|
Eureka,
N California, October 15/01
Hello,
friends:
Lydia
B's now in northern California, wending her way (in not too great a
hurry, as you may observe) southwards. To the astonishment of our many
good friends at Anglers Anchorage, Brentwood Bay, Victoria BC, the last
dock party really was the last (for the time being, anyway) and we left
Canada on September 17. It was hard to leave after well over two years,
and it's hard to believe. Friday Harbor in Washington's San Juan Islands
was our first United States port of call -- in just a little
apprehension in view of the New York bombings and resultant tightening
of border controls. It was more fear than reality, though. It's often
seemed to me, on previous contacts with US customs, that they don't know
their *rses from their elbows; you get a different story about entry
requirements from each customs official. Understandable, in a way,
because they're doing the immigration department's job, and they admit
they don't really know how. What US officials know, if they aren't
sure about anything else, is how to be aggressive. But we chose
Friday Harbor because it's familiar; they're nice people in the customs
office there and we've never had trouble entering Friday
Harbor before -- and sure enough it went smoothly. We got
Lydia B's cruising permit (she's British registered now) to take
us as far as San Diego. A coy English smile goes a long
way.
So
we set off with big ideas about going quickly to San Francisco after a
first call at Port Townsend, just because it seemed an interesting place
to be, with its long association with traditional boats. (Here's the
main lesson about going long-term cruising -- don't ever tell anyone
when you're going to leave, because it'll turn out to be much, much
later. Repeated dock parties at Brentwood for a non-departed Lydia
B attest to that. And don't tell anyone when you expect to get
there -- there are so many interesting and necessary diversions en
route. If you feel chagrin at all your delays, remember it's
probably a minority who get off the dock!).
Anyway,
at Port Townsend we bumped into another Baba 30 owner, Susan Moffatt,
who wanted to do the SanFran leg with us. She packed aboard more stuff
for an intended week than I brought with me from England for the
forseeable future. Anyway, after a weather delay of several more days at
Neah Bay, an Indian-operated, expensively built and strangely deserted marina just
round the corner before Cape Flattery, we launched into the Pacific
proper one afternoon and immediately got bounced in rough weather. All
the advice in Canada about leaving before the end of August
was probably correct. Late September/October lows are getting deeper and
more frequent and the Pacific high's shrinking positively south now,
taking its comfortable northwesterlies with it. The Washington/Oregon
coast performed as we were warned; the winds were on the heavy side of
manageable, so we got quite big, though short, breaking seas, a boat
rolling endlessly and frequently surfing down the swells with a
following northerly. Much of the time we flew only a staysail, steered
with amazing, tireless precision by the Monitor wind-vane. Rachel
and Susan were sick more or less right away; I never was, fortunately
(though I could have been coaxed with a bacon sandwich, or some such).
So after three days -- making an average of 117 miles a day -- we went
inshore and docked at Coos Bay, Oregon, to get some sleep. Susan had had
enough by then and returned to Port Townsend. The boat's now been
through its paces and we have a sense that she's tough and
dependable. Lydia B then left for Crescent City, our first
Californian port, then on to Eureka -- which must have the best (and
cheapest at US$7.50 a night) publicly-run dock on the Pacific coast.
Everything brand, spanking new, free power and showers -- and free bikes
to explore this fascinating Victorian/Californian town; unclaimed stolen
bikes, courtesy of the local police department. Sometimes it's just hard
to leave.
This
is genuine, west coast America, the heart of the timber -- redwood --
industry and it's fascinating to this new boy (particularly in traffic
on a bike). It's colourful, fast, so-different, zany and (naturally) you
can get anything you want somewhere in town. (That just about describes
the United States; everything is here, and everybody has to have
it). The public buses are painted with flowers and there's a
baby-changing platform in the men's toilet, of course. In an empty car-park
on Sunday afternoon, a man in a car, door open, playing a saxophone. I
notice particularly wealth and poverty side-by-side: up-market shopping
in downtown Eureka, and dossers sleeping in the street round the corner,
on a patch of waste ground next to the Victorian theatre. Pampas grass
growing over the derelict rail-tracks on the business side of town.
There's so much space in north America that when one bit's full or used
up, you step out of the mess and move on to another patch.
Maybe it's an unacknowledged reflection of the way the native Indian
population tends to do things -- the earth reclaims
everything, so leave it lying where you toss it. It's the garbage
god.
You
have to keep an open mind when you travel like this. It's particularly
interesting for a Brit who's lived in Asia and Africa (and rural
Britain, of course) now observing Americans against their native,
plentiful backdrop in the aftermath of the New York events,
confused about why these things should be happening to them.
Americans really are deeply shocked by the terrorist attacks. They've
unified across the board round the slogans and the
collecting-boxes.
We're
now watching the weather for a few days' potential slackening, whereupon
we'll leave for San Francisco -- two days' sail away, given half-decent
winds. We can't go further south than San Diego -- a week's sailing
distant, barring stops -- until well into November because of hurricanes
in lower latitudes. We've done a few boat jobs -- the alternator went
awry at Neah Bay, so we replaced it with the spare, and found a spare
for the spare in a car-breaker's yard, helped by a friendly Mexican
hailing from Puerto Vallarta. The diesel saloon heater developed a leak
(actually, it's been malfunctioning for ages, but a blockage in the
metering jet made it spill out onto the cabin sole, so we finally had to
face facts and deal with it. Which meant borrowing tools from Murray, a
Newfoundlander with Chicago wife Colette on a neighbouring 42-ft
boat called Tarazed; I've since bought similar tools -- that's how the
inventory increases. We've enjoyed several meals with Murray and Colette
aboard each other' boats.
So
it's burritos for supper tonight.
More
anon, and best wishes to you all,
Ian
& Rachel aboard Lydia B.
Lydia B's final leaving party at
Anglers Anchorage, Brentwood Bay, Victoria BC.
Anglers Anchorage, Brentwood
Bay, BC -- Lydia B's home 1999-2001
L - Lowering the Canadian flag
in Haro Strait on the US-Canadian border. R - The bar at Fort Bragg,
northern California.
Cape Mendocino, California. A
place to avoid in onshore weather.
Tues
Nov 6/01, Santa Barbara, California.
Hello,
folks:
Lydia
B is now 1,300 nautical miles out from Canada -- a drop in the ocean, so
to speak, in relation to the distance she still has to go. All this
passing life at sea and periodically on land is fascinating to her
crew, who are in the best stall seats. I'll keep on writing, just to put
it down somewhere -- but if it's causing the faintest yawn for any of
the recipients of these letters, please don't hesitate to say and I'll
trim the address-list accordingly. Although we're necessarily out on our
own, we enjoy keeping in touch as we sail on to new places.
--------------------------
So
-- this comes from Santa Barbara, first stop in the heartland
of southern California. We sped past San Francisco without
acknowledging the sailor's dream -- passing under the Golden Gate --
to make up some of the time lost to difficult weather coming down
Washington and Oregon. We want to be in San Diego, on the border with
Mexico, early November, so we can take off south towards Panama as soon
as the tropical storm season ends in the 10-20 latitudes. We've been
watching the weatherfax pictures on the HF radio/computer, transmitted
by the US Coast Guard. Weather information is everything on a small voyaging
boat. Daily we know a little more about reading the
faxes, alongside VHF weather broadcast continously by the flat
computer voice of NOAA (the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration). We hear we'll shortly have a different mechanical
voice.
Fort
Bragg, north of San Francisco, was the last serious harbour bar we
crossed. These constricted Pacific coast harbour entries, with
their heavy, rolling (and sometimes breaking) swells across shoaling
sand bars, are brisk affairs. They take planning and concentration,
usually when you're exhausted with a couple of demanding
nights at sea, with little sleep. There are fewer bars from now on as we
go south.
We
headed across the San Francisco offshore shipping lanes in a
typical dusk fog, thankful for the radar's 16-mile eyes. Fog
is resident on this coast; by now we worry less about sailing blind
on instruments alone. Though having watched the huge hulk of laden
ships crossing our path ahead at 20 knots compared with our five we
took the precaution of calling up San Francisco vessel traffic
service, and the coast guard to let them know we were around.
We
got to Monterey at noon next day and dropped the hook in the bay outside
town. Again, even worse than at Fort Bragg, the noise and stink of
numberless sealions fighting over every square inch of seaside
territory, parking their fat bodies on rocks, dock structures and neglected
boats. They're a protected species here, and they clearly know it.
They're hated by the fishermen up and down this coast, whose lives chasing
tuna, salmon and crab are tough, if lucrative for some. Leave a vacant
space and there's a sealion on it. Their bellowing goes on all night. In
addition the ubiquitous Canada geese, so much part of the sound and
visual scene further north, have by now given way to pelicans.
Monterey's best-known son is the novelist John Steinbeck, whose 'Cannery
Row' is, of course, set in Cannery Row.We bought the book and
walked the walk past the now-demolished sardine canneries. On the whole
though, Monterey seemed a bit overboard in tourist nick-knacks. What's
really interesting about these places is what created them, besides what
keeps them ticking in a current, glitzy world.
Coastal
north California -- maybe like northern parts anywhere -- seemed
down-to-earth, much about work and practical life. Now we're past Point
Conception and going east along the southern California moneybelt. The
rocky shores of further north have given way to sand. Los Angeles and
Hollywood are a stone's throw away. This is bum-watch territory. Not
much sign of struggling industry at the waterside here. First
impressions of Santa Barbara from Lydia B's deck on the narrow harbour
approach through sugar-brown, shoaling sand, steered by red and green
fairway buoys to the acres of masts, is of leisure and comfortable
living. The town-administered marina is packed with over a thousand
pleasure-boats; the relatively few fishing vessels look a bit
token; the many very opulent boats here are just for fun. Lydia B
represents the modest boaters' end. The hillsides visible from
the dock are covered by substantial-looking houses (typically
southern Californian red pan-tiled roofs -- after all, this used to be
Mexico, with Monterey once its capital).
Money
and sun are here in abundance. So are the people. The rat-pack is denser
here than in other parts of the USA; there's a distinct absence of that
laid-back west-coast air we found further north, and especially in
British Columbia. For the first time anywhere we were asked to show
identification for ourselves and the boat, with a warning for good
measure that if we didn't pay the moorage fee within three days, Lydia B
would be seized. Santa Barbara marina office is staffed by gun-packing
cop-patrolmen, keen to explain the guns are reassuring to the
customers. To an English visitor, they seem oddly shocking, especially
when you find a loaded gun sitting next to you in the coffee shop.
In an outdoor shop in Fort Bragg an armed cop was proud to lay
out all the contents of his sagging waist-armoury and explain
them to me one by one: a .33 pistol loaded with nine rounds, two more
clips with nine rounds each, a pair of handcuffs and a large pepper
spray (same size as the one we carry on Lydia. We have no gun, but we do
have a catapult (slingshot) ). But a marina staffed by gun-totin'
cops? Only in America. In fact, maybe only in California.
(Talking
with residents we discover more than a little fear of Santa Barbara's
in-your-face officialdom, and wonder if it goes hand-in-hand with a
money-does-everything culture. Time to leave).
The
cost of living here is much higher than we've met elsewhere. Food -- and
housing -- seem particularly expensive. For the first time -- strangely,
considering the wonderful growing climate -- we found good fruit
and veg at a one-day farmers' market in down-town Santa Barbara. Still,
there's no denying the city is attractive, and clean. Spanish-style
architecture, more and more the norm as we go south, Spanish language
and tall palm trees are the hallmarks. And the warm temperature -- still
in the seventies in November. The electric shuttle bus from the
waterfront to Santa Barbara's extremely attractive central (downtown)
area has no windows -- that's how much rain they expect to get here.
We'll
be on our way tomorow or Tuesday, heading 160 miles south-east for San
Diego, last stop before Mexico.
Bestest
Ian & Rachel
Buying veg at Fort Bragg
farmers' market, northern California.
In the Giant Redwood forest,
California.
Giant redwood
Dawn on the dock at San Diego,
southern California.
Cabo San
Lucas, Baja Mexico, Feb 2/02.
Hello, Friends:
Well
-- here we are at last! The long wait in San Diego, Californian outpost
of the safe, known, gringo world, is over. Lydia B has just
rollicked down Baja Mexico, glimpsing whales and gales, and is now
tucked into Cabo San Lucas for the night. We got here in the middle
of the night and anchored in darkness just off the beach of this
fun-and-fajita holiday town, rather than negotiate a strange
new harbour entry when we were depleted with
tiredness. Over the last eight days we've covered over
800 sea-miles. Lydia B's been going like the clappers for Panama
and the Caribbean. Sadly, though we managed a couple of fascinating
overnight stops in the last week or so, and have at
least tasted a flavour of remote, terra cotta Baja,
we haven't had too much time to really smell the roses (as friends back
at base -- Brentwood Bay, Victoria, BC, Canada -- are constantly urging
us). It's a sort of battle between two distinct urges -- the urge
on the one hand to go old-fashioned voyaging in a small, capable boat,
putting sea-mile after sea-mile past our keel because the going is
exciting, and on the other the wish that we could stop and meet more of
the wonderful people we know we're passing by ashore. It might be we'll
never pass this way again -- though that's isn't a thought we spend
too much time on, knowing there are so many fascinating things and
people further down the road. You just have to look at the chart. With
the prevailing wind on our backs we have Costa Rica, El Salvador,
Honduras, Guatemala and the amazing Las Perlas Islands of Panama ahead
of our bow. Then the Caribbean and Cuba.
'We'
on this leg of the journey is myself and Chris, a young Aussie travel
writer from Melbourne whom I met in San Diego. Rachel, who so
far has sailed 3,000 miles with me from British Columbia to the Queen
Charlotte Islands bordering Alaska and down to San Diego, is heading
back to Wisconsin for a couple of months to attend to some personal
things and I hope she'll be rejoining me in Panama. Chris is a great guy
and it's been wonderful letting Lydia's reins out. She's rewarded us
with some great sailing in a whole variety of weather
conditions. The only damage so far has been to the mainsail when
we got caught overnight in a chubasco off Cedros Island -- a fierce
offshore wind generated by heat
and high barometric pressure over desert on the one hand,
and low pressure offshore. We were reefed down to the maximum, but it
still tore the top eight slides from the mainsail luff (the leading edge
of the sail). Seas were, of course, big and ugly -- these things
always happen when you're most tired and longing for a break in the
buffeting -- and we were constrained by having to follow an almost
impossible course through a twelve-mile wide passage between rocks. That
might seem a lot, but from the cockpit of a little boat
in foaming, noisy, wind-torn darkness, it isn't. However,
we did it, marvelled at our prowess and limped along until daybreak with
a loose-luffed main, held only by the halyard and the headboard. Then
after a rollicking, six-to-seven-knot sail for several hours under
headsails alone, still with the land wind hard on our port beam, we got
into a huge, reasonably protected bay -- Turtle Bay -- and were
immediately met in the moonlight by a grey whale broaching 75
yards or so on our port bow. It came towards us -- we were open mouthed
in exhausted awe by this time -- crossed our bow just a few yards
ahead, then came back and broached again right along our port side. We
think these animals, like dolphins, are intelligent. In fact, we rely on
it -- there's nothing we could do if a whale decided to charge us; but
they don't.
Next
day, flying the spare main and having e-mailed San Diego for some
back-up slides and nylon tape, we put out to sea again, going 60 miles
out in search of a dying wind. It died, of course. But the sea always
rewards you. In the glassy calm of the next day we were privy to
everything that moved for miles around. The best catch was a large
school of dolphins in a fun-and-feeding frenzy. It's impossible to deny
that these creatures enjoy life. They couldn't be doing anything else,
with their playful crossing and re-crossing of Lydia B's bow-wave,
sometimes leaping clear of the water. Somehow they communicate their
pleasure to those on board. They leapt, dived and turned over alongside
for us while we photographed them, then came back for another session
when Chris discovered his camera had contained no film. And just for
extra, a turtle lazing on the surface with a passenger bird on its back.
Then we were heading 70 miles out in a straight line for Cabo San Lucas,
right on the rocky end of the Baja promontory 190 nautical miles
southeast. No more drama -- though we escaped running over a
Mexican trawler's fishing nets by no more than 40 yards. He called us on
the VHF and suggested a port-to-port pass -- but since he wasn't showing
any navigation lights, we made a guess -- the wrong one. This is Mexico.
So
today we've had showers, done the laundry and cleaned the toilet and the
kitchen. Two blokes unattended know how to splash the bacon
fat around. We've topped up with diesel, will top up with water
tomorrow, do a small repair to the old mainsail, get some ice, some
fruit and maybe some beer; had an al fresco meal of lobster, beef,
chicken, mahi mahi and Corona by Cabo dockside tonight, nearly got
rooked by a thoroughly entertaining restaurant customer tout (who
is the British guitarist who wrote a song for his dead son?) and will
get on our way south towards mainland, tropical Mexico. Manyana.
More
anon from Lydia B.
Love
& best wishes,
Ian.
Thurs
afternoon: we've now left
Cabo, heading directly for Puerto Vallarta
or further south, if the wind's good.
Sat 0200: --
The wind WAS good. At this moment Lydia B's relaxing at a leisurely 4.8
knots with a flattening sea, moonlight and the remains of an energetic
wind that poured steadily out of the Sea of Cortez as we crossed the 200
miles from Cabo to mainland Mexico. The wind meter rarely fell below 30
knots all Thursday night, raising big, breaking seas that periodically
washed the boat from stem to stern and tumbled over us into the cockpit.
We tied ourselves to the lurching boat. But both the wind and the water
are warm -- we're getting closer to the tropic of Cancer. You have
to marvel at the power of the sea. One second Lydia is slipping off the
top of a new breaking crest as it passes under her keel, her starboard
deck under foaming water as she tumbles at 45 degrees; the next second
she's sliding down into the trough behind the wave crest, and in the
next her eight laden tons are being hoisted 15 or 20 feet like a
weightless toy to the top of the next crest. The air's full of noise and
spray blown from breaking crests. But it's steady on our port beam
and pushes us 100 miles on our way all night, flying only a little
staysail to give us control yet some speed too. Tonight, however,
the only noise -- apart from Chris's snoring in the off-watch sea-berth
below -- is a quiet ripple of water as the port and starboard
streams flowing over the hull combine on the stern to form a modest
wake. Helming is being done by the third crew, the Monitor -- the
dexterous and dependable servo-pendulum self-steering device that needs
only water-power to keep the boat precisely on course. It's time to
sit in the cockpit, watch a sky lit by a haloed, waning moon, then
the first streaks of dawn off the port bow, and have a cup of tea
(we brought about 1,000 tea-bags) and toast with apricot jam. It's the
most amazing thing to be slipping quietly down the
Pacific ocean with a warm breeze pulling Lydia along.
Skipper in the lazarette
This all goes in here? Rachel
stowing stores at San Diego.
Lively day crossing the Sea of
Cortez, Mexico.
Dolphins feeding in the Pacific
off Mexico.
Hot, dry Baja Mexico at Turtle
Bay.
Puerto Angel, Oaxaca, S. Mexico, Tues. Feb 12/02.
Hello,Friends:
You know what they
say -- any puerto in a storm! This one, aptly named, is Puerto Angel,
some 240 miles past Acapulco towards my immediate goal of Panama. It's
on the threshold of the dreadful Gulf of Tehuantepec; I got a sharp
reminder of that fact as Lydia B sailed in around mid-day yesterday, two
days and two nights out of Acapulco.
But wait! There's
another chapter in the crew saga. Chris, who joined me in San Diego for
the leg to the Canal, suddenly left -- I think the term is 'jumped ship'
-- in Acapulco, apparently succumbing to pressure from a girl-friend
back in California. Thanks to the smart, hi-tec system I've installed on
Lydia B, she was able to e-mail him several times a day while we were at
sea. Cry for me, Mexico!
So now it's for
real. I'm single-handing, to Panama at least. There's another 1,000
nautical miles to go -- starting with the Gulf of Tehuantepec just as
soon as I'm sure there's enough of a lull in the northerly gales that
start in the Gulf of Mexico, get compressed through a gap in the Sierra
Madre and burst southwards over the gulf on the Pacific side. It has a
terrible reputation. So I'm studying the weather forecasts and preparing
for the 150-mile dash -- with one foot on the beach, as the advice goes.
Yesterday's entry
into this idyllic little port (a typical southern Mexico village of a
few hundred people) was nothing short of hair-raising. All the way down
from Acapulco conditions at sea were benign, with gentle sailing breezes
by day, more or less flat seas, and calm conditions overnight. By
setting up the radar's watchman zone, which triggers an alarm if
anything enters a designated area, I snatched a few hours' sleep
underway. For entertainment (astonishment, really) I watched a lightning
storm over the Sierra Madre ashore, photographed an amazing
sun-reflection in distant cumulus clouds over the Gulf, saw a large ray
leap clear of the water and flash its white underside at me, and saw
turtle after turtle, floating idly on the surface with no more than its
shell visible, raise its prehistoric head, like a golf ball waiting to
be tee-d off. All this, and steering by the southern cross, a new-found
friend.
But an ominous
heaving of the ocean 25 miles out from Puerto Angel signalled something
new. No waves, just a very long, very big swell coming from the east.
Wind and weather was still benign overhead. It was a sure sign of
something major a long way off in the Gulf of Tehuantepec. By the time
Lydia reached the entrance to Puerto Angel the gloves were off and we
were getting buried in 12 to 15 foot troughs, working hard to keep a
straight line up the 100-yard entry channel. Even though the boat is
still rocking -- sometimes quite wildly -- inside the harbour, it's a
relief to have the hook firmly down. I've never anchored in foam before.
I'll study the
reports of the weather station set up specially for the Gulf before I
make my dash to Madera, on the border with Guatemala.
Meanwhile I've been
getting acquainted with some delightful people in Puerto Angel. First
came an ola! off the side of Lydia yesterday from an official of the
Port Captain's office -- would I please go in the official panga
(universal, beachable Mexican fishing boat) to meet the Port Captain and
do the paperwork? That's an education in itself. This port has no boats
other than pangas -- few cruising boats come here because of the
Tehuantepeckers. But it has an air-conditioned government office staffed
by at least half-a-dozen Mexican officials, in meticulously pressed and
starched white epauletted uniforms with badges of rank, who process
Lydia's entry to Puerto Angel as though it were a 20,000 ton freighter.
I shake hands with Senor Ruiz, the Port Captain, sit down at his desk,
practice my few bits of Spanish and we have a delightfully charming
conversation about who I am, where I'm coming from and going to, why I'm
coming to Puerto Angel etc. "Solo!" he exclaims. He suggests I
write him a letter -- in English -- there and then saying I came into
Puerto Angel because of bad weather. Copy after copy is made of several
documents, passport & ships papers and I'm to take a taxi next
morning to Potchutla, a large town 12 miles inland, to pay at a Mexican
bank for Lydia's entry and exit dues totalling 296 pesos -- about US$30.
I get the strange feeling the Mexicans have been doing this same job the
same way since the conquistadores, with the addition of type-writers,
computers and copying machines, without noticing there's no longer any
job to do. It's so beautiful in Mexico! But on the whole it seems fair
that a Brit, whose nation ambushed so much gold bullion and jewels from
the Port Captain's ancestors in the days of the Spanish Main, should
have to cough up 20 quid for stopping by. If I go to Huatulco, a few
miles nearer the Gulf, I'll have to do this all over again.
So I get up early,
hail a passing fisherman in a panga and hitch a ride ashore. You should
see these people. 100 yards from the steep sandy beach he stops,
reverses slowly, goes forward slowly and gets the rhythm of the beaching
surf. Then he throws the throttle of his 65HP outboard open wide, gets
to 35 or so mph, tells me to get down on the nets and charges for the
beach, tilting the motor as we leave the sea behind. We're now 40 yards
inland, 10 feet higher and the boat's stopped. That's a Mexican panga.
Then it's into a
taxi for Pochutla -- 7 hot bodies in a four-seater, sticky leg stuck to
stranger's sticky leg, careering up and down the mountain, stopping only
for an unexplained military roadblock and umpteen sleeping policemen,
strategically placed nowhere in particular. But Pochutla, a large
agricultural town, is everything I've come travelling for; totally,
exquisitely Mexican and so full of colour and people buying, selling and
being, so far away from European life it's impossible not to see your
own culture in the obverse. I forgot my camera. But really, did I need
it?
I load a bag with
pineapple, oranges, bananas, tomatoes and fresh bread and get another
taxi back, a small, elderly lady sitting on the knee of an elderly man,
total strangers. I find Arturo at the palapa (palm-roofed beach
restaurant) where I ate grilled fish last night and he gives me a panga-ride
back to Lydia. So neat, tidy, expensive and privileged.
I must make time to
get some weather info.
Love & Best
wishes,
Ian.
Lunch on the hoof, soloing off
south Mexico.
With Mexican panga fisherman at
Puerto Angel, Oaxaca.
Mexican panga fisherman at
Puerto Angel.
Lydia B in a rolling anchorage
at Puerto Angel, Oaxaca, S Mexico.
Puerto Angel, Oaxaca, S Mexico.
Street scene at La Crucecita, S
Mexico
Street kids at La Crucecita, S
Mexico
Sunrise off Acapulco, Mexico
Barillas,
El Salvador, Mar 2/02
Hello
Friends:
It's
just gone five in the morning, it's deliciously cool after punishing
heat yesterday, Lydia B's motionless in still water on a mooring buoy in
the mangroves of El Salvador and all is silent, save for the faint
noise of a generator ashore and the familiar, endless ticking of
shrimps flicking their tails on the boat's hull and the screeching of
monkeys in the trees. I think there are howler monkeys around here. We
-- that is, Lydia and I -- sailed in yesterday after completing the
Tehuantepec crossing and by-passing Guatemala. We rendezvous-ed off
the El Salvador coast with the four other boats we set out from Mexico
with and were led by a local panga past huge, breaking surf
into the lagoon of Bahia Jiquilisco, then through winding, dense
mangroves overlooked by smouldering, active volcanoes -- Usulutan and
San Miguel -- until we came, two hours later, to Barillas. A panga was
waiting to take my bow-line and tie Lydia to a mid-channel buoy in the
fast-ebbing current, so I didn't have to execute the choreographed
panic that single-handers have to go through in these tight
situations, stopping on the buoy exactly the right distance ahead, then
falling back with the current while I put the motor into neutral and run
to the foredeck with a boat-hook. Just as well, because I was fully
stretched after four days at sea.
I
think I'm in a film-set. You know -- one of those
Hollywood B-movies about politico-military plots in banana
republics? (I'm showing my crude, first-world culture -- which, of
course, is precisely why I'm in Central America in my boat, tasting the
real thing).
El
Salvador is one of the most beautiful countries I've been in. The
scenery is quite stunning, from the high mountains of the Sierra Madre
through lush, green jungle to tropical, palm-lined, white
surf beaches. It's a northern European's dream of where in this
world it's nice. But El Salvador is also one of the world's poorest
countries. We saw ordinary life among the villages on the shores as we
sailed in. Houses are not mortgageable here; they're mostly sun-shades,
more than houses, made of sticks and palm-leaves. I was reminded of the
amazing disparities of this world as Lydia, packed with expensive
technical and indulgent goodies (and this is a comparatively modest,
little one -- you should see the others!), passed a family of a man, a
woman and a little girl in a dug-out canoe. They waved cheerfully
and I waved back -- but what a distance!
Here
at Barillas we visiting sailors are lounging in all
the comforts of one of the best marinas I've seen in the whole of
North and Central America. Everything's exquisitely, neatly
organised, from the watered flower gardens, tended grass,
air-conditioned computer-room with a dozen smart new computer-stations,
(I can hook up my own lap-top to send this from one of half-a-dozen
outdoor computer terminals under palm shades in the gardens, then take a
dip in the nearby pool); wonderful hot-and-cold showers, open-air palapa
restaurant. The El Salvadorians are wonderfully,
smilingly friendly. Remember the entry and exit formailities in
Mexico? Here they were done with no fuss, much charm and no dollars by
four uniformed officals who visited and came aboard Lydia shortly
after we arrived. Since I'm a Brit, my visa cost nothing (Americans
pay ten dollars). Today, they're taking us to the town of Usulutan, a
few miles inland, to do some shopping; no charge.
All
this is basically nowhere, in the middle of a swamp. So how does it
work? Who pays for it all? (Not us -- it costs eight dollars a day to
stay here -- though the only money they want is dollars, not their own
colones. El Salvador is phasing out their own currency). I've been
nosing around. The clues (for a B-movie watcher) are the ultra, almost
miltary-style, polish and organisation, and the acres of expensive
equipment and (though very discreetly and still charmingly friendly) one
or two dark-uniformed men with pistols in polished leather hip-belts. El
Salvador has 14 wealthy families, and this has something to with one of
them. Barillas marina club started out in the days -- just past -- when
the families ruled the country. It was a weekend retreat (new
President Flores drops in nowadays with his entourage
for a meal at the Barillas restaurant. He’s a close friend of Juan,
the owner and member of one of the 14 families). Recent social and
military upheaval has turned El Salvador towards democracy and
re-distributed land into farming co-operatives; but wealth has a habit
of re-organising friendships and re-appearing in a different guise. Plus
ca change!!
But
I'm not on a film-set. This is real life in El Salvador. I'm dying to
see how it compares in Usulutan today. Isn't travel fascinating!
Love
& best wishes,
Ian.
Later,
after Usulutan.
Oh,
boy! If you have eyes to see and are in the mood, you could be shocked
by the contrasts in this country. We piled into the air-conditioned
marina bus at 9..0 this morning, exited the steel marina gates after
picking up an armed guard and bounced along a dirt road past sugar-cane
fields fronting the volcanoes for ten miles or so before we reached
the paved highway into Usulutan. We drove through a scene of subsistence
agriculture -- sugar-cane and coffee principally -- and of
mud-and-wattle, iron-roofed shelters that are home to so many of El
Salvador's people, with only the occasional brick house. This really is
a poor country. It's so easy to miss it, whereever you go in the world,
unless you look outside the tourist comfort-zone. US reserve forces
are here -- of course, they're helping to build schools etc.
Anyway,
we did our shopping -- everything is very, very cheap here, though there
seem to be few shortages. I walked with my camera through the
back-streets to the market area. Everywhere I went, people were
friendly, welcoming and rarely refusing to let me take a picture.
Back-street life in everyday El Salvador gives me the same message I got
in Africa and Asia -- that these are tremendous people with small
material goods and a lot to teach visitors from the first world.
The
symbol of El Salvador worn by men is the machete, used to work the
crops. They wear them routinely, fastened to a waist-belt or hanging
from a shoulder, always sheathed in a hand-made, decorative leather
scabbard fringed with leather thongs. I wanted one for a momento of
these people and went in search of a hardware store. The machete was
there alright, and I bought it (for three US dollars and seventy-seven
cents) but not the scabbard. So I stopped a man in the street, admired
his machete and he offered to sell it to me for ten dollars. I'm now a
sailor with two machetes.
L - El Salvadorian boy in
Usulutan fishmarket. R - Orange-seller in Usulutan market, El
Salvador.
Tomato-seller, Usulutan, El
Salvador.
Lunch on the hoof, Usulutan, El
Salvador. Well, it is a milk-bar.
Sugar-field workers, El
Salvador. $3.50 a day.
Salt-pan workers, El Salvador.
$3.50 a day.
Nattering in Usulutan market, El
Salvador
L - Coming home from work in the
sugar-fields, El Salvador R - Tortilla girl (and mum), Usulutan
market, El Salvador.
Line astern up the mangroves to
Barillas, El Salvador.
Contents of the boats that
accompanied Lydia B to Barillas, El Salvador
Bahia Jiquilisco, El Salvador, Thursday March 14/02.
Hello, Friends:
We’re a strange lot, us boaters. We quit jobs and businesses, sell our houses, leave our
families and friends behind, trade security for the uncertainties and
discomforts of the sea in little boats. We’re surely nuts.
But not to a dozen or so families in El Salvador. Just over a year ago,
in January 2001, their homes were destroyed in a major earthquake,
measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale. It was the fifth largest quake to
strike a populated area – and it happened in a country still on its
knees from a guerilla war (remember the Contras?), its already poor
economy struggling. They’re used to disaster here. However beautiful
El Salvador is – and it really is – its people live in volatile
geology, surrounded by active volcanoes.
So what’s this got to do with boats and sailors, and how does into get
into Lydia’s log?
Well, as you gather, I’m still at Barillas in Bahia Jiquilisco
( though I’m doing the formalities for departure for Panama,
and maybe Costa Rica en route, tomorrow morning. I have one more day in
this lovely country).
But to get back to the earthquake.
I spent Monday 3,500 feet up in the mountains, working on a
relief housing project at a little coffee plantation village called
Chiripa, an hour-and-a-half’s drive inland
up steep, narrow and rutted roads – ox-tracks, really
(ox-carts are still common transport round here. Either that or
Shanks’s pony. All the way up you see people carrying water – on
their heads, in wheelbarrows, in ox-carts. There’s plenty of water in
El Salvador, but often you have to go long ways to get it; few houses
have taps. Life’s different here).
The point is that when the earthquake happened, on January
13 last year, a group of cruising sailors had just arrived here
at Barillas. To cut a long story short, they went up into the mountains
to see if they could help, since it wasn’t receiving any aid from the
major relief agencies. The news spread on the boaters’ radio nets,
more arrived with relief goods, cash and labour and the sailors went
right ahead and built six houses at the village of Hacienda Lourdes,
neighbouring Chiripa, each for two families.
The project, still entirely run by more sailors and still entirely
independent of any other relief effort – though it has now been
organized as an official charity, the Barillas Relief Project --
is still going on. Dennis, a sailor
from San Diego, California, arrived -- in a boat appropriately
named Knee Deep – on the tail-end of the first batch of houses and
started another five more or less single-handedly.
He’s staying at least until the five houses are finished and has now
been joined by Neil and his wife, Esther, Canadians from Prince George
and Vancouver, who’ll stay to the end of this phase on their boat,
Paraquina (NB Ron & Colleen – a Saturna 33).
When I was there on Monday, having bounced and clattered up the mountain
in an old Volvo (we put a hole in the petrol tank and stuffed it with
soap, when we got back, to stop the leak), we were putting the finishing
touches to the first of these, helped by local men, women and children.
Though it’s rewarding for us visitors to El Salvador, the work
isn’t easy in the heat (90-100 degrees) and the dust.
The houses are simple, steel-frame structures clad with weatherproof
cement board, entirely non-traditional but built to withstand ground
tremors. They cost a little over US$2,000 each , with three rooms,
earth floor, electricity and no plumbing – but they’re a luxurious
advance on the stick, rusting tin and cloth shacks these families have
been living in since the disaster.
Every penny that’s been collected goes into the houses. The sailors
have dug into their own pockets (helped by $10,000 from the Canadian
government, which bought a diesel generator to power site saws, welder
etc), provided all the labour and there are no administration costs.
Now, although funds have been collected for four of the five new houses,
they need more cash. More land is available if money can be found.
It’s an amazing, unsung story about people.
So, relatively,
we’re pretty well off in our boats. I’ll be sad leaving El Salvador.
Love and best wishes,
Ian.
Farmstead at Chiripa, in El
Salvador's coffee highlands -- scene of the 'quake.
Francisco and Priscilla, owners
of the new house at Chiripa, and (R) their son.
Laying out a section of another
steel-framed house at Chiripa, El Salvador.
Lydia B's skipper lends a hand
at the Chiripa earthquake housing project, El Salvador.
Introduction 0 - Inside Passage and northern British Columbia
2 -
Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama 3
- San Blas to Florida
4
- Intra-Coastal Waterway to Washington DC 5 - Brentwood Bay BC and Chesapeake
6
- Virginia, Atlantic to Azores 7 - Azores, Ireland to England
8
- Chevy through the US - 1 9 - Chevy through the US - 2
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