The Doldrums Blues

I am genuinely sullen. It's not my fault though. The sky is imbued with melancholy. It is the weather for brooding. Not just the weather, but the effect the weather has on the landscape. Sure, it's immensely beautiful, but it is not a jubilant beauty. It invokes quiet among onlookers. It reminds me of a New England harbor, very early in the morning, a fisherman in a yellow smock observing from the beach- all the lobster boats and fishing vessels and sailboats bobbing slowly and evenly at their moorings on glassy water amid a low, still fog. Yes, that would invoke the same sort of, not sadness, melancholy and, as in our case now, the feeling is made complete- the landscape more than a landscape- by the presence of the viewer. Without the viewer- without Ardea bobbing slowly along, her sails and rigging an incompetent orchestra providing a dissonant accompaniment- this would only be another kind of weather. But add the little boat and the vastness around her and the blanket mottled shades of gray in every conceivable direction (up and down) and the dashed hopes of those intrepid mariners who had been clipping along so well. Then it's a scene of glum introspection. If it were a painting, it would be metaphorical- 'drifting in the quiet expanse' or 'perusing the void'. But, instead, it's just us, having been now formerly introduced to the inter-tropical convergence zone.

The inherent injustice of being robbed of wind on a passage is made worse in the doldrums by the need to cross them just after the half-way point in the voyage. There we were, just under twelve hundred nautical miles to go and the patchy cumulus clouds that had been our joyful company, graciously blocking the hot sun at just the right intervals for almost two weeks, began to thicken to the southeast. They began to gain altitude in the southwest. East of us, they started to melt together. Like cookies placed too close together on a baking sheet, convection was expanding our friends the puffy cumulus clouds. Then, the rising warm air of five degrees North started to stretch them into the higher altitudes. Soon it was only to the north that we could still see signs of the idyllic trade winds that had treated us so well. What were cumulus ahead of us became cumulonimbus and with them came rain.

The first rain was joyous. We were smelly and it had been hot out for so long. We danced about on deck merrily and with little effort collected a couple gallons of fresh water in a bucket so that we could wash up. We scrubbed the deck and the rigging and Ardea was glad for a bath. But after that rain the sky never cleared. Rain has come and gone, the clouds having fully explored the spectrum of methods for soaking us down: tiny speckles of raindrops to cannonballs of water, slow drizzle to torrential downpour.

About the wind, however, we care a great deal more. It has struggled to maintain its former gusto. We've avoided being totally becalmed, thankfully, but since Sunday evening (4/29) we haven't been able to maintain the 6 or more knots that we'd held for so long. Based on the ship's log, I'd mark the ITCZ at 5 degrees 1 minute North. Based on weatherfax images, it is about 70 nm wide at our location. Having accepted our woeful exit from the northern hemisphere trades, our singular focus is now to get across this wretched band. We're having some success hunting down the northeast sides of squall systems; when we get one, we point straight South. It's a game of cat and mouse, but I'll be the first to say that the gusty high winds of the squalls are greatly preferable to crawling along at 2 knots. Sadly, we even threw the engine on for an hour or so to aid in our storm chasing. (We've all become very hardened against use of the engine, but since our total run time is still less than four hours and we're 17 days into the passage, we decided running down a squall or two with the old iron sail wouldn't be too huge a knock on our sailor's pride.)

With a bit of luck, we should clear the ITCZ in a day or so. We still won't have solid breeze until we get to about five degrees South, but hopefully conditions will be improving throughout the push to that point. Tonight or perhaps tomorrow morning we will be within one thousand miles of Hiva Oa. That fact and a visit from several dozen dolphins during the last squall, have boosted spirits in spite of our inadequate pace and the morose landscape. In the end, subdued as the crew may be, it feels a distinct honor to be in this very strange part of the world. Even though their creation has meant the dissipation of our beloved breeze, watching the numerous individual weather systems all around us is a unique experience. Still, I expect that with our impending equator crossing and as the southern trades begin to build, this little boat will once again abound with wide-eyed anticipation, for we all look forward to feeling the sand of the South Pacific Isles beneath our feet.

Here we are at 0630 Zulu 4/30/12:

Position: 04 deg 36.8' N 128 deg 37.5' W
Course: 180 T
Speed: 3.8 kt
Wind: 8 kt NE
Swell: 1 m NE
Baro: 1011
Fish: One mackerel about 5 pounds this morning, which I released. Two small tuna (young bigeye or yellowfin, 8 lbs or so each) this afternoon (threw one back). Had two large tuna on lines this evening but lost both and the lures due to poor angling on Dana and my part.

Don't Touch That Dial.

It occurred to me today that we've come to treat our daily radio time with great reverence. A technology we may formerly have viewed as archaic or obsolete, we now anticipate with child-like excitement; first-half-twentieth-century child, of course. We crowd around the nav station right around 0200 Zulu, which, these days, falls just before sunset. One might be sprawled out in the cockpit, lying with head at the companionway, or standing in the galley facing starboard, or maybe sitting up straight on the settee, leaning forward, feet firmly on the floor. That's literally all of the places available within earshot of the radio. Except, of course, the nav station seat, belonging to the person currently on watch, or to whomever they bartered the position out of laziness (getting our position report across can sometimes be a cumbersome process, countering the obvious advantage of being directly in front of the radio). And we listen with fervor.

I suppose it'll help to outline briefly what goes on during our daily radio net, in order to more accurately convey the degree to which it has become an event of importance to the crew of Ardea. Basically, the net consists of a roll-call facilitated by a net-controller, a job which rotates among three or four boats. The net-controller makes his or her way down the list, making contact with and receiving reports from each boat. Reports consist of position, speed, course, weather information and any info that might be of use to others. Because high-frequency radio relies on effectively bouncing radio waves off of a zone of the atmosphere (deemed the ionosphere), its range is dependent not just on the frequency, but also on atmospheric conditions at the time. Propagation conditions can have a big impact on signals. This problem is usually solved by relaying information through boats that are able to capture weaker signals, who then convey the information to the rest of the net, but it can be a very long process on nights when conditions are poor. When we first left there were considerably more boats on the roll-call and, depending on how many relays were needed, it took about an hour before spot came up.

Anyway, the whole thing gets more and more exciting as it progresses. See, the boats are listed on the roll-call in the order in which they left Mexico, so as the nightly saga presses on, it gets more relevant to us. We get potentially useful information as well as a means for comparison, which is the real kicker.

We aren't just sitting around the ham radio, listening to other boats read off their positions, sometimes over a period of several laborious minutes. We're writing it down, often frantically! And afterward, we chart the ones closest to us to see if we've gained on anyone. But charting is for after the net. It doesn't have quite the same action-packed, usually histrionic live analysis, complete with trash-talking, that we enjoy during the net.

I know what you're thinking, ?Connor. Dude. That really doesn't sound that cool.? But you're wrong!

A little quick mental math and we know about where our ?buddy boats? are, no charts required. And, although we haven't officially told any of them that we're racing, it's pretty obviously a contest, the buddy boat moniker being a fabrication, a cowardly tactic meant to catch us on our laurels. You can understand how emotions run high.

S/V Desolina, still about 100 nm south and 30 nm west (read: ahead) of us, might come in with his report; all three of us wait silently, totally still, as though movement or sound might obscure the signal. His position comes in- he hasn't increased his lead. Then, through garbling interference, like a ship through fog, like FDR next to a roaring fireplace, like the baseball announcer with the tying run at the plate...

?pppshhhshpppppshhhht boat speed psssshhht seven decimal zero knots.?

All three of us simultaneously come to life with the jerky motions of defeat. Chittick's shoulders relax as he sits back from the elbows-on-knees posture of anticipation and lets out a long, pained, ?Awwwwwwwwww.?

Dana stomps his foot and throws his head forward and back in a quick nod of disappointment, ?Dammit! Shit!?

I look down, let my forehead fall to my hand, uttering, ?That son-of-a-bitch.?

Our small victories are celebrated with almost as much gusto. That same night, a boat farther on than us decided to cross the ITCZ around 125W, a tactic we were decidedly against.

?ppppssshhht course of one nine zero magnetic psshhht motoring at four decimal two knots.?

Chittick: ?Motoring again? Oh come on!?

Me: ?Shouldn't have crossed so early. Yup, we're stayin North.?

Dana: ?What's their longitude again? Geeez.?

It's this type of banter that gives us entertainment. Obviously, it's mostly unfounded gossip, contrived criticism or completely invented stories built around little bits of patterned data we have about these other boats. But it's all in good fun and we find ourselves feeling like we know these folks that we've never even met simply because we know their radio personalities and have tracked their sailing progress. It might seem a little ridiculous to imagine the three of us huddled here claiming we'll never get becalmed like that boat or bemoaning another skipper's propensity for incredibly long transmissions or joking about how some controllers treat each contact like all the rest of us can't hear it, but we're fascinated with this contact with other people. Even though it isn't exactly a venue for conversation, we build conversation around it, venting our hyper-competitive natures and soothing the banality of our isolation. However crass or nonsensical are the resulting rambles on Ardea, the development of this ritual seems quite natural.

Having noted the evolution of this daily routine, I feel a connection with those whose forms of entertainment are lacking without some form of additional input. Somehow, the radio now seems like an interactive experience- the audience being as important as the broadcast; it simply wouldn't be the same without our collective banter, even if we're the only ones who hear it. It's like how my Mom always yells instructions at sports games even when she knows the players can't hear her. In like manner, we build ourselves some entertainment with what we have, and what we get is quite a bit more fun than even the most captivating episode of Pawn Stars.

Nevertheless, we're lucky to have been able to report today at 0200 Zulu:

Position: 08 deg. 20.9' N 126 deg 43.3' W
Course: 205 M (214 True)
Speed: 6 knots
Baro: 1011 mb
Wind: 16 knots NE
Swell: 2 m NE

We're sailing under the jib and the mizzen, with the main down and the main boom hauled to weather for stability. These days it's easy to see just how hopeful folks are when they wish one another fair winds and following seas.

Connor

Passage Update

Ahoy from the sea.

Finally getting some good radio propagation- should have position updates on Shiptrak.org now (see link on blog homepage). Sorry for the delay- more on how ham radio is awesome but finicky and speciifcs about how I finally got my no-Pactor-modem rig to connect to email-radio servers some other time.

Here's us right now:

25 April 2012; 0200 Z (same as GMT, same as UTC)

Position: 11 deg. 47.3' N; 121 deg. 24.6' W
Course: 249 deg True
Speed: 6.6 knots
Wind: 18 knots NE
Swell: 2.5 m NE
Barometer: 1011 mb
Temperature: 80 F

We are all quite well. We've sort of gotten into our respective routines and sort of quietly go about our days in our tiny, constantly-moving world. We operate on Greenwhich Mean Time, so hours of day and position of sun don't really line up like we're used to. That and the absence of land for more than a week and we're sort of in a weird suspended existence. Time and space are pretty homogenous. You're either on watch or you're not. The sun is either up or it's down. At 0200Z we check in on the pacific puddle jump radio net. Those are basically the only landmarks in the day. Other than that, we eat when hungry, sleep when tired, read, do chores, and, of course, look. Lots of looking.

Fishing has been okay. Early on, we caught three yellowfin tuna (small ones- 10-15 lbs each) and a sizable Pacific crevalle jack. The latter was not so tasty, but the tunny were, as always, fantastic. Today we caught a very young mako shark, which we threw back, and later the tiniest mahi-mahi of all time. It weighed not five pounds, measured maybe 15 inches length. It was a beautiful fish, but we were a bit dissapointed to have our first dolphin be an infant. We would have thrown him back but, evidently, when I pulled hard on the rod to set the hook, it sort of set through his face. Incidentally, plenty for one good meal. Harvested some shrimp as well a few days ago- more on that when I can post pictures. Squid fly onto the deck daily. Starting to get flying fish on the deck too.

The first few days were a bit slow, but we picked up the tradewinds Saturday evening (Day 8) and have been making excellent headway since. The water and sky are beautiful out here. Still seeing some boobies and the occasional gull. Spotted first white-tailed tropic bird yesterday. Lying in our berths last night, we could hear high-pitched dolphin chatter as a group swam alongside Ardea. It was sort of surreal. We've got six days in a row now with more than 100 miles covered, and we finally had to reef, so we're hoping we'll make up lost time. With little else to do, we spend a lot of time on nav and tactics- might as well treat it like we're racing.

Ardea is in excellent order and we still have more than 80 gallons of water. We've lost one boat hook, one allen wrench, and one bowl from the galley into davy jones' locker. Should be looking to cross the equator in about ten days. Trying not to think about it too much, but I suppose we've got about 1600 nm to go.

Best wishes to all you landlubbers,

Connor

Position Update; Day 8

This is Connor's brother Charlie,
They called me with an update via the satellite phone with their position and they have recently picked up the trade winds and are cruising about 6.5 knots, and are "riding the bus." They are well fed on fresh fish and mutual bordem. They befriended a blue footed booby named Earl-Bob who hung out with them for two days, and apparently has defecated large amounts on the deck. They insist that if Earl-Bob returns again he will "get a good talking to."

Their coordinates are:
13" 48.2' north 117" 44.4' west

It's about that time.

Well, we seem to have a tendency toward tardiness. Here we are, really really close to ready to go, but still pushing back our departure day by day. We were going to leave on Tuesday, but the weather was better for Wednesday. Then on Wednesday we were finishing our last projects and it was quite busy- the weather was just as good for a Thursday push, so we put it off a day. Now, here we are on Thursday. I'm writing this at Huanacaxtle Cafe in La Cruz. We just ordered our second round of beers.

The list of preparations has largely been semantic, but these things take time in Mexico. Especially for such prolific beer drinkers as ourselves. We've had to get temporary overseas medical evacuation insurance so that we can be admitted to French Polynesia (this is a new rule this year- we used the Diver's Alert Network, which provides the necessary coverage for the $35/year membership fee). We also decided to throw down a bit of cash to have our immigration taken care of for us in FP. This means we won't have to provide an $1800 per person repatriation bond (the bond is recoverable, but only at certain islands), our paperwork is taken care of for us when we arrive (we don't speak French, so this is a matter of convenience) and we have a permit for duty free fuel in FP. The company we're using will also take care of the paperwork for our crew change in Tahiti. But, it has meant dealing with logistical considerations over the computer, and internet connections here are finicky and slow.

Trying to get something done at the marina restaurant. It's tough
with bad internet and ceviche and beers only 15 pesos each.

We finished our final projects yesterday: fixed the lazarettes, re-wired the stern light, added a topping lift, etc. We managed to buy a liferaft, so we wrapped our dinghy up and now have an actual cabin top to enjoy. We also got a ton of provisions: a hundred or so eggs, lots of beans, flour, and other dry provisions. Plenty of vegetables. Lots of canned goods. And, of course, beer. Six cases to be exact. Five of them are on the cockpit floor... but it's a small price to pay.

Provisions.

Definitely necessary.

Now we will be pushing off as soon as possible, but it's hard to say whether that's Thursday 4/12 or Friday 4/13. The weather is as good as it has been this year, which is nice vindication for our slowness- we were getting some grief from friends in La Paz about our general lateness, but it turns out to have been a late year anyway, so those who left earlier have had very slow passages. Now we're looking at a fairly strong (1026 mb) high pressure system sitting near Hawaii, which is an indicator that the summer trade winds should be getting stronger to the South (the high pressure system there pulls the sub-tropical jetstream North, taking the variable pressure systems that confuse the tradewinds with it). A cold front is passing through northern Baja as well, which helps create down-flow, providing a good connection from where we are to the trades. The ITCZ is relatively narrow still and north of the equator (typically it has widened more by this time of year and moved South, but we're lucky that it has remained more March-like this year). Below are some of the NOAA weather images that we use for route planning and passage tactics; they are all obtainable on the internet at: http://weather.noaa.gov/fax/marine.shtml. We are currently using charts broadcast from the Hawaii station. All of these charts are also available on high frequency radio, which is how we get them at sea. Just in case there's any interest on how we pick weather windows.

24 Hour Surface Pressure Forecast: Central Pacific.

24 Hour Wind/Wave Forecast, SE Pacific. The little flag-looking things show wind direction and speed.
Each full bar they have coming off the back counts for 10 kts breeze, each half bar for 5 kts. The numbers are wave height in feet.

24 Hour Surface Pressure Forecast, Southeast Pacific. We are currently just southwest of the "L",
a low pressure system that has come down from northern Baja.

48 Hour surface pressure forecast for SE Pacific. Note the cold front (line with triangles) in norther Baja,
the 1028 mb high pressure system in the top left, and the northerly, broken ITCZ near the equator-
all good things for Ardea.

48 hour wind/wave forecast SE Pacific.

It takes a while to get used to these images and their interpretation, but I assure you, we are in good shape. The great circle course to Hiva Oa, Marquesas is 2722 nm. We'll end up sailing a bit more than that, since we'll route more to the West at first to clear the Baja Penninsula for more favorable wind and swell. Then, around 130 deg. W, we'll make a course perpendicular to the ITCZ to try to jump from the North Pacific trades to the South Pacific trades as quickly as possible. The South Pacific trades are still pretty weak (see above image), but they'll hopefully strengthen by the time we get there. We expect to take thirty days or so to make the crossing, though if we can manage to hit the weather well, we may come in as quick as 25 days. For some perspective on that- our best day of sailing so far (i.e., 24 hours) has been 165 nm. Our worst has been down in the realm of 60 nm.

Some way or another (i.e., through the SSB radio nets we're using or by calling my Dad on the sat phone and having him submit), we'll provide position updates to YOTREPS, so our position should be viewable on www.shiptrak.org. My HAM callsign is KJ6TNX, but I will post a link on the blog so that the callsign is automatically entered (http://shiptrak.org/?callsign=KJ6TNX).

Anyway, we're all pretty excited with a healthy dose of nerves as well. I've never been more confident in Ardea. She's held up incredibly well so far and I suspect she'll be rather indifferent to the passage at large. So, without further adieu, we bid farewell to North America. Mexico has been better than good to us and we'll miss it for sure. But exploring about Oceania sounds pretty great too.

So, to all our family and friends, we send all of our love and best wishes. We are deeply grateful for the support we've had. Know that we will take good care and stay safe and not lay it over and catch hella monsters.

Love,

Connor

Listo.

Bahia de Banderas: The Last Stop in Mexico

Despite our affinity for the place and the fact that I could continue indefinitely describing its charms, we eventually had to depart from La Paz. It was more than a few times I considered following in the footsteps of those meandering before us and holing up there for a year or so. I suppose, in the end, the drive to complete a crossing was greater than that to post up as a cruiser and explore the Sea of Cortez for the summer. In any case, Mexico seems so accessible to us by boat that by now we're confident we can return here in the future more easily and on a greater variety of vessels than can we cross to the South Pacific. So we pressed on, slightly heartbroken. The day before we left, though, I bought a little outboard for our dinghy. It's a seventies-era Johnson two-stroke- a whopping four horsepower- and it dominates the road. Really, it runs perfectly and the release from paddling from anchor has been revolutionary.

Becalmed in the middle of the Sea, we shot the
 first in a new series of throwback
'Me and My Johnson' photos.

The crossing to Bahia de Banderas, home of Puerto Vallarta et. al, was exceedingly slow. It took us four and a half days to cover the 350 nm passage. We were totally becalmed a great deal of the time and barely moving for much of the remainder. And it was hot out. We did enjoy a swim in the middle of the Sea of Cortez, which was pretty cool. Motoring along one day, we decided to shut the engine down and jump in to cool off. The sea was perfectly glassy, not a drop of wind and not a semblance of swell. Dana stood on the cabin top declaring Shark Watch, before we all dove in. It can be pretty disorienting to be out of site of land on a boat, but this effect is amplified significantly when you dive in the water and are surrounded by a totally three dimensional environment with the sun as the only reference point anywhere. The water was the bluest blue and it felt fantastic to dive deep and look around at total uniformity, but it's hard not to find the immensity at least a bit irksome. All the shark talk didn't help, either.

There were few highlights of the passage. We caught and ate a bonito, which was nice but by now is considered a lesser of the potential fish we might take out there, so it didn't quite come with the pure joy we experience with our first bonito, back near Bahia Tortugas, when we were there a thousand years ago. We almost had a highlight experience fishing on the passage, but it turned to disappointment. We hooked a short-fin mako shark, maybe four feet long, on a squid plug with some cut bait (a bit of the aforementioned bonito). It had a pretty good set of teeth, so we wanted to make sure it was good and dead before we brought it onto our little boat. Thus we set forth rigging snatch blocks to our mizzen so we could hoist the shark out of the water to suffocate. That made it pretty mad, so we got out the bow and our only two arrows and shot it to accelerate the process. Dana took the first shot and got him in the gills. I took the second and got him in the top of the head. We thought we were sitting on Easy Street with shark burgers as good as grilled, but our severely incapacitated friend gave one last fight for life and managed to break the lines tied to the arrows and pull the fishing line attached to the hook still securely in his mouth in between the roller and the snatch block housing so it pinched and snapped. It was an impressive effort, but the shark was too far gone to have survived. We swung the boat around and tried our best to find him so we might get him back with the gaff, but, like I said, it's incredibly difficult to orient offshore and the shark got enough below the surface that we couldn't find him again. It's still a fairly sore subject and I probably wouldn't have shared it if I weren't so compelled to post a picture of the guy. Hopefully we'll catch another later. We're still working on making up lost karma having killed a fish only to lose it in such poor fashion.

The one that got away.

Here he is getting angrier.

After arriving at La Cruz, a bit north of Puerto Vallarta, we attended the last of the Puddle Jump seminars organized by Latitude 38 magazine. The topic was weather routing- different sources for weather information were discussed as well as interpretation of offshore patterns, mainly from looking at pressure systems. We also talked about strategies for getting across the ITCZ (Inter-tropical convergence zone, also known as the doldrums), namely finding and using squall systems to get to the southern hemisphere trade winds. It was definitely worthwhile and we all feel we learned something.

Still eating pretty well...

The rest of our stay here is a bit of a whirlwind. My parents came down for a visit for four days. We had a blast with them up in Sayulita, only a 20 minute or so drive from La Cruz. We managed to tour about Puerto Vallarta, get out for a little sail, and get some solid relaxation time during their stay. I must say, too, that it was quite nice to get off the boat for a few days.

A little daysail with the rents.

Dana and I had to find something to do while
my Mom perused the trinkets in PV.

Dana, Chittick, Anna, David, Camille, Connor

Anna also came down for a visit followed by Robin, so we were pretty busy touring about for a while. Chittick and I managed to get a couple kite-boarding sessions in, which were fantastic. It was pretty cool to be kiting in warm water again, and this time with sea turtles and dolphins splashing about only a few feet away. We did have a propensity to stay out a bit long, so had more than one slow swim to the beach when the wind shut down. The breeze here is a solid thermal like San Francisco Bay, though it hasn't been as strong as at home. Still though, it kicks up in the early afternoon just about every day.

Two night herons being friends in PV.

We also had a great trip out to Las Islas de Las Tres Marietas, which are a group of small islands at the western end of Banderas Bay. Robin came along and, though we didn't manage to catch any monsters on the way, we did discover a cool cave and had fun wandering around the island looking at boobies and enjoying a very sheltered beach.

Our own private beach. Connor's mad dinghy driving skills and our sweet
Johnson got us through that cave- it was a bit of a tight fit.

Ardea sits off the island. Boobies whistle and mob in the foreground.

Dana and Robin scrambling on the rocks.

Blue-footed boobie.

Robin's fishing!

Our last week here has been full of preparations. We're busily trying to get ready to push off as a positive weather window is coming upon us. More on our final projects and provisioning soon!

Adventures in La Paz Part III: A Cultural Experience

It's truly difficult to describe the experience of our first yacht club meeting at the Berkovich boatyard. In time, we would look back on it and describe a feeling as though our entire trip had happened in the three and a half days Ardea was hauled out. But for the moment, we soaked it in.

We sat at a shabby picnic table under a shabby tent among a mix of gringos unlike any other. There were the residents- a couple of viejos (older dudes) whose boats were anchored just off the boatyard that preferred the relative quiet and isolation outside of town. These were Banana Boy and Tuerto. Banana Boy (“David”) lived on his boat and was allegedly slowly getting ready to leave. Tuerto had made up more of a permanent residence. His actual name is Doug- tuerto refers to a man with only one eye and was given to Doug as a nick name because of the readily apparent hole on the left side of his face where is other eye used to be. Though he wasn't the first to express such sentiments, he did sum it up nicely when he said, “I came to La Paz for two weeks ten years ago.” Since then, he had opened a sail loft and continues to hand-build apparently very reputable sails. But it's unfair to leave it at that. We were struck by the animation of this man. Nearly eighty years old, he was a spitting image of the classic sailor; his face harks to memories of tales of whaling in Nantucket and adventures in the South Seas. His old wrinkled face was adorned with the classic long white beard that extends thick from the chin and cheeks but is rounded off at the end. He wore bell-bottoms and proudly proclaimed them easier to roll up when coming ashore. He laughed with a loud and exceedingly jovial “eh, eh, eh” that could bring a smile to the face of the most stoic and cynical. And, most of all, he had a constant stream of stories he could relate with youthful exuberance, which made him seem to us a classic caricature- the saltiest man I've ever met to be sure.

Of the residents, there was one with a bit of a different story. Mark, the ever-joyful friend that helped pull Ardea out earlier in the day, sat among the crowd at the all-important Yacht Club meeting. Mark had worked at the yard for a couple of years after perusing through Mexico on his way from southern California. He seldom wears a shirt or shoes. His skin was leathery and dark from sun and his feet so tough that only the spiral metal shavings cast off by lathes in the Berkovich machine shop could pierce them. He would later tell us about the Blackfoot Tribe of his creation containing as members those whose feet were dirty enough to represent a very strong commitment to shoelessness. Mark, who is more commonly known as Tarzan because of his formerly much longer and (somehow) shaggier blonde hair, but who also responds to Markovich and any number of other nicknames, is in his mid-fifties. We would never have guessed this- sitting there at the table at dusk, his silhouette and his ever-present persona could more easily have belonged to one of the Lost Boys. He was making 200 pesos a day (about $18 US), twice what the mexicanos in the yard were paid, and proudly declared that he spent 120 pesos a day on beer and cigarettes. He would come to be about the most fascinating and hilarious ambassador to La Paz that we could have imagined.

Working on my qualifications for the Blackfoot Tribe.

Then there were the transients. The half-dozen or so dudes, ourselves now among them, that had been in the yard anywhere from a week to a couple of years working on their boats. Of these, we would come to know the gentlemen of s/v Bounced Check the best. They were Mitch and David, brothers in law who had sailed from San Diego on a big concrete sloop. David, with long hair and a clean shave, owned the boat, which he and Mitch had sailed thus far without autopilot but with satellite t.v. Their argument seemed pretty strong- it's no problem coming off a four hour steering watch if you have Sportscenter waiting. Admittedly, we were slightly jealous. Mitch, who learned how to sail on the way down, had a shocking resemblance to a wookie and showed a most impressive ability to constantly drink beer and smoke cigarettes basically all day long. Evidently he had been clean cut all his life, but after he was laid off from his banking job in Chicago and had agreed to join David on a sailing trip, he awoke one morning and paused with the razor on the way to the cheek and said, “Forget it.” Except, of course, he used in place of “Forget” a similar word that is much more common in the sailor's lexicon, but which would make my Mom sad were I to write it here. Anyhow, by the time we met him, Mitch had long hair and a gigantic beard, which were an identical mottle of brown and blond.

The Yacht Club held a vivacious membership and we quickly became comfortable amid the uproarious conversation that night. Being new, we were made to give our story and duly harassed when we revealed we planned to be in the yard only about three days. Tuerto just had a little bit of work to do and his boat ended up in the yard for nearly ten years, it was pointed out. Mitch and David had been on the hard for a month, and they actually worked on the boat every day. Immediately the crowd began to predict the duration of our plight. We told the prognosticators about our rudder- the main reason we were out. Mitch laughed between drags on his cigarro and asserted we'd be there two weeks minimum. Later, we revealed that we had some side projects. We wanted to get a couple coats of varnish on the toe rail. Six weeks, they predicted. We were hoping to re-bed our stanchion posts. Ten weeks. We need to repair some gelcoat dings on the bow. Fifteen weeks.

As the night wore on, we joked and drank in the yacht club dining area and each time that new evidence was uncovered of our workload or of the ease of our assimilation to the Yard, the prediction of the length of our stay would increase. Now more than a few beers deep, we felt we had been in La Paz our whole trip and the Berkovich crowd seemed like old friends. Before we went to bed, Mitch let us know how well-suited we seemed to this scene: “Fifty-seven weeks.”

The rest of our stay at Berkovich was no less entertaining or eventful. We worked hard on Ardea and were glad to do so among such a jovial bunch of people. Before we left, we would have plenty of adventures with these folks. Dana would be briefly arrested and taken away for peeing on a cactus while Tarzan pulled the bumper off of Tuerto's car and threw it in the bushes. We would regularly purchase all of the Pacifico at the only store that far outside of town. We would all (including Mitch and David) come to view Abel Berkovich more as a demanding boss than the proprietor of an establishment we were patronizing. By the time we left, we could hardly imagined we'd been anywhere else. But, most importantly, we got the work on Ardea done and, despite the predictions, we were back in the water in three and a half days.

Waiting for the rudder to dry...

The rudder repair was relatively simple. First, I took a scraper and a knife and removed the paint and gelcoat for the whole length of the rudder shaft. I chipped away a very small amount of rotted wood and then set up two heat guns to start drying it out. We let it sit like that for a day before continuing the prep-work. The next step was to sand from the leading edge of the rudder aft so that there would be a large surface area upon which to lay fiberglass. Toward the end of our second full day in the yard, we began laying glass. It was a bit tricky because the heat caused the epoxy to kick so quickly that we had to mix numerous small batches one after the other. We worked out a pretty good system where Chittick would mix epoxy and while I was bathing strips of fiberglass cloth, he would go to the other side of the rudder to hold the piece while we put it in position. Then I would take the brush and blot to remove air bubbles and ensure it was saturated in epoxy. For much of the length of the rudder shaft, we also had to add filler before applying the glass. Using syringes, we injected epoxy mixed with silica filler into the cavity behind the rudder shaft and along the sides of the shaft where an air pocket my have otherwise developed between the rudder and the new fiberglass. We ran out of epoxy catalyst that night so we had to wait to finish the following morning. It was a bit hectic while we were glassing, but it turned out pretty well. On the afternoon of the third full day in the yard, the epoxy was kicked and we only had to sand and paint. Abel wandered by as Chittick had started sanding with our Fein tool (which has a pretty small sanding head) and, knowing he needed to get us in the water the following morning, said, “You're gonna be here all night. Let me get you a real sander.” We thought this might have meant a better tool, but he showed up with Martin, one of his employees. Martin had already done an excellent job repairing the gelcoat mess on the bow (from a flailing anchor). He then took an angle grinder with a sanding head and proceeded to knock out the sanding portion in about a tenth the time it would have taken us. It saved us a lot of work. Then, we had only to paint with primer and a slightly different shade of blue.

Prep-work done. Still drying.

Laying glass- round 1.

Done glassing.

Finished!

In the down time on the rudder project, we managed to get three coats of varnish on the toe rail and Dana and Chittick re-bedded the five or so stanchions that were overly stressed. I had been meaning to bed them on neoprene so that less sheer stress would be placed on the deck when the stanchions or lifelines were loaded, so we planned for this project a while back. I looked into bulk neoprene back in Berkeley but it was sort of expensive, so we snagged an old-school wetsuit out of the old lost-and-found and cut neoprene padding from that. The crew did a great job of putting it all in place and the stanchions are definitely better off. The wetsuit, which went from full-length to shorty, is now adorned by the children of a Mexican who was happy to take it off our hands.

A nicely re-bedded stanchion.

Dana at work.

We managed several other side-projects while were out of the water. It was an incredibly productive and enjoyable time. Abel and all the folks at the yard were helpful, honest and hard-working. After all the grief they'd given us for how long we'd be in the yard, David and Mitch had to put up with us rubbing it in a bit when we were done. As we had promised them during one of the many times we wandered over to Bounced Check to shoot the shit, we returned to the yard with cases of beer and pulled up chairs to watch as they toiled away painting and grinding. Enjoying our hyperbolic humor to the fullest, we talked loudly of our opinions of how they should be working on their boat while we drank and watched (it is quickly noticeable in the yard that everybody who wanders past has got an opinion about how and what you should be doing on your boat... if you can't beat 'em, join 'em). It was a great time and, ironically, we all felt a little sad as Ardea slid back into the Sea.

David and Mitch of s/v Bounced Check thinking about maybe
painting that boat.

Chittick and Dana drinking beers and watching as our amigos work.