if i win the lottery, i'll buy some tanks to fill with fish

in port

horta, azores
1154 UTC
05.18.08
_________________________________

enjoying a double espresso in the little cafe by the laundrette. it will be grand to have clean clothing again. part of becoming lighter at every stage of movement has meant that i have now about half the amount of shwag i'd left canada carrying. sold my guitar. gave away most of my warm clothes. donated my sleeping bag to the carriacou sloop 'good expectation.' acquired and sold a spinnaker, a lovely chrome ladder (which i gave away), a bicycle, another bicycle, a few piles of money (the most recent of which was $40 US i stowed in a pocket for to spend frivolously at the buju banton show. it went for a swim and as the vessel was then doing about 10.5 knots i watched it fly away in a rather detached fashion. there's no jumping to get pictures even of andrew jackson when the boat is on the move.), most of the books i brought (tough call, but i still have 'everything is illuminated,' and parted with malory's 'morte d'arthur').

the next phase is standard issue stop in port stuff. clean the engine room. do laundry. two of us are sorting flights. jenny comes back right away so i'll be back to being a deckhand. different only in title. first mate sounds better than it actually is. it's the same. slept in the stack pack last night. this is in the boom. there's a zip-up thing that stores and protects the mainsail from UV. it's also very comfortable and wins the 'most like a hammock without actually being a hammock' prize. we're going to exit the boat at some point for a 10 day shore leave and at that point i shall endeavour to complete my banjo project. the tone ring is looking way more like a tone ring. i have yet to see a goat here, so i might have to wait until terciera to get my goat skin banjo head. still crossing fingers about that one. the sketchy rasta that slept on the picnic table at the end of my street in antigua claimed he'd get me a goat skin but never delivered. alas.

yep. i think i want one of these at some point

my new favourite toy is the 'eeepc,' a linux-based itty bitty flaptop. it's killer and reportedly only $400. brian has generously allowed me to use it to get my journal out of the ink on the page and into zeroes and ones so that folks can read about our trip. thanks brian.
and tom and midori, and matthew; all them radio evangelist dudes, urban hustle, rico anthony, martin from 'good expectation,' liza kirwan, melinda and the lazy turtle, tim etc. at tyrell bay, gord z and ximena, naomi, bill from the nook, georgina, norm and the pups, valery huffman, david westdal, the ether city ensemble, those monks who made the DT beer with the pink elephants on the label, c.r. avery, all them folks in the evil triangle, our parents, itchy feet, addison for giving Norman a good home, clifford, cassey, bansai and frankie, carl and trudy mclaren, sled dog music, the asshole who robbed me in antigua, antigua sailing week and cavalier rum for helping make that possible, tony at HQ, bob williamson, ray, kayla for bringing us all espresso after espresso, tod, diana fred, julian for owning such a marvellous boat, elvis the gecko, courtney and tara, rachel, donniel, leonard rhodes, david the leatherman, joanna finch, the antigua public library, mister james who illegally seized my passport in antigua, carramia, damien styles (i wonder if i will ever escape having played the rod stewart cover band gig. as i write this 'young turks' is playing. actually, i have /always/ liked that song, but not so much a minor third down), kf - maybe i'll see you in sweden, my new relation who is just born to my cousin and his partner and doesn't have a name yet, diem, the toy camera, flying cloud alumni, leighana and everyone at camp s, and hey jason bowers thank you for hiring matt debicki, by the way.

two ships passing in the night

at sea
38 00 N
31 17 30 W
0625 UTC
05.16.08
s/y flying cloud
______________________________________

eagerly awaiting as fromage du chevre wasa snack baking until melty in the oven. another watch kicking ass under sail, both the gennaker and a full main up. we only made about 11 knots max, but it's been quite consistent and has been a night of nice wind and a mostly calm sea.

foggy day ~ actually low visibility. yesterday morning while i was neglecting my journal and also i think preparing hors d'oevures, a container ship or perhaps an oil tanker passed rather close by ~ nearly alarmingly so. considering their speed and the part where it takes nearly a kilometer for a boat that size to even consider turning, it /was/ a little close for comfort. this ship really did appear from out of nowhere. five minutes ~ inside of every five minutes when visibility is good, a person on watch is expected to perform the horizon sweep, changing vantage points at least once in the process as a vessel on a collision course will remain in any blind spot if the sweep is performed from only one spot in the cockpit. at night we are to always be wearing harnesses. at night we do not leave the cockpit. all safety, all the time.

so midori went below for not more than a minute and upon her return there was this giant ship steaming full ahead ~ fortunately not at us but diagonally behind us. we could see the bow wave. and probably could have read the letters, though somehow the name of the vessel now eludes me. i am told that they are to keep 3 nautical miles away from us officially but i am thinking they were more like one or maybe one and a half miles away. considering that we are two specks in an ocean otherwise empty as far as the eye can see in any direction...

five, five, five is the number

sunrise, but from a different day.

at sea
36 01 45 N
38 22 00 W
0710 UTC
05.14.08
s/y flying cloud
______________________________

O,neglect. strange to have missed a day but was quite wrapped up in a discussion about the five-year plan ~ not a taboo topic but one that is certainly on the challenging side of challenging. i am still working on the five-week plan, and there are some details to attend to in the five-hour plan ~ i'm also thinking that the sun comes up in 10 minutes and that about makes the five-minute plan as clear as could be.

taking apart the shower sump pump. clean, reassemble and remount. the little half assed job quickly became a fix-it-right-once-and-for-all-the-first-time-bud. reportedly the last skipper of flying cloud took a lot of shortcuts. matthew prefers to do things right, once. which i appreciate.

time to catch the sunrise over the atlantic. with any luck, the cloud cover will not prevent that.

not the sharpest knife in the drawer

at sea
32 45 15 N
45 18 30 W
0710 GMT
05.12.08
s/y flying cloud
___________________________

another perfect day though i surrendered my watch to enjoy tearing apart the portside head and then putting it back together again, having removed the offending paper towelly item. at least the process is becoming more efficient. in and out in 2 hours, followed by a good half hour of cleaning and putting away tools. 'the job's not done until the tools are put away.' ~wisdom from bob picken.

this has dominated my day, as lunch dragged its feet and there was a move toward television. i have begun a mending project and have completed what would be most likely considered a 'crap knife' in the welch boat loft. actually, not so much of a loft as it's a basement level garage, but a great place to build a boat nonetheless. i wonder actually if there is a 'crap knife,' though i am certain there is a 'crap saw.'

these, of course, refer to the quality of the tool and nothing else; as it has been said, 'not every job is worth doing well;' and i would say that there are some jobs on which i would rather use a completely expendable knife. this one owes me very little.

entirely assembled from pieces found on the ground in the tyrell bay haulout yard in carriacou. i temporary-like liberated a sharpening stone from our tool locker in the engine room of 'good expectation.' i spent a great deal of time on my 'day off' sharpening and honing. the thing was still not yet a knife, but hey, it's becoming one moreso each hour i spend at it. sharpish, but you cannot yet shave with it.

the problem with the sharpest knife, matthew says, is that everyone wants to use it all the time. so it gets dull fast. at this point you actually can shave with most of the knives here. though there are indeed so many things to do that are better than shaving around here. it's been a blitz of activity since the first day i got to the boat. and in the spare afternoon moments tend to keep slightly busy, often honing and sharpening.

building a banjo, in my spare time

guilty and selfish

at sea
30 24 15 N
48 41 00 W
0724 UTC
05.11.08
s/y flying cloud
_________________________

an extra 45 minutes of solo time today was i suppose some sort of occasion. we made the halfway point from A to B ~ or from Antigua to Azores. factoid: 'bad luck' to write the destination on the ship's log before arriving. this i think has the adaptive advantage of making it possible to change one's mind about where to land ~ especially when dealing with hundreds of miles and many days' journey.

stopped again for a recreational swim this afternoon. seems to be a phenomenon when we motor-sail. sometimes there just isn't all that much wind. this afternoon was force 2 or 4-6 knots, ideal for intermediates or counsellors in a boat for the first time. a gentle learning wind; less ideal for kicking ass in a racing yacht. on my watch tonight we made 13.7 knots SOG (speed over ground). much funner and more better-er.

may all your swimming be recreational

ostensibly the swim was so that matthew might persuade the feathering prop on our portside to actually fold up ~ more hydrodynamic if that's a word. this gets us 1/4 of a knot, he claims, and that means we get 'there' sooner. i must say, it's pretty relaxing not knowing a great deal about the destination.

so we had fancy dinner and i opened a bottle of wine (rare at sea) i had been bringing along for a special occasion; this one i picked up in the Canary Islands on the way over. i figure i'll get another wine in acores as they have vineyards there. also i made apple pie and it even worked out not so bad. more like apple pie experiment. i sweetened with cassis nectar (i.e. concentrate) and demerrara and had intended to have half the sugar. it was pretty sweety anyway and i think was well received.

my watch relief slept through the alarm again and today i felt guilty and selfish about enjoying the stars and the extra time so i did wake up call after about 45 minutes. there isn't a great deal of alone time on a tiny boat like this and the first light of day is so beautiful. beautiful enough to share; beautiful enough to selfishly consume without troubling anyone about it.

it sounds like, though it's hard to tell, the next leg will have one less crew ~ so 4 hour watches anyway. nice to get used to it in a preview kinda way. after 3 hours i feel like i am all warmed up.

Buon giorno, Principessa!

at sea
28 27 00 N
51 15 00 W
0720 UTC
05.10.08
s/y flying cloud
____________________

a beautiful morning. it's started - the hint of light separating sky from sea. aft of us, the milky way is casting a reflection on gentle waves. jupiter shines like a beacon, a bright point of light in a moonless night. it's great, in my estimation, that the moon is around during the day; my watch relief slept through the alarm and i got to extend by an hour, at which i started to feel selfish and guilty and decided it was well time to do the wakeup call. not before, however, seeing the first signs of the forthcoming day.

heading east is a whole different thing and i a pleased at my luck (and i suppose that perseverence and effort to get 4,000 more sea miles before returning to the evil triangle has paid off).



about a day away from antigua ~ more like 36 hours i think, i confided in matt that i wanted to see the stars from a boat going the other direction. heading east is certainly different. the crew is different. the learning curve is certainly still quite steep. but many of the parts i enjoyed are still here. sailing is where it's at. and even when we're motor-sailing there are good things to enjoy. i believe i fully exhausted my violin repertoire tonight in my extended watch. i took long breaks ~ realizing one does not simply play violin for 3 hours at once after barely playing for a long time. the frame just doesn't want to handle that kind of stress. better to work into it and play a little every day over a longer period. still some longer sessions yield actual progress. the other day i played some bass after being away from antigua (and playing at all) for around 3 and a half weeks and totally paid for it. not a hefty price, but my hand was feeling it for a couple days.

i am enjoying.

tonight i made cookies ~ half the sugar and 'kick start' trail mix. we got these great brown eggs from bailey's in antigua and i think that and real butter have made a difference. as tod says:

eat 'em up.

elephant of randomness

at sea
26 50 45 N
53 28 30 W
0720 UTC
05.09.08
s/y flying cloud
________________________________
a day of spring cleaning. what i would be likely doing were in canada (and at camp s).

today was also yellow fin tuna day and i must apologise to the beautiful fish for the butchery of a butcher job i did on it. at least the knives were sharp. i'd been sitting in the cockpit happily sharpening. tom wandered in and said:

"that's creepy."

perhaps, but it make's chopping the fish's head off a lot easier and cleaner. okay. maybe creepy. knife honing is a somewhat boring and repetitive task, but rhythmic and relaxing all the same. we got a sharpening steel not so long ago and i think it fully helps. next i should actually read something about how to clean a fish as the element of randomness might best be left off the program in order to make the most of the resource. i aksed tom if he had seen 'sling blade.'

raised the mainsail today. that was a treat (on the one hand) and a lot of effort (i think on the same hand). wow is that a lot of rope to haul. and it's 2:1 so easier than it might be. still it was absolutely everything i had. this working the left side thing does have its limits.
using the grinder (s/ yachtie slang for 'winch') is in many ways a core training thing; i discovered that our new winch handle ~ which i hadn't yet encountered on this passage ~ has two handles for convenience and ease. not that my right hand is terribly useful just yet. i'll give it another 5 days. things are getting a little better (at least) every day. i still bang it and think bad words, but no longer say them. swelling = gone.

ooo. got tremendous thanks for making 'egg mayonnaise' a.k.a. egg salad for lunch. also did a big chicken salad,and a three fish melange. dorado,tuna and snapper. regrettably brain (sic) did not participate as he doesn't do mayo. had i known, i could have set something aside. not that there's a shortage of food here.tomorrow is leftover day. ooo!

stinkpots and malevolent winged creatures

at sea
25 31 30 N
56 00 30 w
0752 UTC
05.08.08
______________________________

well, well, well.

today had a few bumps but also a few comedic moments. made lunch after again taking slightly too long with an engineering problem. matthew had me play metal fabricator and sculpt some jubilee clips (i.e. hose clamps, but in l'europe) into latches with which to secure the freezer door. as i have needed to ice my hand for nearly a week now i feel as though i have a karmic debt to be paid to the freezer. it remains my contention that refrigeration is one of the hallmarks of civilisation. i'd have to say that in a very strange way, the most comfortable afternoon i spent in Antigua was the day i waited in the 'infertility and imaging clinic' for my x-ray, totally air-conditioned bliss. i was even slightly chilly. noooo! And the results were favourable. though slightly sore, it is as they say in carriacou 'not a problem.'

after my watch was done, the wind shifted and we did another sail change. actually we had just put away the main; and i got an in-the-dark anatomy of our mast lesson. i am convinced that the experiential / lateral learning process is most effective when there is so much information to assimilate. my actual plan was to secure a crossing on a /different/ boat, but hey. as buckley wrote, 'we don't actually commute.' which is less true in my time than it was in his, excepting the 'we' part.

i guessed while hanging out in Antigua while all them yachts did their chartering, available crew for delivery would be in rather short supply at a certain point i.e. when all insurance policies probably stipulate that said vessel must be S of grenada on the hard (in the yard, all chocked up) or in the med or in the US and A (merely anywhere but in the carribean for hurricane season). it's true. when i got back to antigua, i was offered a pile of crossings. but as matt aksed first, i get to be on flying cloud again. woo!

back to the comedy part. on midori's watch, we espied a vessel off to starboard and that was pretty fun. it seems like her watch is exactly nap time for all the rest and i was having a good relax with some WD40 and our can opener. random deep cleaning project. so i was endeavouring to identify the type of vessel, intently staring through binocs and i suppose hanging real motionless like. i felt this odd scratching on my head ~ this stupid sea bird had decided to make a nest out of my hair. or was quite interested anyway in landing on my head. i said some bad words and ducked under the bimini. i think this particular bird had it in for me, because when i poked our skipper's digital camera up to get a nice close-up shot, the bird tried to take my finger off with its beak. left a mark, but also fortunately left my finger. i've often been fond of the ring finger on my left hand. apparently my sea bird nemesis was too. the presence of the bird made midori's horizon sweep ~ which we all tend to perform at least once in any 5 minute period ~ more risky. mostly, the bird let her be.

a vicious animal. really.

while we were enjoying the drama, Flying Cloud crept off course and headed for africa, much to the consternation of matthew. crappy. on the one hand, the course problem, in which we were headed almost 10 degrees S of E, should have been picked up by one or both of us; on the other hand it is not much of a problem given our destination and our distance from it. what /is/ a problem is that we have come upon a high pressure system as a consequence and are now no longer under sail. very likely though, we would have encountered high pressure regardless. another watch under power.

sailing is better than motor sailing is better than motoring.


the sailing yachties call motor vessels 'stinkpots.'

tom burns the toast part one.

at sea
23 20 45 N
59 09 00 W
0620 UTC
05.07.08
s/y flying cloud
__________________________________________

just off watch and my mouth is on fire. i made mini cheese melties on a disguised hamburger bun. the boat bought a small bottle of susie's hot sauce... the good stuff. if i remember right this is also the good stuff at the nook, but there it comes by the bucketload and i somehow have learned to appreciate it more in the middle of the sea.

perhaps this is also a result of my month of eating rice and beans while in Antigua that first time. i think after about the second week i bought a spice and that greatly improved my quality of life. though everything was nutritious and tasty as i am quite scientific about that sort of thing.

when i brought the end of the boat roquefort to make hors d'oeuvres for liza i knew by her reaction i had encountered a kindred spirit. ooo! cheese!

today was a stellar food day and rather serene. before lunch midori was dealing with the fishing line ~ i found a flying fish on deck and so baited the hook. right after lunch we got our fish. a big (big) dorado that made i think dozen or so portions for the deep freeze and a giant fish dinner for the delivery crew. freezer space is /still/ at a premium. also for dinner was tuna and snapper, served on brown rice. tom spent a great deal of time basting bagelly croutons with a dijon vinaigrette and then dusting them lightly with palm crushed rosemary, then burning them slightly, then scraping the carbon bits into a large bowl. good save. a spectacular meal. the dorado was of course the highlight. fried in onion and corn fresh from the cob in too much butter. which is how we like that. then baked for 10 minutes in the juice of 4 lemons and 3 limes, lightly salted and less lightly peppered.

t. spillane, working on his tan in between mosquito hunts

also we fixed the freezer problem, discovered and (hopefully) repaired the watermaker issue, and i have decided that the tool room is the ideal place for me to play the violin badly for a short while each evening. pretty much soundproof at that point what with the (relatively) distant location and the ambient noise of routine boat activity.

waiting for buju

18 28 30 N
61 45 00 W
0629 UTC
05.04.08
__________________________

ah, stress.

like bogaert used to say. except of course the stress that invigorates and lifts a person up is generally welcome. it's most premium to be once again on the water. And though i prefer to sleep aboard than ashore and the part where there's an element of fun in any meals taken on a boat whether mine or a friend's, there's not a lot that compares to being on passage. especially after all the ass-busting that we'd been doing in the days leading up to departure.

sort of sad to leave Antigua, but that's to be expected in a way. a great brunch was had at the 'hot, hot, hot spot' ~ arnold is back in BC by now but joy was around and i must say, the breakfaast panini was such a delicious treat i'm disappointed i waited until my last morning in Antigua to have one.

After the innumerable but expected delays, the last but not least meaningful of which were the stolen tender event and the guard rail tearing a hole in our port sugar scoop, the crew was rewarded with night out in St. John's. Buju Banton was playing in a spanky new concert venue behind the Paradise Casino ~ it's called Paradise Lawn and probably would hold around 4,000 or so. a great looking and sounding concert stage put together by this fellow from florida IATSE. we rushed to get there and arrived at a completely empty venue. no people, just crew. and waited, and waited. when the first band finally got going, Matthew decided that it was a school night and it would be best to jet. Midori, Tom and i hung around for the show3, but at a certain point Midori fired us from waiting for Buju. she said it was comical (not her words) to return to the VIP room (where we had set up residence in the only chairs to be had) to find a room full of dancing people and the folks she came with snoring away, sitting upright in uncomfortable chairs. both tom and i were fully zapped ~ not surprising as tom consistently has been first awake hosing and scrubbing our deck. it's been good to have a slight spur to get moving in the morning. still, succession of 6 AM wakeup times and late-night sailing week parties meant staying up until 3AM ~ i think it was fully 345AM when we got back in that rainstorm. staying awake any longer was not a realistic plan. in the bus on the way back i saw tom and midori both fading in and out of consciousness. tom has a photo of midori and i looking sleepy on the bus. it's funny.

we got back to rhodes lane in a tremendous rainstorm. tom hid from the rain on a porch across from sweeties. midori sprinted down the road to the marina. not in a sprinting mood, i did my best to figure out where tom went and sauntered through the rain back to the boat.

buju, alas.

our RIB was stolen from the dinghy dock on the last night of sailing week, along with the gas tanks for a whole bunch of other tenders (*a tender is a smallish, often inflatable boat that gets you to and fro when the vessel is moored ~ or to the coffee place across the harbour if you want to miss the 45 minute walk. it was unfortunately our RIB that was the getaway vehicle our thief used to abscond with everyone's gas. and it's probably for sale in St. Martin or something today, but tracking it down doesn't fit in the 'realistic' category.

brian, mid swim

sky looks great. crew is doing well, though there's been more vom in this day than our entire last crossing. oh well, these guys are tough and can handle it. one good thing: lots of dinner and there's even leftover pasta that i intend to make the most of. there was /even/ leftover cheese toast that i just got to eat. mmmm. portabello.

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manchego ~ an asiago type cheese. tasty on melties.