What do we do each day?

First a long philosophical (of sorts) discussion ... what else would you expect from the yang side?

At the core of it all, you need to understand that when we left the US, several cultural differences were encountered, but ours were encountered onboard, not on shore. We didn't even recognize the subtle differences for years. And then too, the subliminal training stayed with us for over a year ... seeing the world and our role in it the way we were trained. But we also recognized that these changes work 'here' on ceilidh but would not stay with us if we returned to America. They couldn't stay with us: different game with different rules.

Biggest difference: there is no mass media where we are. We don't have the advertising industry incessantly telling us to buy more, buy faster. We don't have the same industry telling us what the perfect lifestyle would be through TV or movie role models: more gadgets, better car, faster computer/internet, and so on. The psychological drivers creating greed and consumption have been (slowly) stripped away. Entertainment is self-generated or shared with friends. Simply being quiet and feeling/experiencing the environment is an enjoyable activity.

We also have limited choices: shopping is not a recreational activity in the same sense it is in America. Shopping for price rarely results in a savings of more than a few cents for an hour's work. You deal with the people you come to like. Eventually the prices come down. Shopping for variety is possible only in the larger towns (rarely encountered in our favored areas) and even then variety is nothing like in America. How many brands, types, formulations of sausage (meat, vegetarian, and vegan) can you find among all the supermarkets (individually and collectively), speciality gourmet shops, and meat markets in a convenient driving distance? We're lucky to find 6-10 TOTAL in an entire town (even the big ones) and that would take over a couple of hours of walking or several hours of bussing. Usually there is one meat market with two types: regular and spicy. Sometimes there is no sausage in a town: buy the whole cuts of meat then grind and blend your own that day. Limited choices, go with the flow. It's delicious!

The same lack of mass media has caused us to re-evaluate our usage and recycling practices. Not of trash, but of possessions. When outfitting ceilidh (especially while I was still working), we would just buy a new replacement, get exactly what we needed ... new. Now we mend, repair, make do. I even clean bolts and nuts and save them for reuse. Clothes are pushed beyond all normal standards in America because each has become (in its way) a favorite. If at all possible, I figure out a way to repair something with what I have on hand, not get a new piece of equipment like I did in America. In that way, ceilidh is getting to be (if you know where to look) more & more like a cruising boat. That 'temporary' fix will last for ten years so why lust after a whole new component? It would be much easier and faster to spend money, but why?

The one thing we have in excess is time. Learning, practising, then doing things ourselves that would be economically unjustified to employed Americans ("My time is worth more than that!"). Most cruisers have more disposable income than we do. So we have more time to 'spend' than we do money. So we spend more time on what we do than we spend money on the activity or project. Example, walking instead of busses, busses instead of taxis, taxis instead of car rentals (never a car rental).

One noticeable difference when no one is around: Hope and I simply enjoy each other (almost all of the time). Some have noted (exclaimed!) that this means we are together 24x7. I will sit and do nothing but listen to her play her harp. We will sit together touching & reading. We work together, shop together, explore together, and still it seems like 24x7 isn't enough (most of the time).

Another noticeable difference is that our home is in a constant state of decay (saltwater) and breakage (extreme usage ... sailing and passage-making). So no matter whether we are in a posh marina or on the hook in a remote anchorage, there is maintenance to do from polishing (to keep a finish that resists saltwater corrosion), to routine servicing (there are few qualified workers to do what is needed even if we had the money), to overhauling major components. You've got to like it (maintenance), be challenged by it, and be up to it, or it becomes a reason to quit.

So what did we do today: Up at 6:30 for coffee and a snack for Hope and pack for showers on shore. Check state of batteries, any weird noises heard during night. 7:00, put the dinghy in the water and get the outboard on (put away each night to lessen growth on the submerged surfaces). 7:15 leave for shore, tie up, drop things off at Puerto Amistad (local cruiser facility). 7:30, start walking around the point to the other side of town with a friend. Meet other friends on the walk (old friends new to town) and chat for awhile to catch up on adventures, answer their questions since we've been here longer. Usually 8:30 (but today 8:45) get back to Puerto Amistad for showers. 9:00-9:15 get back on ceilidh for breakfast (& dishes, & make bed, & straighten up, & etc), listen to the SSB radio net (catch up on friends not here) & weather, hang up exercise duds & towels. 9:45 go back (most weekdays) for Spanish class from 10:00-11:00. 11:00-2:00, in-town chores. Today: internet (15 min walk from class) and some groceries (15 min from internet) (someone needed copies of tax forms, we needed to make a VISA payment, etc). Walk downtown to mercado for fresh food (veggies, meat, bread, all little specialty shops spread out over a few blocks). Today we walked to the other end of town to find the one 'supermarket' in town. Bought a few things but decided it was too pricey for routine shopping, it's cheaper to eat out than shop there. Last Thursday we had to find the DHL office (& FedEx to compare prices & times) to mail a post office form & copies of IDs to our new mail forwarding service (took11-3, getting them notarized was another hour). Meet friends in the street, both cruisers and locals. Get back to ceilidh, put things away. Yesterday we had water jugs waiting for us to pour in the tanks (can't make water here). 2:00-5:00 or sometimes right after class 'til done: chores on ceilidh. The water line needed cleaning (without getting in the water) over the weekend. Other days: replace or repair used components, make repairs of things damaged in getting here (example, I'm having to re-engineer how the rudder post is held in place at the top). Hope has laundry that we hang around ceilidh on some sunny days. We're going to be making repairs to the sails, new dinghy chaps, I cleaned out the anchor locker (long overdue), etc ... our list runs to dozens of items not all of which we will complete here. We'll need to search out a coffin maker (apparently the only woodworkers in town) that can also make table tops. 5:00 or so have a 'delicious drink' (today Pisco sours) and plan dinner, spend some time together, just focused on each other. 7:00 do Spanish home work. 8:00 read & put dinghy away (outboard off & locked on stern rail, dinghy hanging & secured to lifelines). 9:00-9:30 turn in for the night.

Other possible activities that sneak in routinely: Local travel: Saturday we took a ferry/bus trip to another town up the coast that lasted from after the net (10ish) 'til 4:00 ... 3 hours in the resort town, 3 hours on ferries and busses looking at the scenery. Optional activities: Naps occasionally sneak in there (siestas work!). Dinners with or at friends' once in awhile. Happy hour with friends at Puerto Amistad once in awhile to trade in-land travel information or catch up on old/recent times. So far on two days ... 2-3 hours watching the Ecuador world cup team and celebrate briefly with the locals, they go on for hours, we go back to boat projects. We run one of the SSB cruiser nets on Friday morning and have been helping out on an unofficial one at 5pm each evening for others making the passage to here (often the longest any of us have made). Research (mostly Hope) & talk about land trips to Quito & Mindo, then Cuenca & Machu Picchu. Hope has been cat sitting for friends traveling inland for the past 10 days, two trips a day and time at their boat. I've been going with her some of the time. Write emails (Hello!) and blog postings. Edit, upload, and label photos. Financial tracking (where does that little amount of money get to?). Planning & dreaming where we'd like to go next in ceilidh: this involves researching & understanding weather patterns for the planned passage time, environment, currents, friendliness of local officials, what-if (something goes wrong) scenarios, provisioning needs (& availability on the other end), figuring out what projects have to be completed for such a passage ... obviously not just jumping in the car & driving down the coast. Trying to track down info on unidentified, broken parts not available outside the US. Searching out sources locally for broken bits or specialized services. Practice & fiddle with our musical instruments. Track down & eliminate this or that computer glitch. And so on.

So we feel quite occupied in mind and body and heart.

love from the three of us,

yang & yin
s/v ceilidh
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador

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Late (stress on late) Breaking News

Have no idea where the days go but they are zooming by – very hard to believe we have been in Ecuador now for almost 3 weeks. Such an interesting village this is. Rich and I were just chatting over lunch (ok, it is 2:15 but it is our afternoon meal) and I came to the conclusion that Bahia Caraquez (called just Bahia) is just that, a village – but a village with high rise (8 or so floors) apartment buildings. There are no supermarkets, no expensive or sophisticated restaurants, no department stores, no industrial manufactures, no….. There are, however, friendly people, a mercado (open market with various vendors) that supplies the town with basic food, and many small inexpensive store front type ma and pa places to eat. It is, all in all, a small town where everyone knows everyone else.

We started walking every morning and are now greeting and being greeted by the other walkers. They see us in town and stop to chat as we visit the internet in the afternoon. We are taking Spanish classes each morning, as well, and feel as though progress is slowly plodding in a positive direction. Francisco, our teacher, is a wonderfully patient man. Good thing! As always, we are attempting to balance the investigation of our surroundings with boat tasks and maintenance. Somehow we thought that with so much time in one anchorage there would be huge amounts of time to just work on projects such as varnish, polish, sewing…. Funny, but there are so few hours in the day that we are scrambling just to complete the smaller task list.

For example, this morning we started our walk early, at 6:30 am, so we could be showered and ready for breakfast in front of Puerto Almasted’s TV. Ecuador played and won their second game in the World Cup! Talk about excitement! Cruisers and Ecuadorians yelling and jumping and dancing. What fun. The government declared a national holiday and everyone is celebrating as I write. Music, honking of horns, people hooting with joy. Way cool. Today they played Costa Rica – Ecuador won 3 to 0. Poor Costa Rica. Who would have figured we would be in Ecuador watching them compete in the World Cup?

More travel adventures via land travel are planned for August and September. August to Ecuador’s interior and September to Peru. Looks like we’ll be headed for the Galapagos in late October, early November with Ceilidh, then back to Panama. For now, we are just enjoying each day and the adventures that appear.

I’ll blast up new photos at the same time as this post, so here is the photo link:
http://public.fotki.com/svceilidh/ecuador/
Best viewed by selecting the "slideshow" feature.

Wish it were easier to include photos intext but the whole BLOG tends to bomb when photos are included. Rich and I think about starting a web site but it still seems too much like work – UGH! Besides, we can BLOG from our boat’s email and that is very wonderful. So much still to say but I’ll get to it next time. Love and hugs to all from us

from the yin side

How far is far?

After installing the GPS/Chartplotter back in San Francisco in 2003, I never did reset the trip log (accumulated miles) to zero. Too many other things to do (like learn how to use a GPS/Chartplotter let alone navigate in more traditional ways). But yesterday I had some time and I've been curious: roughly how many miles have Hope & I sailed since leaving San Francisco in September of 2003?

When we knew that we were going to head to Central America and probably Ecuador, I meant to reset the trip log up at our northernmost point in the Sea of Cortez. Unfortunately, it didn't get done until a couple of hundred miles later in La Paz. But going back and gauging the mileage along the coast, I've come up with a total of at least 11,000 nautical miles (nm). For you land lubbers, that's roughly 12,500 miles or just over 20,000 kilometers. And it's probably more because I can't begin to add up the back-and-forths between islands and anchorages, circles we've made, and so on. As an example of that (this last passage), the straight-line distance between Panama and Ecuador is around 600 nm. Our GPS recorded that we actually sailed 935 (way out to the west then back again to have sailing angles on the winds from the south) to cover the straight-line passage of 600 nm. And in calculating the 11,000 nm I was using straight-line distances along coasts for about 60% of our travels.

The funny thing now (to us) is that the first hop out of San Francisco Bay around the corner to Half Moon Bay was about 50-60 miles. Then down to Santa Cruz was about the same again. But they were our first hops and they seem H-U-G-E ! Two weeks ago, this 900 mile passage seemed huge: now we feel we can plan 1000 miles at a time with no problem. Which will be helpful because when we leave here (Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador) we'll be heading due west to the Galapagos, another 600 nm. But this times the winds should still be southerly so our actual miles should be almost exactly the 600 of the straightline distance.

OK, time to catch up on some waypoints to look up on Google Maps:

Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador: 00.609217S, 080.420633W (Note the 'S' for a change, and we'll be here for a few months so no new ones for awhile)

Balboa, Panama: 08.908300N, 079.525333W (Zoom out or pan right to find the Panama Canal to the east ... should be interesting)

Las Perlas: 08.426983N, 078.854717W (Zoom out a little: this is just one place we stopped in this bunch of islands)

Bahia Banao: 07.425700N, 080.193800W (Zoom out a little to see the point to the East ... Punta Mala [Bad Point] ... Banao is the hidey-hole to wait for decent weather to get around the well-named Punta Mala)

Isla Coiba: 07.623483N, 080.726000W (Nice place but with the shark stories from Hope)

Isla Parida: 07.10167N, 082.367483W (First stop after leaving Costa Rica ... want to get back to 'western Panama')

Golfito, Costa Rica: 08.619633N, 083.153300W (Last stop & check out point for Costa Rica)

Isla del Cano: 08.713850N, 083.887083W (Best snorkeling story since leaving Mexico)

Bahia Drake: 08.697167N, 083.668400W (Panga trip into the mangroves .. search to the north for the river entrance ... and our own inflatable kayak trip up a stream on the point of land to the west of where we anchored)

Think that takes us back awhile. And, oh yeah: water does swirl in the opposite direction here when going down a drain!

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Catching up ...

A whole bunch of unrelated paragraphs from the yang side.

We were told by a local that one could live like 'a king' on US$2000 per month in Panama. New car every two years, great condo in the best neighborhood. Not going to do that though. Buying a $200,000 CD entitles you to a resident visa, which, if you renew the CD and the visa for 5 years, could lead to citizenship. Of course, enough money up front and I imagine the wait could be significantly shortened. Is tomorrow convenient for you, se�or?

Hope related the passage here. We are very pleased to find out that we are more resourceful than we thought, that we planned ahead appropriately, that ceilidh is stronger than we knew, that our sailing skills continue to grow, and that we're more and more in love with each other and our choices as time goes by.

When we returned to Panama to diagnose and the replace the battery bank, we didn't check back in so we were (technically) illegal aliens. The port captains are understanding (we're told) about vessels returning with problems so there wasn't much to worry about.

The rainy season was starting in Panama and Central America just before we left. Each afternoon huge black clouds would form over the isthmus and move out over Panama City and sometimes us. Good news for the canal as that what's fills the lake for the locks to continue operating. A daily downpour is pretty much how it remains through the summer. We were out on deck taking showers, filling buckets to catch the rain and add to our drinking water tanks, and generally having a good time in the rain. (Can't remember the last time I've been in the rain intentionally!) But come October (again, we're told) the lightning is so constant that you can see to pick up small things off the sidewalk during the night. No thank you!

On passage we had a few clear evenings, at least for awhile. It's a whole new sky, little is recognizable. The north star is gone (has been gone in the haze of the horizon for some time) but here in Ecuador, even the big dipper has to be just right to be seen. Think I recognized Scorpio, or at least a bunch of stars over the Milky Way that SHOULD be a Scorpio. Will check it out on the star charts sometime.

Hope and I celebrate our anniversary on the first full moon after the winter solstice. We celebrated our last anniversary (after the winter solstice you know and love on 21 December) on 14 January. But since we're in the southern hemisphere, 21 June is the next winter solstice, so another anniversary coming up! The back up in Panama, yet another come December!

All these extra anniversaries because we crossed the equator. We did so at 2 AM our last night out. Didn't have any hazing of each other, but it was a small moment to share as an accomplishment. Happened at a watch change so we were both up. That's a long way from San Francisco! More to come though.

One can never get ready on time. While getting ready to leave Panama, we seemed to be working many hours and very hard. But the date to leave slipped a couple of times. Not much, but it apparently takes much more organized workers and gifted schedulers than us. We're not as bad as others, not as good as others. We seemed to be hurrying and hurrying and tiring ourselves out, but the list wasn't shrinking appreciably. One of our friends declared that the whole week was a D-O-I-N-G N-O-T-H-I-N-G set of days. Maybe it's our attitude ... too beaver-like? (That's a joke ...) Actually, we're glad we pushed a little. With the delay caused by the batteries, we had a hard enough time because the wind had more of a chance to turn from the south and build itself and the seas. Those coming after us have even more wind and seas to contend with.

No big insights on what we'll do next year. Will go to the Galapagos in October, then we think turn north to Panama and Costa Rica. Maybe up to Isla del Coco before turning to the mainland. Maybe go through the canal and spend a season in the Caribbean. Probably not the south Pacific yet. This last passage gave us some insight and experience, but more will be in order. Just like we spent an extra year in Mexico and are very glad we did it.

Lots of pictures to catch up on. More to come.

yang

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Sitting here in Ecuador

and ever such a lovely day. Yes, we did make it. Only took us 8 days after the first aborted departure. We left Balboa, Panama the first time and got 18 hours out before realizing that our battery bank would no long retain a charge. Humm. Not a good way to start the longest journey we have made to date and to a further port than we have previously visited. So, back we went to Balboa to do further diagnosis of the problem and then obtain new batteries. Ouch. It is only $$$'s, right? Took us 3 days and we were on our way yet again. New batteries, topped off fuel and happy wishes from our friends still in the anchorage. As for the trip - it was long. I thought it was 1000 miles we sailed but Rich corrected me. It was only 935. The extra miles went in tacking back and forth into the wind which, as expected, was on our nose. We experienced many squalls with mucho rain and shifting winds for the first 4 days. After that the wind stayed in the 18 to 24 knot range with rather large lumpy seas. The battery failure was just the first of many. The regulator on the alternator went bonkers and Rich found a way to disconnect the alternator yet still have it run (just no juice coming out) and put in a switch to so we could charge only when needed. What a clever boy. Lots of other small problems that we'll solve while here so they will no longer be issues. The largest of these was the rudder wobble. During one of my early morning watches I started hearing a definite icky noise coming from the steering column, rudder post area. It continued to get louder and more worrisome so I woke up Rich and asked him his opinion. Turns out there are 4 screws that hold a circular ring which the top of the rudder post goes thru. This ring keeps the rudder from moving side to side. Well, all 4 of the screws had come loose and the ring and the rudder post were twisting back and forth. YIKES! We worked together and tightened them down and all was well. Had to do this again the next day as well but it all held together. The strong wind and large seas really worked the entire boat and especially the rudder. Rich is working on re engineering the whole structure for additional strength and safety. Whew! That was just a bit to close for comfort.

And so the journey passed and here we are. Today is our 5th day in Bahia. To check in with immigration we took a taxi (1 hour ride) to Manata, another coastal town to the south. Loved seeing all the farming land, rice paddies, fat happy pigs, brahma type cows and houses built of bamboo with braided palm leaves. Most of these houses supported on poles to stay above the flood plane. Yesterday we went with some other cruisers (Carina and 5th Element) to San Vicente via a large vehicle and pedestrian ferry. The vehicles pay a fee but pedestrians are free of charge - as many as can pack themselves between the railing and the vehicles. While waiting for the ferry on the Bahia Caraquez side we talked with a group of 15 or so students - all between the ages of 16 and 18. They come to the Bahia side to attend classes and live in San Vicente. We had a lot of fun trying out our limited Spanish and their smattering of English. San Vicente is just on the other side of the estuary here and appears to be a small but busy city. Sure we'll go back and explore some more soon.

Yesterday was also the first day of Spanish classes. In order to travel further inland in Ecuador and Peru we really need to improve our vocabulary. I want to be able to really converse, not just "how much is that" and "where is ???". So, Spanish lessons 5 days a week for an hour and Rich and I will get out in the town and practice, practice, practice! OK! We'll stick around Ceilidh and do some of the chores that identified themselves on our trip down in the next week or so and then start thinking about local adventures via bus and boat. I have taken some more photos and will work on getting them up on the web next week. I'll post a link when they're live. For now, love from here to you

from the yin side.

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