 9 (this is one of my favorite parts of this new life - sleeping as late as I wanna), and get to work. We have a list of projects that we'd like to complete since we're in a relatively good place for getting electricity and room on shore to spread out to work. We do some work until the boat gets too unbelievably hot around 12 or 1, when we move to shore. We sit under the palapa and do some boat work, read, write, do computer work, some computer play. Around 4:30 or so the mosquitos and no-see-ums get so bad that we have to move into the open-aired restaurant and sit in front huge fans. There we plop ourselves, waiting until the staff leaves so we can use their grill since it's too hot on the boat to cook. We have permission to use the grill, but we wait until they leave since we prepare and cook our meals at the restaurant tables. After the nightly downpour, we make our way back to the boat, read ourselves to sleep and do it all again the next day.
We do have some distractions. On Tuesdays and Fridays there is a van from The Compound into town. We shop for groceries and try to find air conditioned restaurants for a cheap lunch. On Sundays (as of two weeks ago), we don't do work on the boat and go make a day of football since the restaurant has cable. It is very strange to listen to American football commented on in Spanish. How 'bout those Colts?! Go Manning. Other distractions include some exercise. Abe and I are swimming each day in the tiny pool. We figure it's about 20 yards long at the best. But it's exercise and a way to stave off the madness that comes from doing not too much. It's just too hot to run. And hard to run when you know The Compound will make a security guard ride his bike behind you. Just because we want exercise doesn't mean they want it as well.
Abe here: Just last week I was sitting at the edge of the pool relaxing after doing laps and the a thought hit me. What would any of our friends think of us whining about our current situation if they could see our surroundings with the palapas, nice lively music, beautiful weather (although sometimes a bit too warm), three pools, great security? Every so often the ladies that work here will pick flowers from trees and bushes to decorate the restaurant tables. We have our friendly iguanas keeping an eye on us while doing laps, and many other critters not found in the US cross our paths daily. Oh, did I mention that it only costs us eleven dollars a day to park at a mooring ball? Try getting all this in any vacation spot and you will be hard pressed. So why is that we are having a hard time dealing with all this? If you can figure it out, let us know! What a problem to have...
When I was working, I said I couldn't wait for this kind of lifestyle. It is divine to schedule our days to fit our moods. We work hard on those days we feel industrious and slower on others. The relaxation and slow pace are nice up to a point. But with the heat, no air conditioning (we do have fans that help tremendously as well as an awning, but even so, it's just to warm to move much), it's hard to eat much, it's difficult most days to get motivated to work much. We do feel a little stir crazy, but by the same token we're in a nice little rut of carrying computers, canvas bags and food to shore every morning, and carrying computers, canvas bags and food home every evening. Lugging it in and out of the dinghy. Didn't we just do this yesterday?
It's been a frustrating month, but by the same token, it's gotten much better. Coming back to the itty bitty boat after such a nice visit in the States where my sister and her family have loads of room and Mom & Dad have loads of room was difficult. (A short aside: our visit in the States was divine. We spent time at Mom and Dads without a schedule, relaxing in their company, enjoying not having a timetable to leave. I really do miss them. It was nice to have time to just "be" with them. And Abe, fortunately for me, doesn't mind staying there. He feels relaxed and able to come and go and be himself.) It seems like we have to move 5 things to get to the one that we need. And there's nowhere to sit. We've been amazed at how often other cruisers will say to us, "Oh, you have THAT? That's so neat/useful/wish we'd thought of that before we left." Most of the items are spares, and we are prepared in that way. But it seems like no other cruiser is as packed as we are. It would be nice to actually be able to use our one and only table. So one of our major projects while here has been to reorganize, get rid of, inventory (my mental inventory was wiped out from 2 months of disuse while in the States), and generally clean out the boat. That makes it quite a mess in the process, but hopefully at the end of it, we'll have a somewhat spacious boat again. We'll never have use of the v-berth while traveling, but at least the floors won't be littered with milk crates, the aft bathroom won't be piled to the ceiling with storage crates, there will be room under the salon table for our feet, and the table itself will be cleared of stuff. Sigh. That's my dream.
In addition to the reorganization and reclaiming of our boat, our project list while here:
- rewiring the windlass so that we can hook up a battery combiner (for charging). The current wires are way too small.
- Permanently mounting the solar panels. That's leftover from San Diego when we installed them on 1x4s until we got the stainless steel we needed.
- Wiring a DC plug for Abe's side of the bed. Presently, his fan is plugged into my side of the bed with the wire hanging over us (it's not unsafe, just a pain).
- finish cleaning and sealing the 9 of 14 portholes. When the boat was built, the holes for the portholes were cut at the wrong angle and not sealed. Therefore, the core of the boat (at the walls) is unprotected and the windows leak. We need to take them out, properly make the holes for the windows by building up the walls with MarineTex, caulking them and rebedding them.
- Change engine oil
- install the bilge pump that Brian and Shelly brought us in February. It's going to go just forward of the engine compartment. There's a shelf there supporting the water tanks and water can slosh forward on passages, but gets stuck there because the shelf is too high for it to run back. We end up with some standing water in the forward bilge.
- Seal and paint the traveler. The paint is peeling and we need to protect that wood from the elements.
- Install our insulation bought in the States (because it cannot be had in Mexico or El Salvador) to the refrigerator. This is extruded polystyrene 2" thick. It's a bit more than what we planned on, but it will serve two purposes for us. We'll install it inside the existing box. With the bigger size it will not only provide insulation but will also make the box smaller and therefore less room to cool.
- I still need to finish the upholstery job by covering four small pieces of foam for the "railings" that are just above the covers.
- I'd like to cut the corners off our comforter since our bed isn't square. It's a six-sided, odd shaped hexagon. We also need new fitted sheets to fix the odd shape. Our original ones are just about done for.
September 6th marked our one year anniversary since leaving although we think we'll celebrate each year on Labor Day instead of the 6th. Labor Day 1996 is when we met. Labor Day 2004 is when we left. Labor Day just has some meaning for us. With our first year anniversary, we sat back and reviewed. We came up with some things that we enjoyed, things that we absolutely hated, and everything in between. When we imagined this trip, we knew that it would not be paradise, drinking mai-tais every day. We didn't want that. We've often heard that cruising is nothing more than fixing your boat in exotic places. But we've had a frustrating couple of months of boat living. We enjoy the comforts of the United States. We enjoy the fact that it's not a third world country. We both miss hearing positive things about America. We happen to really love our country, and didn't count on missing so much living wihtin it's boundries. We enjoy the fact that we can get that widget that we need down the street at any hardware store in the States. We enjoy the use of a vehicle in the States, and the relative ease of Buying and Consuming. If we don't have any of the benefits of cruising to outweigh the inconveniences (in our eyes), then it really is no fun. So we're trying to balance out the work with some more fun. We haven't been scuba diving since Puerto Vallarta. We still have those inflatable kayaks that we haven't tried out yet. We like to visit some new places, but we're really anxious to see places other than third world. There are many cruisers that love the small towns with the local color and all that offers. We enjoy the people, but it's so very hard to see the incredible poverty day in and day out. Our being here or not doesn't change the fact that it's here. I just can't get the images out of my mind. It's so very sad. We didn't count on how much we would carry the sight of this kind of poverty with us. We've learned that we would rather stay put in one area for a longer period, learning where the locals go, rather than blowing through each port and seeing only the tourist areas.
In terms of preparation, what did we do that was good? All the spares we have on board are worth the space they take. We have Shop manuals for our boat engine and our outboard. We can rebuild either (with the exception of a major overhaul on the boat engine - i.e. changing cylinders or valves. We can replace injectors, head gaskets, etc.). We have rebuild and service kits for all our equipment. We took classes (medicine at sea, diesel engines, celestial navigation, line splicing) or read books where our knowledge was weak. It's amazing how many people come cruising with very little in the way of knowledge or preparation. In that sense, our stress level is much less because of that preparation. We have trouble finding parts for the few jobs we left for after departure. I'd hate to try to find parts for our diesel engine, outboard, watermaker, Lectra/San, heads, etc. They can be found, but not without a lot of headache and trouble. Our preparation has made our time out that much easier and relaxing.
What have we done wrong? I think we haven't played enough. We have had trouble getting into the non-work mode. I feel guilty if more than a day or two goes by without working on the boat. We haven't taken the initiate to go Scuba diving on our own (with input from locals about safe and good places to dive). I think part of it is knowing that we'd have to unpack half the boat to get to the Scuba gear. Hopefully with our reorganization and repacking the boat, we'll have an easier time.
We said that we would cruise for as long as it is fun. It's not been so very fun the last months that we've been on the boat, and we're struggling with how to change that. We're certainly not ready to bag it all, but we need to change our days so that we have some enjoyable things too. It's not fun to work on the boat in hot temperatures, contorting our bodies to fit into tight spaces to fit that widget upside down, inside out. There is no such thing as easy access on a boat. If all we do is fix the boat, why did we leave the States? At least there we had easy access to West Marine. The boat needs lots of work, just simply because of the hard life on it of cruising. But we also need to enjoy the fact that we set our schedule. We need to enjoy and take advantage of the relative cheap travel to see places others normally only hear about.
I do find myself, while reading novels that describe houses as part of the surroundings, dreaming of a refrigerator and very large freezer stocked with ice and ice cream, a washer and dryer, very large storage area where things don't have to be stacked on top of one another, a tool room with easy access to all our tools, air conditioning, large kitchen counters. Sigh. We didn't go cruising because we enjoyed living on a boat. For us, the boat and sailing is a means to see the world. After spending the last year in Mexico and even poorer Central America, we wonder if we're frustrated because of all the surrounding poverty and hardships or simply because our home is so cramped. A large dose of both, I would imagine. And where's that blue water you see on postcards that invite you to swim? We haven't seen much of that. I thought we'd be diving in the ocean every morning for a swim. It's just not happened that way.
Life seems a bit just so unsettled. On a very sad note, a cruising acquaintance died on September 11th in a free-diving accident. We'd spent some time with this gentleman, his wife and two kids in Barillas, and his death came as such a shock. He was under 40, and it's just so hard to believe it. There are people that affect you, sometimes in ways that you don't know. This hit hard. My college roommate got married and I'm so bummed I didn't get to see her walk down the isle. One of our friends is having marital troubles. The air just feels unsettled. But how do I have room to complain? Aren't we living the dream? And if this isn't the dream, then what were those 3 1/2 years between buying the boat and setting sail all about? We put so much effort into making it happen. At least we're out here trying it. If we decide we don't like it, we can change plans the full knowledge of what this life is like. We dream big and make it happen. We don't lose anything this way. At least we try it out. We never thought cruising would be all blue skies and easy living. In fact, life out here is much harder in many aspects. We didn't and couldn't count on the differences no matter how much we read before departing.
So where does this leave us? Dropping back to punt. Reorganizing. Reconfiguring our lives. Figuring out how to change our situation to make it better. We can't complain without a plan to change it. We're looking at places between here and Ecuador where we can Scuba. We haven't made that a big priority yet. We're looking at ways to get off the boat for short periods of time to just get away. We're looking at the South Pacific in a bit of a different light. Most of the islands are very remote. Do we want to spend 9 months crossing from Central America to New Zealand or 6 months, arriving in New Zealand a bit quicker and into the relative comforts that a developed country offers? The water will certainly be blue and mostly swimmable during the crossing. And Scuba diving opportunities will abound. French Polynesia is very expensive, so we're looking at routes to see how we can limit our time and costs there.
During all this consternation, we sent an e-mail to our friends on Tournesol (click for current location. Last we talked they were in the Cook Islands, that much closer to being the first legally blind folks to cross and ocean. And the largest ocean in the world at that!) We haven't met anyone like them, and miss them so. We knew if anyone could understand some of the feelings that we were having, they could. Being the eternal optimists that they are, they wrote the perfect reply. Snap out of it! After that e-mail, and a phone conversation with them via Skype (cheap/free internet phone service. We love it), we felt oh, so much better. We needed their pick-us-ups! Cruising has also been described as a series of extreme highs and lows. It was nice to have their help to pick ourselves out of one of our lows. Back to the top.
