Play Time

It has been a pretty solid couple of weeks since I returned to the southern hemisphere. My boat work is complete, or at least to that stage of near-completion that seems never to be surpassed; Xeno's paradox at work. It was as all that boat work is: frustrating, exhausting, invigorating, challenging, rewarding... a roller coaster in many ways. But it went, and Ardea has masts again. The cockpit is strong and supported far better than before. The main mast step has been replaced along with the plank beneath it. I also ended up fabricating an arched piece to support the timbers that hold up the main mast on the interior of the cabin. It is bolted into the bulkhead and, though it eats up a little bit of headroom, it should provide some added support for the deck there where the main mast is stepped.

New support beam. Needs varnish, but it's in.

Main mast step before.

Main step after. Original half-dollar back in. A kiwi
two-dollar coin went under the mizzen, chosen
for it's heron on the tails side.

Re-stepping the masts was a bit more exciting than I would have hoped. As usual, I let it all come down to crunch time. I had the crane coming at 1600 and by 1400 was ready for the masts to go on, except for the wicked mess all over deck and cabin as well as the fact that I couldn't start the engine to move to the crane slip. I had removed the primary fuel filter back when I was demolishing the forward part of the cockpit as it was bolted to the interior. In order to take it off, I had to remove four screws thus detaching the plastic bowl from the upper filter element. I had two hours before the crane was to arrive and thus the big money clock began to tick, but I only could find three of those screws. I tried to jury-rig it but couldn't get a seal. I tried to run the engine with the bleed nut on the secondary filter open to avoid pulling air to the injectors, but no luck after a few minutes eating up whatever fuel was already in the downstream portion of the delivery system. I just couldn't get any fuel pressure. So, with the help of neighboring sailors (more on that later), we pulled Ardea bit by bit to the working slip.

Already in a hectic frame of mind, I was given another stressful curveball when the main mast settled onto its step. The aft lower shrouds wouldn't reach their chainplates. It was such a shame to have that moment of truth fall through. I couldn't believe it, actually. I knew I had increased the thickness of the timber beneath the aluminum mast step, but I had checked the turnbuckle screws and thought I could accommodate it. I realized later that I had replaced Ardea's rigging back in 2011 with the deck compressed, and the new set-up not only had a thicker piece of timber, but had the deck brought back up. Woops.

Cockpit ready for paint. I failed to photograph it
with the step in as things were getting a little hectic
around then.

We shackled the toggles to the chainplates and moved on. The mizzen went in without a hitch. Finally, crane and rigger left, their pockets full, as I sat lamenting my mistake though happy no less to have sticks again. We pulled Ardea back to a normal berth and I set about cleaning and winding down.

The next day, thankfully, I was able to get all of the rigging in without having to use any shackles. Once I tensioned the backstay, the aft lowers reached fine, though there is not a lot of turnbuckle screw left over. I think time helped the problem as well, since the bedding compound wasn't set when the sticks went in, so I gained a little vertical space on having saved bedding the steps until only a few hours before stepping the masts. Now the rig is tuned and looking good. The genoa is back on the furler, the booms are on. And, I've cleaned and cleaned until my space is starting to look liveable again.

I've opted not to sail to Auckland because the weather is bad and it is just too big of a rush and I've been working too much to have the energy to single-hand the coast in the rain. Ardea is back on a pile mooring in Whangarei. I will take the bus down to meet Charlie and Dianna in the morning and we'll crash for a night on Cap's Tres with my Spanish friends before flying to Queenstown for some trekking in the fjord lands. In a week, we'll be back. After a couple of days of finishing up some projects and taking on provisions, we'll take off. On the list are Waiheke Island, Great Barrier Island, Poor Knight's Island, and Doubtless Bay to the North. We'll see how it works out... I'll be back on the cruiser's clock and Chuck and D will soon discover how easy it is to while away the time at a fine anchorage eating fresh snapper and kingfish and scallops. Surely it's those thoughts that keep one motivated on the long days in the yard.

This is the second time on this trip that I have been in a boat yard, the last being in La Paz, BCS, Mexico. Though very different experiences in many ways, they were both wonderful parts of this whole boat-ownership thing. It's tough to be there gutting your vessel and working and bleeding cash, but I have always found wonderful people in the yards, and I owe them a great debt of gratitude. This time around, my endless thanks go to Len, captain of the schooner Mary Harrigan. Len became not only a dear friend, providing a reliable source of moral support, but also lent me a great deal of help. He has a workshop that any tinkering soul would envy just a few minutes up the road from the yard and he saved me countless hours of sanding and hacking by letting me use and teaching me techniques with his planer, router, band-saw, and so on. Len was the founder and owner of a business in the States called Stoney Point Decoys years ago; his skills as a craftsman, which so benefit him as the owner of a classic wooden schooner, were honed first as he hand-carved and painted bird-hunting decoys and later as he designed and built machines for their manufacture. I felt a keen sense of pride as I hand-planed my main-mast support with the very plane with which he built his first wooden duck, in spite of the prevailing opinion that he couldn't possibly succeed with such a business. He saved me a lot of grief and was good company in those tired evenings when beer can't get down the gullet fast enough and sailing stories are all that one wants to hear; when reminiscing is the only seafaring possible as long as the vessel is under the knife.

Len's long-time Kiwi friend, Mark Webbey, is another upstanding character. He is a boat-builder and craftsman by trade and, though he made it clear that he disapproved of plastic boats, it was very nice to have him give my new cockpit design a once-over. Both he and Len gave freely of their off-cuts of hardwood, which is also dearly appreciated by this ever-poorer sailor.

New mizzen support design. I think I'm
the only person that can decipher that.

But there's more. I wallow in the small-worldness and the next-level coincidences that seem to continue to grace the open mind. After a few days in the yard, a boat named Chesapeake pulled in next to me, her port of call none other than Berkeley, California. The first boat from Berkeley I've seen since leaving, and excellent neighbors for my time there. Not long after that, another boat pulled in a few slips over (and this is a small boatyard!). It's name: Chautauqua. I asked, of course, and indeed it is named for the small lake fifty miles or so southwest of Buffalo, New York. The lake that I have visited with my family nearly every year of my life. The place in which my siblings and I, who moved around a fair deal as kids, found a sense of grounding, that continues to be our place of sanctuary. Yes, indeed, these folks were from that small place in the world. They had cruised the oceans on the current Chautauqua, but the first Chautauqua they owned was moored in Bemus Point, the village that my family has called home for generations. It seems so hard to believe...

My short time in Whangarei has been full of positive interactions, of new and wonderful people. I sit now quite happy with the renewed state of my vessel, and though I will continue to work on her, I could not be more excited to be a cruiser again, a vagabond and a wanderer. I am asked often what are my long-term plans and I still don't really know. Cyclone season ends in April along with my visa. I don't know where I'll go, where I'll work, what I'll do. I've got a few leads, though, and I feel quite certain that things will work out just fine.

Just needs a little paint when the sun comes out.

Pretty much done.

Sorted.

I wouldn't say I've got a predisposition toward big projects, but it does seem I'm a bit above average at this stage as compared to the rest of the offshore cohort. That blasted engine business a few months ago is what started it all. Now it's the cockpit decking. The latter is not nearly so bad, though, for a number of reasons. I've had the masts off for ten days now and I am well on my way to finishing. Here's the scoop:

After nearly ten-thousand miles of offshore sailing, the mizzen mast, which sits on the cockpit deck just aft of the cabin-house, compressed the decking substantially. The cockpit well- the rectangular area that makes up the lowest part of the cockpit- had begun to separate from the decking. The deck was angling in toward the mizzen. It is a problem that is rampant on Mariners, as the deck in the cockpit was not supported well enough in the original design. On Ardea, the problem got worse and worse with time. In Tonga, I began to notice that the lower shrouds on the mizzen had lost a great deal of their tension, indicating that the mast was moving, albeit very slowly, toward the point of crashing through the deck and into the engine.

Note the sagging. Also the separation to port.

It worried me a great deal for many miles. I was careful with my sail area and tried to keep the pressure off as much as I could. I knew the problem needed to be addressed, but I wasn't quite sure how bad it would be and how I would go about repairing it until I started ripping out the cockpit decking underneath the mizzen.

Easily breaking through to my galley cubby.

I pulled out teak and rotten plywood and support beams until I ended up with this:

The aft beam, about an inch and a quarter wide,
was all that supported the king plank.

Then came time to build it back up again. I used a couple of borrowed car jacks to bring the cockpit well back up to the original level and put in new runners to support it. I then ran a few new beams to support the deck on port, which had been failing due to rotten wood as well.

All of that was very easy. I used two-part epoxy with silica filler to glue in each new piece before screwing it all together. It was only a matter of replacing what had been there before with new, stronger wood.

Then I had to come up with a way to support the deck under the mizzen. The old design had nothing to support the aft portion of the deck except a single athwartships beam; nothing extended to the hull and there was no bulkhead in place for that purpose. So, I ran a couple of good strong hardwood beams down to the thick epoxied engine mounts. I bolted them to the engine mounts and screwed them into the new forward panel of the cockpit well. That ended up being the most challenging part simply because it was so difficult to drill the holes for lack of space; I borrowed a right-angle drill from Len the schooner captain and then ended up buying several 3/8ths inch bits which I cut to various sizes with my angle grinder. That way, starting with the shortest bit, I could drill in some; I took the bit out and put the next one in the partial-hole, fit the drill chuck around it, tightened, and kept at it. Eventually, I had my bolt-holes. Pain in the neck, but so it goes.

Starboard vertical support bolts into engine mount
runners with two 3/8s in stainless bolts.

Then I ran a beam athwartships on top of the new supports after slotting them at the top to carry it. The latter provided new support for the king board- the large piece of wood that sits directly beneath the mizzen step. Incidentally, the piece I got for the king board is a gorgeous bit of timber called purple heart. Shame to cover it up, but I'm glad to know it's down there.

Got my little galley shelf re-built.

That pretty purple heart. 

From there it was simply a matter of laying new plywood decking. I opted not to put teak back in; it costs about $75 per square foot and, though it looks good when it's new, it just ends up being problematic. It's tendency to leak is what led to all of the aforementioned rot in the first place.

More deck removed to port. Plywood added to create
overlap with new decking (for waterproofing).

Instead, I will lay a layer of fiberglass, paint with liquid polyurethane deck paint and put the mast-step back on. It looks a little funny since much of the cockpit deck is still teak, but eventually that will be removed as it inevitably fails. For now, Ardea's cockpit will be two-tone, though the mast and propane housing hide much of that. In the end, cosmetics comes second to functionality.

Tomorrow, a bit of fiberglass and some sanding,
and we'll call it a done deal.

What seemed an overwhelming project for a few quick seconds was in the end pretty straight-forward. I was lucky to meet a few nice people that lent me some tools and some off-cuts of hardwood, so it was actually quite a cheap project as well. In the end, not a whole lot was needed. The timbers, a sheet of plywood, a hand saw, a sander (I used a manual block and an electric sander), an angle grinder (for making flush those pesky brass screws that are in those beams to stay), epoxy, silica filler (glue powder in Kiwi), some fiberglass cloth, and a lot of fasteners. It took about ten days of not-that-hard-working work, though I accomplished a number of side projects in the mean time (fixed the lazarette cover with some of the harvested teak, fixed the settee table, fixed one of the interior hatch covers, got all the rust stains off the deck, cleaned, cleaned, cleaned). It's been productive.

Before. 

After. Oxalic Acid. It's the stuff.

I've got a week left over. Time to dive into the next project. It never ends, but it's great to be knocking things off the list at a good clip. It won't be long before I can cast off these blasted dock lines and find I'm floating again in tranquility at Great Barrier Island or somewhere- wherever- else.

That escalated quickly.

Scallops and Horse Mussels.

I briefly considered bailing and heading back for another day of indolence in the bay at Urupukapuka, but when I looked astern the island itself, as well as the pass through the rocks at the margin of Bay of Islands, had been engulfed in fog. The same dreary clouds were moving to obscure Cape Brett off my starboard bow as I pummeled forward through a nasty chop against a thirty knots breeze. I stayed at the wheel working the waves and spilling the heavy gusts, wearing all my foulies, trying to keep warm. Saltbreaker fought the same battle just ahead of me.

 Bay of Islands.

Urupukapuka

It was Friday, the seventh of December. I had a flight out of Auckland the coming Monday and a fair bit of coast to cover between Bay of Islands and Whangarei in the mean time. The forecasts had been nasty for days- fifty knots in the Hauraki Gulf, easing slightly to the North. We awoke that morning to a relatively decent forecast, though. As we were weighing anchors, the sun was out in the sheltered bay. It was the first phase in what would be a day of remarkably varied conditions. It would seem the Pacific would send a smorgasbord of her finest as we hauled down the coast.

From Cape Brett, I eased the sheets and shot like a rocket downhill under half jib. The chop was short-period and steep, and Ardea was hitting nine knots regularly. She even kept up with Saltbreaker. For a while at least. The sun departed in clouds, then reappeared. The wind got stronger, then lightened up, then stiffened again. Rain came and went. At one stage, as I careened South in twenty-five knots under full jib and a close-reefed mizzen, I looked astern to see a massive and veritably gnarly squall line. I didn't quite believe it at first, but watched the pace of the clouds for a moment and then quickly doused the mizzen and reefed the jib. It hit me with a freezing rain and thirty-five knots. I got on the radio to warn Saltbreaker, but they were a mile or two ahead of me and never got the squall. It seemed the weather had something different for everyone. We agreed, though, that this was excellent sailing. We were having a phenomenal time.

We continued down toward Bream Head, the point around which lay Whangerei. Saltbreaker saw the passing of the front, the wind suddenly changing from northwest to southwest though losing little of its power. For me, though only a few miles away, the front passed with less excitement. In fact, before long, I was becalmed. I laughed to myself at the irony of seeing such a range, a taste of nearly everything the Pacific had mustered over the last ten months. Soon the wind kicked up again. About twenty miles north of Bream Head, we tuned into the vhf weather broadcast (how convenient!) and heard fifty knots still licked points southward. It was early afternoon. We made the decision to head toward Tutukaka and save the last push to Whangerei for Sunday, when the winds would moderate.

This proved a fortuitous choice with this lovely cove like a head of broccoli, small covelets branching out separated by an incomplete isthmus, a few rocks or a sand spit. We anchored in one of the covelets and raved with excitement about the day. We were wind-licked and salty. It was a familiar and fine feeling. It felt like we'd been out on the Bay. Our response was Pavlovian, for we knew there was no greater cap to such a day as a pint and pub food. We piled into Tuerto and scooted across a few broccoli branches towards a marina and the small town, er, village, of Tutukaka. The water was shallow and the Johnson scraped a few times reminding me of the outgoing tide.

In town we found the restaurant, which was under the hotel, which was also the apartment building, which housed the business and the grocery store. Low and behold we soon found friends among the sole other party at the establishment who piled into Tuerto for a tour of our boats whilst we gathered the necessary items for a night on the town. Whangarei, that is. Still at least a half-day's sail away, the city was nontheless a mere twenty-minute drive. Our detour, though pushing me ever-closer to my deadline, was vindicated by the blessing of some great new friends. We spent the following day hanging out in Tutukaka as the weather eased.

On Sunday, Alex and Nick left Saltbreaker at anchor in Tutukaka and boarded Ardea along with our friends Nikki and Carrie. For the first time in a while, I would head out for a day sail with friends and a couple boxes of beer. We beat into a headwind most of the day but the sun was warm and noone complained. It was a long mixture of sailing and motoring up the channel to Whangarei Town Basin, but we made it at dusk. I tied Ardea up to a pile mooring twenty-two hours before my flight was to take off in Auckland.

Bream Head.

The next morning I sorted everything out and moved Ardea to the mooring at which she would spend the next month. I put my fishing equipment, my outboard and all the other valuable pulpit ornaments down below, packed my bags and caught the bus. Naturally, since I sailed to the land of wind, there were a handful of yachties I happened to know on the bus come South from Bay of Islands. I languished in this last fruit of the glorious lifestyle I had led for almost a year.

California. What a place. In a blink my trip Stateside flew by. It was good, in a word. I ate and drank and laughed and lamented. I met my nephew, Cameron, and carried him proudly in the suspenders of my overalls. I enjoyed the great company of my family and a good many friends. I flew East to New York and was so affected by the cold that I forgot the smell of diesel. It was good to be home, if crazy and overwhelming and intense.

I made it back to Auckland and, after crashing on Only Child with John and Nia and Alex for a few nights, reunited with Ardea in Whangarei. I brought her across the basin to a boatyard and pulled the masts off yesterday. Then things really started to get interesting. It is day two of my time tied to this dock next to a boat at which an altercation led to the incarceration of no less than four souls last night. With hammer and chisel I have progressively dismantled with emotional distress as though I were performing surgery on my own child. I have nearly finished the utter destruction of the forward portion of Ardea's cockpit decking and well.  Tomorrow, perhaps, I will begin to build her back again. That boat yards are places of great character and of great characters holds true in the southern hemisphere thus far.

Uhhhh. Moral support welcome.

With any luck, I'll have Ardea put back together again within two weeks, but, as the affable captain of the gaff-rigged wooden schooner on hard-stand nearby says, “Predictions are difficult. Especially regarding the future.”

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.

Adventures in La Paz Part II: The Path to the Yard

Back in what seems like ancient history, when we were coming down the Pacific side of the Baja Peninsula, we decided to check out a place called Bahia Magdalena. After leaving Bahia Tortugas, we wondered why we were skipping the rest of the western coast of Baja. We looked at the charts and saw this great bay and estuary. Our guides told of good fishing and that this bay was a calving grounds for whales this time of year. There was a chance for fuel and immigration at San Carlos, deep in the bay, so we decided to check it out- having generally let go of anything resembling haste.

Approaching Bahia Magdalena.

We accidentally approached at night, as had been typical of the trip at the time. There was no moon, but the bioluminescence in the water were spectacular- the best we have seen- and lit up our path astern. The stars were likewise glorious. The bay is formed by Isla Magdalena, which, several miles long, constitutes the westernmost perimeter. At the southern end of the island there is a break about as wide as that spanned by the Golden Gate Bridge. The channel therein was well lit entering the massive, well-protected bay. All was well as we coasted in planning to stop at a small anchorage nearby to rest until the next day. Then, in the dark night, we heard a thump. We looked around but saw nothing, and assumed it must have been something shifting in the cabin. A few minutes later, I looked astern at a biological light show that had changed a bit from earlier.

“What are we dragging?”

We gathered at the transom. I put the engine in neutral and got a more powerful flashlight. It was a crab pot. It dragged under the boat miraculously without getting snagged in the prop. However, one of the small floats that extends from the main float to provide a retrieval rope pulled through the small gap just in front of the rudder that accommodates the engine prop. I shut off the engine and after a few minutes grappling with a boat hook, we unfouled her. About twenty yards down the long line to the trap was a big snag of coiled rope; my guess is that the snag kept the trap off the bottom and allowed the whole thing to drift into the channel, but it's probably not unlikely that it was just put in the channel because that's where the crabs are. Anyway, problem solved, we motored in to anchor.

Anchored just off the fishing village of Puerto Magdalena.

The rest of our stay in Bahia Magdalena was great. There are amazing mountain landscapes, beautiful deserts and plenty of whales. We failed to find anchorage at San Carlos, so didn't get fuel or immigration papers, but we spent some time at Puerto Magdalena, a little fishing outpost, which was a very quiet, pleasant place. From there, we went for a hike through the desert, past a marsh and on to the Ocean side of northern Isla Magdelana. I excitedly jumped about tide-pools, overturning rocks and taking photos.


 I came across one particular crab who was strangely comfortable with my presence. After taking several photos, getting closer and closer, my suspicion was peaked. I thought he must be dead but, it turns out, he was molting. Crabs, along with other crustaceans, insects, and several other taxonomical groups with some form of exoskeleton, undergo ecydisis, or molting, whereby they shed their exoskeleton and a new slightly larger one forms so that their body can grow. They are soft and vulnerable throughout the process, so they typically find a good hiding place and it's a rare sight to see (it's common to find the evidence, though, in the form of intact old molts of crabs, insects, etc.). Anyway, I got excited and took lots of pictures of the fellow.

A molting crab- the stubs are new legs- he must have lost a couple since
his last molt.

A nudibranch found in the tide pools.

Ok, yes, I moved some things around to set this one up.

The desert-beach interface in Baja is magnificent.

Like this story, our minds digressed from the old crab pot for some time. It wasn't until I was diving the boat a few weeks later in Los Cabos to clean the waterline and check the prop-shaft zinc that the crab pot came up again as a likely culprit. On examining the shaft zinc, I noticed two large vertical cracks in the leading edge of the rudder. They were on either side of the rudder shaft and clearly penetrated through to the wood of the rudder. I then rose to the surface and was seized by the now very short moment of panic that most boat-owners have experienced. A new problem. And below the waterline? I told the crew and we took some photos. There wasn't much to talk about though. It was highly evident we would have to haul the boat out to repair the rudder. We mused it would take a minimum of three days: one to dry out, one to lay epoxy, one to sand and paint. That was best case scenario, and we by now know how frequently best case scenario comes to be in the world of sailboats.

The underwater view of the rudder damage on starboard.

The underwater view of the rudder damage on port.

We didn't let it bum us out much, since it was merely a fact and nothing more. The good news was, the wood was not rotten yet, which bought us time. We could wait until La Paz to haul the boat, where we would have more boating infrastructure and where we were itching to spend some time anyway.

So, after we lazily made our way round into the Sea of Cortez, having left the rudder damage in the back of our minds so as to enjoy fully our beautiful surroundings, there we were in La Paz. In the days prior we had made a list of side-projects to be completed while we were out of the water. We figured we could get done much of the tasks that precluded our crossing to the Marquesas. Our main goals, aside from the rudder, were to re-bed most of the stanchions, which hold the stainless steel lifelines around the perimeter of the boat, and to varnish the toe-rail, which is much more easily accomplished on the hard than in the water and was badly needed. Since much of the rudder repair would be spent in waiting for the wood to dry and for fiberglass to kick, we would be able to stay busy in the mean time.

On our second day in La Paz, I walked barefoot, having forgot my shoes at the boat, to three boatyards in town to determine prices and availability. I also had to negotiate so that we could perform our own repairs. A typical price was about fourteen dollars per foot for round-trip crane fees and fifty dollars per day in the yard to perform your own work. It was a bit painful to think about, but do-able. After completing this journey, I rejoined Taylor and Dana and we decided that we would go to the cheapest yard the next day and schedule for the following day.

Later, though, we ran into our friend Shane, a long-haired dude with tattoos all about his arms and back who I never once saw with a shirt or shoes. Shane is from Santa Cruz, CA, but had been around La Paz for a while. He bought his yellow 30-or-so-foot sloop a year ago for a dollar back home; it was barely floating, but he fixed it up, taught himself to sail and made it to La Paz. He had been there for months preparing his vessel for a crossing to the Marquesas with his little black cat. Shane is making do on the super cheap, at one point joking that he didn't know whether to buy windvane steering or groceries for his crossing. He, like so many of the cruisers in La Paz, was endlessly helpful. We hope to catch up with him in French Polynesia. Before he took off across the big moat, he mentioned one boatyard I hadn't visited. It was way out near the entrance to the channel away from town.

“It's called Berkovich. Talk to a guy named Abel. He's in charge. He's a good guy- laid back with a kind of strange sense of humor but he's fair and whatever deal he makes with you is gold. You won't find a better price.”

Trusting this, I set out on foot to find out the prices down the road. It ended up being a very long walk, and eventually I hiked up over some talus to the road and picked up a ride from some young Mexicanos in a pick-up truck. As I hopped into the truck bed, the guy in the back slid open the rear-facing window and greeted me in Spanish. I told them where I needed to go, which by then wasn't very far, and we were soon out front.

The Berkovich boatyard occupies a long stretch of waterfront but is relatively narrow due to the presence of the road on which I arrived. Nevertheless it is large and packed with boats. When I arrived, it seemed deserted. It was just after noon and, not seeing anyone around, I let myself in the gate and began to wander quietly among the myriad vessels in every imaginable state of growth or decay. There were some beauties and a great deal of potential in others, but the sadness of those neglected boats in various states of disrepair lingered. Combined with the heat of the surrounding Baja landscape and the quiet in the yard, it had a sort of eery feeling when I first wondered in solitude through Abel's yard.

Presently I came upon the office, which was temporarily closed. A man was listening to the radio in the driver's seat of a parked truck with the window down. He wore a gray short-sleeved shirt, large, dark sunglasses and a white cowboy hat that contrasted heavily with his dark skin. He was quintessential Baja. As I approached the truck, he turned the radio down and I soon learned that Abel wasn't around but would return in about an hour. I told the man in the truck, Abel's brother, that I would wait and proceeded to take another lap around the yard to admire boats.

I was staring jealously at a 52 foot catamaran that sat on a track lift recently hauled when the owners wandered up. We began to chat and it turned out the couple were finishing five years of cruising and selling their boat so that they could go spoil the grandkids in Berkeley, of all places. We talked for a while and they invited me on their fantastic, huge vessel for some lunch, which would turn out to be incredibly lucky, since I hadn't eaten and wasn't going to have the opportunity for some time.

Eventually, about two hours after I'd first arrived at the yard, Abel returned. Even more so than with his brother, it was immediately clear that this man had character. He had the full getup: leather pull-on boots, blue jeans, tucked in collared shirt-perfectly white, a prominent mustache. He had an authoritative air at first, which I would find to seem at constant odds with his also easy-going persona.

We walked into Abel's office and I told him about the boat and the services we needed. After some discussion, we agreed to a rate of 600 USD for hauling the boat out and splashing her back in along with 3 days in the yard with the ability to do our own work. While we negotiated the price, he assured me:

“Look, wit me, they not gonna be any surprises. And, maybe you take an extra day, I not gonna worry about it- I not gonna charge you. You need a little help, you need tools, we help you. You have your own tools?”

“Yes.”

“What about fiberglass? You got your own fiberglass?”

“Yeah, we've got fiberglass and epoxy.”

“Ok, well, look, everybody come here leaves happy. They not gonna be any surprises.”

For those who haven't had to go through the process of putting a boat on the hard, it can be difficult to comprehend the complications and considerations involved. It's also wildly more expensive than most land-lubbers would guess. This was certainly the best price I had been quoted in La Paz, and the same job back home would be difficult to accomplish for less than a grand. What I found surprising was the resistance to people working on their own boats while they're hauled. Abel was the easiest to convince, but every yard I visited was displeased and added to the daily cost for my wanting to do my own work. That may be common in the States, too, but I am only familiar with good ole' Berkeley Marine Center, where it was never a problem.

Anyway, the conversation came around to scheduling and I was hoping to have Ardea pulled the next day. Abel glanced over at his pin-up calender with tides lines drawn across the days. The next day he already had a boat scheduled (i.e., written in tiny lettering above that day on the pin-up calender) and the tide wasn't favorable for getting two boats out. He suggested that, instead, we do it immediately. I really did not want to deal with it today- it was nearly 1500 hours already, this was beginning to be a long day and I greatly preferred to go back to town to eat tacos and drink beer. I tried to use the excuse that I had to walk back to town, which would take at least an hour, even though I was pretty certain I could hitch-hike in no time. No luck. Abel arranged to have his brother, who hadn't left the seat of that truck this entire time, drive me to town. I reluctantly agreed, assuming it best to take what I could get in regard to scheduling. I got the handheld vhf out and called the crew back at the boat to inform them that I would return shortly and we would pull the hook and bring her to the yard right away.

It took us about an hour to get Ardea underway and out to the mouth of the long channel to La Paz. When we got there, I saw through the binoculars that the huge hydraulic trailer that was to pull us out was not yet in the water. We waited a couple hundred yards from the boat ramp where the trailer was stationed, attached to a very old big-rig truck. A wind had picked up and was blowing about 8 knots at an angle to the boatramp; this was a rare instance in which a wind increase was met with scorn on Ardea. Soon, we called Berkovich on the vhf and were handed off to Mark, a gringo that works at the yard who I had met briefly earlier.

“You guys just want to let us know when to start the approach?”

“Yeah, Abel is changing. When you see him come out looking like frogman, you'll know we're ready to go. Just hang tight.”

We were getting blown toward the jetty, so I had to decided whether to try to keep Ardea in one spot, or circle back to the channel and start over entirely.

“How long's it gonna be?”

“A Mexican minute.”

I swung the wheel and circled back to the channel. Ten minutes or so later, the trailer was going in the water and we could see Mark standing on it, waving us in. I kept the bow pointed into the breeze, about 45 degrees off from the trailer, as long as I could on the approach. When we were close, I swung the wheel, lined it up as best as I could and slid in a bit too quickly. The result was a ding in the gelcoat on the bow, but I had needed the speed to maintain steerage- a rock jetty was only about four feet downwind of the trailer, so it was sort of a one-shot deal.

On the trailer.

During this process, people began to come out of the woodwork all over the boatyard. The couple from the catamaran stood watching from near their boat. A few scruffy old gringos stood along the jetty next to the trailer watching, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Several Mexicans that worked at the yard were standing around the trailer and truck watching the action. Earlier in the day I had seen hardly anyone around, but now their were a dozen or more folks who had emerged one by one and chatted amongst themselves as they watched Ardea come out.

Getting the trailer adjusted. Mark and Taylor standing on shore.

 Once on the trailer, Abel set about with full wetsuit and a mask diving around the boat to set the stands properly. Then, using a remote control, he lifted the boat up with the hydraulic arms at which point Mark put the truck in gear and started toward the gate. Soon they had us backed in and settled, still on the trailer, in the middle of the far North end of the yard, where I hadn't wandered earlier. After Mark brought us a ladder, we spent some time with the hose giving Ardea a good freshwater bath before she needed to dry out. Some folks said hello as they walked past, but for the most part, everyone seemed to sort of disappear again while we cleaned.

On the hard.

By the time we finished it was nearly dark. We had planned our course of action for the following day, which was important since several steps must occur with adequate time in between during fiberglass repairs and we had to keep our stay to a minimum. Finally, after what seemed an excruciatingly long day, we were ready to find food and beer. Awkwardly, and with noted distaste, we clambered down the ladder to the sandy floor of the yard. As we approached the ramp where Ardea was recently pulled, we saw a group of people under a flimsy white canopy sitting around a table, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. One of them saw us approaching and exclaimed amid the laughter and loud conversation at the table:

"Hey, it's the new guys."

Another turned and looked at us.

"Welcome to the Yacht Club."