We have spent the past winter in Boot Key Harbor doing a lot of refit work, new solar panels, tricky engine issues, wiring, plumbing, rigging issues, lots of small stuff that we couldn't deal with in Guatemala. Our intention was to finish up the technical work with Joe Hanko this Spring then park the boat and travel to Europe for the summer. Not happening now.
Now, we are self-isolating on Cerca Trova out on anchor in various anchorages around western Florida. One of our favorites is Pelican Bay at the Cayo Costa State Park. The park is closed, and we have been chased off the beach by the Sheriff's patrol, but there are about twenty five other boats in here with us, and no one is doing the boat-to-boat cruiser social thing.
This is very strange. Cruisers are incredibly gregarious, perhaps because we spend so much time alone, so when we are in an anchorage it is only natural to get out and meet people. Not happening now.
In fact, everyone is giving each other the stink-eye as we putt around in our dinghies. There are a few fishing skiffs around, too, but they just blast past and won't even make eye contact (which might be normal behavior for that class of boater, I don't actually know). On the other hand, the wildlife is having a field-day. We have seen more manatees in the last week than we have seen in our entire past seven years of cruising. Ospreys and pelicans everywhere, no trash floating by, no loud music. We actually saw a contrail two nights ago and were awed to see such a powerful remnant of the world before the virus.
We have been getting groceries at a local general store. The store is in the itty bitty town of Boca Grande but only an hour by big-boat over from Cayo Costa. It's an up-market Florida beach town that oozes quaintness. And is populated by folks with a lot of money. So the groceries are expeeeensive! But it saves us having to beat back four hours to Punta Gorda, anchor up, get a ride to the Publix (which is a mile and a half from the water front, then brave the hairy scene inside the store, then get a ride *back* to our dinghy and out to the boat.
Still, we are getting boat-cabin fever. We can't go to the beach, there's little see, there's no diving or snorkeling, and we are mostly out of boat projects. So Jenn has picked up a job answering help-line calls for State of Florida's disaster of an unemployment system. That only took us a full week to unsnarl the IT mess and poor training to get her going. But she is now quite busy and feeling good about doing something active to help the myriad people who are floundering.
And so it goes, until the social limits are relaxed, or we get sick.
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Change is upon us
Royalston, MA
Change is upon us here.
The mist is rising from the trout stream this morning under the red,
orange, and pine-green trees, the swamp maples have dropped their leaves. We have had
our first frost and more are coming. We
will be away to Cerca Trova in two weeks.
But change is also brewing in the outside world. We have personally seen the change, the dying
reefs, the species shifts, the increased storms, the changing rain patterns,
and we are here to tell you it is absolutely happening. But a cousin sent around an article by a
vehement Denier about how, finally, a heroic climate scientist was calling bullshit
on the world-wide clamor to act. So I dug
into that article and the climate scientist in question and here’s what I
found. It runs a bit long because it
takes some work to unpack the truth.
The article is here https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/tony-thomas/2014/03/finally-real-climate-science/.
It definitely challenges the standing belief that climate change is both real
and man-made, so it definitely deserves some real attention. It makes the challenge with name-calling and
shaming, and only one minor scientific argument that is at least worth noting.
The way to credibly assess a scientific position is to
examine the people taking the position, the position itself, and the manner in
which the position is presented. Using this approach, several things
stand out with Tony Thomas’ article on Quadrant.au about Mototaka Nakamura.
The most obvious one is that Quadrant has an obvious
audience and the article sells well with that audience. Other material on
Quadrant is almost entirely name-calling that plays to the people who need to
be outraged. Tony Thomas is himself not a scientist and has never done
any modelling work. He is a “prolific contributor” to Quadrant. He
and Quadrant are clearly making a profit from promoting the controversy. I.e. he clearly has a conflict of interest.
The other key person is Nakamura. See https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2013331662_Mototaka_Nakamura
ResearchGate is essentially the IMDB of
peer-reviewed science, ie the only credible science because without peer-review
you can say anything that will get printed.
Nakamura’s body of work stops in 2010. His last topic
of work largely dealt with baroclinic waves (like the meanders in the jet stream) as
factors in various elements of dynamic climate such as the polar vortex
phenomenon. He has published nothing that has a global integrated climate
output. His work has largely dealt with small-scale models of
particularly complex non-linear elements.
He has never published work that shows the global observed changes can
be ascribed to any mechanism other than green house gas emissions. I.e. he is not a published global
climate scientist.
Thomas paraphrases Nakamura, since what Nakamura
has actually written is not readily available. Nakamura’s book does exist
but there is no way to actually read it since it is indeed in Japanese https://www.amazon.com/kikoukagakushanokokuhaku-chikyuuonndannkahamikennshounokasetsu-Japanese-Nakamura-Mototaka-ebook/dp/B07FKHF7T2/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=mototaka+nakamura&qid=1570052979&s=digital-text&sr=1-1
. The excerpts in English that Thomas offers are not translation-cited.
But in those excerpts I see a lot of language of Nakamura “throwing sour
grapes”. Nakamura's specific complaint that Thomas reports is that climate
modelling is so complicated that drawing conclusions is useless. From the get-go this is
a bit strange since Nakamra's entire body of science work is in fact built on
computer modelling.
Just how accurate is Thomas’ interpretation of a book in
Japanese, since I am willing to be that Thomas doesn’t read Japanese? Note that
I am operating only on Thomas’ presentation. And he has already
been shown to have a conflict of interest. But it is all we have to go on for now.
There is a fundamental truth in science, a sine
dicens since it is so utterly obvious, which a Canadian economist George
Box put into eloquent words about two decades ago: “All models are wrong, but
some are useful”. In this specific case, the question is - can these
models be used to predict our near future?
Every single scientist who is an actual scientist knows that
his/her model (a.k.a theory-expressed-as-equations) is incomplete. The way computer models are built is to
assemble the equations which describe the phenomenon, fit the equations’
parameters (the A, B, C etc, typically multiplier factors) to a set of known
data (called the ‘learning set’), and then test that fit with a new set of data
(called ‘the test set’). This is indeed how nearly all climate modelling
has been done.
You might ask how is both a ‘learning set’ and a ‘test set’
obtained. Good question. In the climate situation where the only
climate data are historical, i.e. you can’t just run the experiment again and
collect a new set of data, one way is to draw the learning data from one subset
of the measurements, say every other reading, and the test set is the remaining
data. Another way is to fit the model to one output parameter, say global
temperature, and test against a different parameter, say sea level. This
latter approach is much more powerful and is the basis for most of the
predictions being made.
Predictions are the central point of contention in Thomas’
write-up, since Thomas says Nakamura says predictions can’t be done by
modelling even though he has done so himself. In an absolute sense,
this is correct. Another sine discens is that “extrapolations are
hazardous.” Predictions can be legitimately made out as far as the model
error diverges to where it’s judged the predictions are not confident,
typically the 95% confidence level. However, the way climate predictions are
being done, using about 100,000 years of historical data, is to only look at
model outputs for the next 50-100 years, which is only a few sample points
ahead of Now and are well within the 95% confidence interval of the
models. This is perfectly legitimate and is almost always done with
models. For models being built with recorded data from the
post-industrial age, the predictions are still being only pushed out to where
the model error is excessive.
In fact the echo cancellation technology in your long
distance phone connections does this every single time you make a phone call,
predicting the sounds that will bounce back on the line and subtracting them
before putting the result on to your ears. Do you remember hearing echos
on your long distance calls? Not for a long while now. I.e. the
models are now good enough to predict the signal to several seconds, which is
in fact several thousand sample intervals ahead of Now.
As for the manner in which Thomas presents the results, note
the language and tone of it all as disparaging and only one single scientific
argument. That argument is interesting. Thomas says that Nakamura
says that existing climate models can only be made to fit by adjusting some
model parameters to outrageous values. I have no way to assess the validity of
this statement itself since I am not active in the model-making work and have
not dug in to the models themselves. But if this is the case, then it is
a legitimate complaint.
In my own modelling work for my doctorate, I
arrived at bizarre parameter values, for example negative volumes for the
heart, in order to get the models to fit the data. My doctoral committee
pointed this out and I was able to show many more instances where the model fit
without resorting to weird parameter values. And in the end, my model was
able to successfully predict and remove the signal in question, much like the
echo cancellation example above, so we all said “there must be more to this
beastie” and drove on.
Which is the case with climate science. Everyone
knows there’s more to the beastie. Saying that the beastie is too
complicated so we are just going to ignore it is specious at best and fatal at
worst. The entire September issue of the
Economist is saying that the non-linear tipping points are beyond current
science, for now, but the results are unanimously foreboding. But science
progresses when the next kid up takes what’s been done and adds in another
factor to get to an even better model. Which is what has been going on
with climate science since the first warning report was presented to President
Johnson in 1965 (which he ignored BTW).
Ultimately, there’s my own observations in the real
world. I have traversed the Caribbean for 40 years of which the last 10 years have seen 15,000 miles under
sail. Climate has absolutely changed since 1980’s. No question, I
am here to testify to it. Will it continue to change? All the models say yes, it is changing 100
fold faster than has ever been seen in geobiologic history, and that the
factors which we can measure also can account for that change in ways that
predict no slowing of the change within our kids’ lifetimes (which is a blink
of an eye in geobiologic history)
But bottom line, are the predictions accurately, absolutely correct?
No. All models are wrong but some are useful. The translations of Nakamura reads like a
spoiled perfectionist, not a thoughtful scientist working to address the
situation. There is way too much hysteria and not enough
discussion. Nakamura does not help the situation.
But are the predictions useful? Absolutely. They
are clearly fitting what is being observed well enough that each decade the
situation becomes more clearly problematic. Does it matter if we see
another 1oC increase in 30 years or in 50? Not in the sense that it’s all
bad news and we need to be doing something about it. And are we thinking about the consequences of
that news to us and our cruising?
Absolutely.
The real question is whether we, the world village, are willing
to take the risk that the predictions are fundamentally wrong. The canaries in the coal
mine are screaming, the managers are saying there’s a problem, and we can’t get
out of the coal mine.
Monday, July 1, 2019
There's no place like home
Coming up along the coast of Florida on our "ruby slipper" I couldn't help but recall this lesser known delight from "A Child's Garden of Verses":
We spent the spring cruising Belize. We tried twice to get to Roatan but the weather was blowing very hard from the southeast most of the season and we never got there. So instead we dove on Lighthouse Reef, met and hung with new old friends, and really got inside the details of cruising Belize.
After clearing out of Guatemala with our new Copper Coat, we intended to run up the Belize barrier reef then cross to Roatan. After nearly two weeks, not cleared in and waiting on weather, we gave up and returned to Placencia to clear in. The SE trade winds were just not backing off and we had pushed things about as far as we thought we could with the Belezian officialdom. Three days after clearing in to Belize there was a decent window to Roatan, arrggh.
But we took the positive view and worked our way out to Lighthouse Reef, where we again met up with sv BlueJacket with our friends Geoff and Sue from Hudson MA. We got in a couple of dives before the weather started kicking up again (tough diving from a 10ft dingy in 3ft waves) and we all trooped over to Cay Caulker to re-provision and wait for better diving weather to appear. We waited a week and got to know Cay Caulker pretty well. If/when you go, be sure to eat at Pasta Per Caso!
On our way back out to Lighthouse, anchored along the west side of Turneffe Atoll, we met up with long-time Belize cruisers mv Chickcharnie and mv My Island Queen. My Island Queen showed us how to cut through the middle of Turneffe and save 20 miles on the run from Cay Caulker to Lighthouse. With this short cut, the trip from Cay Caulker to Lighthouse drops to roughly 65 miles which is doable in one long day of travel. This would allow us to stay out at Lighthouse and only return to Caye Caulker just ahead of bad weather.
We learned a lot more from these seasoned boats beyond the short-cut. They taught us tips on fishing which led to us landing our first Mahi Mahi on our next jump to Lighthouse. We learned about the state of fishing within Belize, it's not good and the locals are now turning to deep-line fishing, which takes the breeding stock, in order to keep their catches up. We learned how to actually land a mahi mahi (very soft mouths so have to be gentle despite how hard they fight). We learned that doctor fly season runs about the time we were there - doctor flies are vicious deer flies that make deep punctures which you can't feel until a day later when the bites swell into welts. We learned about some great, tucked away anchorages for the trip to and from the Rio Dulce. And we learned their truism "it's called pleasure-boating - if its' not pleasurable you shouldn't be doing it."
We got back out to Lighthouse, squeezed in another set of dives, and then after only a week on-site, we had to leave to put the boat on a dock for Easter week so we could meet friends on a previously-booked trip to the British Virgin Islands on the only time-share we have ever been sucked into, on crewed sailing catamarans. It was a real treat to have a pro crew look after us, feed us, deal with the boat logistics, get us to all the great places. But we had to leave CT tied up safe during the busiest week in Belize. We found a spot at the nicer marina in Placencia and got there just ahead of the rush of power boats coming from Guatemala for "Semana Santa". Had a nice dinner and caught our plane two days later for the BVI's via Miami and Puerto Rico. We had a great time, it was soooo nice to be having that much fun and all the headaches were someone else's. And we spent enough time in San Juan to really see the charms there. We will definitely go back.
On our return, we got new Belize visas but our boat's permit had expired, so we dashed over to the officials' offices the next morning and cleared out with the intention of trying for Roatan, or heading for the States. Weather was again pumping hard out of the southeast so we decided to start on our voyage back to the States. We had considered many options going forward, from pushing all the way east to the eastern Caribbean, more time in the Bahamas and then to Puerto Rico or Cuba, but we had had enough of Belize. It had been a rough season with too much wind and not much diving (with a lot of effort we got in a total of 7 dives in two months), and we had been outside the US for a year and half. Time to go home.
With that decision made, we hoofed it from Placencia to Cay Caulker, 100 miles in 2 days, much of it into the wind, and ... waited for a weather window. sv Blue Jacket was there and so was our first-ever cruising buddies sv Take Two, there doing the same waiting for a window north, although they were headed to Isla Mujeres. We have been to Isla twice for a month each and know hard it is to get out of there across the Yucatan current and fight due east into the prevailing winds. Our better idea was to jump directly from Belize, ride the Yucatan current north while bearing gently east to graze the western tip of Cuba called Cabo San Antonio, then wrap around there, catch the Gulf Stream and ride it all the way to Key West. Great plan, weather window arrived, and then the night before we were going to jump I discovered on my pre-passage checks we had water in both sail drives. This is like having saltwater in your transmission, really bad news.
A week after getting back to Belize we had to turn back from the threshold and go back to the Rio Dulce for repairs.
We love the Rio. The easy pace, the lovely people, our many friends among the ex-pats and cruisers. But we got there pushing hard (2 and half days and 150 miles nearly all under sail to save the motors), rushed through paperwork to clear back in, a quick stop at Cayo Quemado, and up to the boat lift of RAM Marina. We had been on the phone with them as we ran down the coast of Belize so they had our parts already on order and, in fact, the parts got there before we were even hauled out.
The repairs took a week on the hard. We spent a total of two weeks in the Rio, waiting for tasks and making sure the boat was operating correctly after the haul-out. We lucked out with lodging (conditions in the boat yard were in the mid-90's and utterly windless, we *had* to have A/C and a quiet room to stay in) and our good friends Lobis and Jim of Punta Bonita had our own little casita available for us. So we stayed there, it was sooo comfortable after our very rough cruising season. At the boat yard, the machinist and the mechanic were top-notch. We also squeezed in a significant carpentry repair project while waiting for various sub-projects, carpentry work that would have cost us an arm and a leg in the US, and got our brand new gel coat waxed and polished. Then back into the water, a motor run back down the river to Cayo Quemado (the new seals were doing their job!), one last chicken-fry at Texas Mini-Mikes, and away down the river to clear out. Somehow in there we had a chance to meet more new old friends, who have built a house at Cayo Quemado and cruise Belize in the good months, and who took us for Sunday lunch at a cool place on the banks of the Rio just up from Livingston.
But it was now near the end of May and the weather was turning to the summer pattern - no wind, and lots of thunder storms), we really needed to hoof it to get out of there. We cleared out at Livingston on our way past, Raul's service agency Servamar did a smashing quick job of that and got us out of there just before the next rainstorm hit, and we pushed up to one of those new-to-us anchorages we had learned about from the old-time Belize cruising crowd back in Turneffe. From there we pushed into a north east wind for 50 miles, by-passing Placencia all together, to the little range of cays called the Pelicans with the one-room eco-resort Hide-Away Cay (http://www.hideawaycaye.com/), where our friends Dustin and Kim treat passing cruisers (and their one-room guest(s)) to right-off-the-reef seafood dinners. It was our 20th anniversary and we had to just stop for a breather. So we did.
Breather over, we were again back to pushing north. We made it 60 miles that day to another "hidden" anchorage we had learned about this year, only a few miles outside of Belize City but utterly hidden in quiet mangroves, but now it was so hot and so full of mosquitos and noseeums we had to close the boat and run the boat's A/C on the generator all night. We made it through that Night of Bugs and Heat and high-tailed it to Cay Caulker. To wait, again, for a weather window north.
We got one after about a week. It was clear that conditions would be very rough for the first 24hrs out of Belize but, if we could get through that, then things would settle down and the rest of the run to Cabo San Antonio would be pretty benign. Many thanks to our patient and professional weather forecaster, Chis Parker. One last lovely dinner at Pasta Per Caso and off we went.
Yah, it was rough with 6ft seas hitting us on the beam all night until we were nearly to Cozumel. But then things did start to settle down. So much so that by that evening we had our whole mainsail up as we crossed the Yucatan Trench towards Cuba. We usually pull in a reef for the night, and in doing so this time we discovered that two of the cars which hold our sail to the mast had broken. Fortunately these cars were below the second reef level, so we pulled the sail down to second reef and continued overnight. We had 2-3 knots of current carrying us forward and were making respectable speed despite the double reef and modest wind. We arrived at dawn at Cabo San Antonio and anchored inside the point to make repairs as best we could. We had *sailed* the whole way, 350 miles in 50 hours and only used the engines to charge batteries and for that final maneuvering to anchor. Gotta love a good strong current when it's working for you.
We couldn't fix the broken cars but we did fix the problem that had caused them to break, which left us stuck on the second reef until we could get back to the US and get new parts. We took an extra night there at Cabo San Antonio to rest and then took off inside their reef, anchoring twice before jumping out a cut in the reef and making for Key West. That whole section of north west Cuba is a national park that's 100 miles of nearly deserted mangroves and reefs. Truely lovely untouched ecology. Maybe the best cruising we had had all year. Two fisherman did turn up and sold us the largest lobsters and snapper we had seen all year, for $20US. The best thing we can do to break down the Cuban military regime is teach the citizens the benefits of free enterprise. They seem to be catching on. But what will that do to these last remaining wild places?
Again, we set off into the current. Timing, current and weather were with us. We had the current (now called the Gulf Stream) pushing us directly NE towards the Keys and essentially no easterly wind. When the easterly trades pump up against the Gulf Stream, a lethal sea state can develop, one that will wreak havock with large ships much less little cruising boats like us. Ie. we had no wind against us, a benign sea state, and plenty of helping current, all good. The mainsail was limited to just the second reef but we had to motor anyway due to there being no wind. We were moving so well that we decided to motor our way past Key West all the way to Marathon and the wonderful cruisers' harbor at Boot Key. Overall, that was 180 miles we did in 30 hours.
Oh, I forgot to mention, our fridge/freezer had decided to lose all it's coolant on the run from Belize to Cuba. I replaced that on anchor at Cabo San Antonio, but we knew it was just a matter of time before the whole thing went belly up and we lost all our cold stores, including another mahi mahi that decided to take our lure just at sunset going into the Gulf Stream.
Job #1 at Marathon was to replace the broken sail cars. And #2 was get the fridge system replaced. Both were accomplished in a week and we took CT out for a trial overnight on anchor. Weeell, the sail car replacement was a total success but that brand new and very expensive refer system was barely working.
Back to the Boot Key harbor and another call to the installers (whom we have known since our very first stop there years ago and been wrestling with the refer). They came back out on short notice, examined their work and declared it was working correctly. But it just wasn't effectively cooling the way our old until had. What a PITA. In the end we agreed to return in the fall and let them make it right, because, as much as we enjoy the scene at Boot Key, we really really wanted to get out of there and up to our summer base in Ft. Pierce.
OK, off we went again, with overnight stops at Key Largo and Key Biscayne, then an overnight passage to get us all the way from Miami to Ft. Pierce. We hit the Ft. Pierce channel as the out-going tide was beginning to die down, anchored off the marina until that had a slip for us, and went in on a now-slack tide to tie up.
For now, we are rushing around finishing must-do projects which can only be done on a dock (docks are *expensive* in the US!) and preparing CT to sit on her own for the summer months.
We are off and away, by plane this time, in a week.
- The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
And high overhead and all moving about,
There were thousands of millions of stars.
There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
Nor of people in church or the Park,
As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,
And that glittered and winked in the dark.
The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,
And the star of the sailor, and Mars,
These shown in the sky, and the pail by the wall
Would be half full of water and stars.
They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,
And they soon had me packed into bed;
But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,
And the stars going round in my head.
We spent the spring cruising Belize. We tried twice to get to Roatan but the weather was blowing very hard from the southeast most of the season and we never got there. So instead we dove on Lighthouse Reef, met and hung with new old friends, and really got inside the details of cruising Belize.
A Tough Springtime in Belize
After clearing out of Guatemala with our new Copper Coat, we intended to run up the Belize barrier reef then cross to Roatan. After nearly two weeks, not cleared in and waiting on weather, we gave up and returned to Placencia to clear in. The SE trade winds were just not backing off and we had pushed things about as far as we thought we could with the Belezian officialdom. Three days after clearing in to Belize there was a decent window to Roatan, arrggh.
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| Final state of our fancy new CopperCoat bottom paint |
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| Arnie Juarez and his team cheering on our re-launch |
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| The new Cerca Trova visits Monkey Bay Marina on Valentines Day |
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| Belize Black Orchid at Monkey Bay |
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| Orchid at Monkey Bay |
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| The waterfront at Livingston Guatemala |
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| sv Blue Jacket under sail for Lighthouse Reef |
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| A very fine breakfast including jam from Vermont |
On our way back out to Lighthouse, anchored along the west side of Turneffe Atoll, we met up with long-time Belize cruisers mv Chickcharnie and mv My Island Queen. My Island Queen showed us how to cut through the middle of Turneffe and save 20 miles on the run from Cay Caulker to Lighthouse. With this short cut, the trip from Cay Caulker to Lighthouse drops to roughly 65 miles which is doable in one long day of travel. This would allow us to stay out at Lighthouse and only return to Caye Caulker just ahead of bad weather.
We learned a lot more from these seasoned boats beyond the short-cut. They taught us tips on fishing which led to us landing our first Mahi Mahi on our next jump to Lighthouse. We learned about the state of fishing within Belize, it's not good and the locals are now turning to deep-line fishing, which takes the breeding stock, in order to keep their catches up. We learned how to actually land a mahi mahi (very soft mouths so have to be gentle despite how hard they fight). We learned that doctor fly season runs about the time we were there - doctor flies are vicious deer flies that make deep punctures which you can't feel until a day later when the bites swell into welts. We learned about some great, tucked away anchorages for the trip to and from the Rio Dulce. And we learned their truism "it's called pleasure-boating - if its' not pleasurable you shouldn't be doing it."
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| Our very first ever successfully landed Mahi Mahi, caught on our way to Lighthouse |
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| Anchorage at Caye Caulker |
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| Sunset from the "back" side of Caye Caulker |
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| A troop of travelling circus performers one night at Restaurant Suggestion Gourmet |
We got back out to Lighthouse, squeezed in another set of dives, and then after only a week on-site, we had to leave to put the boat on a dock for Easter week so we could meet friends on a previously-booked trip to the British Virgin Islands on the only time-share we have ever been sucked into, on crewed sailing catamarans. It was a real treat to have a pro crew look after us, feed us, deal with the boat logistics, get us to all the great places. But we had to leave CT tied up safe during the busiest week in Belize. We found a spot at the nicer marina in Placencia and got there just ahead of the rush of power boats coming from Guatemala for "Semana Santa". Had a nice dinner and caught our plane two days later for the BVI's via Miami and Puerto Rico. We had a great time, it was soooo nice to be having that much fun and all the headaches were someone else's. And we spent enough time in San Juan to really see the charms there. We will definitely go back.
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| Sprightly sail inside the reef at Lighthouse |
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| A Lighthouse sunset |
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| Cerca Trova running down to Placencia passing a school ship motor-sailing the other way (photo courtesy sv Blue Jacket) |
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| Hanging at the Placencia marina while we set up to fly to the BVIs |
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| Road Town Harbor, BVI |
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| Francis Drake Channel from The Baths |
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| Scrambling around The Baths |
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| The world-famous Bubbly Pool |
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| Our charter buddies, and Skipper Guy in the foreground |
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| Castillo of Old San Juan |
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| Astounding antique Swiss chandelier at the bar of the Conrad San Juan |
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| Equally astounding street of umbrellas in Old San Juan |
With that decision made, we hoofed it from Placencia to Cay Caulker, 100 miles in 2 days, much of it into the wind, and ... waited for a weather window. sv Blue Jacket was there and so was our first-ever cruising buddies sv Take Two, there doing the same waiting for a window north, although they were headed to Isla Mujeres. We have been to Isla twice for a month each and know hard it is to get out of there across the Yucatan current and fight due east into the prevailing winds. Our better idea was to jump directly from Belize, ride the Yucatan current north while bearing gently east to graze the western tip of Cuba called Cabo San Antonio, then wrap around there, catch the Gulf Stream and ride it all the way to Key West. Great plan, weather window arrived, and then the night before we were going to jump I discovered on my pre-passage checks we had water in both sail drives. This is like having saltwater in your transmission, really bad news.
A week after getting back to Belize we had to turn back from the threshold and go back to the Rio Dulce for repairs.
"Once more on to the concrete, dear friends!"
We love the Rio. The easy pace, the lovely people, our many friends among the ex-pats and cruisers. But we got there pushing hard (2 and half days and 150 miles nearly all under sail to save the motors), rushed through paperwork to clear back in, a quick stop at Cayo Quemado, and up to the boat lift of RAM Marina. We had been on the phone with them as we ran down the coast of Belize so they had our parts already on order and, in fact, the parts got there before we were even hauled out.
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| Cerca Trova (left) and unknown boat at entry to Cayo Quemado |
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| Cerca Trova at anchor off of Cayo Quemado |
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| Cooling swim in El Golfete |
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| Sunset over the eastern end of El Golfete |
The repairs took a week on the hard. We spent a total of two weeks in the Rio, waiting for tasks and making sure the boat was operating correctly after the haul-out. We lucked out with lodging (conditions in the boat yard were in the mid-90's and utterly windless, we *had* to have A/C and a quiet room to stay in) and our good friends Lobis and Jim of Punta Bonita had our own little casita available for us. So we stayed there, it was sooo comfortable after our very rough cruising season. At the boat yard, the machinist and the mechanic were top-notch. We also squeezed in a significant carpentry repair project while waiting for various sub-projects, carpentry work that would have cost us an arm and a leg in the US, and got our brand new gel coat waxed and polished. Then back into the water, a motor run back down the river to Cayo Quemado (the new seals were doing their job!), one last chicken-fry at Texas Mini-Mikes, and away down the river to clear out. Somehow in there we had a chance to meet more new old friends, who have built a house at Cayo Quemado and cruise Belize in the good months, and who took us for Sunday lunch at a cool place on the banks of the Rio just up from Livingston.
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| Old sleeves on drive shaft (note grooving) |
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| New sleeve on drive shaft |
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| Back into the water after the repairs |
But it was now near the end of May and the weather was turning to the summer pattern - no wind, and lots of thunder storms), we really needed to hoof it to get out of there. We cleared out at Livingston on our way past, Raul's service agency Servamar did a smashing quick job of that and got us out of there just before the next rainstorm hit, and we pushed up to one of those new-to-us anchorages we had learned about from the old-time Belize cruising crowd back in Turneffe. From there we pushed into a north east wind for 50 miles, by-passing Placencia all together, to the little range of cays called the Pelicans with the one-room eco-resort Hide-Away Cay (http://www.hideawaycaye.com/), where our friends Dustin and Kim treat passing cruisers (and their one-room guest(s)) to right-off-the-reef seafood dinners. It was our 20th anniversary and we had to just stop for a breather. So we did.
Breather over, we were again back to pushing north. We made it 60 miles that day to another "hidden" anchorage we had learned about this year, only a few miles outside of Belize City but utterly hidden in quiet mangroves, but now it was so hot and so full of mosquitos and noseeums we had to close the boat and run the boat's A/C on the generator all night. We made it through that Night of Bugs and Heat and high-tailed it to Cay Caulker. To wait, again, for a weather window north.
We got one after about a week. It was clear that conditions would be very rough for the first 24hrs out of Belize but, if we could get through that, then things would settle down and the rest of the run to Cabo San Antonio would be pretty benign. Many thanks to our patient and professional weather forecaster, Chis Parker. One last lovely dinner at Pasta Per Caso and off we went.
Yah, it was rough with 6ft seas hitting us on the beam all night until we were nearly to Cozumel. But then things did start to settle down. So much so that by that evening we had our whole mainsail up as we crossed the Yucatan Trench towards Cuba. We usually pull in a reef for the night, and in doing so this time we discovered that two of the cars which hold our sail to the mast had broken. Fortunately these cars were below the second reef level, so we pulled the sail down to second reef and continued overnight. We had 2-3 knots of current carrying us forward and were making respectable speed despite the double reef and modest wind. We arrived at dawn at Cabo San Antonio and anchored inside the point to make repairs as best we could. We had *sailed* the whole way, 350 miles in 50 hours and only used the engines to charge batteries and for that final maneuvering to anchor. Gotta love a good strong current when it's working for you.
We couldn't fix the broken cars but we did fix the problem that had caused them to break, which left us stuck on the second reef until we could get back to the US and get new parts. We took an extra night there at Cabo San Antonio to rest and then took off inside their reef, anchoring twice before jumping out a cut in the reef and making for Key West. That whole section of north west Cuba is a national park that's 100 miles of nearly deserted mangroves and reefs. Truely lovely untouched ecology. Maybe the best cruising we had had all year. Two fisherman did turn up and sold us the largest lobsters and snapper we had seen all year, for $20US. The best thing we can do to break down the Cuban military regime is teach the citizens the benefits of free enterprise. They seem to be catching on. But what will that do to these last remaining wild places?
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| Mast track separation that caused the car failures |
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| Squall over Cayo Buena Vista |
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| Squall chasing us up the reef |
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| After the squalls, before turning for Key West |
Again, we set off into the current. Timing, current and weather were with us. We had the current (now called the Gulf Stream) pushing us directly NE towards the Keys and essentially no easterly wind. When the easterly trades pump up against the Gulf Stream, a lethal sea state can develop, one that will wreak havock with large ships much less little cruising boats like us. Ie. we had no wind against us, a benign sea state, and plenty of helping current, all good. The mainsail was limited to just the second reef but we had to motor anyway due to there being no wind. We were moving so well that we decided to motor our way past Key West all the way to Marathon and the wonderful cruisers' harbor at Boot Key. Overall, that was 180 miles we did in 30 hours.
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| One more mahi on our way to Key West |
Phew! Back in the U S A.
Oh, I forgot to mention, our fridge/freezer had decided to lose all it's coolant on the run from Belize to Cuba. I replaced that on anchor at Cabo San Antonio, but we knew it was just a matter of time before the whole thing went belly up and we lost all our cold stores, including another mahi mahi that decided to take our lure just at sunset going into the Gulf Stream.
Job #1 at Marathon was to replace the broken sail cars. And #2 was get the fridge system replaced. Both were accomplished in a week and we took CT out for a trial overnight on anchor. Weeell, the sail car replacement was a total success but that brand new and very expensive refer system was barely working.
Back to the Boot Key harbor and another call to the installers (whom we have known since our very first stop there years ago and been wrestling with the refer). They came back out on short notice, examined their work and declared it was working correctly. But it just wasn't effectively cooling the way our old until had. What a PITA. In the end we agreed to return in the fall and let them make it right, because, as much as we enjoy the scene at Boot Key, we really really wanted to get out of there and up to our summer base in Ft. Pierce.
OK, off we went again, with overnight stops at Key Largo and Key Biscayne, then an overnight passage to get us all the way from Miami to Ft. Pierce. We hit the Ft. Pierce channel as the out-going tide was beginning to die down, anchored off the marina until that had a slip for us, and went in on a now-slack tide to tie up.
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| Sunrise off Stuart FL as we finish our passage north |
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| On our summer dock in Fort Pierce |
We are off and away, by plane this time, in a week.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
A Winter of Work
We have known for years that the
decking on Cerca Trova was badly done. The deck section had come out
of the mold with a lot of flaws which had been patched at the
factory. We bought her knowing this, knowing there were no
structural issues with the deck, it just looked bad. Over the years,
too, the gel coat (the glossy outer layer of the fiberglass sandwich)
has worn away with use, with polishing, and had been very thin in
places to begin with. So this past winter it was time to deal with
it. Which why we planned to stay in the Rio through the winter to
get this done where the workers are skilled and costs a quarter of
the same work in the US.
Guatemala City on our way back to the Rio to Begin the Big Project
Hauled out, the crew had us packed in with other boats
Lunch break at the Burger Shack right on the river
The non-skid panels ground off
Prepping the hull for the Copper Coat primer
Evening view from Punta Bonita
Punta Bonita's mascot, and the great bridge over the Rio Dulce
Prop shaft seals replaced and new bearing cap in place
Quick break to help install solar-powered lights in a village above the Rio
Rebuilding and lubricating thru-hull valves
Our second, longer trip took us first to Panama City in the Christmas season where we stayed near but not in, the old center. We splurged on a personal guide who had been recommended by our friends on Take Two for a day of seeing the city and the Canal (which is a truly impressive feat of engineering, even now 100 years after it was built). And we took a day on our own to go walk-about. We spent a lovely afternoon in the old town at a cafe and with shopping. Panama City is sort of the Manhattan of Central America, located at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal. There are fine restaurants and stores, high-rise apartment towers, businesses, constant shipping traffic, workers and visitors from all over the world, all driven by the Canal.
Three years ago, as we passed through
the Rio, we did some research on contractors and even got a bid from
one of them. We weren't quite ready to pull the trigger and so
sailed back to the US, cruised the Bahamas, etc. Then, since we had
ended our cruising last spring in the Rio, we in-depth interviewed
the same two contractors, sought references and example work, drew up
project plans, and took the plunge having finally chosen the same guy
who had given us the bid three years ago. His name is Arnie, he has
been doing this kind of work for 25 years, speaks lovely English (key
to ensuring the job proceeded correctly), and had his own crew of
full time guys. It was an enormous project in our eyes, the full
team working full time for four moths. It involved first removing
everything that was removable from
the deck (all sails, lines, fittings, anchors-and-chains, safety
gear, cushions, awnings, .. pulling the windlass off the deck is
a three-hour job), and then grinding off all the gel coat of
the deck, making new panels of the textured “non-skid” pattern
from gel coat and fiberglass cloth, gluing those panels back on the
deck, fairing their edges to the deck with new gelcoat, and then
spraying smooth gel coat over all the rest of the deck area. And,
while we were at it, we splurged on the latest boat paint that is
basically an epoxy coating loaded with copper power and good (they
say!) for ten years, rebuilding our window louvers which had been
badly designed and had been disintegrating over the years, and an
array of smaller projects. We booked a haul-out at the yard Arnie
uses for this past October, then after summer in the States we flew
back in a week ahead of the haul-out, got Cerca Trova to the yard,
hauled her out, and turned her over to Arnie. But we didn't go far.
It is a dictum of this kind of work, whether in the first world or
the third world, that you stay on hand and monitor, supervise, and
make decisions about the inevitable unplanned surprises.
We settled in a casita at the lovely
Punta Bonita Lodge and Marina right on the banks of the river. We
kept ahold of our dinghy to get back and forth to the yard daily and
for trips into town because Punta Bonita is on an island, there was
no land access to anything. We moved about ten dinghy-loads of stuff
to the casita from our boat-home since we were going to be living
there for four months. We went daily to the yard, checked with Arnie
on their progress and problems, and tackled our set of DIY tasks such
as replacing the shaft seals on the saildrives, fixing a persistent
plumbing issue with the toilet in our bathroom, hunting and fixing
several pernicious leaks, rebuilding the RF feed cable to our
shortwave antenna, etc etc etc. We managed the shipping of all the
required parts and supplies since very little is available in the
Rio. We did Thanksgiving with the wonderfully warm Jim and Kitty at
our “home base” marina of Monkey Bay Marina. We took breaks to go
swim in Lago Izabal. We did some work for the local NGO “Pass It
On Guatemala” in the form of trips to villages to install
solar-powered lighting for community centers. And we spent a lot of
time just keeping life going with grocery shopping and all the other
things that make life busy anywhere.
Guatemala City on our way back to the Rio to Begin the Big Project
Hauled out, the crew had us packed in with other boats
Lunch break at the Burger Shack right on the river
The non-skid panels ground off
Prepping the hull for the Copper Coat primer
Evening view from Punta Bonita
Punta Bonita's mascot, and the great bridge over the Rio Dulce
Prop shaft seals replaced and new bearing cap in place
Quick break to help install solar-powered lights in a village above the Rio
Rebuilding and lubricating thru-hull valves
After the work got going steadily, we
did take off on some land travel. We just haven't done enough of
that as we cruise, sticking to the boat and not seeing the countries
we travel through. So we took a trip to see some seriously large
Mayan ruins near the Rio and we treated ourselves to a Central
American cities tour in December.
Our Mayan ruins trip took us to the
sites of Quigua and Copan. Quirigua is known for very large stone
stellae, including the famous “Stella E” which is 35 ft high and
the largest in Central America, and fanciful stone animals carved
from boulders the size of minivans. What we found were those
artifacts as expected and unexpectedly a beautiful green park
wrapping around the ruins and surrounded by cool forest full of
birds. Then it was onto Copan, Honduras. We found a lovely hostel
with its patio ovelooking a creek, about a 20 min walk from the site
in the cute little town of Copan Ruinas. We hired a ruins guide and
had a fascinating day on the site. The flocks of Macaws living at the
site we really fun to watch flying in colorful flocks overhead. We
lucked out with weather and had gorgeous, but not hot, sun for the
whole trip. But a lot of the site is actually underground, where the
archeologists have excavated below
the surface level of buildings to exposed the level of structures
that the most recent had been on top of. We also had a wonderful day
touring the Welchez' family coffee and fruit plantation, Finca Santa Isabel, just south of
the ruins and up in the cloud forest. The coffee process is complex
and pursued with deep knowledge akin to the ways of vinters. They
sell their stunningly good coffee via the internet, if you would like
to try it, and their web sales are run personally by a Welchez
daughter.
At Quirigua
At Copan
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| 3 dots and 3 lines =18, as in "18 Rabbit" |
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| the famous heiroglyphic stair |
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| disco jaguar |
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| this way to the undercroft |
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| stone head out in a field |
At Finca Sta Isabel
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| before leaf-cutter ants |
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| after leaf-cutter ants |
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| coffee plants in the cloud forest |
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| street art in the village of Copan Ruinas |
Christmas season on the Rio
Our second, longer trip took us first to Panama City in the Christmas season where we stayed near but not in, the old center. We splurged on a personal guide who had been recommended by our friends on Take Two for a day of seeing the city and the Canal (which is a truly impressive feat of engineering, even now 100 years after it was built). And we took a day on our own to go walk-about. We spent a lovely afternoon in the old town at a cafe and with shopping. Panama City is sort of the Manhattan of Central America, located at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal. There are fine restaurants and stores, high-rise apartment towers, businesses, constant shipping traffic, workers and visitors from all over the world, all driven by the Canal.
From Panama City, which is a
surprisingly long 3 hr flight from Guatemala City, we hopped to
Cartegena, Columbia. Cartegena is one of the oldest cities in the
New World. And it is really old. It dates to the early
1500's and was a vitally important harbor for the Spanish as their
main deep-water port for shipping treasure back to the Old World.
The old city is one of only three walled cities in the New World
(name the other two: ____ , and ____ ). Since it was Christmas time,
the walls and towers were decorated with lights, the city parks were
festooned with lights, the residents were in fine feather, and the
weather was awesomely nice. We stayed on the beach in a dressy large
resort hotel, wore actual clothes (not just shorts and flip flops),
and lived like civilized folk for a week. If you are ever seeking an
not-the-usual-destination destination, put Cartegena on your short
list.
Cartegena old, new, and beachy
From Cartegena, we jumped back to
Antigua, Guatemala. Last spring, we had spent two very productive
weeks in Spanish language school there. We had been supposed to be
housed with a local family but instead we got a student dorm house.
Pretty ratty (eg. they served instant coffee, in Guatemala!).
So this time we went for an upmarket boutique hotel set in an
ancient structure right in the heart of the old town. We toured all
the things we had not been able to get to the prior spring due to the
daily work at the language school. We also were able to arrange
lunch with the aunt of our young friends Keren and Scott. She
directed us around the corner from our hotel to maybe the nicest
restaurant we had yet been in, Epicur, and there she unexpectedly ran
into the owner, who was a childhood friend. It became a lunch of
great food and great conversation with two cultured and successful
Guatemalans.
Antigua Guatemala - old, older, and our super-cozy classy hotel (where Royce was seen to cut a caper)
Antigua Guatemala - old, older, and our super-cozy classy hotel (where Royce was seen to cut a caper)
Our trip through the civilized part of
Central American came to an end, though, as we were getting anxious
to return to Cerca Trova and catch up on the work in progress. We
had planned to re-launch the boat in mid-January, so had only a month
of time to ensure the project was done completely and correctly, a
big chunk of that month was the Christmas holiday week, and there was
a tremendous amount of the project yet to be done.
Christmas and New Years in our casita
The final stages of polishing and reinstalling all that stuff from the deckChristmas and New Years in our casita
In the end, Arnie's team worked 7 days
a week, with the exception of Christmas Day and New Years Day and a
couple of days when it rained so hard they couldn't work, and we
still launched three weeks late. Not bad for a project that we had
laid out six months ago to take 10 weeks and exceptional for any boat
project because boats are always full of surprises once you get
started and expose what's under the paint. Cerca Trova re-launched
on 6 February, literally better than new.
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