tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42286704765445087502024-03-05T10:37:15.769-08:00New World Travelsbocasgaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10535260029841395996noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228670476544508750.post-49709064535874380742010-09-17T07:29:00.000-07:002010-09-17T07:29:43.417-07:00Smoking cabrito in Panama Texas style.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ATCNSkf5a1YXL_ELb-CLVrcBJuKA6JqdX7n84mvjvl7__O9JCYWLNPEmMyDHnDZ_PaVGKXJS2-XfskC1iQaqGxv-BYaR4CPJcPld85OrBrOd8IdPc_YSptWqoIrf1hoYk8dOZMuMmFk/s1600/P1000275.JPG"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; FLOAT: left; CLEAR: both" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ATCNSkf5a1YXL_ELb-CLVrcBJuKA6JqdX7n84mvjvl7__O9JCYWLNPEmMyDHnDZ_PaVGKXJS2-XfskC1iQaqGxv-BYaR4CPJcPld85OrBrOd8IdPc_YSptWqoIrf1hoYk8dOZMuMmFk/s320/P1000275.JPG" /></a><div style='clear:both; text-align:LEFT'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div>bocasgaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10535260029841395996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228670476544508750.post-4448577564410370842007-03-21T05:01:00.000-07:002010-12-16T10:22:21.618-08:00Sea Stories<div align="left"><b></b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyOOb7z2qSO9c69svLOzWYqXxwnfI_5Y4_tAwKMbtSQLgV-MMoNAay5Q1llhRYkSCF4O27BTAMMwxuX5eSUIqtgao22QU8l5l7Sr67tjcWg4_wbkQ1KbewJmroO02pbVcpIC41EYxhTQ4/s1600-h/storm+sea.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5044522790534224882" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyOOb7z2qSO9c69svLOzWYqXxwnfI_5Y4_tAwKMbtSQLgV-MMoNAay5Q1llhRYkSCF4O27BTAMMwxuX5eSUIqtgao22QU8l5l7Sr67tjcWg4_wbkQ1KbewJmroO02pbVcpIC41EYxhTQ4/s320/storm+sea.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a> <b><span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 180%;">SCROLL DOWN FOR OTHER </span></b><b><span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 180%;">STORIES AND PHOTOS</span></b> . <b><span style="color: #009900; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 180%;">Click on "Into Panama" on the right for the current Journal </span></b><b><span style="color: #009900; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 180%;">or scroll to it after </span></b><b><span style="color: #009900; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 180%;">the Alaska stuff... </span></b><b><span style="color: #009900; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 180%;">Click on Photos to enlarge.</span></b></div><br />
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<b>CAPE HATTERAS</b><br />
<br />
It was early winter and we were seven days out from San Juan <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Puerto</span> Rico, bound for the Chesapeake Bay. From there we would follow the Delaware River up to Camden New Jersey. I was riding the 3000 hp ocean going tug, Sea Monarch as chief engineer. We had an empty 250’ barge in tow that was to be loaded with steel. The day was pleasant, high-scattered clouds, a slight swell, and light winds out of the east. I’d found a spot behind the wheelhouse that was out of the wind and stretched out on the deck to get some sun. It was late afternoon when I started back down to my cabin.<br />
<br />
From the wheelhouse I noticed a black wall of clouds ahead, stretching across the horizon. The wall covered the ocean surface as dark and impenetrable as mortuary curtains. The wall seemed alive though, rolling over on its self, surging forward, reaching out to engulf us. When we broached its forward edge, darkness descended, and the sea and the wind started to go mad. Rain came in torrents, horizontal and blinding. The wind quickly reached hurricane force and kept getting stronger. The weather reports we were receiving had no relation at all to what we were experiencing. We radioed our office and received a weather report of three-foot seas, winds ten to fifteen out of the east. We were in a different world from the one they were talking about.<br />
<br />
Within the hour, winds were at eighty knots with gusts to a hundred. The seas were topping thirty feet and building. It was then the main engine faltered. The rpm dropped rapidly. I rushed to the engine room, the fuel pressure was fluctuating wildly, and the engine was about to stall. I switched fuel filters and the pressure and the rpm returned to normal. The filter I pulled out was fouled with black algae and muck from the tank bottoms. The slime in the fuel immediate<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">ly</span> started turning the translucent case of the new filter black. The pounding the boat was taking had stirred up the algae and sediment from the tanks in greater concentrations than the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">fil</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">ters</span> were ever designed to handle. The pressure in the new filter started to drop within minutes. When it got down to a critical level I switched back to the one I had just replaced, and replaced the second one. That set the pattern for the rest of the night. Back and forth, switching from filter to filter, as soon as I got one replaced, the other needed it. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFI77YBLaw0XDC8lfovYzPOF2n0bAHm-Fwa9E65jRbsm2IHqQXZ39Iw-voJ1PEjFVzbCQmFQBEnNXZ9DmQt7TXh7gKD4heNc61sqfpnAZDouUe_5VAkVb9PPNuBn-nz0zwa1LpQKf4g9Q/s1600-h/Tug+Engine+Room.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5068835039351128498" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFI77YBLaw0XDC8lfovYzPOF2n0bAHm-Fwa9E65jRbsm2IHqQXZ39Iw-voJ1PEjFVzbCQmFQBEnNXZ9DmQt7TXh7gKD4heNc61sqfpnAZDouUe_5VAkVb9PPNuBn-nz0zwa1LpQKf4g9Q/s320/Tug+Engine+Room.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a><br />
<br />
The seas built to forty feet, and I went through case after case of fuel filters. In the early morning hours I sent word to the Captain that I would soon run out of filters, and expected to lose the engine. Without power in these seas, we could easily founder. We were off Cape Hatteras, “The Graveyard.” The number of ships and men who had been lost off those shores was uncounted. The Civil War ironclad Monitor was down there somewhere. By zero three hundred the seas were still building. The wind gauge had blown away hours earlier. The boat was a mess anything and everything that could be tossed off a shelf or out of a drawer had long ago joined in the melee, rushing from one side of the decks to the other. Those off watch tried to stay in their bunks. By piling life jackets, pillows and blankets under the outer edge of the mattress, you could raise it up until the mattress and the bulkhead formed a forty-five degree angle. Wedged into the angle you had a chance of, if not sleeping, at least not getting thrown from your bed. For those not in a bunk, every movement was a challenge. The simplest task became a nightmare. To relax your hold for a moment was to risk broken limbs or worse. The galley was a mosaic of color. Olives and pickles were chasing peppers and toothpicks through a sea of mustard and ke<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">tchup</span>, relish and broken glass.<br />
<br />
The engine stopped. It seemed time did also. If we went sideways to these seas we were sure to capsize. I grabbed a life jacket and ran to the bridge. The rest of the crew was there ahead of me. They all had life jackets on. Whatever happened I wanted to be up where I could see it. Miraculously, our heading stayed the same, the bow continued to point into the wind and the sea. It was the wind working on the barge that was keeping us steady. The hundred plus knot wind pushing against the high <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">freeboard</span> of the empty barge worked like a sea anchor. By pulling on our stern, it kept our nose into the wind. It was a wonderful revelation. Once I saw that we were likely to ride it out I could pay attention to the world outside. It really was getting interesting.<br />
<br />
Daylight had arrived, or at least what was going to pass for daylight this day. The night had passed in a blur of diesel fumes and filter canisters. When the boat was at the top of the waves the defining line between water and air was <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">nonex</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">istent</span>. The wind tore the tops off of the waves and displaced the air with it. It was like an Arctic whiteout, there was zero visibility. As the boat would start the long wild corkscrewing drop down the face of the waves, visibility would improve as the huge walls of water provided shelter from the wind. Only in the questionable protection of the wave’s trough could we visually appreciate the magnitude of the storm. From the bottom of the trough the monstrous waves towered over the boat. It seemed a much smaller vessel than ever it had before. The light would disappear and the boat stagger and shake as tons of water crashed down over us. Those were heart-stopping moments as the boat shuddered in the darkness. Then the water would part, and we would be on the upward track of a wild, wet, roller coaster ride.<br />
<br />
Once it appeared the boat would hold its own, I felt secure enough to start thinking about the engine again. I went back down below to see what could be done about getting power restored. By then the storm had ripped off our radio antennas and knocked out the radars. The only help we were likely to get would be self-help. There was no want for help in the engine room. The entire crew came down and stood around big eyed and anxious. Everyone want<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">ing</span> to know what they could do to help. It took eight hours to get up and running again. I changed and modified all sixteen-fuel injectors. The good fortune was that the electrical generators continued to function. Loss of electric power would have made the other repairs difficult.<br />
<br />
The storm continued moving to the south, as we slowly beat our way to north. As the Cape was left behind the weather slowly moderated. Bruised and torn, licking our wounds, it was a relief to enter the protected waters of Chesapeake Bay. It took <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">anoth</span>er twenty - four hours to run the river up to Camden. We found out later that the storm that had given us so much excitement still had the power to kill when it hit the Bahamas. It sank half dozen boats and drowned three people. The barge loading took six days. We made repairs, replaced antennas, loaded supplies, and squeezed in a few nights on the town. I made it to several restaurants in New Jersey, and got over to Philadelphia for one evening. The only person I ever saw smile while we were up there, was a coat check girl in Camden. I went back and gave her an extra five-dollar tip for that small ray of sunshine. A uniformly depressing place with a depressed population.<br />
<br />
The barge was loaded with billets of steel about four inches square and twenty feet long. A line of I-beam stanchions ran along each side of the barge about twenty feet high. The steel was stacked on deck and straps holding it in place were welded to the deck and to the stanchions. It seemed a solid stable cargo. As on the upstream journey, we were required to have Delaware River pilots aboard. On the day of departure, as soon as the pilots arrived, we cast off and headed down stream. All aboard happy to be heading back to the Tropics. During the night the skipper had to get some rest and left the pilots in charge. He <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">hadn</span>’t been asleep two hours when they ran over a lighted channel buoy. The buoy got hung up in the barge-towing bridle, where its light continued to flash throughout the night. All night long passing ships would radio, “You have a buoy in your bridle.” When we got down into the bay, a Coast Guard buoy tender met us and lifted it clear. After the extraction, we bid the pilots adieu, thanked them for their “help,” and headed back out into the Atlantic.<br />
<br />
Though we were all looking forward to returning to the land of coconut palms, it was with some trepidation that we viewed the return trip around Hatteras. Well-founded trepidation it would turn out. About eighteen hours after leaving the lights of Virginia Beach behind, the weather started to deteriorate. We headed due east hoping to get far enough offshore that we would get away from the influence of Cape Hatteras. Pipe dreams, conditions continued to worsen. The wind blew and the seas pounded. We turned south and made what time we could. By the third day nothing had improved. The seas were thirty-five feet and more, the wind gusts over a hundred once again. In conditions such as we were in, it was almost impossible to see the barge back there on its 1500-foot tow wire. On the forth day, the mate said that he thought that the barge might be list<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">ing</span> to port. We kept a watch throughout the day. Only on rare occasions would the barge be visible. The boat and the barge would both need to be on top of a wave at the same time. Even then a squall or blowing spray could make line of sight <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">observa</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">tions</span> chancy. By afternoon, even with the limited sightings, there was no doubt that the barge was healing over to port. There was little we could do. Any attempt to approach the barge under the circumstances would be suicidal. The seas could easily toss us into the barge. Daylight faded rapidly. The last sighting before darkness <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">de</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">scended</span> showed the barge heeling sharply. Soon after full dark<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">ness</span> enveloped us, the tow winch brake shoes started screaming and shooting sparks and fire in all directions. The two and a half inch steel cable was being stripped off the winch drum like a blue marlin taking 80-pound Dacron off a Penn Reel. In a panic the mate ran back and started to release the tow winch brake. Just in time, the skipper stopped him, and using the after controls backed the boat much like the skipper of a marlin boat would do. If the barge were actually sinking, we would have to let it go, so it <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">wouldn</span>’t drag us down. If it <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">wasn</span>’t sinking, we sure <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">didn</span>’t want to let an unattended barge loose in the shipping lanes. It would be an extreme hazard, and we would have to catch it again. The running wire slowed, and then stopped. We had control. There was no way to know what shape the barge was in, and no way to find out until daybreak.<br />
<br />
A man would have to be stationed near the brake wheel so the wire could be dumped if it did start pulling us under. It would be a cold, wet, all-night vigil. The day began as the previous one ended, howling winds, mountain<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">ous</span> seas and all eyes searching for sign of the barge. Once again daylight limped in like a weak sister. It was mid-morning before we got a clear enough view of the barge to figure out what we were seeing. We were looking at the bottom of an overturned barge. We had been suspicious of that. Our speed had not broken a knot and a half since the incident with the winch brake. Not good news, but at least it was floating. The seas and the wind pounded us all that day and the next. On the following day the weather showed a slight improvement. The seas remained <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">moun</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">tainous</span>, but the wind was shifting more to the east and had abated somewhat. By nightfall the seas were also showing some signs of coming down. Since the barge flipped we <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">hadn</span>’t made over thirty-eight miles in twenty - four hours. The improving weather did not seem to help. The double rows of I-beams along each side of the barge were now creating a thirty-foot draft and causing an immense drag, more power just threw a bigger wake. It looked as though it would be a long trip to San Juan.<br />
<br />
As the weather improved we were able to give more throttle, but even at full ahead we could not get more than two knots. We continued south, the lines on the chart showing minute progress each day. The weather warmed, the sea lay down and began to exhibit the vibrant blues and greens of the tropical ocean. Day in and day out the barge reluctantly followed along like some mammoth obstinate turtle. Epilogue: We averaged 1.8 knots on the trip back to San Juan. The weather improved until the sea was as slick and smooth as an oyster’s belly. The trip still proved too much for the Mate. On the night before we hit port he died in his bunk. Obesity and the strain of the storm both took their toll I would guess. It took six tugboats and a salvage crew two weeks to right the barge. The cargo was a total loss.<br />
<br />
<b>TUG MERCURY, NORTH TO ALASKA</b><br />
<br />
I awoke a little before five to the rolling and pitching of a boat in a storm. I felt rested, but still I retained the night memory of bracing myself against the bulkhead to keep from being thrown from my bunk. I lay there awake for some time, slowly absorbing the feel of the storm, in no hurry to begin the dance that getting dressed in heavy weather entails. Later, after performing the intricate steps needed to thrust my legs into my pants and continuing on to the next balancing act, performed in front of the mirror with tooth brush and comb, I made my way down into the hot noisy cavern of the tugboat engine room, making my first inspection of the day, looking for anything that might have gone awry while I slept. Finding nothing of immediate concern I made my way back to the main deck and forward to the galley, hanging on with each step, attempting to anticipate the gyrations of the boat, and so not to fight them. I sat down at the table with a cup of the insipid brown liquid that Juan Valdez has fostered off on the American public as coffee, and ordered a plate of hot cakes.<br />
<br />
I was working for Crowley Maritime as a Chief Engineer and it was beginning to look as if taking a tugboat north to Alaska in October would be anything but boring. The first few days after leaving Seattle we spent traversing the Inside Passage up the coasts of Canada and the panhandle of Alaska, protected from the early winter gales by the many scenic and providentially placed islands. The calm waters of the passage teemed with life, eagles and salmon, porpoise and whales, and though we had more rain and fog than sunshine, the excitement of making my first voyage through the passage was exhilarating. On our first day out, while still in Puget Sound, we passed through an area where <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Orca's</span> or Killer Whales seemed to be everywhere we looked. Two or three-dozen whales rolling and jumping gave us a show to put Sea World to shame. Then during our fifth night we reached the northern terminus of the Inside Passage. At Cape Spencer we tentatively pointed our bow out into the icy gray waters of the Gulf of Alaska. The seas rapidly began building and the boat started showing the characteristics I had been warned about, and for which she is justly famous. She has a round bathtub shaped hull that will roll in any sea and beat you to death, or at least make you wish you were dead, in a storm. We moved out into ten and twelve foot seas, but on this boat they seemed closer to sixteen to eighteen footers.<br />
<br />
We were towing a 250-foot barge loaded with cement, and in these seas we could only make five or six knots. That meant it would take five days to cross the gulf. The seas hammered at us the entire way, but it could have been much worse. We made it passed the Barren Islands and around Dangerous Cape just in time. The boat slipped into Cook Inlet only hours ahead of a powerful low pressure system packing winds of sixty knots or more. Even beating the storm system we experienced seas in excess of twenty feet.<br />
<br />
The day before, on my first inspection of the engine room I found the bilges in need of pumping. The boat was rolling so hard that bilge water was being thrown up onto the propeller shafts, and then slung up onto the engine room deck plates. When I started the bilge pump the motor shorted out and fried itself. I had to rig a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Jabsco</span> pump to remove the water. To do that called for running a hose up and out the escape hatch. The boat by then was pitching wildly, hanging on with one hand and dragging the pump hose with the other I climbed up the ladder and opened the hatch. I was immediately drenched in paint thinner from a bucket one of the sailors had left sitting on the hatch. About then the boat started taking some even more radical rolls and the engine room shelves started unloading themselves of parts and supplies. So there I was wiping paint thinner out of my face and chasing spare parts around the engine room, trying to corral them before they hopped into the bilge. Just another morning of tug boating. At about ten o’clock, after showering the paint thinner away, I sat down for my morning coffee.<br />
<br />
A few days later, after unloading our barge at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Nikiski</span> on the eastern shore of Cook Inlet, we found ourselves once again back out in the Gulf of Alaska. We were now heading for Prince William Sound. We picked up a radio transmission from another Crowley tug, the Sea King. They were adrift in the Bering Sea with an engine room fire. The fire burned out of control for three or four hours, long enough to warp the door and blister the deck in the galley. They said that they had been able to seal the engine room and kill the fuel to the engines. After that the CO2 system and lack of oxygen brought the fire under control. A Coast Guard buoy tender was fortunately in the vicinity and on the way to rescue the crew. We hoped to hear more later, as for our boat, we were having the hell knocked out of us. Seventy-five knot winds had whipped the seas up past twenty four feet. Happily it was only a two-day run before we made it into the protected waters of the sound. It is such a feeling of relief to reach calm water after taking that kind of a beating, I could feel all of my muscles going slack and relaxing of their own accord. In heavy weather there is no relaxing even in sleep, the muscles are always tensing for control<br />
<br />
We pulled into Shotgun Cove where we are going to drop off this barge and pick up a fuel barge that we will be towing out to the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Pribolof</span> Islands in the Bering Sea. Coming into the cove, the weather was cold and wet, with a steady rain and clouds down around our ankles. All except the closest mountains merely faint shadows in the mist. The few islands and mountains that were visible appeared to be about three thousand feet high with the top third dusted with snow. Every few hundred yards a small and startling white cataract came tumbling down to the sea, providing the only relief to the monochromatic gray color of our world. A lone gull every now and again, the only movement beyond the falling water. The Earth appeared quiet, cold and mystical. Mystical that is until it was discovered the running lights on the barge were not working. After that it was five cold miserable hours out in the icy rain repairing and replacing the lights.<br />
<br />
As soon as the repairs were made we headed back out into the Gulf of Alaska, back out where the seas were already in excess of twenty eight feet, and the charcoal gray sky merged into a gray green sea streaked with wind driven foam. We beat straight into the storm all that day making very little headway. Towards evening we pulled into a narrow cove looking for shelter. The small cove afforded protection from the sea, but the winds that came funneling down through the mountain passes would gust to over one hundred miles an hour. The weather is such a regulating force in our lives our thoughts are continuously tuned to it. We spent the night jogging back and forth, the rain coming completely horizontal, the surface of the cove whipped to a white froth. About three in the morning the clouds broke for a few minutes to reveal magnificent mountains in every direction. The full moon draped the snow covered peaks in a beautiful luminescence that looked strangely serene when viewed from the maelstrom in the cove. Early the next afternoon the weather report we received down graded the storm to a gale! That was really wonderful. It thrilled me to no end! That evening we headed back out into it.<br />
<br />
We kept beating back into the teeth of the storm, running down along the Kenai Peninsula, until once again we traversed the waters of the Barren Islands and made our way out across the mouth of Cook Inlet. The sea and the wind continued to toss us around, enough so that just being able to hang on and not get banged up was a victory. As we neared Mt. Augustine, an island volcano with a lone and near flawless cone rising shear from the sea, the boat started taking freezing spray and was soon sheathed in a coat of ice. Five hours after leaving Mt. Augustine behind we rounded Cape Douglas, massive and foreboding, its mountains and glaciers did provide some protection from the wind and sea. All that night, and the next day and a night, we proceeded down along the Alaska Peninsula. The Shilekof Straits with their usual eighty knot winds and Kodiak Island off to our port were left astern. As we entered the Shumigan Islands we would experi<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja1i34sGU8VlqLrD22pfIWjRFkDeC7NMNa9G-lvZDe0d4AfREWWmMSBqW_opqoIaaBrBi2bVAnsAGKNh5pU3t6ZEhAMHMLMC7eyOXscBdS3vW8m2GdS-aCN3FgAlnVTGNF9MiS-9_lb1M/s1600-h/Sea+Sixty+Knots.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5045293176747868258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja1i34sGU8VlqLrD22pfIWjRFkDeC7NMNa9G-lvZDe0d4AfREWWmMSBqW_opqoIaaBrBi2bVAnsAGKNh5pU3t6ZEhAMHMLMC7eyOXscBdS3vW8m2GdS-aCN3FgAlnVTGNF9MiS-9_lb1M/s320/Sea+Sixty+Knots.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a>ence alternating periods of moderate to gale winds, and our coating of ice would continue to grow. As daylight returned the boat started developing a definite list to starboard, the side the wind was blowing from. The ice buildup there was three times the thickness of that on the port side. By early afternoon the problem was getting dangerous. Many boats have been lost from the weight of such ice. Once again we went in search of protected water. I took this opportunity to attempt taking some photos of the ice. On the stern of the boat the tow winch<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCtDBfbPNu8WKhrt2Supvv_ZRcI1Mhrz_t4bgdnhZ-UEK7ogKvILUTN6347V16Oh2vwORqaZBg9J54ial2BNDt26WRDamWzS4EYCyLx7rLWwu9M1nNSb1eozb8SDz3mMxddI9kLo_00Gk/s1600-h/Frozen+Bits.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5045292631287021650" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCtDBfbPNu8WKhrt2Supvv_ZRcI1Mhrz_t4bgdnhZ-UEK7ogKvILUTN6347V16Oh2vwORqaZBg9J54ial2BNDt26WRDamWzS4EYCyLx7rLWwu9M1nNSb1eozb8SDz3mMxddI9kLo_00Gk/s320/Frozen+Bits.JPG" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a> is partially enclosed to afford some protection from the sea. There was one area where I could stand and be out of the wind and the spray, with only the swirling water on deck to worry about. I rolled up my pants and kicked off my shoes as I was just going to step through the door, snap off a couple of shots and step back inside. I picked up my camera and stepped out onto the deck. The water swirled up around my calves and the first searing pain felt as if I were being hit with live steam. After that first shock passed, the bone numbing cold hit home with a force that was frightening. I snapped one photo and jumped back inside, I waited a few minutes and made one more attempt, I snapped off a couple of more shots, and that was all I could stand. To think of being washed overboard or loosing a boat out from under you in these temperatures is horrendous. A survival suit would be your only hope, even for a few moments. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRc_opjgFwDb8zDZkOMGAl_SYwsuDEoWiLnVBN8kGLWDq91fXLVQ3_8WQUmtqAo6T5WZp5IeJMlIUITdVNKxz0yH3dL9oJGaMSeBOTbequOebL5sHRgte7VbeVV7Ag3wXl04TeOSDz7oo/s1600-h/Sea+AK,+KW.+PA+Photos.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5045647292506456194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRc_opjgFwDb8zDZkOMGAl_SYwsuDEoWiLnVBN8kGLWDq91fXLVQ3_8WQUmtqAo6T5WZp5IeJMlIUITdVNKxz0yH3dL9oJGaMSeBOTbequOebL5sHRgte7VbeVV7Ag3wXl04TeOSDz7oo/s320/Sea+AK,+KW.+PA+Photos.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a><br />
<br />
This time we really did find a safe harbor. Light winds, calm seas, and the sun blessed us with faint warmth. Now it was baseball bats, sledge hammers and fire hoses to knock off the ice. We broke ice for five or six hours and I transferred some fuel until the boat came back on an even keel. We continued down the peninsula with the volcanoes of the Aleutian Range towering above. Pavlov Mountain and Pavlov Sister were wreathed in clouds, but the Shishaldin volcano which was smoking slightly, and the Isanotski Peaks, sparkled in a clear sky, under a low winter sun.<br />
<br />
We had picked up further radio transmissions about the tug Sea King. Some other Crowley tugs had arrived on the scene and had taken the crew aboard. Then in the salvage attempt, the tug Tiny got too close to the Sea King’s barge and the barge’s skegs came down and ripped the boats side open. The Tiny sank in minutes. Fortunately her crew was able to scramble aboard the other tugs. The Sea King was finally taken under tow to Dutch Harbor on Unalaska Island. We have also had word of a storm out in the Pribilof''s that took another tug and barge that had been tied up at the dock in St. Paul, snapped their mooring lines and tossed them up on the rocks. One more tug and barge was being driven ashore up near Dillingham. A sign on the galley chalk board this morning read, “Bering Sea, 4, Crowley, 0. Something to look forward to. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBdOUG59vYFr9cOR5UHP-IB0VmZyiwBea0sx4f5r_jl_BJdc3j84NPXBRxYmKKYH_A2X1yL9aOPPL9iFkihvpzlqB-cjMkWzxi2RE6SkH9o9dzw43h2n5WiWh2rggtiGWOid2BMdUE8fk/s1600-h/Ice+Melting.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5199108047724466722" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBdOUG59vYFr9cOR5UHP-IB0VmZyiwBea0sx4f5r_jl_BJdc3j84NPXBRxYmKKYH_A2X1yL9aOPPL9iFkihvpzlqB-cjMkWzxi2RE6SkH9o9dzw43h2n5WiWh2rggtiGWOid2BMdUE8fk/s320/Ice+Melting.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a><br />
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We finally arrived down at the lower end of Unimak Island and turned up into the Bering Sea. My journal for that day reads, “Now traversing Unimak Pass, 22 foot swells and in the trough.” “Ya Hoo!” It was like a roller coaster. Once into the Bering Sea, a slight rise in temperature allowed the sea water to start melting our accumulated ice. Within two days it was all a memory. Another two days of running in the trough with the sea on our port side and we arrived at St. Paul. The Pribolof Islands are the breeding grounds for eighty percent of the world’s fur seals and a major staging port for the great Bristol Bay fishing fleet. The fleet will use a large percentage of the fuel we are hauling; the rest is heating oil for the island. We were forced to anchor in the lee of the island for three days before the sea calmed down enough to allow us to enter port. It took twenty four hours to pump off the fuel, and then we started on our return trip. We are heading back to Shotgun Cove and on to the nearby town of Whittier.<br />
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The return trip was cold, wet, and rough, but we didn’t ice up again, just a “normal” Alaskan winter time voyage. A week after leaving St. Paul, we moored the barge in Shotgun Cove and took the tug on in to the dock at Whittier where I would leave the boat. It was vacation time for me. I was heading for the tropical island of Key West Florida, to bask under its eighty five degree winter sun, and pursue fish and lobster in its crystalline blue waters.<br />
<br />
<b>ALASKA JOURNAL, FALL 1991</b><br />
<br />
September 6.<br />
Well once again, I’m in Alaska and on a boat! Seems I’ve said that before. So far almost a replay of the northern journey this spring. Howard drove me to the Corpus Christi airport and the adventure began. Better connections this time, a quick hop to Houston and then on to Anchorage. Another short hop down to Homer and I was on the boat in fifteen hours. The same job, Chief Engineer on the tug Petro Challenger. Four familiar faces, three new ones. The skipper and the two mates the new faces. First impressions are that it is a normal crew; all but one mate are smokers. Four of the crew consider Louis L’amour America’s greatest writer. The other three, the skipper, the chief mate, and an AB you can hold a conversation with.<br />
<br />
The big surprise is that there is still another trip to the Red Dog Mine on tap. I would have thought that they would have gotten that out of the way by now. It is getting late in the year to be heading into the Arctic. We have a two-day wait here in Homer and then we will run up to Nikiski and load fuel. There is a load for Kodiak before the trip to Red Dog. I’m looking forward to Kodiak, another “new” port for me. I never tire of going to see “the elephant.<br />
<br />
September 7. The weather has been a pleasant surprise. Sunshine and warm temperatures although the skipper said it is the first sun they have seen in two weeks.<br />
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September 11. We pulled out of Kodiak this evening at the dinner hour. We had arrived last night at twenty hundred. A little misjudgment on coming alongside the pier and the barge took out a couple of pilings and did some other assorted damage. Likely take the profit out of this trip, or at least make a dent in it. Kodiak and Dutch Harbor are both fishing towns, but that is where the similarity ends. Kodiak has tree-covered mountains, they use some color on their homes, and the streets are paved. It looks like a nice place. I’ve already written more than enough about Dutch Harbor in my journal this spring; it has & is none of the above.<br />
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September 12, Homer. Anchored this afternoon in Kachemak Bay. There will be a delay before we can load the fuel for the Red Dog Mine. The days get shorter and winter creeps intolerably closer. We would all like to get this trip behind us as the Red Dog is one hundred fifty miles north of the Arctic Circle and the ice will soon be spreading south. Already we can expect some very uncomfortable weather. The first major storm of the winter is due to hit here tomorrow.<br />
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September 14. Homer. Ridding the hook. Yesterday we left the barge anchored and went in to the pier. I went to the dentist for some antibiotics to try and keep my dental problems under control until I get home and can finish up the treatments that started in July. The skipper and the now “2nd mate”, he was demoted after we hit the pier in Kodiak, had to go in for drug tests. Anymore that is the rule after an accident. I took time to inspect and try on my Survival Suit today. If the worst happens, it is the only chance there is of surviving in these waters for more than a few minutes.<br />
<br />
The weather has turned Alaskan, rain, fog, drizzle, wind, more rain, and clouds wispy fingers caressing a cold dark sea. Gale and storm warnings, it is good to be anchored in a protected harbor on a day like today. It is a day that we will likely soon look back on with longing.<br />
<br />
September 18. Shilekof Straits. After leaving Homer we made the run up into Cook Inlet to Nikiski and loaded the barge for the Red Dog, mostly jet fuel, some diesel. The jet is simply a better grade of fuel for cold weather. We left out of there at fifteen hundred yesterday and headed south. It is about a six hundred mile run southeast along the Alaska Peninsula. At Unimak Pass we head north out across the Bering Sea. We crossed the waters near the Barren Islands during the night and entered the Straits a little after daylight. So far so good, the weather had been kicking up pretty good out here but laid down nicely before we came through.<br />
September 21. Akutan Bay, Aleutian Islands, midday. We had an uneventful run down the Alaska Peninsula, fog, rain, low, low ceiling. Some moderately rough weather, nothing much though. Last night coming through Unimak Pass we were in the trough and took some big rolls for a while. Right now we are in the calm before the storm. All the weather reports are talking about fifty to sixty knot winds and seas to thirty feet in a wide area all around us. We have pulled into the protected waters between Akutan and Akun Islands to see what is coming. The Petro Mariner is tied up in St. Paul, out in the Pribolof Islands, and already in the thick of it. They will hold there until it passes. We will make circles here at least until eighteen hundred and the next weather update.<br />
<br />
By 1800 when we picked up the weather broadcast we were getting wind gusts to sixty mph. The report calls for seas of 30 to 35 feet and winds of 50 to 60, with gusts to 80 and higher all day tomorrow. Coming in here was a good move. There are two other tugs and barges in here also. It is a large well-protected bay, some of the surrounding mountains must be close to two thousand feet and the tundra still has the green of summer.As we were heading in here, we were in amongst hundreds of thousands of birds. Mostly shearwaters, but puffins, gulls, murres, guillemonts, and more. They were so thick on the water that in some places they were showing up on the radar. If it had been night we would have thought we were in among the fishing fleet. Some Dall’s Porpoise visited us as we were shorting up the tow wire and there have been a few otter feeding nearby. Once inside the bay the most common bird has been the puffin. This is the kind of weather when you can expect to hear those frantic calls of Mayday coming in over the airwaves.<br />
<br />
If one of these storms hit when we are out in the middle of the Bering Sea there will be no safe harbor. Then it will be head into the wind and hang on. It would be nice to miss that treat altogether, but it is definitely that time of the year. By twenty hundred we were getting wind gusts in excess of a hundred miles an hour and were pitching heavily. It really must be hell out in unprotected waters. The barometer has dropped an inch and a half since we pulled into the bay.<br />
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September 22. Holding in Akutan Bay. Sunday morning & the barometer is still dropping. 28.06” this morning, two inches all told. The old Alaska hands on here are saying that it is the lowest barometer they can remember? Engines in clutch jogging back and forth. For the moment the wind has laid to about thirty-five and the rain has let up some. A gray nasty looking day beginning. Anyone still not in protected waters is taking a real beating. Late afternoon we moved into Akutan Harbor for even more protection. The center of the storm has passed over us and the shifting wind has started pushing the swell in through the entrance of the bay. Here in the harbor we only have a slight swell. We are making circles just off of the Eskimo village of Akutan. Three or four-dozen buildings and over a point of land, a cannery and dock. The villagers have blown up the road connecting the two. They don’t want the imported cannery workers and the trouble they bring coming into the village. There is an old whaling village across the harbor. It would be nice to get over there with my camera, but there won’t be any chance of that.<br />
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Sunday dinner was baked halibut from a fish we picked up in Kodiak. A peach/apple cobbler topped it off. A very nice meal. I have vowed that is to be the last sugar I consume on this boat! The cook is a grouchy old Viet Nam vet with a disability pension. He was an early advisor in the war and an explosives man. A jeep he was ridding in hit a mine and rotated him out. His hands now shake as if he has permanent DT’s. His enormous belly balloons the stained tee shirts and prevents him from getting closer then arms length to the stove. His stomach looks like a Sunday afternoon football blimp held fast by large red suspenders. The heavy gray stubble jaw is made grayer still by ash fall from the ever present cigarette protruding from the large fleshly lips. The smoke is a real problem on this boat. Last night was typical. The smoke hung in the galley air like that from the fires of Yellowstone. Adding to the poisonous haze was smoke from the adjoining room where some of the crewmembers were watching the video of Louis L’amour’s Sakett clan killing the same people that they have killed so many times before on this trip. The same movie seems to be on everyday. I breathe shallow as I pass through and seldom linger. I try to work my meal times around those of the heaviest smokers. The one I can never work around is the cook. If his meals were not so damn good I would come back when he was finished and fix my own.<br />
<br />
I was listening to a Coast Guard broadcast just after dinner. They are trying to identify an overturned hull off to the southeast of here. They think it might be a fishing vessel out of Cordova that has been missing since the twentieth.<br />
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September 22. PM. We stuck our nose outside the bay and since it didn’t get broken so we decided to go for it. Another day in there wouldn’t have bothered me a bit. Give it a little more time to lie down. One of the heaviest otter populations that I have come across up here. That was a treat, watching them lolling along on their backs with dinner resting on their chests. One pair we passed was very closely entwined. I went to my Audubon nature guide for information on breeding seasons and gestation times but all that I found was confirmation that they are aquatic in both breeding and birthing habits.<br />
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September 24. AM. The nose might not have gotten broken, but it is going to get bruised some, that’s for sure. Heading north and hanging on at a slow bell. 20’seas and 40 to 50 knot winds, a real rough ride. I don’t know what if anything this abuse would do to my computer so until the weather calms down I will keep my journal in longhand and transcribe it later. The storm of course did not go where forecast, (ashore) and we are now in behind it following it north. It looks like a slow rough ride ahead. The delays, along with letting Old Man Winter get really wound up, will also stretch our fresh water supply. I have cautioned the crew about conserving as best they can. We have been making 1 to 1 ½ knots. Twenty-four miles a day. 850 miles to go, it doesn’t bear thing about. There is another low-pressure system coming off Japan already. This could really be a bad trip.<br />
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September 25. For a while this morning it looked as if the weather might get reasonable, but that was not to be, not yet. Winds that had dropped to thirty are once again flirting with fifty. Seas back up to twenty feet. It looked so good this morning I opened my port and cleaned the glass both sides. Left it propped open and received a face full of cold salt water during my afternoon nap. I ask the skipper about refueling the tug from the barge, (our usual source) before we head back from the Red Dog. He said that he had asked them to load some extra for us, but the office turned him down. Not a wise decision in my opinion. At this time of year this far north it is not a good idea to be running the boat light on fuel. That is the only ballast we carry. I worry about stability when we are light. I would guess that these diesel engines weigh quite a bit less that the original steam plant that the boat was designed around. I know that the ride deteriorates markedly as the fuel is used up.<br />
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September 26. We have been averaging eighty miles a day for the last two days, 3.3 miles per hour. Wind and sea increasing, wind sixty, seas to twenty-five. Making even less headway today, 2.0 knot. Air temperature is dropping a degree a day. It is forty-four and still no concern, but still a long northern run ahead. Freezing spray in weather like this would be deadly. There is no safe harbor out here where you could lay up and break ice. At sixteen hundred we picked up a Coast Guard broadcast about the F/V Seahawk sinking with two people aboard. The CG was asking if there were any boats in the vicinity that could render aid. Once again they were far to the southeast of us. We did have a target on our radar today, about six miles distant but in this weather invisible. Could not raise him on the radio.<br />
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September 27. Happy birthday to me! The big FIVE O, somewhere in the middle of the Bering Sea. Whoopee!!! The weather calmed down today, it does get tiresome hanging on twenty-four hours a day. This afternoon we were able to put the engines full ahead for the first time. Looks as if we might get to the Red Dog about eighteen hundred on the 30th. There are storm warnings everywhere behind us. Just hope they stay behind us.<br />
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September 28. More good weather, but also the calm before the storm again. The maps coming off of the weather fax today tell a terrible story. One storm tracking north right behind us and a huge one off to the west coming this direction with 75 knot winds and 40 foot seas. We need about eighteen hours of good weather to pump off the barge. The dock is unprotected and the water is shallow. If we don’t get the fuel off before the storm hits we could be there for days waiting on weather. We don’t have days. This is not a good situation. It won’t be long before all this water is frozen solid until spring. It doesn’t happen like one day there is a little bit of ice here, and the next day a little more there. It happens that one day it is suddenly all ice. Poof, just like that.<br />
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September 29. AURORA BOREALIS!!! A nice treat this morning, the mate on watch woke me at 0400 for the light show. This is the first clear sky we have had in weeks. Red, green and white ribbons of light pulsating across the northern sky, changing minute by minute. The show went on for about a half hour while I was on the bridge. If fortune will smile on us, we just may have another clear night or two before all hell breaks loose. A nice sunrise this morning also. It went on for almost two hours before the sun crept over the horizon. “Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.” At sunrise we were about the same latitude as Nome and still over three hundred miles to go. We will reach the Bering Strait sometime before midnight and so cross into the Chukchi Sea. Dinner hour, the cook prepared a Thanksgiving Dinner? Approaching Cape Prince of Wales & the Straits. The drab barren volcanoes of the cape and the adjoining Seward Peninsula lightly dusted with snow. High overcast has settled back in, the Diomede Islands faint shadows in the mist. Over on the Siberian mainland Cape Dezhneva is hidden by fog. Light winds and calm seas so it is still a beautiful evening. Twenty one hundred, making good time, the Cape has been left behind and we are now in the Chukchi Sea. The wind is back up to 40 mph out of the northeast. To the west there is a break between the overcast and the fog bank hovering over the land. The setting sun has turned that strip of sky the color of Hawaiian lava, the hottest gold, and oranges and reds. Shooting out of that molten mixture the suns rays have painted the bottom of the overcast in multi hued bands like the strata of some gigantic canyon wall. “Red sky at night, sailors delight.” What now? 2200. Picking up the “Tundra Telegraph” on the Kotzebue radio station. “William Smith please call the National Guard office.” “Bill we will be at the camp until Thursday. Sally & Rod.” “To residents of Kotzebue from Homer Mills, the dump will be open October 1st.” “Larry, Jack, and Vickie at camp; Mom & Dad have made it home OK.” Then some popular music, then Eskimo language lessons and a little later, country music. Something for everyone. Scripture three or four times an hour. In Alaska, unless you are within reach of a PBS station it is hard not to be subjected to Jesus on the radio. Penitence that must be why people move here. Choosing to live in Alaska is the same as the Iranians beating themselves with chains. That has to be it.<br />
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September 30. Day broke calm and clear, two-foot seas, light winds out of the east. Color starts to come to the eastern sky a little after seven and builds until the sunrise a little after nine. The radio has brought good tidings this morning. The storm that was following in our tract is now forecast to dissipate in the Yukon delta. The huge storm to the west is now drifting to the south and looks as if it will go into the Gulf of Alaska. Something for others to worry about. With this break in the weather we should be able to get in there tonight, pump the fuel off, and be on ou<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW1BWVwVV72MzqVN4orkJBBtZBegNKSsw4Ynq2bWxTaoX4KY0uDca5DD_dDOkEnu4VOVtBzuasXqTeI1C5qBoUHm_goqAf9ggJyZ3WnaN9dvViww-tl39zEWLHg0HguZYXD1ZS3NaZFPE/s1600-h/Red+Dog+Bldg.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5045290788746051634" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW1BWVwVV72MzqVN4orkJBBtZBegNKSsw4Ynq2bWxTaoX4KY0uDca5DD_dDOkEnu4VOVtBzuasXqTeI1C5qBoUHm_goqAf9ggJyZ3WnaN9dvViww-tl39zEWLHg0HguZYXD1ZS3NaZFPE/s320/Red+Dog+Bldg.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a>r way south by tomorrow night. PM. Clear skies all day. Wind picked up to 20. The red white & blue Red Dog building showing up bright and sharp from twenty miles out. The largest building in Alaska.<br />
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October 7. The trip back to the south has been anti-climatic. Everyone is thankful for that. Good to great weather the entire distance. We will pull into Seward in the morning. We have a two-week shipyard period ahead. Not my favorite way to spend time on a boat. I wouldn’t mind just wrapping up this adventure and heading back home. Time for me and the birds to get started on that southbound journey. This is not turning out to be a happy crew. The Louis L’amour click against the others. Luckily I am my own little department and can usually stay out of most of it. It doesn’t make for good vibes though. It is really hard to relate to some of the people that work on the boats. I guess most everyone runs into or works with the same type, but out here you have to live with them also. The low man on the totem here, the one that would normally do most of the general chores is sixty years old. The few remaining teeth hanging in his ruined gums look like the last standing tombstones in a boot hill cemetery. He is a caricature of a white trash figure from Tobacco Road. Stupid, lazy, intolerant, he is against everything he doesn’t understand. He has a lot to take aim at. He, the second mate, and the lead tankerman, form the LL click. The chief mate is their antagonist. I usually just try to ignore them unless our jobs intertwine. This will be my last time on this boat. When the atmosphere gets like this I just don’t come back. I have been getting criticism for not including people in my journals. I am trying to stick some in this one every now and then. The above is one reason I haven’t, I don’t even like to think about some of these the assholes! I’ll show them intolerant.<br />
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October 8. Seward. We shortened up the tow wire at 0230 and proceeded up the fiord at slow speed to time our arrival with the daylight. Steep jagged snow capped mountains and huge glaciers marked our route. The dock that we are going to is across the harbor from town. The shipyard and the Alaska State prison are on the banks of Forth of July Creek below the blue white mass of the Godwin Glacier.<br />
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October 10. I got my wish and left the boat. I had told the skipper that I would just as soon get relieved when we got here and I was obliged. The two mates and I left the boat first thing this morning and caught a ride over the mountains to Anchorage. I had a seven-hour wait at the Anchorage airport but after that an uneventful flight to DFW and on to Corpus Christi. Twenty-four hours after leaving the boat I was home.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: times new roman; font-size: 130%;"><b>The Sound of Oil<br />
</b></span>I arrived, forty days before the Solstice, thankfully the summer one this time. Another thirty eight hundred mile commute from Key West Florida, and now once again, I'm in Alaska and on a boat...On March 25, within hours of the Exxon Valdez ripping its belly open on Bligh Reef and spilling 260,000 barrels of North Slope Crude into Prince William Sound, my answering machine was receiving calls from Crowley Maritime. They were crewing up all the boats they could get in service to send to Valdez, and they needed help.<br />
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I had been down in old Mexico thawing out after working the winter on the frozen waters of Cook Inlet. For that adventure I had arrived on the winter solstice of what was to be the coldest winter in Alaskan history. Wind chill factors of one hundred degrees below zero and more had been more than enough cold weather to last me a lifetime, but here it was scarcely mid April and I was on my way back, back to a world reeling under the impact of the largest oil spill in American history. My initial destination was Seattle where I would meet the boat that I would take up north.<br />
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I went aboard as chief engineer on what turned out to be a massive old 1956 vintage tugboat named the Sea Giant. I had no more than reported aboard when we loaded some groceries and were underway. We were to first head down to San Francisco to pick up a barge loaded with equipment destined for Valdez and the cleanup effort. It was a pleasant transit out through Puget Sound with good weather and a following sea all the way to San Francisco. A couple of days in port waiting for the barge to be loaded and we hooked up and were on our way for the two week trip to Valdez. The Sea Giant had a type of diesel engine that I had never seen before, a huge direct reversible monster twenty four feet long and ten feet high called an Enterprise that looked to be right out of the Smithsonian. The boat itself is 116 feet long, of 294 gross tons, and generates 2000 HP with an engine speed of a sedate 260 RPM. A big comfortable slow moving relic, all in all an interesting Boat. I'm enjoying it, we cruise along at six or seven knots and for a tugboat she runs fairly quiet. The galley has a diesel fired range that looks like something out of an early mining camp and we have a cook named Jack that knows how to make it sing. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhSXO6B-mbd1lsKuocidLLLkKaX2at5dFgBthV2nd-T_TDRWG0FmhY2Ft2khusPRJxtQbcFIYsQt5to-GSR1QeXq09249PTS1AEes0FwtXVVwZ_at_ZybPFFKxmCH7mo9IBuycOivZmuE/s1600-h/My+Cabin+Tug+Sea+Giant.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5068836881892098498" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhSXO6B-mbd1lsKuocidLLLkKaX2at5dFgBthV2nd-T_TDRWG0FmhY2Ft2khusPRJxtQbcFIYsQt5to-GSR1QeXq09249PTS1AEes0FwtXVVwZ_at_ZybPFFKxmCH7mo9IBuycOivZmuE/s320/My+Cabin+Tug+Sea+Giant.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a><br />
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On the entire trip south, and now going north also, the ocean has been covered with small jellyfish that I believed were Portuguese Man of War. They are so thick that they sometimes appear to be sea foam. One washed up on deck and it proved to be a type known as the, By-The-Wind-Sailor, a smaller less toxic cousin to the Man of War. This is the first time I have been on the Pacific Ocean in over twenty years and the wildlife we are seeing is a treat. We have been accompanied all along by legions of Black Footed Albatross, their soaring flight with its long low glides skimming the surface is truly majestic and something I have missed on my Atlantic and Caribbean voyages. Also keeping us company in great numbers are the far traveling shearwaters of the Short-tailed, Sooty, and Buller's varieties, true vagabonds, they nest in Tasmania and Australia and summer along the Pacific Coast as far north as the Aleutian Islands. Their journey has caused me to view my commute from far a different perspective. The Dall's Porpoise with his black and white markings similar to the Killer Whale's has been ridding our bow wave daily, while Humpback Whales have put in a couple of appearances also. The Pacific Ocean has been living up to its name and has been almost as smooth and slick as smoked glass. For a while at least the tragic reason for this trip can almost be forgotten.<br />
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On the 12th of May we entered Prince William Sound, its remote beauty easily living up to my expectations, steep thickly forested mountains with immense glaciers and shimmering snow fields which at this time of year send many spectacular waterfalls tumbling into the sea. All the way across the sound, past the now infamous Bligh Reef, and into Valdez harbor we saw no sign of the spill. The Exxon Valdez had been moved to Naked Island on the side not visible to us as we passed and the oil is now mostly southwest of our course. Soon enough I expect to see all too much of this catastrophe.<br />
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May 26. We have been anchored here in Valdez harbor for two weeks now and along with numerous other boats and barges we have spent most of our time standing by. The harbor is full of equipment doing little or nothing. From my vantage point this operation is in dire need of a general. People are working at cross-purposes and running in circles. We made one trip out to Smith Island and the U.S.S. Juneau, which is the mother ship for numerous landing craft that are being used in the clean up. The Juneau is also used as a hotel for some of the clean up crew. Smith Island is a flyspeck on the charts, yet has been the center of the major part of the cleaning effort for a month or more. There are landing craft and small boats of every description literally running around in circles. I know of one beach that has been cleaned seven times. A beach will apparently be cleaned of oil and then with the next high tide, oil that is already buried in the gravel will float to the surface, recoat the beach and it will appear as if the cleanup never took place.<br />
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Some of the figures that have been published: 2500 to 6000 square miles of ocean affected. Estimates are 400 to 700 miles of shoreline fouled; the larger number may be conservative. Miles of beach that Exxon promises to clean by September thirty, miles cleaned as of May 15th: one point three. Sea Otters killed 900. Deer killed from eating oiled kelp 300. Birds killed 17,000*. The number of seals affected is unknown, they should have started pupping a week ago but a Cousteau Vessel reported yesterday of being unable to find any sign of it so far. Forty dead Bald Eagles with 30% of the Prince William Sound population unaccounted for. One millimeter of oil on an Eagle egg will reportedly kill the chick.** It just goes on and on and gets more and more depressing. This is merely the body count from accessible areas and is a fraction of the true totals. I see the restoration of the Sound to be totally beyond the scope of mankind's ability, the best that can be said is that every gallon reclaimed is one gallon less out there spreading its deadly curse.<br />
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On a lighter note the weather since our arrival has been glorious, daily highs around sixty degrees. The mountains around Valdez harbor are magnificent, great rugged peaks that come out of the water to rise as shear cliffs five thousand feet or more. We had a seal climb up on the boat to sun himself the other day but as soon as I poked my head and camera out of the hatch he hit the water. Daylight, we have it in abundance, it is not getting dark until about one in the morning and then it starts getting light again by three. I have been into town twice and there is definitely a boomtown atmosphere about it. Lines at every pay phone, bare shelves in the stores and people everywhere. Not much unemployment here, Exxon promises to have 5000 people on beach cleaning crews by June 15th. We are slated to tow a derrick barge out to Louis Bay on Knight Island any day now that will put us right in the thick of the cleanup effort. The schedule is calling for the boat to stay out there the rest of the summer. My bet is that it will be a mad house, though it should be interesting. I go with both curiosity and dread.<br />
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May 30. Our glorious weather is a thing of the past; we haven't seen the sun in three or four days. The clouds seem almost to touch our mast, and at times the fog cuts our visibility down to a boat length. The cook has been catching a few sable fish, also called black cod, they are fine eating.<br />
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* On June 20, Biologists for Alaska Wildlife Refuge estimate bird deaths from the spill likely to exceed 200,000.<br />
** June 27. U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports that out of 118 Bald Eagle nests on Knight Island, only 13 eaglets have been spotted. On five other islands heavily impacted by oil no eaglets were seen in 30 known nests. In affected areas possibly 50% of the nests have been abandoned.<br />
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At eleven hundred hours we got underway for Knight Island with the derrick barge in tow. The Tugs Sea Fox and the Sea Queen are following along behind, each with a barge in tow also. Moving out to the front lines finally after seventeen days in Valdez Harbor.<br />
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May 31. Louis Bay, Knight Island. What an address! We maneuvered the barge in past several small wooded islands and through narrow passages up into the head of Louis Bay. It is a scene to make a travel agent gush, a well protected anchorage with numerous rocky beaches and forested mountains on three sides, the snow fields of the higher elevations sending sparkling cataracts tumbling down from granite precipice to rocky gorge on waters endless journey back to the sea. At first glance it still appeared untouched by man, and then I noticed the unnatural stillness. There is little movement beyond the falling water, only an occasional bird where hundreds once soared. The normal wildlife is absent... <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZqqxippG5vf00rSdK1yMvoV8-7h_EWPFO1YRk2EgaLQavvBUJJzbW8aG-Ul5H9k-qTj4bryFMPZio54gTRJVRRsIcyHJwWkw-psLaqEu5CfMD9NzosbHpHZPwmajp67mkSUJrAGqdlRQ/s1600-h/Crowley+Tugs+Prince+William+Sound.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5068837912684249554" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZqqxippG5vf00rSdK1yMvoV8-7h_EWPFO1YRk2EgaLQavvBUJJzbW8aG-Ul5H9k-qTj4bryFMPZio54gTRJVRRsIcyHJwWkw-psLaqEu5CfMD9NzosbHpHZPwmajp67mkSUJrAGqdlRQ/s320/Crowley+Tugs+Prince+William+Sound.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a><br />
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Our first order of business was to anchor the barges securely. The derrick barge anchored using a four-point spread, which is a manner of mooring where an anchor is run out from each corner of the barge and makes for a very stable platform. Next the two barges brought in by the other tugs were made fast along either side of the derrick barge. This will now form a repair and supply base for the cleanup task forces. The massive crane on the derrick barge is capable of lifting boats of up to 350 tons aboard for repairs. The next arrival and addition to our growing community was the Tug Sea Cloud with a fuel barge carrying over a million gallons of diesel fuel. This is growing into a complete ship repair facility capable of most emergency repairs or engine overhauls. The size of this operation is staggering. I was given a list of seven store ships stationed throughout the Sound that can supply all of our grocery and personal needs such as shampoos, stationary, etc. There are hotel ships and hotel and hospital barges, West Coast boats, and boats from Texas and Louisiana, this operation itself cannot be sustained without its own detrimental impact on the environment. The amount of sewage and laundry phosphates alone now being dumped into the water must be tremendous, there has to be upwards of 8000 people now living and working in Prince William Sound.<br />
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June 1. We have been here twenty four hours now, time enough to observe our surroundings, time enough to notice the heavy black "bathtub ring" around the entire bay, time enough to see the oil slicks drifting by and the tar balls amongst the popweed, and time enough once again to notice the stillness, the lack of movement in an area so recently pristine and renown for its myriad forms of wildlife. Time enough also to listen to fishermen who have harvested these waters for years and who tell of the recent past, when I would have seen hundreds of Bald Eagles, plus ravens, and crows, and sea gulls in numbers beyond counting, along with scores of Sea Otters, seals, and shore birds. What I have seen is six eagles, seven sea gulls, three ravens, one Blue Heron, and one otter. What has happened here is devastating and when multiplied by the hundreds of miles of shoreline affected, it is beyond comprehension. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4J5qWHTzHIibB-iiGDcfBxls5UlOcy7h7KF3fSFV5hcQ96VGdT69pswik_hsCn4rONrXDMGobOx7X1nfCmEhZxT_ELmJSChwFZ29RQLodNyn23QmbmK2_FCDr9W5mWg46AR4KdDmleWY/s1600-h/Sea+Story+Photo+fiish+%26+stove.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5044544793651682306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4J5qWHTzHIibB-iiGDcfBxls5UlOcy7h7KF3fSFV5hcQ96VGdT69pswik_hsCn4rONrXDMGobOx7X1nfCmEhZxT_ELmJSChwFZ29RQLodNyn23QmbmK2_FCDr9W5mWg46AR4KdDmleWY/s320/Sea+Story+Photo+fiish+%26+stove.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a><br />
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June 2. Fish, now on that score I can be more optimistic. Yesterday after the anchoring operation had settled down, maybe even before, the cook had his line in the water. By evening the tally was four codfish and two halibut, the latter running about eight pounds. This morning I had my line out first thing and soon had a nice twenty-five pound halibut to show for my efforts. Then this afternoon while I was in my cabin punching away at my word processor I heard a commotion out on deck; I arrived just in time to see the crew trying to bring a five and a half foot halibut aboard. After shooting him in the head with the line-throwing gun we were able to land him. It was one hundred fifty pounds of fish, very good fish. Wonderful fish! So far at least the spill does not seem to have affected the bottom fishes and we will have some splendid eating. The salmon should start running in here in a couple of weeks. We can just hope for the best, I sure don't know what is happening, or will hap<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1y28dtoqWWPoS-qZTGyGGDnf5_kAaLfApm00R4rYw-3SuL3QwZYaJf4F3YkmTC-bMAHUBIRDjoB_VQ02ot1RwyRAWN24rwVTyWpSOpKAnBFdqmgsojjchD5ANzLqCV_aA39KXL69vtQE/s1600-h/Sea+Story+Photo+Halibut.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5044545351997430802" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1y28dtoqWWPoS-qZTGyGGDnf5_kAaLfApm00R4rYw-3SuL3QwZYaJf4F3YkmTC-bMAHUBIRDjoB_VQ02ot1RwyRAWN24rwVTyWpSOpKAnBFdqmgsojjchD5ANzLqCV_aA39KXL69vtQE/s320/Sea+Story+Photo+Halibut.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a>pen, I don't believe anyone knows.<br />
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June 4. Sunday, I awoke to find a large oil slick covering a good part of the bay stretching out from our boats. It doesn't look like the original spill, to me this looks as if someone pumped bilges during the night. It is inconceivable to me, but that would be my guess. We came here to be a part of the solution and within days we are a part of the problem. I saw a flock of seven sea gulls today; about double the number I've spotted since our arrival. This is the first time I can ever remember being anywhere on or near the sea that you could even think about being able to count gulls. They for one at least should make a rapid comeback, as they are some of the most successful colonizers on Earth.<br />
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June 6. Sunshine! The first since the glorious weather of those initial days in Valdez, it is a rare commodity up here, and one to be treasured. The operation centered on the derrick barge is coming together now, small and medium sized boats coming and going in increasing numbers, loading and unloading supplies and equipment at all hours, we have daylight pretty much around the clock now as we approach the Solstice, a couple of hours of twilight in the wee hours of the morning and then it is getting light again. Boats are being lifted onto the barge for repairs, floatplanes are flying in and out and the helicopter pad should be operational soon. There is a water supply ship collecting water from falls coming off glaciers and distributing it to boats of the cleanup task force. Repair crews are fabricating parts and refueling boats, the activity is hectic and purposeful, a big change from our d<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8NGLWzQZB9JjIW6pOuZ2DB-uttlFmN7cCDNJKMrykfHkLRzIsy_I8aa2KG_cmmKF8F3WuqPE7H0_akt21GHkaFhZL61A8Poglc4N3zJwqsMyMj_aaQ2Ar2Hz11EH6ui0U_u2uKsEtcWY/s1600-h/Gathering+Oil+Knight+Island.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5068838660008559074" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8NGLWzQZB9JjIW6pOuZ2DB-uttlFmN7cCDNJKMrykfHkLRzIsy_I8aa2KG_cmmKF8F3WuqPE7H0_akt21GHkaFhZL61A8Poglc4N3zJwqsMyMj_aaQ2Ar2Hz11EH6ui0U_u2uKsEtcWY/s320/Gathering+Oil+Knight+Island.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a>ays in Valdez harbor.<br />
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June 10. I managed to liberate a skiff today and get out away from the hustle and noise of our part in this operation. I ran in along the shore of Louis Bay and circled some smaller nearby islands. In this area the black "bathtub ring" covers about ten vertical feet of the shore, thick, gooey, and reeking of oil the inter-tidal zone is lifeless. I came upon one group of six or seven seals, it seemed that half of them were oiled and those were very listless. I didn't attempt a close approach, as I am sure they have been stressed to near, or beyond their limits. There was no other life, no shore birds, no otters, no gulls, total silence prevailed. I have not seen even the few eagles that were here when we arrived in days, have we scarred them off or have they also succumbed to the Black Death?<br />
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June 12. I availed myself to the skiff again, this time I ran over to Ingot Island, a few miles across the bay. There is a beach cleaning crew that is visible from our boat and has been cleaning in about the same spot since we anchored here. It is a large barge with an attending tugboat holding it up against the beach. They are using high-pressure hoses deployed from a basket similar to the ones used to lift workers up to power lines. They wash the surface oil off the rocks and into the water where it is contained by booms and reclaimed by skimmers. A very slow procedure and one that has little effect on the subsurface oil that is sure to rise again with the incoming tide.<br />
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June 15. I went aboard a 47-foot aluminum boat that was tied up along side waiting on the crane. A Navy LCM collided with them and they are over here for repairs. The boat is built similar to a small Navy landing craft, a flat bottom with a bow ramp. They have been involved in the cleanup since day one. So far the boat has grossed $220,000, that is about $3000 a day and will be approximately a half million dollars by summers end. They carry several high-pressure pumps and steam cleaners and are washing the beaches. The cleaners put out 3000 psi and 150 degree centigrade seawater. They have 12 fire hoses churning up the beach and use the steam to wash the oil out to be gathered by the waiting skimmers. They work with a 60-person beach crew and have 3 people in the cargo bay to operate the pumps. The couple with the boat, Rodney and Kathy, were getting ready to leave on a five year cruise on their wooden sailboat when the Exxon Valdez, managed in clear weather, to eviscerate itself on a well marked reef and void its bowels of poisonous cargo into the heretofore bountiful waters of Prince William Sound. They had been planning the trip for three years and it was to be a low budget affair. This has caused a delay in the adventure, but they will leave with a very comfortable cushion. Rodney was telling of beaches where a three-foot hole will continually fill with oil as fast as you can bail it out. He has some photos from the first days, where his boat is anchored in oil a foot thick. We need new terminology, calling this disaster a spill is akin to calling Hurricane Hugo bad weather.<br />
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June 18. The work continues, but the task is overwhelming. At summers end there are sure to be many hundreds of miles of fouled beach that will never have seen a cleanup crew, yet today I received a letter from Exxon. Dated June 8, 1989 and signed by L.G. Rawl, Chairman of the Board. Addressed to me as one of many who wrote them about the tragic accident (I had sent them my melted credit card) he states "Exxon plans to clean up all affected shoreline by September 15, 1989." It simply cannot be done, the effort being expended here is enormous, the money being thrown around mind boggling, but the help came too late and now the dimensions of this cataclysm have put it beyond their power to rectify. It is also apparently beyond their power to speak the truth. I believe the best thing that could now be done for the environment is for us all to go home and leave this mess to Mother Nature. The secondary pollution being caused by the thousands of people and boats out here is I believe, worse than any "good" that we are accomplishing. I was told yesterday of a 7000 gallon oil spill at one of the Navy ships, where it still took over two hours to get booms deployed. It is the old one step forward two step back dance, in some areas, after days of cleaning activity, the most apparent difference is oil splattered onto regions heretofore free of the carnage. This effort had to be put forth, but with our current technology I believe that once the oil is on the beach, in this type of terrain at least, the restoration is out of the hands of man. Our efforts must now be on prevention, safer ships, larger better-trained crews, expanded response teams, and higher liabilities and insurance levels for all tankers plying this nations waters.<br />
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This is a story without an ending, and one where we cannot yet draw any final conclusions; this sad saga will be played out over the coming years in ways we cannot yet fathom. Lessons can and hopefully will be learned, attitudes and priorities hopefully changed. At times like this it is hard to be optimistic, for as we were passing Bligh Reef on our way out here to Knight Island we met a Liberian Tanker inbound to Valdez. If the Exxon Valdez had been a foreign flag of convenience vessel, there would have been little if any recourse for the recovery of damages. Those ships, usually American owned are one ship companies. Their insurance and liabilities begin and end with the value of that one ship and its cargo.<br />
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Louis Bay, Knight Island<br />
Prince William Sound, Alaska<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: 130%;">Walrus, Puffin & Whale</span></b><br />
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The boat staggered as the immense weight of the green water crashed into the wheelhouse. Daylight disappeared as if the jaws of some primal sea monster had snapped shut around us. As the boat struggled out from under the embrace of the huge wave, the windows were suffused with an opaque light. Yet even as we shook free of its grasp, our vision was obscured, as the sea was dashed to foam against the ice-encrusted windows. Knuckles flashed white as handgrips were reaffirmed and bodies again braced against the mad gyrations of the tugboat. The windows cleared, and for a brief moment I again became unwilling witness to the spectacle of an ocean standing on end, whipped to a fury of thirty five foot seas and foam filled skies by ninety knot winds. Tons of water continually rushed over the decks back to the sea, yet some small part always remained behind, now adding a new layer to the ever-growing coat of ice. Ice that can in time overwhelm, and carry a boat down to a dark and everlasting peace, where waves crash and thunder no more. I remembered that morning with a clarity that seems to be saved for those times when you are out on the edge. The memories awakened by a phone call, a company looking for a chief engineer for a tugboat in Alaska. The morning had been in 1989, and we had later made it into a protected cove on the Alaska Peninsula and spent many long hours breaking ice with baseball bats and sledgehammers. That had been in November, and winter had been tightening its icy grip upon the land, but now it was early spring and the world looked bright and new.<br />
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By the middle of April 1991, I had been running American Agenda, my maritime employment service for about eight months. By then I had close to five hundred shipping companies and a thousand merchant marine personnel in my computer files. The business was growing and I felt that I was definitely on the right track, but as in every start up I have ever had anything to do with, cash was tight. I received the call from United Tug & Barge of Seattle in response to one the promotional fliers that I periodically fax out. They were looking for a chief engineer for a two-month job on an ocean going tugboat in Alaska. The money and the job sounded interesting so I faxed them my own resume. They called the next morning with the job offer. I phoned my son Howard and offered him a position running American Agenda while I was gone. One of my goals in starting this business was to get Howard involved. I had two weeks to break Howard in and get ready to leave. One of the things that made me think that this might work was the fact that the boat I would be working on would seldom be out to sea for more than three or four days at a time and I could stay in touch by telephone. I bought a laptop computer to take along and loaded all of my files onto it. Under those conditions I felt I would be able to exercise some control and help Howard over the rough spots. Spending the last eight months at a desk had nothing to do with my decision. I’ve outgrown the need for adventure. This was strictly business.<br />
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And that is how I found myself once again, far away from the warm sandy beaches of my tropical homeland, sailing on the cold northern sea, on the lookout for walrus, puffin, and whale.<br />
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DUTCH HARBOR, ALASKA, MAY 2, 1991 In the early hours of April 30, Howard drove me to the Corpus Christi airport. Eighteen hours and three planes later I was at the Anchorage airport awaiting the flight to Dutch Harbor. I boarded a small twin-engine propeller driven plane for the four-hour flight. Under, over, and through a cold gray overcast we headed for our first stop. It was the tiny settlement of Cold Bay out on the Alaska Peninsula. It turned out to be a dreary collection of a handful of small buildings grouped around a minimal airstrip. The colorless structures seemed to crouch there, racked by the cold relentless wind on a slightly elevated strip of soggy tundra surrounded by miles of mud flats. Beyond the mud, cold inhospitable waters and little else. Most of the homes seemed to have been built to resemble house trailers. A photograph would appear much the same in black & white or color. What would attract or cause someone to stay there? Icy winds of near hurricane velocities seem to be the norm. Our one deplaning passenger the major advent of the day? The week?<br />
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At 2100 hours we landed at Dutch Harbor. Almost the same color scheme, varying shades of gray. The mountains are higher here so there is more of the clean white brightness of fresh snow. Some of the ships and boats in the harbor providing a welcome splash of color every now and again. Everything except the fresh snow and the ships covered with mud, or dried mud. Everything. Hovering over the town there is a sour all prevailing smell from the Surimi plants, but that is also the smell of money. This is the top producing seafood port in the nation. That is the attraction that has brought the fishing fleets of many nations to this unattractive and inhospitable Aleutian Island outpost.<br />
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We are at anchor, waiting on the fuel dock to sell enough fuel to the fishing fleet that they will have room to take the fuel from the barge we are towing. This is my fifth day on the boat. I awoke to the hissing whine of gale force winds and a hard driving rain that was so cold I was amazed that it was not snowing. It was a reminder that in this part of the world, the month of May does not bring flowers. It was only seven days ago that I was at home on the beach of Mustang Island in ninety-four degree weather. Throughout this day, the wind has been gusting 40 to 50 miles per hour, and bringing with it wind chill temperatures of 10 degrees and below. Last night the winds hit 90 mph. These conditions are so common that they hardly deserve comment. They say the Navy once released a hundred goats here on the island and within a year, all were dead from malnutrition. The sparse vegetation it seems is almost devoid of nourishment.<br />
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The one visual treat that can be counted on is the soaring flight of the many Bald Eagles now in residence. They can be found riding the air currents above the mountain ridges and along the shoreline during most of the eighteen hours of daylight available at this time of the year. It won’t be long before daylight will last pretty much around the clock. “The Land of The Midnight Sun.” It has a nice ring to it. The problem with that is the other side of the coin. During the winter months it is, “The Land The Sun Forsook.”<br />
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The M/V Petro Challenger. My place of habitation and work for the next two months. She is a 150’ tugboat that started life in 1946 as a steam powered Army tug. She has been converted to diesel power sometime in the distant past. It is an interesting old boat and seems to be in pretty fair shape. The diesels take up far less room than did the steam plant; therefore the engine room is unusually spacious. The overhead raises four decks to a bank of skylights. They provide a rare engine-room phenomenon, daylight. Our hydraulic crane can reach down through the skylights to facilitate replacing heavy engine-room equipment. It is a nice layout for the engineer. By most standards she is a roomy tugboat. The eight- man crew is each afforded a private stateroom. We have a good cook and a comfortable lounge. The later of which I seldom use because of the number of smokers aboard. The level of smoke in this boat is as bad as a politician’s back room. My cabin is separate from the rest of the living quarters, so there at least, I have sanctuary from cigarettes. I’m sure some of the crew-members must think that I’m anti-social but it is (mostly) just my aversion to tobacco smoke.<br />
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We left the barge anchored in the harbor and ran in to the company dock to fill up with fresh water. The boat needed some other supplies so I rode along in the pickup to do some sight seeing. From what I’ve seen so far, a roll of film will last a long time on this island. Gray & brown, brown and gray, and in what to me is a unique exterior design statement, most of the homes are painted the color of the mud. Red, green, blue, yellow. I’m starved for the colors of the tropics and I’ve only been here a week. Before long I’ll likely be hanging around the produce department at the local grocery, it is the only place I’ve found with any color.<br />
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MAY 8. I awoke to a rocking boat and a whistling wind once again. This time it looks as if it has been snowing all night. On a positive note and one of the things that makes Dutch Harbor important, is the harbor. It is large and well protected. In fact it is a series of harbors. To be bouncing like we are here at anchor does generate some appreciation of the place, realizing what it must be like outside. The barometer has dropped 1” since midnight. There are three-foot waves here in the harbor. A bad day to be out on one of the small local fishing boats. It is a tough and dangerous life. Yesterday was halibut season, a 24-hour season. There may be only one or two 24 hour seasons a year. That forces the fishermen to go out whatever the weather. We picked up a few pieces of bait from a boat that was getting ready to go out the day before yesterday. Four people in a 32’ boat risking their lives for a $1 a pound.<br />
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MAY 10. Still hanging on the anchor in Dutch Harbor. Somewhat improved weather. Almost noon and it hasn’t rained or snowed yet. There was even a hint of sunshine for a couple of hours. Today is an EAGLE DAY. They are everywhere; I took some photos of beautiful mature eagle perched on our mast. The skipper and I made a run into town and I must have seen fifty or more Bald Eagles. They were mixed about half and half, mature and immature. They were working the water, perched on the cliffs, and sitting on the rocks at waters edge next to the road. I have seen a number of large sea lions here in the harbor also. I guess it is about time I found something positive about this place. Its good points though, are well disguised. I am ready to hook it up and go see the some new country. (Note: Just heard on the radio of at least one halibut boat going down during the storm. Some lives lost, I didn’t catch the number. Another boat on the news caught 14,000 pounds that is why they take the risks. This year’s price was $1.75.)<br />
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MAY 19. 0400 This morning we pulled out of Dutch Harbor, 20 days sitting on anchor. It is good to be on the move. We have pretty good weather, five foot seas, 20 knot winds, we will be in fairly protected waters most of the way to Nikiski. Up along the Alaska Peninsula we will be running inside of some small islands which afford a bit of shelter most of the way. Past Kodiak Island there is a stretch of open water before we get into Cook Inlet. Kick Ass Strait would be a good name for it. 1800. Blue sky and calm seas all day, a nice surprise. If it wasn’t for the temperature & the towering snow capped volcanoes (one smoking) we have been passing all day we might think that we were somewhere reasonable. The old boat is running good, quite comfortable for a tugboat and relatively quiet. (I still sleep with earplugs) The engine-room skylights are a treat. I’m running with them cranked open, letting in the sunshine and the fresh air. With the unusual spaciousness afforded by the engine-room overhead rising open for four deck levels, it would only require the addition some stained glass in the skylights, for it to look like some bizarre cathedral to the God of Internal Combustion.<br />
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MAY 20, 1991 Perfect weather, a one-foot swell and no wind or clouds. Almost unheard of up here. A more typical Aleutian Islands weather forecast would be, “There is a small craft warning associated with a low pressure system that has been lying off Adak for the last 48 years, more of the same is expected.” The most numerous birds that I have seen since we left port have been the Horned Puffin. Great looking birds, the sea parrots with the clown face. They sure do have a hard time getting up off the water. They look like a bird evolving towards the loss of flight, but I believe they are simply full of fish. Some of them look positively round. When they do get into the air it still looks as though they have to work pretty hard at staying there. Often as hard as they flap, they just bounce their bellies from wave to wave until they are far enough away from our path to feel secure. At other times they just give up all attempts at flight and dive below the surface.<br />
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May 21 0530, Slept from sundown to sunup. That is a little over five hours this time of year. At midnight it is just getting dark. The boat did a little rock’n & a roll’n during the night, nothing radical. It looks like another day of sunshine. It would be great if this summer’s weather turned out similar to the summer of ‘89. The year I worked the Valdez oil spill we had one six-week stretch of sunshine. The locals said that it was almost unheard of. We are passing through the Shilekof Straits, this can be dangerous water. The winter that I was up here, it seemed that the weather reports called for 80-knot winds and freezing spray here every time I heard the broadcasts. This is the water between Kodiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula. Later today, as we leave the Straits we will be passing Mt. Augustine, an island volcano with a classic cylindrical cone. It should be a treat on a clear day like this. And it was. Cape Douglas was also impressive. Huge craggy snow covered, glaciated mountains, jutting powerfully out into the sea. As we neared the Kenai Peninsula the Puffins that we started seeing were of the tufted variety instead of the horned ones that were prevalent out in the Aleutians.<br />
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HOMER ALASKA We received word that there would not be any room at the fuel dock for a couple of days so we have pulled into Homer and dropped the hook. A great improvement over Dutch Harbor. This place is what Alaska is supposed to look like. Snow capped pine (spruce?) covered mountains rising sharply from a cold blue sea. We shortened up the tow, made up alongside the barge, and dropped anchor at 2300. Still plenty of daylight left.<br />
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NIKISKI, MAY 23 Our stay in Homer was cut short; room was made for us at the fuel dock here in Nikiski. We are moored to the same dock that provided me with so much excitement that winter of ‘89. The boat that I was working on at the time, the Rig Engineer had been stuck in the ice for most of the night. About three in the morning the moving ice flow carried us in under the dock. The entire stern was swept under. The wheelhouse hitting the face of the pier was all that kept the boat from slipping completely beneath the dock. The forward mooring bits were ripped off, as were the bridge handrails and a ladder. The temperature was so low that steel that would normally bend, split like wood. A changing tide is all that spared the boat. I never thought I’d be coming back here. That was the closest I’ve ever come of loosing a boat out from under me. We will be out of here this afternoon. We have a one-day trip over to Seward on tap. Yesterday in Homer, a sea lion caught a salmon alongside the boat. I’m hoping to catch a few my own self. I happened to be on deck with my camera and I might have gotten an interesting photo or two.<br />
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SEWARD, MAY 25 We were only in Seward for eight hours, 1900 to 0300. Pulled in, pumped some fuel and were on our way. I would like to have spent a little more time there. A dramatic setting. Located at the end of a deep, cobalt blue fiord, nestled at the base of some remarkable mountains it is another one of those Alaska Tourist Board ideals. They do seem to have a more than casual acquaintanceship with fog though. The warm Japan Current meeting the arctic air mass just offshore creates the ideal environment for its formation. We had been running in bright sunlight until about six hours from port. Then the fog bank appeared ahead, lying like a great gray blanket on the waters surface. It was about two hundred feet thick with clear sky above. As soon as we broached its boundary, all trace of the sun and the horizon disappeared. The all-encompassing gray mist broke for a short time as we arrived in port. As it retreated, it revealed a magnificent amphitheater of forested snow clad mountains rising precipitously from the clear water. The view was illusive though, as the mist quickly settled back in, drawing a curtain around our world that excluded all but our immediate surroundings. The boat, barge, water, docks, a fish packing plant with one lone boat unloading its catch under a haloed light, that was the extent of what was visible on the stage formed by the soft damp curtain. We are now on our way back to the delightful port of Dutch Harbor, realm of the Mud God, and Alaska’s answer to Morgan City Louisiana. Running in fog, but the seas are calm. Gray, the sky, the water, Kodiak Island and numerous smaller islands off to port, gray & brown. A very limited palette. The snow covered mountains providing a dividing line of white, separating the gray above, from the gray below. We are now accompanied by the soaring flights of the aptly named Shearwaters. Sooty or Short-tailed varieties, likely both it is hard to distinguish. Every year millions of these birds make the round trip journey from their nesting sites in Tasmania and Australia. In the spring they fly up towards Japan and on to Alaska. In the fall they head down the west coast of North America to central California, there to head back out across the Pacific Ocean to intersect their northern flight path near Fiji. Running south by southwest, out from behind the protection of the islands. The wind and the sea coming at us from the southeast. Once again, gray above and below, now not even a snowline for a point of reference. Somewhere off to the northwest, the Alaska Peninsula, hidden now by the enveloping sameness of sea and sky. Our world has now shrunk to a circle with a visible horizon only a few hundred yards across. Our radar’s probing sweep piercing the fog and rain, electronically restoring the vision lost to the elements. The boat running in the trough, rolling in response to eight & ten foot seas and thirty knot winds. It is a nice smooth roll, an easy one to get used to. The boat rides well. By Alaskan standards a ten-foot sea is not that big a deal. Fifteen, twenty, or thirty-foot seas are not uncommon....<br />
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DUTCH HARBOR, JUNE 1, 1991 Once again at anchor waiting to pump fuel to the Petro Marine fuel dock. The Pollock season is about to open. The harbor is crammed with ships. U.S. flag draggers & trawlers, the smaller long-liners, the large foreign flag processing ships, tugboats, and container ships. The fishing boats and those that support them. The water continually fouled by fuel spills. The rainbow sheen of oil decorates every tide. Ashore, the litter of years. Cast aside fishing nets, booms, blocks, cables, wires, the rusting hulks of boats, cars, trucks, boilers, forklifts, all intermingled with a multitude of less identifiable flotsam & jetsam. The homes and business of Dutch Harbor are surrounded by & inundated by junk. Everything is mired in and covered with the all-encompassing mud. The best that can usually be said about the weather here is that, “it could be worse.”<br />
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JUNE 5 Still in Dutch, no rain for three days or so but no sun either. The solid overcast never tops of the 2000-foot Mountains. Most days half that. Today winds gusting to 35/40 mph. Hell, most days at least that. After lunch the cook and I drove into “town.” As we were leaving the dock on the road that skirts the harbor, we were behind a water truck. He started watering the road, making more mud. Later I was to appreciate why. We passed the truck and went on in to town, the cook to shop for groceries and me to go to the clinic to have a last checkup on a boil that was removed from my back last Saturday. I attempted to find out why a doctor would be living in this place if he weren’t born to it. (Or even if he was.) In answer to my questions he said that he had lived in Saudi, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Chicago. I commented that he had quite a track record for picking places of limited aesthetic appeal. After I saw the $320.00 charge for treating a boil I felt I had my answer. Back to the water truck and the reason thereof. Three days without rain and the dry mud turns to dust. Lots of dust. People were sprinting from building to building as if running from a Sahara sandstorm. With the prevailing forty-knot wind I guess mud is the more desirable. The three faces of Dutch Harbor, Ice, Mud, & Dust. Today is our last day here. Amen.<br />
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JUNE 6 Underway, we worked all night, the tanker-men pumping the rest of the fuel to the shore stations and I was loading engine parts and taking on water. The rains came; Dutch Harbor gave us a wet send off. We worked in fifty-knot winds and horizontal rain throughout the night. After we got out to sea, fifteen to twenty foot seas. No visibility. Just try to eat, sleep, stand your watch and hang on. Heading for Homer but with these sea conditions we are lucky to make five knots.<br />
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JUNE 9 Except for twelve hours or so that we were running in protected waters amongst the Shumigan Island we have had moderately heavy weather since leaving Dutch. It has calmed down a little, ten-foot seas on our bow. Whales today, saw three groups this morning, Humpbacks, maybe twenty in all. I would really like to see a Sperm Whale. Moby Dick that is one I’ve never run across. When we head back out with our next load of fuel we will be heading up through the Bering Strait into the Chukchi Sea and crossing the Arctic Circle. I have great hopes of seeing some Walrus up there. It would be great to get some of them on film. We will be going into Kivalina a native whaling village. There is a good chance that I might find some carved ivory or baleen. Two of the crew that have been up that way before have found dead walrus on floating ice floes and have gotten out on the floes and cut out the tusks. A gruesome task but part of the adventure.<br />
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JUNE 10 Calm sea, sunshine, the first in a while. This morning we are in the Shilekof Straits still heading north. We should be in Homer by evening. Above, long tendrils of clouds streaming from east to west, gray shading to white. Off to port & starboard the sky clears before land is reached. Over to port, seven thousand foot Snowy Mountain on the Alaska Peninsula is the centerpiece. To starboard the lower mountains of Kodiak Island. The low sun casts intricate shadows on the snow of the Peninsula Mountains, the lower foothills along the water showing some traces of green. The only whitecaps this morning are those raised by the antics of some Dall’s porpoise off in the distance. To the north, Mt. Kukak, Devils Desk and Mt. Douglas. Their upper reaches wreathed in clouds as white as the massive snow fields which with seeming reluctance have begun to relinquish a narrow strip of shoreline to the brief summer ahead.<br />
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JUNE 12 Homer, just long enough to take 12,000 barrels of fuel off of a Foss barge and then we went on up to Nikiski to complete loading. The bad news, the harbor is still iced in up at Kivalina so there is another run to Dutch Harbor in the works. In Nikiski we were 700 miles north and east of Dutch and the difference in the amount of daylight are really noticeable. In Dutch right now it is dark by 0100. In Nikiski when the sky is clear there is no real darkness. Between 0200 and 0500 the last vestiges of an extended sunset seem to blend into the first of an extended sunrise.<br />
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JUNE 14 The sky is clear. This morning started with calm seas and 15 MPH winds. By 0900 the winds were 20 to 30, still a nice day in these waters. I had about an hours work to take care of in the engine room so I took advantage of the nice ride to knock it out. When I came back up on the bridge the wind was blowing 50 MPH and gusting to 70. We had fifteen foot seas and I had a wet bunk, as whenever possible I leave my porthole open for the fresh air. Two hours later it was again 20 to 30 with five-foot seas. The wind had blown all trace of haze from the air. Shafts of sunlight seemed to snap off the water. Across the northwestern horizon the snow covered volcanoes of the Alaska Peninsula dazzled the eye with all the brightness of a Hollywood starlet’s smile, but the peaks were as sharp and jagged as a barracuda’s grin.<br />
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JUNE 15 Late in the evening, (early at night, what do you call it when at 10PM its full daylight?) we came around Cape Pankof and headed down along the south side of Unimak Island. The wind had picked up to fifty knots and the sea was ten to twelve and building. It was the first day of salmon season in this area and the radar screen blossomed with targets. It showed twenty or thirty boats in the vicinity. To the eye they were almost invisible under these conditions. Dark gray overcast, fog, white caps, and blowing spray. The usual weather anywhere within two hundred miles of Dutch Harbor. The maximum size of these gill-netters is 32’; a two-man crew is about average. The only time they became visible to us is when they were on top of a swell. Watching out for them and their nets, which can be strung out for 2000’, takes a sharp eye. They fish all day and then haul the catch to one of the processor ships anchored in a nearby cove and sell it each night. They say they can make $80,000 in a few weeks each “summer.” More than a few never live to spend it. At Seal Cape we crossed Unimak Pass just to the north of Ugamak Island. We entered the protected waters of Avatanak Strait and ran between Akutan, Tanginak, Akun, Rootok, and Unaiga Islands. Great names huh? How would you like to try and learn that language? It would seem that you could as easily communicate by belching and farting. (From Kurt Vonnegut)<br />
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The islands have taken on their summer greenery though they would never be mistaken for emerald isles. Tundra a few inches high, no bushes, no trees, steep rocky cliffs, a smattering of small rocky beaches. Here and there the rusting hulk of a ship tossed haphazardly upon the rocks. Warning signs for the unwary, reminders for all the rest. For man it is a hostile barren land. For the birds, it is another story entirely. Thousands upon tens of thousands of Puffins and Shearwaters, Murres, Murrelets, Pigeon Guillemonts, and many more make their home here for at least a portion of the year. The productive northern sea supports huge populations of birds and mammals, though man’s over-fishing and pollution is taking its toll on many species. I don’t know what it means if anything, but I have seen only one otter the whole time that I have been up here. JUNE 16 Just a few miles out of Dutch in the pass between Unalga and Unalaska Islands our progress came to a, if not screeching halt, a hell of a slow down. The tidal current was close to seven knots against us. We went from 8.7 to 1.8 knots within minutes. And as is so common up here, the almost obligatory rusting ship upon the rocks was in place. In this current it would take only moments of lost power to join her. The margin for error here is slight. (*)<br />
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JUNE 18 Delicious, Delightful, Dutch. At anchor once again, last night we pumped 500,000 gallons of fuel to one of the shore fuel farms and another 500,000 to a smaller barge. Only about 2,000,0000 gallons to go. Even the eagles have left. (*)<br />
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July 8, we picked up a May Day on the radio. The 90’ dragger Pegasus was hard aground & rapidly taking water with four people aboard on these same rocks. They managed to don survival suits and get in a raft. They were rescued by another fishing boat.Most of the fishing fleet is now out chasing the fish. There are about twenty large freezer ships anchored here in the harbor waiting to load from the processing ships. When the processors are through with the catch, it is ready to go, frozen, packaged and ready for market. Most of the ships here now are from Japan, but there are also, US, Polish, Korean, Russian & more.<br />
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JUNE 20 Dutch no more! Last night we pumped another 500,000 gallons to the other fuel farm we service and “got the hell out of Dutch.” It is getting on to time for the run up “north” so we didn’t have to wait for them to make room for the rest of the fuel. We cleared the harbor about 0200. At 1000 we were off Unimak Island amongst the salmon fleet. The day was overcast but the seas were only running four to five feet. The skipper got on the radio offering to trade some crab & $$ for salmon. He had run into a crabber buddy in Dutch who had given us some crab. We found a taker and slowed down. One of the Bristol Bay gill-netters left the fleet and came along side. He loaded us up with about two hundred pounds of really beautiful Sockeye Salmon, fresh caught this morning. Eight to ten pound fish, twenty four to twenty eight inches long. He said he has been catching 5000 pounds a day! Needless to say we enjoyed a great supper tonight. There was more but all I ate was baked salmon and a potato. I told the cook I would like to have salmon & eggs in the morning. I couldn’t wait to try it and made some impromptu sashimi while I was cleaning the fish. The bright orange flesh was as delightful to the palate as to the eyes.<br />
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SUMMER SOLSTICE There will be no sun today. OVCST & FG. Overcast & Fog. I don’t suppose the Alaska natives ever knew Solstice from Equinox anyway; they so seldom see the sky. There must have been a limited gene pool up here; anyone with any sense would have kept on going south to become Inca, Olmec, or Maya. Fresh salmon loaf with clam sauce for lunch today!<br />
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JUNE 24 HOMER. Yesterday we pulled into Nikiski in good weather and loaded the barge. Ten hours in port and we were on the way north to the Red Dog Mine. The Red Dog is thirteen miles south of Kivalina. It is the largest Zinc mine in the world and also produces lead and silver. This boat has a contract to haul three barge loads of fuel to them this summer. As we reached the lower end of Cook Inlet the office decided there were some things that still needed to be done on the barge and diverted us to Homer. It was a much-appreciated move by me. I had come down with a doozy of a toothache and had been eating Advil by the hand full. I took advantage of the layover to get to a dentist. He told me some things I already knew, prescribed some antibiotics and pain pills and told me to go see a dentist when I get off the boat. Another good thing about this job is that I have worked long enough to be covered by insurance. Time to get one of my, “oh I have insurance” tune-ups.<br />
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JUNE 25 Rain & fog, fifteen foot seas & in the trough. For you landlubbers, “in the trough” is when the seas are taking you on the side, a much more uncomfortable ride than when they are on the bow or the stern. But we are on our way to the arctic so I can see a walrus and that is what I have been waiting for. We received word from another boat that is already approaching the Red Dog that they were, “running in the ice.” The chances are this could be a less than comfortable trip but I’m still looking forward to it. Also, when it is over I’ll be heading to the house! I have enjoyed the last two months, it was good to get out of the office, but now it is now time to get back home and go at American Agenda with renewed vigor. A little surf fishing and beach time won’t be out of order either.<br />
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JUNE 27 After running back down the Alaska Peninsula on the same course that we used to go to Dutch Harbor, we turned the corner around Unimak Island and headed north into the Beri<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih9b8dbHG-Eduya6deCeX6ClYElXjMY-gB8UTchBJlWDvnFqnQtjrtSIhXnUQdl5KsnSo8fmzxL5hFUnuJUgry4J5MInKLz_X8Iy5mNjIuU93OpM0M_wtq0oJqSkqDCr6Y5xpZRIjWcyw/s1600-h/Volcano.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5045291609084805186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih9b8dbHG-Eduya6deCeX6ClYElXjMY-gB8UTchBJlWDvnFqnQtjrtSIhXnUQdl5KsnSo8fmzxL5hFUnuJUgry4J5MInKLz_X8Iy5mNjIuU93OpM0M_wtq0oJqSkqDCr6Y5xpZRIjWcyw/s320/Volcano.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a>ng Sea. Mostly it has been rain and fog and bumpy seas but as we came past Cape Pankof on Unimak the clouds dissipated just in time for the sun to make a dramatic exit behind Shishaldin Volcano. A magnificent sight, the smoking volcano backlit by the setting sun. The timing couldn’t have been better; I should have some good photos.This will be the longest time away from a phone since I left home, the longest Howard will be on his own running the business. He should be OK; he seems to be getting the hang of it. He put five people to work in one week the first of this month. That is my primary goal, twenty placements a month. When we start to average that I will know that we have established ourselves, and that we really are, “The National Maritime Recruiting & Placement Service.” (A footnote to those salmon we picked up from the other day. On the news, the Bristol Bay Fishermen are going out on strike. They are only receiving fifty cents a pound for those great red salmon. Fifty cents to them but what would a salmon steak cost you?)<br />
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JUNE 29, BERING SEA OVCST & FG, the sun’s dramatic exit behind the volcano the other day was the last we have seen of her. Once again our world is a circle in the fog that just barely includes the barge trailing along a third of a mile astern. The only sign of life beyond the boat, our escort of shearwaters, their wave skimming flight and acrobatic turns a welcome diversion. The comical puffins have been left behind, as has other boat traffic. One small blip cutting across a far corner of the radar screen yesterday the only other sign of man beyond what is heard over the airwaves. Daily routine, boredom, drama, and tragedy are indiscriminately gathered by the radio antenna and broadcast into the wheelhouse as haphazardly as a pocket full of loose change scattered on the bedroom floor. Calls between boats, calls to the office, calls about the weather and times of arrival, the price of fish, calls home, news about the kids, complaints about the car, the rent, the dishwasher. Love and missing you. The radio captures it all and shares it with all. Calls for help, May Day! May Day! We are on the rocks, we are flooding, and we are on fire. And those terrible last calls when a boat is going down and there is no help. These waters have more of those than any waters I have sailed before. By afternoon the fog had lifted but the overcast was still low and dark. The shearwaters seem to have been left behind now also. A flock of about a dozen common murres the only birds to be seen. We are now farther north than I have ever been before and still six hundred miles to go. All this water we now travel was solid ice just a few weeks ago.<br />
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JUNE 30 OVCST&FG, I hope to hell that while we are up here where the sun never sets we will have at least one clear day to experience it! The OVCST&FG has changed to FG&DRZL. The forecast is for FG&RN. The Maya, the Inca, they knew when to keep going. In the afternoon the radio brought word of the pack ice moving back to the south, being pushed by the northwest winds so we have changed course towards Nome to get away from it. The ice is where we will find the Walrus!! The ice is where the photo opportunities lie. No sense of adventure at all. OVCST&FG, still traveling in that soft gray circle, light gray above, dark gray below. One hundred miles south of Nome heading due north. A three-foot swell, a light chop, tree trunks and pieces of timber strewn over the sea. Carried here by the outflow of the mighty Yukon River, one of the major rivers of the world. It’s headwaters rising in the mountains of northern British Columbia, crossing the Yukon Territory, and the breadth of Alaska it is navigable it’s entire length. Historically and now, it is the most important Alaskan river. Our chief mate has been up it nine hundred miles on a tugboat. Picking up the Nome AM radio station, on the news. “In regards to the heavy traffic and numerous traffic accidents on the highway out to the Roadhouse immediately after the Nome bars close, the city council today called an emergency session and voted 5 to 1 to keep the Nome bars open longer to cut down on drunk driving.” Honest, I couldn’t make this up. Also on the news, the run of red salmon is reaching its crescendo. The strike is still on, but the few independent fishermen who are fishing, are bringing in 15 to 20,000 pound loads. The Japanese buyers are offering 55 cents a pound saying there is a glut in Japan, yet the retail buyer over there is paying ten times the price.<br />
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By twenty hundred hours the fog cleared, the first sunshine since the two hours or so it came out when we were coming through Unimak Pass four or five days ago. At midnight the sun is about where you would expect it to be a couple of hours before sunset. We are heading northeast working our way around the Seward Peninsula towards the Bering Strait. We should pass through the strait around noon tomorrow! For me, that and crossing the Arctic Circle will be milestones. I guess I should pee over the side to mark the occasion, mark it as an arctic wolf would. With the coming of the sun, the water took on a luminous dark green hue that along with the blue sky is a real treat after so many dismal days of gray. On July first the sun didn’t set until the second. It was two AM a little bit northwest of Nome when Kenny, one of the Tanker-men knocked on my door and said that Ernie the mate on watch had told him to wake me up and let me know that there was a photo opportunity in the setting sun. (I have left instructions that I don’t want to sleep through sightings of whales, walrus, mermaids, or other events of merit.) Slipping into my robe I grabbed my camera and snapped a shot from the wheelhouse and another from the back deck. It was a nice sunset; it wouldn’t have caused a great stir in Key West or Port Aransas, unless of course like this one, it happened at 2 AM.<br />
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Sunrise came red and clear at 4 AM. So I heard, I got out of bed at 6, but it was still clear. We had picked up a good current during the “night,” and at ten knots we were already approaching Cape Prince of Whales. We were abreast of the Cape at 0900 at which time I marked the event in the manner of the wolf. We ran into a fog bank at about the same time, but so far at least, it has been spotty and it is still bright. And still there is no sign of ice. I have what must be a Russian station on the radio; we are about forty-five miles off the coast of Siberia. It is not rock & roll.<br />
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12 NOON First ice! The fog closed in to where we could not see the barge, even after shortening up the tow tire. It is thick here on the water but must not extend very high above, as the glare is painfully bright. The patches of ice materialize out of the fog only when we are right on top of them. Running at dead slow we try to work our way through. So far I have seen one patch with four seals on it and one ringed seal pup swimming close alongside the boat. Visibility is measured in yards, walrus could be anywhere! It wasn’t long before we worked clear of the ice field and then all there was, was fog. So I took my afternoon nap, awoke at 1500, blue sky, calm sea, no fog, no wind, no ice, no walrus, unlimited visibility, Cape Dezhneva over there in tomorrow on the other side of the International Date Line showing up in fine detail. Anticlimactic to say the least, crossing the Arctic Circle I pose for a photo out on the back deck in short sleeves and my Key West sandals, it is 60 degrees Fahrenheit.<br />
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JULY 3 Ice. 0500 about 28 miles from shore we entered the ice. The pack is made up of individual low bergs with patches of open water between. Sunshine, high thin clouds, a light breeze, calm sea, and nice weather. At slow ahead we worked our way into the ice. The trick is to not only weave the boat in and out amongst the bergs but the barge following along behind as well. The ice is prone to hang up in the barge’s towing bridle. We averaged about two and a half knots. As the day wore on the cloud cover thickened drastically, intermittent light rain started to fall. A few miles inside the pack ice we started to spot seals. Most were lone seals in the water but there were two large ice flows with groups of seal pups lying in the sun. The pups dove into their escape holes before we ever got near. The most numerous has been the ringed seal, but I did spot one ribbon seal resting The Red Dog Mine has a huge building that we could see from twenty miles at out, without binoculars! It is by far the largest building in Alaska. Eight football fields would fit inside it and it is as high as a ten-story building. All this I found out later along with the fact that it is used to store the ore concentrate produced during the winter when the Chukchi Sea is shut tight by ice and it can’t be shipped. When we reached a point about two and a half miles from shore we dropped anchor. Our position, 67.34 north, and 164.10 west, ninety miles north of Kotzebue. The clouds broke up and dissipated soon after we settled in. There are two ore barges ahead of us and we may be here awhile. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyebFvh194HlT13hws-oYMkUDQKeSEGi5Ehn3PKRykzr_jPzYVPHCLZuyJkwWEfzSPF-cXsiAZlt8kBE2Guvmigp3QEgz2v57_E-2sL8cRUSD5xKApGmegsMRT_7REU27Nu52MhWW6-_4/s1600-h/Native+Seal+Hunters.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5068839798174892530" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyebFvh194HlT13hws-oYMkUDQKeSEGi5Ehn3PKRykzr_jPzYVPHCLZuyJkwWEfzSPF-cXsiAZlt8kBE2Guvmigp3QEgz2v57_E-2sL8cRUSD5xKApGmegsMRT_7REU27Nu52MhWW6-_4/s320/Native+Seal+Hunters.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a><br />
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There is a large low iceberg about 200 yards off our starboard side. It is approximately a half-mile wide and a mile long. Looking out my cabin porthole I could count a dozen seals with pups lying out on the ice. Not long after we arrived, a native skiff with three hunters came by stalking the seals. They looked the seals over but continued on without firing. Maybe they are only looking for the ones without pups. Still no sign of Walrus! The hunters returned at about twenty three hundred, the sky was clear, the sun still high, and the large berg had drifted until one edge was pressed against the barge. There were five natives in the boat this time. Three stayed with the boat where it was pulled up on the ice and seemed to be watching the open water. The other two went out onto the ice. One stopped about a quarter of a mile from the boat and dropped a line down through a hole in the ice, fishing? The other continued on, stalking the seals. I had a good view from the elevation of the wheelhouse, and with the binoculars I could watch the hunters and also see the seals as they came up through their breathing holes. The one hunter was crawling on hands and knees and then dropped down on to his stomach and wormed his way forward. He rose up on one knee, brought his rifle to his shoulder and fired. He jumped to his feet and turned back towards the boat with his arms in the air in sign of victory. The seal he retrieved hung down past his waist when he slung it over his shoulder. It seemed heavy for him as he would carry it that way for a while, and then drag it for a while. The man that had been fishing went to help carry it back to the boat.<br />
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JULY FORTH, 1991 Last night the setting sun didn’t. Between 0300 & 0400 the sun seemed to stop and hang in the same spot, about ten degrees above the horizon. It appeared to be stuck there, and then after awhile I noticed that it was rising, without so much as kissing the earth. That sight alone made the trip worthwhile. Since arriving the weather has been phenomenal, clear blue sky, sparkling clean air, light breezes, and 24 hours of sunshine. I can almost forget the days and days of gray gloom. In these high latitudes light refraction does some funny things. This afternoon it appeared that we were surrounded by high ice covered cliffs. Some thought that a thick ice pack was drifting in from sea. At the size and distance that it appeared, it would have had to be two hundred feet high. To leave here it would look as if you were sailing towards a distant shore. I had been warned that in the arctic mirages are common occurrences. Shifted in to the dock at 2200, it is eighty degrees!! This is some Arctic Circle experience we are having. One story that has proven true is the one about the infamous Alaskan Mosquitoes. They are thick and aggressive. If all goes well it will take sixteen to twenty hours to pump the barge so we should be on our way south by tomorrow afternoon.<br />
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JULY 5 Red Dog Mine. I walked up along the conveyor that brings the ore down to the dock and went into the building that houses the offices, mess hall, living quarters, etc. The Red Dog is a dangerous place to work. In 1990 ten people died in accidents. In 1991 eleven people were killed in the first three months. Posted on the bulletin board are a series of notices called “Fatal-grams.” Each documents one of the accidents. Electrocutions, falls, crushed by machinery, trucks overturned in water, averaging close to four deaths a month the first quarter of the year. One man that was crushed to death had been on the job two and a half hours! A miner that fell had thirty years experience. Alongside the Fatal-grams are posted bear and caribou alerts. Red Dog is on the migratory route of the caribou and they have the right of way. Vehicle traffic must stop and give at least a three hundred yard berth until they are all past. At times the fifty-two mile road from the mine to the port is closed completely. The bear alert was about what you might expect, don’t feed, and don’t go into the tundra alone, give wide berth, be advised that bears won’t be shot just because they are in the area. We got underway at twenty hundred; the sea was still, the only movement caused by the melting ice, water returning to water in drips and streams, faster now under the onslaught of twenty-four hour sunshine. Every now and then a movement in the ice pack would catch the eye. The rolling over of an iceberg as the melting caused the center of gravity to shift. The eighty-degree weather has made a big impact on the ice in just the short time that we have been in port. Most of the large pieces have broken up, and all of it is much softer. It is much easier leaving than arriving. Some seals and a few gulls and murres, one Jaeger watching from above, the only visible life except for a lone native skiff with three hunters aboard that crossed our path in the distance. At zero two hundred we left the ice behind and the sea’s surface became as smooth as an Exxon oil slick. It was a cloudless sky, as the sun once again seemed to be stuck just above the horizon. The sun, the sky, the water, all the color of molten gold, too bright to do more than steal a quick glance towards. The low sun it seemed could sear the eye.<br />
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JULY 6 Russia out my porthole. The Bering Strait once again, from the Chukchi Sea into the Bering Sea, still clear & calm. Starting to see a few puffins again, usually in pairs, bobbing on the water. We are making excellent time, hopefully this will be a six day trip to Nikiski, and then will come the long flight home. Usually twenty hours of airplanes and airports. As the time looms nearer it will be harder to keep from harping on it in this journal. Sixty days on a boat is long enough, most people start to get irritable and edgy after that. I know it is enough for me. I’ll have about seventy-two in when we hit port. Whales, one surfaced a few yards from the boat. A tail slap and he was gone, leaving behind a swirl of discolored water. He was the first and closest of many Humpbacks that we were to see today a few miles south of the strait. For two or three hours we were among the spouts and tails and humped backs of the feeding giants. The water still completely flat, from horizon to horizon nothing to disturb the dark blue surface except the snow white geysers of the whales exhalations, usually followed by the appearance of the dark brown expanse of their backs, and then by the huge tail flukes raising high in the air before slipping smoothly beneath the sea.<br />
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WALRUS!!! I this morning I took the wheel watch while the skipper showered. I was sitting back with the glasses watching some whale spouts when I noticed a light colored object on the surface a mile or more distant. I kept watching the whales but kept going back to the other also. It looked to me as if it could be the bottom of an overturned skiff. I mentioned to the skipper that I had spotted something off in the distance and when he returned to the bridge we altered course a bit to investigate. Until we were close along side we couldn’t figure out what we were looking at. Then when we saw the flippers we knew we had a “floater.” A dead walrus, and then we could see that it still had its tusks. What followed wasn’t pleasant, but it was exciting and made this whole trip come together for me. The law of the sea, “he who spots the floater gets the tusks.” At least on tugboats. At least on this tugboat. It took three hours. The smell was horrendous, the deed was gory. It had been dead for a long time and it was blown up until it looked like some giant nine-foot mutant puffer fish. We got a line on it and tried to pull it up with the winch but the line parted. We put the zodiac in the water and got another line on it and towed it around to where the crane could reach. We were able to lift the head up and tried to take it off with a fire axe. On one swing of the axe the zodiac took the hit and we hurriedly slapped some duct tape on it as an emergency patch. Taking the head proved too difficult with the tools at hand so we attacked the tusks with a hacksaw, and then finally used the electric “Saws-All.” Horrendous might not be a strong enough word for the smell! Anyway, we retrieved both tusks and the teeth. We couldn’t have done it without Pat the mate’s knowledge and help, so he earned one of the tusks. He traded me a piece of baleen that he had bought from a Kivalina Eskimo to sweeten the deal. The teeth were divided among the crew. I came out with a fine tusk, the baleen, and two teeth. The mate & I both threw away the clothes we were wearing.<br />
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As we traveled south we returned to that part of the world, where in the early hours of the morning, each day begins with yesterday’s sunset. Still there is no darkness; twilight holds sway for a short time, and then the sun is soon climbing back towards the heavens. But today, we’ll see no sunrise, during the time of twilight we were once again wrapped in the folds of that familiar soft gray blanket that lays so lightly upon the sea. Lightly, but thick and almost constant as we draw near the Aleutian Islands one more time. Under the spell of the Dutch Harbor weather pattern. Tomorrow morning we should be in Unimak Pass, and then we will enter the Pacific Ocean and turn northeast for the run up the Alaska Peninsula on the last leg of our voyage.<br />
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JULY 9 Days shorten rapidly as we continue south; we are making 265 miles a day, eleven knots. The change in the light to dark ratio is remarkable. One night the sun doesn’t set, the next we have a couple of hours of twilight, the next, three or four hours of darkness. To get around the Alaska Peninsula we are forced south to about the same latitude as Prince Rupert, British Colombia. Then we will head back to the north & east for six hundred forty miles. The nights will start getting shorter again as we return north. We are looking for arrival in Nikiski sometime late on the eleventh or very early on the twelfth. I hope to be on a plane before noon on the twelfth. OVCST&FG, visibility down to a hundred yards, but the shearwaters are back to distract us. To our remarkable good fortune the sea is still calm. We haven’t experienced more than a one or two foot chop since leaving the Red Dog Mine.<br />
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July 10: 0700 a nice sunrise in progress, doubly nice as we have had two days of fog where the visibility seldom exceeded two hundred yards. But as I said before, the seas were calm! Two more days to go to wrap up a really nice trip. Not withstanding the bitching about Dutch Harbor and some of the weather, I can’t remember when I have enjoyed a stretch on a boat so much as I have these last two months. The sixteen five I earned will come in handy also. It doesn’t look as though I’ll make that noon plane Friday, but what can a few hours matter after all this? Finished the last of “GARY OSBORNE’S WEST INDIES PEPPER SAUCE” today, it really is time to go home!<br />
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WHALES!! ORCAS, HUMPBACKS, & FIN!!!!! A nice morning turned into a great afternoon. Full sun, a one to two foot swell with just a light chop, no white caps. I had been taking a couple of photos of Aniakchak Crater, a huge mountain with the top half simply blown away. Ahead I started seeing whale blows over a wide area, their exhalations looked like splashes from naval gunfire. Then off our starboard beam I saw a pod of Orcas, or Killer Whales. There was one large male and a half dozen or so females and calves. We passed that pod by and I continued to watch the blows, they were Humpbacks for the most part but I saw one that had a large crescent shaped dorsal fin. They were staying out in front of us, at least matching our speed. Closer inboard, on our starboard side there was an area of disturbed water. As I watched, two large whales blew and surfaced and seemed to thrash the water. Then an Orca surfaced in between the other two. His large dorsal was rigid, but he was leaning over on his side so that it came out of the water at a sharp angle. The three submerged and surfaced three or four times before we moved out of range. I believe what I witnessed was an Orca attack on a large whale, most likely a Humpback though at least one of the other whales I saw, and one Kenny saw definitely had an un-humpback like dorsal, possibly a Fin Whale.<br />
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JULY 11, Shilekof Straits Midday, chugging north, sunshine but heavy haze, the mountains on either side of the straits, faint shadows. An uneventful morning taking care of engine-room stuff, getting ready to get off the boat. Puffins and some Dall’s porpoise our main companions today. Still nice and smooth.<br />
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JULY 12: HOMER. Once again on the way to Nikiski we were diverted here. The office, instead of sending the crew relief’s down here to Homer, say they have delayed crew change until tomorrow, when the boat is due in Nikiski. It doesn’t make that big a difference to me as this has been the only time I have been on a boat in a year, and I have really enjoyed myself. It does show a complete lack of understanding or concern on management’s part, on the psychic of a sailor who has been on a boat for a long time. The other crewmembers that are due off have been on the boat for over ninety days. To most in that position it is not just “one more day.” The man has been counting the hours until we “hit port.” He has visualized his homecoming until it is already real to him. He knows (he thinks) just what he is going to do, how it is going to go. Even though from past experience he should know it wouldn’t happen as he sees it, an unnecessary delay of even a few hours at this point takes on an importance way out of all proportion to what the facts might indicate. A company that does not allow for that is sure to have a morale problem, and a high turnover rate. As it is, I would like to have been on a plane this morning myself. A weekend has been pissed away. So I can understand statements like, “I’ll quit if I can’t get off.” It is usually just talk, but it leaves a very bad taste in the employee’s mouth for little or no reason. In a similar position a few years ago I walked off the highest paying boat job that I have ever had. At that time it was simply insensitivity on the part of the office staff that forced my hand. (Footnote on the Nome bar hours. Today, bowing to public pressure the city council voted 4 to 1, not to extend the bar hours until 5AM. So as of now at 2, you’ve got to hit the road to the Roadhouse if you want to party!)<br />
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JULY 17, PORT ARANSAS This is my forth day back home and it is good! I greeted the day as I do most now, swimming in the warm gentle sea as the huge sun paints the eastern sky with orange and crimson. It appears twice as large as it does in the arctic during the rise and set. The seagulls and pelicans were beginning the days foraging, and small pompano were jumping all around me. It is a very special time of day. I’ll swim and walk for an hour before I return to the office. I also try to get in another hour in the afternoon. I’m back at work with AMERICAN AGENDA and will have little time for these musings for a while. So, until the next adventure, I’m “trying to reason with hurricane season.” Adios for now Gary Osborne, Port Aransas, Texas, July 18, 1991<br />
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THE WINTER OF’89<br />
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I arrived on the Winter Solstice, could I have made my commute any more extreme? Thirty eight hundred miles from Key West Florida, a tiny two by four mile Island that is the southernmost point in the continental United States, across the entire continent, south to north and east to west, to Alaska, our largest and northernmost state on the shortest day of the year. Behind me tropical days of sunshine and warm crystalline waters, ahead seemingly endless nights of ice and cold. Where it is late morning before the sun appears and where, in six short hours the light and meager warmth it provided is only a fleeting memory to be lovingly nourished throughout the coming eighteen hours of frigid sub-arctic darkness.<br />
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Having a total and long standing aversion to the cold, even now I wonder why I ever agreed to spend what would prove to be the coldest winter in Alaskan history working in the snow and ice of Cooks Inlet. An almost complete ignorance of what I was actually getting into, and the old urge once again, to see the “Elephant,” had set me on this dangerous icy road. I am a forty seven year old sometime Merchant Seaman, sometime entrepreneur, former owner of art galleries in Texas and New Mexico and now an importer of a folk art and Indian crafts from Mexico and Central America. A veteran of twenty years of travel throughout the Southwest, the Caribbean and Mexico as a voluntary refugee from the madness that is Southern California. I am presently a six year resident of the mystical isle of Key West, a tropical American paradise of coral reefs, manana days and perfumed nights.<br />
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My allure for the sea began with visits to the beaches of Southern California as a child, and a fascination with the unfathomable mysteries of the tide pools. At seventeen I went to sea with the U. S. Navy where I was introduced to the power and beauty of the offshore waters along with the thrill and excitement of exotic ports of call. I left the Navy in 1965 after six years, but I have continued going to sea on and off ever since. I have seen the ocean in a dead calm, as slick and smooth as smoked glass, and rearing up and howling in South China Sea typhoons and hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. I have experienced Cape Hatteras in all her winter fury and marveled at the emerald flash of days end on the warm tropical sea. The winter of’89 on Cooks Inlet was to be a completely new experience, one I would not care to repeat, but one that does make a tale to tell...<br />
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I had been on the “beach” for about six months. In July, having had enough of work and boats for awhile, I had left my last Merchant Marine position where I had been working as Chief Engineer on a Navy owned research vessel. It was civilian operated and engaged in anti—submarine warfare research and development work, usually in the Bahamas, off Bermuda or in the Caribbean. Perfect training ground for the Alaskan winter that was to come! Now after six months of the good life lazing in the sun of my island home, with some extended trips into Mexico, it was time to pay my dues and give the bank account a much needed transfusion. Time to dust off the old Engineers License, time to look towards the sea. I sat down one day in early December and fired off some resumes to a few boat companies around the Country. The first response was a phone call three days later. It came from Crowley Maritime and even though they were in Seattle and talking Alaska to this denizen of the tropics I heard them out and finally agreed to give it a try for sixty days.<br />
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My good friend Andrew Cleland who is an engineer with them had mostly good things to say about the Seattle Division and what the hell, I could do sixty days standing on my head, right! They shot me a ticket before I could change my mind and almost before I knew it I was on an Eastern flight white knuckling it to Seattle. I had caught a flight with only one intermediate stop. It was one of those wide body monstrosities with no personal ventilation controls; the temperature must have been eighty degrees or more the entire trip. I would sleep fitfully and then awaken with perspiration running down my face, the flight was only about half full so I could move around, but no matter how far forward I went, the sickening sweet smell of stale tobacco smoke hung in the tepid air as persistent and oppressive as the smell of death and disease in Calcutta. I arrived hot sweaty and ill, into the cold wet world of a northwestern winter.<br />
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Andrew happened to be in port waiting for a boat so I had a friendly face to greet me at the airport. My attire from twenty years of knocking around the tropics would scarcely be adequate for the coming adventure so I was fortunate to have Andrew with his previous arctic experience available as a shopping guide. We jumped into his rental car and a few hours later I was the proud owner of $500 worth of accouterments I had not even known existed before, TherMax underwear, Pac boots, Carheart coveralls and various and sundry other articles of clothing employed by people lacking the good sense to stay in a reasonable environment. I was to have one night in Seattle before heading on to Alaska, so to recover from the trauma of the shopping trip we retired to one of Seattle’s fine alehouses where the product is brewed on the premises. Their total distribution system consists of thirty feet or so of tubing, from the vat to the tap. Fine stuff, a beautiful old back bar and a view of the vats in the next room. They serve only light, medium or dark ale. Nothing in bottles, no chips, no eats, and no designer water. Just good ale.<br />
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After the therapy of the Big Time Ale House we felt that we might now be prepared to face the rest of the world and prevailed on Andrew’s girl friend Mary to guide us to one of Seattle’s superior seafood establishments. She recommended Ray’s Boat House over on Puget Sound where we dined leisurely and well. After a superb salmon dinner accompanied by a fine Washington State wine it was time for me to call it an early night so I could catch an early flight.<br />
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The next morning I was on an Alaska Airlines flight to Anchorage. It was a pleasant surprise to experience a flight on a well-run airline. After yesterdays flight this one was doubly appreciated. The well-appointed plane and smiling, courteous flight crew was a fine welcome to the “Last Frontier.” From Anchorage I caught a commuter flight to Kenai, about one hundred thirty miles south on the peninsula of the same name, to catch the offshore supply vessel, Rig Engineer. This is a 180-foot, 3000 HP boat that services the oil rigs out on Cooks Inlet. She is a typical supply boat with a long back deck for cargo and the bridge and living quarters all the way forward.<br />
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I was met by Paul Vidal, the Port Engineer and given a ride over to the village of Nikiski where the boat was tied up. Driving along the shore for the first time gave me a grand view of the snow covered mountains across the inlet. There are a series of magnificent volcanoes running south from here three of which were last active in 1986. Arriving at the dock I had my first exposure to the great Cook Inlet tides, as we drove up all I could see of the boat was the mast and top of the wheelhouse. The tides will run 28 to 30 feet at times and the current can run as fast as eight knots or more. The boat cannot stay at the dock during low tide, as she would be left sitting high and dry on the rocks. Soon after I climbed down a ladder to the boat we were forced to pull away from the dock to await the returning tide.<br />
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In many parts of the world servicing oil rigs can be a routine, even mundane affair. On Cooks Inlet during the winter of’89 it would be anything but mundane! I soon settled into the routine of my job along with the rest of our five-man crew. We were hauling equipment, fuel oil, water and groceries out to the half dozen or so rigs that we were taking care of. The high point of my first few days on the boat was the sighting of a pod of white Beluga whales. They were a startling sight, their creamy white color just not something I had ever associated with marine mammals. They must have been some of the last to migrate as the ice was already forming very rapidly.<br />
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Christmas and New Years came and went; we ate our turkeys and went about our jobs, the temperature dropping and the ice getting thicker day by day. The second week of January and the temperatures are starting to fall below zero. The water fill lines on both the dock and the boat are continually frozen now. It takes a propane torch to thaw them out so we can take on water. The windows on the bridge are freezing up, on the inside! One day while I was sitting in the galley having my morning coffee Marty Smith, the mate stumbles out of his cabin and asks me, “is it cold out.” I replied, “Cold, where the hell have you been? Of course it’s cold, this is Alaska, its winter, it was cold yesterday, it is cold today, and it is going to be cold for months.”<br />
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January 15. The Inlet almost totally frozen over now, ice a foot thick. We are breaking through it continuously and it really is getting colder, fifteen below this morning. Maybe Marty’s question was not so off the wall after all?<br />
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January 17. MAYDAY!, MAYDAY! We had just finished working a rig when we received the call. It came from the Tug Mickey; she was caught in the ice a couple of miles east of our position and was being carried along towards a reef. We answered their radio message and replied that we were nearby and would attempt to make it over to them and break them loose. We were able to reach her without too much trouble and broke up the ice enough so that she could fall in astern and tag—a—long in our wake. It turns out that she is an old wooden hull former Army Tug built prior to World War Two. She has been converted into a dinning and sightseeing excursion boat working out of Anchorage during the summer and she is now trying to get to Seward and open water to escape the ice that will crush her hull if she tries to stay on the inlet all winter. They waited a little too long to get going, and now they really do have some troubles. The old girl is really beautiful, classic tugboat lines and the addition of the dinning room and observation deck fit in nicely. We led her over to our dock and got her tied up safely within two hours. I understand her hull is three feet thick which is the only reason she made it this far, this late in the season. She stayed at our dock for three days while her owner and the captain hemmed and hawed about what to do. They missed two exceptionally strong ebb tides that would have helped carry them a long way south but indecision rules it seems. Everyday they hesitate the ice gets stronger. On the forth day when I awoke she was gone, I wish her well, and she really is a fine old boat. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFDwZxG3-zVH1ukrGY8Vwe2hdFuu7eL5Nbhyphenhyphen24nLxaH0VRzGYYu-yjbkxXVMsWOUx77KSZhmpcpP7gWyTfOY5dmV2GJ9QLPxmh7c_dxdtRvnIXRtdsNurpP-dPTGQxXpFo1fkT7ba09KQ/s1600-h/Sea+Story+Photo+stuck+ice.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5045648203039522962" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFDwZxG3-zVH1ukrGY8Vwe2hdFuu7eL5Nbhyphenhyphen24nLxaH0VRzGYYu-yjbkxXVMsWOUx77KSZhmpcpP7gWyTfOY5dmV2GJ9QLPxmh7c_dxdtRvnIXRtdsNurpP-dPTGQxXpFo1fkT7ba09KQ/s320/Sea+Story+Photo+stuck+ice.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a><br />
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January 20. 26 below this morning, we were caught in the ice three or four times last night coming back in from the rigs. When you get stuck it is full astern and then full ahead, back and forth until you can hopefully force a lead open through the ice. It is very slow going. The radio is calling for a high today of 15 below with tonight’s low at thirty five below. Before I came up here I had not owned a pair of gloves in years, now I wear three pair at a time! Mexico has never sounded so good. Dreams of a hammock in a palapa on the beach at Puerto Escondido, I know it will take at least a month to thaw out after this. January 21. 0600 we left the dock heading for one of the rigs. In three hours we made eleven miles, breaking heavy ice all the way. At one point we were within one mile of the rig when the ice got the upper hand and carried us back two miles. It can look as though you are making headway through the ice when in reality the eight-knot current is carrying you backwards. It can take the boat in under a rig or put it on the rocks if it catches you in the wrong place. This ice must move back and forth forty or fifty miles on each tide change. It will run north for six hours then turn and go south for six. The noise of running through this stuff is almost indescribable. Something akin to rolling down a rocky hill in an oil drum I imagine. It sure makes sleep hard to come by, or for that matter it is hard to eat or do much of anything but hang on.<br />
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January 22. We spent eighteen hours trying to get to a rig that was only ten miles away and never did make it. This is really getting dangerous. You get trapped in the ice and then go where it goes. There is little you can do about it. Old Man winter is taking control. January 23. Trapped in the ice again, this time it carried us nineteen miles. It was simply good fortune that the nineteen miles of open “water” was there. As it happened it was a nice clear day and since we could not break the boat free anyway the mate and I got out on the ice to see what the boat looked like and to take some photos. Quite an experience, to stand under the bow of a boat five miles offshore and still be moving along at seven or eight knots. We were finally able to break free after the tide changed, that sometimes opens up a lead and gives us a chance to break out. It is the time of the full moon that means higher tides and faster currents, but it also means my time up here is at the half way mark. I came up here on a full moon and now I can look forward to the next one as my time of emancipation and the return to the warmth and beauty of Key West. I do not believe I was meant to be any farther north than coconut trees wil<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN9ASMiHUquzOk-53rIz3koBIASj_LUNRfC27DE5t2Vx5nFjdKp_lR655iun860w2JACGkjz_4s4aLTvk6lFXtRykxqZJZUTUOWBW_E8lmw0Kba-VlMvssSx6KgrjsDyNZ437aCnB6_2M/s1600-h/Sea+Story+Photo+explorer.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5045649229536706722" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN9ASMiHUquzOk-53rIz3koBIASj_LUNRfC27DE5t2Vx5nFjdKp_lR655iun860w2JACGkjz_4s4aLTvk6lFXtRykxqZJZUTUOWBW_E8lmw0Kba-VlMvssSx6KgrjsDyNZ437aCnB6_2M/s320/Sea+Story+Photo+explorer.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a>l grow. </div><br />
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<i><b>Legendary Arctic Explorer </b></i><br />
<i><b>Gary "Nanook" Osborne's Heroic Quest to find the fabled Frangipanni Pass to the Isle of Key West foiled by the coldest winter in Alaskan history asks, "where is the airport?"</b></i><br />
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January 24. Weather and ice just gets worse, we did get out to a rig today, it took fourteen or fifteen hours I think, it gets hard to keep track sometimes. I saw my first Northern Lights this morning, monumental ribbons of red and green pulsating across the northern sky. A fine treat, and then the reality of trying to tie up to a rig in this weather intruded with all the rudeness of a rush hour cabby. With these massive “pans” of ice barreling up and down the inlet, Some of them two and three feet thick, the only time we have any chance of tying up is during the relatively short times of slack “water” between the tide changes. After we get tied up, always on the down stream side of the rig there is the chance that the rig will break up the ice enough to let us hang there until the next slack period when we can make a dash for the next rig on our list. There is also the chance that the ice will swing around the rig, catch the boat and knock it back hard enough to part the mooring line. When that happens it parts with the sound of an explosion and can snap back with the power to cut a man in half. When a line starts getting tight and squeaking it is time to get out of there fast. Today we were able to tie up and load and back load some cargo and pump some fuel and water to them. Some rigs have had to shut down operations because of our inability to reach them and keep them supplied with water. I think they should all shut down until this terrible cold spell ends; it will be miraculous if someone does not get hurt or killed trying to work in these conditions. The media are now calling this the “Coldest Winter in Alaskan history,” and the coldest place on earth. It has set a record for the highest barometric pressure ever recorded in North America, if not the world. Airports are operating in daylight hours only as the airplane altimeters will not function at these pressures.<br />
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January 25. 0100 in heavy snow. We have been trying to make it back to the dock for eight hours, the last four stuck fast in the ice and going south with the tide. We have a return target on the radar showing a large ship heading our way. The big container ships can run right through this two and three foot ice. We raised him by radio and advised him of our position and situation, in that we are not in control of our movements and are traveling at the whim of ice and current. He confirmed that he had us on his radar and offered to come to a course that would put him close enough to us to break up the ice so we might get free. The skipper replied that we would appreciate all the help we could get and that we would illuminate all of our lights so there would be no doubt as to our correct position. A nine hundred plus foot ship doing twenty knots is not something you want any closer than necessary. A short time latter, he came out of the storm and into our lights, roaring like a freight train, ice breaking and cracking with huge blocks being thrown into the air. He seemed as big as the Grand Coulee Dam and appeared much too close, but then in what seemed just moments, the ice closed in behind him, and he was gone, as if he had never been, swallowed up by the night and the storm. At first there did not seem to be any appreciable change, and then slowly we started gaining ground, a little bit at first, and then a little bit more. Within the hour we were able to work our way over to the path that he had fractured in the ice as he passed, and we were able once again to make some headway towards our birth. As we approached the dock the last quarter mile took over two hours, backing and ramming the entire way. I still do not know why they are keeping the boat here, we cannot do our job, but we can sure get into trouble. If we had not arrived at the dock and tied up when we did, a changing tide one hour later would likely have put us on the rocks within sight of our office. One-hour leeway is cutting it mighty thin under these conditions.<br />
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January 27. Listening to Coast Guard emergency radio broadcasts today; the winter is taking its toll. There is a Crowley fuel barge that has snapped its tow wire and is on the rocks in Cold Bay out on the Alaska Peninsula towards the Aleutian Islands, another barge loaded with fuel oil is adrift in the Gulf of Alaska with only its bow above water, and a crab boat that has been calling for help because of heavy icing is now missing with six aboard. I am also sorry to say that the Tug Mickey did not make it. They started taking on water and the Coast Guard had to lift the crew off by helicopter. She was last seen adrift, also with only her bow showing. A beautiful old boat, now just a hazard to navigation. A very unforgiving environment this.<br />
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January 28. 0700. Have been stuck in the ice most of the night, going with the flow again. We were carried south for five or six hours and then north for about the same, unable to maneuver, the boat was carried into the big tanker dock at Nikiski. We were thrown up against and drug along the face of the dock, the big truck tires that the boat uses as fenders were ripped off and left littering the ice like so many buttons at a sailor’s homecoming. The ice swung us around and pushed the back deck completely under the pier. The boats bridge was banging and crashing into the dock and our handrails and mooring bits were being ripped up and knocked down, it looked like the aftermath of a tin soldier Waterloo. At one point I could have stepped off the boat right onto the pier. It was tempting; it looked as if we might lose her. The entire crew was struggling to get into their survival suits. These dry, closed cell foam suits are supposed to keep you alive and afloat for eighteen hours or more in twenty eight to thirty degree water. We all looked like giant orange Gumby’s. We radioed a MAYDAY and a chopper was on hand and standing by overhead within minutes. It was a comforting sight, knowing we were not alone out there and that help was hovering nearby. The wind chill was eighty below zero, the metal so cold that instead of bending it split like wood. The survival suits, awkward at best, in those temperatures stiffened to make all movement next to impossible. We finally got a small lead open in the ice and managed to get out far enough that the current carried us past the end of the pier. Clear of the pier but then we were heading straight towards a point of rocks a few hundred yards due north of us. We were carried to within a boat length of the rocks when the tide started to turn. Mother Nature gave us a last minute reprieve. Once the tide switched direction we were able to get into some fractured ice and force our way clear of the point. If we would have had to abandon ship, the chopper should have been able to land on the ice and we could have walked over to it.<br />
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If I had been forced to get on that helicopter I would have had him to take me straight to the airport. I had my wallet, credit cards, plane ticket and passport in my pocket; I would have been heading south! Far south! This is about all of this adventure I need. We were very lucky, no one hurt and only a few thousand dollars damage to the boat. It could have been a disaster. January 29. Newspaper calling for forty-five below today, with the thirty-five MPH wind speed it translates into one hundred degrees below zero wind chill! I received four fifty-five gallon drums of antifreeze today and they were all frozen solid as rocks. What am I doing here?<br />
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February 1. The powers that be finally woke to the fact that this is getting out of hand and that we cannot stay lucky forever. We are heading south to the town of Homer to await a warming trend. It was only a seven-hour trip but what a difference. Open water with very little ice, above zero temperatures, and really beautiful, high mountains falling sheer, down into a clear blue sea. Abundant wildlife, sea otters, seals, puffins, and many, many bald eagles. The eagles are everywhere; they hang around the city docks like pelicans do in Key West. I must have seen one, maybe two hundred today. They are in the trees, on the power poles, in the air and on the rocks. Wonderful!<br />
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February 5. Less than a week here but it was a much-needed respite. The weather has improved and we left Homer this morning. Arrived back up in Nikiski in the afternoon and though the ice looks about the same it is much softer. It can still bring us to a halt but with some backing and ramming we can usually get free.<br />
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February 15. Routine operations since we returned from Homer, we had one day when we were running to the northernmost rig we service when the ice got a hold on us and would not let go. Another big container ship happened along and broke us out, a photo opportunity but not much excitement and that is fine with me. It is now getting along towards the full moon and my relief is due in a few days, thoughts turning to Key West, Mexico, and sunshine, but then that is another story.<br />
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EPILOGUE The winter of’89 exacted a terrible toll in life and property. My list is by no means complete, for the most part simply events I overheard happening over the ships radios. The crabber mentioned earlier was the Vest fjord and six lives were lost when it went down. The Coast Guard with cannon fire finally sank the fuel barge in the Gulf of Alaska. A three hundred foot Japanese processing ship broke its shaft and went on the rocks of Unalaska Island with the Coast Guard rescuing the crew by helicopter. Another Japanese vessel this one a three hundred foot refrigerator ship went ashore on Aktun Island and is still there with its nose shoved up against the cliffs. There was also a fishing boat in the Bearing Sea that sank with two of the four-crew members who had made it into a life raft being washed overboard and lost. And then there is the EXXON VALDEZ, not something to blame on the weather, but a disaster to eclipse all the rest...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5RQKM2F68_Gokz51Guc4hibPUSkOkNyLeyOIXevL_DeamENGbHSdQlrUK-yt-yVGXtBrko2pnxLgV8kq6DgmtfcnDuaB8XioALtxUyxsNHGBHu7_VL47kJK7vFkQwin3WVELeHRjioP4/s1600-h/G.O.+4+stripe+Photo.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086097787824819538" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5RQKM2F68_Gokz51Guc4hibPUSkOkNyLeyOIXevL_DeamENGbHSdQlrUK-yt-yVGXtBrko2pnxLgV8kq6DgmtfcnDuaB8XioALtxUyxsNHGBHu7_VL47kJK7vFkQwin3WVELeHRjioP4/s320/G.O.+4+stripe+Photo.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a><br />
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After the Alaskan adventures I signed on as Chief Engineer on some Mid-Western Riverboat Casino's. A much more civilized but not very exciting position.bocasgaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10535260029841395996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228670476544508750.post-12488460495916008312007-03-19T06:01:00.001-07:002010-02-23T03:51:24.880-08:00Into Panama, A Journal<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio48YxmjT-ckwwfgDUB0ive6F620fcXE6Ktf_PS32n5n4hLtDUFYVsd95v5aPEW2eertuc9HXPbqLwrXr4_1WpCxD6BgQIALC0fQTShl-FjScURSiN-X1Ij1goUerJKaQVqD8-BzACwo0/s1600-h/Marina+Sunrise+006.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043775606882440946" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio48YxmjT-ckwwfgDUB0ive6F620fcXE6Ktf_PS32n5n4hLtDUFYVsd95v5aPEW2eertuc9HXPbqLwrXr4_1WpCxD6BgQIALC0fQTShl-FjScURSiN-X1Ij1goUerJKaQVqD8-BzACwo0/s320/Marina+Sunrise+006.jpg" border="0" /></a>February 27, 2007<br />Into Panama, A Journal<br /><br />April 24, 2006<br /><br />Monday, 24<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">th</span>. Clinton <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Baermann</span> drove me and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Coquina</span> from Port A to Houston International Airport. After a little searching we found the cargo operation where I had to put <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Coquina</span> into a kennel and leave her in the care of the Continental Airlines people. That was almost as bad as saying goodbye to Billy and Gary on Sunday. That turned out to be a lot more emotional than I had expected. But anyway when we landed in Panama City, Panama, my preparations paid off and the man I had hired to help us through Customs did the job and got us out of there in an hour or so. Not that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Coquina</span> was not stressed near the limits. For that whole hour we all had to listen to her howling and crying.<br /><br />My Pet Expediter drove us to a pet friendly Bed & Breakfast and we settled in for the night. It was a great place, an old mansion that just been converted into this use on April first. The dogs have a fenced in yard of about an acre right in the middle of Panama City.I had an appointment at ten that morning with an attorney to begin my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Pensianado</span> application and that went smoothly. Got my HIV blood test and a physical that afternoon and the next morning was taken to immigration and whisked through there in 30 minutes. I had been warned to be prepared to spend a few hours there.<br /><br />Three nights in the B & B and then on to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Bocas</span> Del <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Toro</span>, early on Thursday the 26<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">th</span>. Another stressful trip for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Coquina</span>, but we got out of the Airport and hired a water taxi to take us to our<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIWFQnvjB1xzv2io3CyyNS7hdj3eVP_Me9Og-t6dejwzHcnk2SAvMp1aV8wBG34E_CBWLq32_eUYSY3tvO7onBGS2-VViwm7fSmSt471W6EfOHDY4DyGBl3G1EDtUhdfHbPRyFZCpgOlo/s1600-h/Sea+Feather+2+004.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5045975994943553794" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIWFQnvjB1xzv2io3CyyNS7hdj3eVP_Me9Og-t6dejwzHcnk2SAvMp1aV8wBG34E_CBWLq32_eUYSY3tvO7onBGS2-VViwm7fSmSt471W6EfOHDY4DyGBl3G1EDtUhdfHbPRyFZCpgOlo/s320/Sea+Feather+2+004.jpg" border="0" /></a> new home, the sailing vessel, Sea Feather. We were joined on the dock by the previous owners who have been aboard for a week or more cleaning and getting the boat ready. They had done a great job and had all the sails on and everything ship shape. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Coquina</span> was not in such good shape, the stress has taken its toll. I lifted her onto the boat and she is OK on board, but I had to have help getting her off later in the evening. She did eat more than she had in the last couple of days and when I got her off the boat up into the grass she had three pees and a poop. She needed to get off.<br /><br /><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div>Thursdays here in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Bocas</span> Marina there is a Pot-luck supper that I just found out about late in the afternoon. I rummaged through the boat pantry and found a box of Couscous, one onion, a few cloves of garlic, some olive oil and a can of chunky spaghetti sauce. Anyway, through it all together and most of it got eaten, I do have some left that I will have for lunch. I need to get to the market. My first try at taking the dingy into town was not a real success. I mistook the dock next to the dinghy dock for where I meant to tie up. It was a high dock and being unfamiliar with the boat operation and sixty pounds overweight, the dinghy went under the dock when I attempted to climb out and dumped me into the water. There went my new cell phone and my pride. I had to swim ashore and my shopping was a little abbreviated as I was dripping copious amounts of water up & down the isles.<br /><br />Friday, April 28, 2006<br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Coquina</span> seems a little livelier today but I still have not been able to get her off the boat this morning. Charley and Babe came aboard and we started getting ready for my first sea trial and Charley helped me get <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Coquina</span> off the boat and was she happy once on the dock. She took off for the grass and took care of business. We motored out and got the feel of the boat and put up the jib. The boat runs like a new boat. Charley has really taken care of her. We are going to take her out again tomorrow and get all the sails up.<br /><br />Saturday, April 29, 2006<br />We had a good nights sleep and I got <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Coquina</span> off the boat by myself, a first. I need to rig a gangway for her. It is too far for her to jump given her age and her hip problems. This time she <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">didn</span>’t exactly want to come back to the boat but I can’t let her run loose as there are yard chickens not too far away and I know she would go for them if she got close. Well our sail today got washed away by a squall. We put the awnings back up and sat out the rain. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPU-uN3c9QhEDDdX6tKBN2JplpjRW2p-erDWarHUyGvSywRgYsZa_4Phc-FQRKFIoHy-ah_uz8rX_UZnUX1IoGq819NN442XobkEzGdEN0k8y8Ku4Gy_S0Vuh8xyH0A20visUU8mmi9ds/s1600-h/DSC00602.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5044010211957250882" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPU-uN3c9QhEDDdX6tKBN2JplpjRW2p-erDWarHUyGvSywRgYsZa_4Phc-FQRKFIoHy-ah_uz8rX_UZnUX1IoGq819NN442XobkEzGdEN0k8y8Ku4Gy_S0Vuh8xyH0A20visUU8mmi9ds/s320/DSC00602.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Saturday, May 06, 2006<br />It has been an uneventful week, just getting familiar with the boat, the marina and town. Not near as much rain as I was expecting, only one day when it rained most of the day. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Coquina</span> has gotten used to it all, she will now jump off the boat, but I have started lifting her down, as she started yelping when I was picking her up to come back aboard and I’m afraid she might have been hurting herself when she landed on the dock. Now when we get back to the boat she walks up to the end of the finger pier and waits to be lifted aboard.<br /><br />Friday, May 12, 2000<br />I was able to buy an anchor for my dinghy this week so I have been able to start snorkeling. I went twice yesterday and once today. I hope to go most days for the exercise if nothing else. The waters are beautiful but the most plentiful of the larger fish that I have seen is the spotted eagle ray. The only fish I have seen around the coral are small tropicals and small parrot fish.<br /><br />At the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Bocas</span> Yacht Club Bar & Restaurant. It opens at five and by five there was quite a crowd. Some new boats have come in and others just coming over for the social, restaurant time. It was nice. I met Bob & Ray when they sailed in yesterday on a thirty foot sloop form Key West. Ray is staying here for a while anyway but Bob is flying back tomorrow. Both neat people, Bob is a geologist and a great person to talk to. Ray I am not so sure of as to a category, boat person, writer, busker, much more to find out.<br /><br />Friday, May 26, 2006<br />Well haven’t been keeping up my journal very well. Ray has become a friend, his book “Tales of a Sea Gypsy” is a good read. He used to perform at Mallory Square in Key West as a juggler of bowling balls and machetes. Yesterday Ray and I caught a high speed water taxi up to <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC9o9KMUa6z2MYx4BUumIUcPfDtcFjw0wb80s3klKx-ethYwxHgFoL2O7Y6ZycWMwxVASQ4YtwtcHyYyhEK-IPBTkwscIDCYQOeqEnCHR1ZSvQ3MabP8JJL5QwZg5K-aG29_dqpm_O2QI/s1600-h/River+Trip+5+018.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5078182106708931922" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC9o9KMUa6z2MYx4BUumIUcPfDtcFjw0wb80s3klKx-ethYwxHgFoL2O7Y6ZycWMwxVASQ4YtwtcHyYyhEK-IPBTkwscIDCYQOeqEnCHR1ZSvQ3MabP8JJL5QwZg5K-aG29_dqpm_O2QI/s320/River+Trip+5+018.jpg" border="0" /></a><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Changuinola</span>. What a fine trip. The boat takes off from the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Bocas</span> waterfront and runs up along the whole length of Colon, the island <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Bocas</span> Del <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Toro</span> is on, past <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Bocas</span> Del <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Drago</span> and over to the mainland. The boat really fly’s. As we approach the mainland there is no slowing down and it looks like this crazed driver is going to run us up into the mangroves. At the last possible moment he cranks it hard over to the right and we are brushing the mangroves on the port side and just missing a couple of PVC markers on the starboard side which mark the small channel that gets us over the bar. Then almost immediately it is a hard left and we are in the river. The river is actually a 100 year old canal that was dug parallel to the coast to bring bananas down to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Bocas</span> for shipment. There is no sign that it is man made now. It is beautiful, a few primitive Indian homes and some grazing cattle the only sign of habitation. Ten or fifteen miles in recent floods have washed out the land between the ocean and the river, so for a couple of miles we are surfing. It is fairly exciting. The 45 minute high speed boat ride costs $5.<br /></div><br /><div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBIjeeaaU1QKu8MJ1-IRkg0x6-EVfrpJTRB8bm0cLfeVBH9tS4-_Kk8KGYxG1n2nqiRFHAw8ID-NHB1bOjffe2jerCe_jyxmqu5MdZrKXqogDOS9fPp0qdjKPI2ZKk6aZ4kgg-2uHOJDk/s1600-h/DSCF0055.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043765805767071394" style="" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBIjeeaaU1QKu8MJ1-IRkg0x6-EVfrpJTRB8bm0cLfeVBH9tS4-_Kk8KGYxG1n2nqiRFHAw8ID-NHB1bOjffe2jerCe_jyxmqu5MdZrKXqogDOS9fPp0qdjKPI2ZKk6aZ4kgg-2uHOJDk/s320/DSCF0055.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div>From where the boat docks it is a 5 or 6 KM taxi ride into <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Changuinola</span> through a huge banana plantation. That is really interesting also. There is what must be hundreds of miles of overhead cable winding throughout the bananas that the stock’s of bananas are hung on and carried into the processing buildings. I hope to get a tour there some day. We did a little shopping had lunch and came back the same way. I was back on my boat by 3 PM.<br /><br />May, 29, 2006<br />I was up at the marina restaurant last night and overheard a new face say he had just sailed in on a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Dufor</span>. I mentioned that I used to sail on a friends <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Dufor</span> in Key West. He said is that him over there. I looked over my shoulder and said is that Norman!! It sure was. Norman was my landlord for 6 or 7 years in Key West. He like many others took his boat out of hurricane country and he is looking to relocate here also. It was really neat seeing him again after 20 years. I have also been in e-mail contact with his wife Elaine.<br /><br />June 1, 2006<br />I bought some really small fish hooks yesterday to catch some live bait with. This morning I dropped a hand line over next to the boat. Had a hard hit and had a good sized snapper on. Just as I was lifting it out of the water a 3’ barracuda shot out from under the dock and took him away.<br /><br />Saturday, June 03, 2006<br />Well a boat from Galveston came in today and one of the guys is flying back home. He gave me an ice chest and a 12 pack of Shiner Bock!!!! I will take some of it to tomorrow’s cruisers pot-luck along with a pot of pinto beans. I will not pouring any into the beans, as I sometimes do!<br /><br />Sunday, June 04, 2006<br />One of the other residents here Billy <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Aljoe</span>, is a diver from South Padre Island. He has been here nine years, is one of the marina owners and built most of it. He has made over 20,000 dives, has done salvage jobs where he wrapped <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">det</span> cord around the shaft of larges ships and blown the props off, or used explosives on the end of giant ten foot wrenches just to turn them. He is also the man that found the 1554 treasure ship <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">Espiritu</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Santo</span> off the Texas coast, whose cargo is now in the Museum of Natural History in Corpus Christ. He knows where some more Spanish wrecks are down this way although he won’t even say what country they are in. He is going to work them later this year. His boat is a large old motor-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">sailer</span> that holds 1000 gallons of fuel.<br /><br />Monday, June 05, 2006<br />I received word from my attorney that my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">Pensianado</span> has been approved so I am an official permanent resident of Panama now. Or I will be after I fly back over to Panama City and get my card. I was hoping I could have Chip pick it up the next time he went but it has to be done in person.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZlY1tH8B8U_kcYz7UYTKJ2BH-ihzN51NMJV4deDPRn-0RPoktbMGjSrF2dg6s3vOvisTsLzR-t6jc8UGMq1uY2oF-dwIV8n8Iz1UgOPLu0F0GN1_qT9x_ilQLbgQ2cS9WBGolKnQTVWE/s1600-h/Blue+River+004.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043773231765526242" style="" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZlY1tH8B8U_kcYz7UYTKJ2BH-ihzN51NMJV4deDPRn-0RPoktbMGjSrF2dg6s3vOvisTsLzR-t6jc8UGMq1uY2oF-dwIV8n8Iz1UgOPLu0F0GN1_qT9x_ilQLbgQ2cS9WBGolKnQTVWE/s320/Blue+River+004.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />One of the largest <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">cayuca</span> I have ever seen came in today with a load of lumber. The dugout canoe was about 45 to 50’ long and very deep. It was carrying 10,000 board feet of hardwood. The guy in charge said it was for Chip and there are 30,000 more feet still to be delivered. (for some of you Texan’s, Chip started the Leon Springs <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">Café</span> back in the eighties and turned it over to his brother Jud when he came down here to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">Bocas</span> in 92. He has been selling land and done really well. He owns the marina land and 42 acres around it and a lot more. We have many mutual friends including <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">Baermann</span> and the late John <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">Witherspoon</span> and Howard <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">Huntzinger</span>. "<a href="http://www.islandreality.com/">http://www.islandreality.com/</a>" <a href="http://www.bocasdeltoro.net/">http://www.bocasdeltoro.net/</a> )<br /><br />Saturday, June 17, 2006<br />Boy, it has been awhile since I put anything down here. Life is good. I went over to Panama City and picked up my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">Pensianado</span> card so now I am officially a permanent resident of Panama. It also comes with many discounts on restaurants, medical, entertainment; you name it including 25% off on all domestic and international airfare.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div>A couple of days ago I met a young blond lady named Blue that lives in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">Rotan</span>, Honduras and we spent the afternoon drinking beer. We then came over here to the Marina Restaurant for dinner. Some strong storm’s moved in and we decided it would not be prudent to attempt to get her back across the lagoon in my dinghy so she stayed aboard the boat as my first ever guest. I made up the forward cabin for her and it was nice to have some company. The next day we took the water taxi ride to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">Changuinola</span> and had lunch there and came back. She has sent me some of her journals and some are great. She has an import business from Central and South America and has had some interesting experiences. It is such a great boat ride I look forward to taking someone else on it soon.<br /><br />Thursday, June 29, 2006<br />Well once again somewhat remiss in keeping the journal up. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">Siempre</span> manana in paradise. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45">Coquina</span> seemed to be more affected by the heat lately so I dug my air conditioner out and hooked it up for use on the hottest days and she seems happy with that. We hiked back up to the old German cemetery behind the marina and took some photos but could not read the tombstone inscriptions (1886, 1901) in the photos. Took another river ride to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46">Changuinola</span> for lunch and bought a good blender. (not like my old one, someone will have to carry my two and a half horse power Vita-Mix in their suitcase when they come to visit!!) I am getting low on Chernobyl and need to get some pepper sauce going. Lilli who owns Lilli’s Caribbean <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_47">Café</span> and produces the “<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_48">Killin</span> Me Man” pepper sauce is going to give me her source for bottles and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_49">habanero</span>’s. I guess it will be “<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_50">Bocas</span> Chernobyl” instead of “Texas Chernobyl.”</div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzN3nlKKuQar7aeOwfORo4EdqVsTleGrW9oOvoyoB4LMWZ0tz0LwFLqYtz6gsFcTuL0Xpg78Da5NdqWKX5zS3fzCq6jpL4cYs9nnFEqeI0pkg7LVwYmFKvVbHGHwbEmdfE9_hvO9DaEMc/s1600-h/Bocas+Chernobyl+Label.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043767918890981042" style="" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzN3nlKKuQar7aeOwfORo4EdqVsTleGrW9oOvoyoB4LMWZ0tz0LwFLqYtz6gsFcTuL0Xpg78Da5NdqWKX5zS3fzCq6jpL4cYs9nnFEqeI0pkg7LVwYmFKvVbHGHwbEmdfE9_hvO9DaEMc/s320/Bocas+Chernobyl+Label.jpg" border="0" /></a> Anyway on this trip through the banana plantation we had a new experience. Every so often along the road there are some spindly steel structures that I had given little thought to. Peeling yellow paint and rust they looked like some long abandoned mechanisms. Wrong, on this last trip two of these structures had been swung out to meet each other over the road and they c<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlPcnUhgh-1dRT8-wFejBxNYVVI2zGiiw3hXX4LWt7zb3LVS2LVZJ4ofWSzUarViirH0UBJA3pQQEe8MiznnHDzZwwDVEkLunLdYMuY699ilKTzsdnSZAXI2lknHp3NvEoAdjagYr-n6w/s1600-h/DSC01296.JPG"></a><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_51">onnected</span> the overhead banana <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_52">skyway</span> cables. Our taxi was the first in line as traffic <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_53">bac</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPky5GkUbvxuOA5lnGMIP8yn-rPYB4ulCniDjCcopultAvzQiFtgx41iXTivy7Kph7SfUOOCf_we9GRN6Nt6zvAr6FE1juh01HlZDy4PBIZGrOsplv3K0fNHL7ZIneebU99LNjW76tlp8/s1600-h/DSC01296.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5044108596773100482" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPky5GkUbvxuOA5lnGMIP8yn-rPYB4ulCniDjCcopultAvzQiFtgx41iXTivy7Kph7SfUOOCf_we9GRN6Nt6zvAr6FE1juh01HlZDy4PBIZGrOsplv3K0fNHL7ZIneebU99LNjW76tlp8/s320/DSC01296.JPG" border="0" /></a><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_54">ked</span> up and we watched these stocks of banana’s slowly move along on their stately ride from field to processing. We got out took some photos and I made the comment that like the Caribou in Alaska it seems that in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_55">Changuinola</span>, banana’s have the right of way. With horns blowing behind us our driver jumped out unhooked the train and pushed the banana’s back out of the way and we speed past. I looked back and only 3 cars got through before banana people ran out of the grove and reconnected the cable.<br /><br />We had a hell of a storm a couple of nights ago, I had about fifty gallons of water in my dinghy and there were two lightning strikes that everyone the next day said they thought someone in the marina must have been hit, but no one seems to have got it unless it was an unoccupied boat? The marina is just about full up. The first time ever, last year’s hurricane season sent a lot of boats down this way. And I have been the recipient of a lot of good from that. Some big boats cleaning out their freezers before the owners fly home have been great. Our Sunday pot-lucks (they were changed to Sunday soon after I arrived) have benefited. The week before last I grilled 8 or 9 swordfish steaks and last week I pan seared southwestern style 5# of jumbo shrimp tails. This week I will be doing something with pork chops. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_56">Coquina</span> and I did in the rib-eyes ourselves.<br /><br />The marina has a couple of Indian grounds keepers / handy men. (the grounds look like a park with flowers of many descriptions in profusion) One paddles over and back from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_57">Isla</span> San Cristobal, about three of four miles each way, everyday in a small <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_58">cayuca</span> with about 3” of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_59">freeboard</span>, in any weather. This morning we had about as hard a rain as I have ever seen, here comes Louie, just a dark shadow moving out of the down pour, no rain gear either. And there are many water taxi’s screaming up and down that same stretch of water. He comes up to the restaurant and is just all smiles and grins, he is 56 years old. I had been watching Wimbledon on TV but the rain took the satellite signal away completely.<br /><br /><br /><div></div><br /><div>Saturday, July 01, 2006<br />A few days ago a new boat arrived with an attractive lady sailing single-handed. We visited up at the restaurant and decided we each wanted to visit the Smithsonian lab here in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_60">Bocas</span>, so yesterday we did. An interesting field trip, they only let the public in on Friday’s from 3 to 5. Not exactly a tourist attraction. My companion, Pam, I also found out is a dentist. I mentioned that I had broken what I think is a porcelain crown and she said come by the boat, she had her mirror. After the Smithsonian we had a couple of beers at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_61">Boca</span> Bills and then went to El Refugio for dinner. Sesame crusted Tuna and a nice bottle of Chardonnay really topped off the day. Pam needs a small air-conditioner to leave in the boat to guard against humidity while she is in the states for a couple of months so we may take that river ride to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_62">Changuinola</span> once again.<br /><br />Monday, July 03, 2006 Sunday’s pot-luck went well, I did a big pot of pasta and it came out just fine. There was not a noodle left. Our river ride got rained out. On the rain days they run the water taxis with canvas storm curtains and that is not the view we go for. So I cleaned the boat, Pam is coming over tonight as my first ever dinner guest.<br /><br />Tuesday, July 04, 2006<br />Dinner was a great success, I did some more pasta to go with the sauce left over from Sunday and pork chops. I did it all on my little outside gas grill so as not to heat up the boat. Even with my little air conditioner blowing into the galley it cannot handle the extra load of cooking. After dinner I showed Pam some of the DVD I have of the next governor of Texas, Kinky Friedman, whom she had never heard of and she got a big kick out of that. There is a 4<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_63">th</span> of July party scheduled today over at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_64">Playa</span> Mango, but it is looking pretty rainy. I hope it does clear later, my buddy Ray Jason is on tap to do his juggling act with bowling balls, torches and machetes. </div><br /><br /><div>It did clear and I went, I saw, and I believe. I have some still photos but one of my neighbors used his still camera to take some video, and it really came out great. He will put it on disk and get it to me. My camera should take video also, I will try to figure it out. We took a water taxi over to Playa Mango, it is on our same island but still quit a trip. Not so much in miles but we were running today in a 3 to 4 foot swell. Not anything to worry about but the trip back might be exciting as there is some weather around. Well anyway, after a $10 buffet of really over cooked chicken and dried out hamburgers. Ray then got up and did his thing. It was worth the whole trip. He only performed for about ten minutes but it was wonderful. He started out with flaming torches, went on to a thing for kids with softballs, then on to a routine with a hatchet, a machete, and a cycle. His finishing act was the bowling balls. Really, real bowling balls, twelve ponders, he doesn’t do it for long but it is pretty amazing. Hell it is really amazing!!<br /></div><br /><div>After the bad food (the only bad food I have experienced down here) and Ray’s great performance some of us were ready to come back to town including Ray. Lee and Nadia off the big trawler across the dock from me, arranged to get a van to come out. Coming out to Playa Mango by road is also an adventure. It is full of pot holes and on the bridge there are holes big enough that a large person could fall through!! And with the rain we have been having many cars would not make it. It is a sea of mud and mini lakes.<br /><br />Anyway the van came, we got in, and the fireworks started. We soon realized the driver was watching the fire works, so most of us had the sense to get back out and watch also. A couple of the rockets went off it seemed at ground level, but whoever was out there doing it continued doing so. Not a big show, but those near ground explosions gave it some excitement that more sophisticated shows don’t have. The van we were in was much smaller than any I have seen in the states, but there were sixteen people squeezed into it. And the rains came along with some real fireworks, much thunder and lightning. I was glad we took the colectivo as I am sure the water taxi ride back was more exciting and wetter than need be. I will find out from some of the other marina residents how that went. The van got a flat tire just as we were coming into town and the driver swung in under a handy covered parking area. He stacked up pieces of wood and drove up on it, and then just used the jack to hold up the van to change the tire. We stopped at Boca Bill’s for a nightcap and then hired a water taxi to get back to the marina.<br /><br />Thursday, July 06, 2006<br />Just a nice easy fair weather day. Took the dinghy into town had a couple of beers at Boca Bills and walked down to the Reef for a late lunch. The Reef has just reopened after a major renovation and it is sure nice. It is a waterfront place and they took out a wall and really opened it up to the water. It also sets out on a little point and catches all the breezes. A platter of fish fingers and a green salad for $3.50 and a beer for 75 cents. My house wine on the boat is Concha Y Toro Merlot at $2.50 a liter.<br /><br />I was talking to a lady off a Cal 39 over on the next dock and she said that Coquina had been really unhappy with me earlier. What happened was we had been up at the restaurant and <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggQGdD7gGWQdri4qTOhqJmKxO7PGNMobNa4o2zc6Kyb4FYVjmwsOpO5YZj932t4ieRKWKevn11fbqjIgWJuH0n_E-JbuhyphenhyphenwSlW15c-S-K3g2uV3uMTZnvQz_r-tI16y7VZ23Mery89cDs/s1600-h/Bocas+Dec+06+050.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5044007012206615346" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggQGdD7gGWQdri4qTOhqJmKxO7PGNMobNa4o2zc6Kyb4FYVjmwsOpO5YZj932t4ieRKWKevn11fbqjIgWJuH0n_E-JbuhyphenhyphenwSlW15c-S-K3g2uV3uMTZnvQz_r-tI16y7VZ23Mery89cDs/s320/Bocas+Dec+06+050.jpg" border="0" /></a>Coquina must have lost track of me when I went into the marina office. Anca the lady in the office started showing me a bunch of aerial photos her husband Jeff and just taken of the marina and Bocas. I completely forgot that Coquina was off the boat. Anyway the gal from the other dock said that Coquina was back at my boat and when she didn’t find me she started howling and raising hell. I didn’t hear any of it but when I came walking back down the dock and she saw me she came running and jumping and acting like a happy puppy once again, instead of the twelve and half year old lady that she is.(86 in people years) It was nice.<br /><br />One thing I have been remiss in mentioning is my wonderful population of Geckos. I have a healthy breeding population of all sizes. I have to watch when I move most anything as there is likely a Gecko close by. They seem to be our only guests, no ants or cockroaches so far. The Geckos seem to be doing a great job.<br /><br />Tuesday, July 18, 2006<br />The other night during my writing time something happened and poof three or four nights of writing just went away. It has taken me a while to even sit back down at the keyboard. I am still trying to figure out what happened but it is nowhere to be found. (Save)<br />With my current short term memory it is somewhat of a problem to recall!<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div>Panama, Fall 06 Winter 07<br />Thanksgiving, I haven’t taken care of my journal in a few months. It has been a good few months, have seen some nice places, Green Acres, the cacao farm where the ocelot lived that I sent photos out to some of you was a neat trip. Dave and Linda bought 25 waterfront acres on the mainland, on Dolphin Bay 12 years ago for $12,000 that are just wonderful, lots of elevation and a running stream. They have built a great two story stone house from stone on site. Dave’s chocolate production is not massive but really something to see. All hand made equipment and solar powered. The finished product looks professionally made but it is cast in half sections of two inch PVC pipe. </div></div><br /><br /><br /><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043784020723373826" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiWMydWNUiyau53ZmTKCTZSQMI29qclSxmAVTsA2ZvqYZMMTLzvfqTD2fAfpG_OFiE7of_gra_Nie-PUVkbyCWl5dq-zO6kFjApTlA12a0rvcFI7H2LILQ35HunvFh8MwaDT4JNi_ezx8/s320/Green+Acres+017.jpg" border="0" />Back in July, about the 25th when I quit writing in my journal I also quit drinking alcohol and started a walking regimen. I also watched what I ate. By October 25th I had lost 80 pounds!!! I get up and start my walk about 0430, and walk for 2 hours, about 8 miles around the marina docks. I sure feel a lot better!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had given myself until the first of the year to loose the 80 pounds but did it with 2 months to spare. So I have put a little vino back on the menu. I also want to take off another 10 pounds. That would be my weight in the Navy over 40 years ago.<br />Have been getting the boat out for day sail’s, I have found some young guys off nearby boats that are up for a sail and my friend Pam the gal that sails single handed has just got back from the States and has offered to give me some help also. I still do not have anyone that will go out for a week or two and I just do not have the knowledge yet to go by myself. I have lots o<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFpiNP5rEQwSx_ifMgekTneur_F3SVwrHFLaSTRtX7IBE6SW3JsZ9mAxSf2rK404EIZp3FFQxq3z89ZS-S_vJm5Yp7JyibvSZm8pHVGJd0Y9BkyyvH5EpyUPMeBlF3eOS7y565r-rc9Ss/s1600-h/sea+story+photos+10.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043790377274971954" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFpiNP5rEQwSx_ifMgekTneur_F3SVwrHFLaSTRtX7IBE6SW3JsZ9mAxSf2rK404EIZp3FFQxq3z89ZS-S_vJm5Yp7JyibvSZm8pHVGJd0Y9BkyyvH5EpyUPMeBlF3eOS7y565r-rc9Ss/s320/sea+story+photos+10.jpg" border="0" /></a>f se<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7sX4Psadb7xhUUQwncQEgowGbqkj_R8hMZFOKE1BtR8UIeREqjVooc5mpUICctzsHY_qEEh_I9aeFy7lmdB3W9ezpRuQavJnNNLDQBXupX8ecBCiScx0HRBQVSlZ_JudLE59wWPmWBKE/s1600-h/Sea+KW+Cuda.jpg"></a>a time just not much sail time. Not many sail boaters can say they have been through 5 hurricanes at sea and the many 100 MPH plus storms in Alaska that do not even rate names.<br /><br />Thanksgiving was great here at the marina, the restaurant did 3 turkeys and a ham, the rest was pot-luck. I did Mom’s turkey dressing and giblet gravy. We had about 50 people show up, had plenty of food and most of it got taken care of. I figured I would have gained 5 pounds, but the next morning there was no change? I have added sit-ups and push-ups to my morning program, if I can have my wine and still not gain weight it w<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBJHc_yusxDnoCVRtOEzN6I3a_euW4mz7g_KkwwyeBzCV0GaUJ5KFeyrikFhghyF5BTYEShvVBxURAjhBT3ff3uSMXlalMrq8Gzg0fpsV9rLKtwCM66df0HydyZl8kbRFsmKzQCQSUxC8/s1600-h/Thanksgiving+Photo+06.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5045304790339436658" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBJHc_yusxDnoCVRtOEzN6I3a_euW4mz7g_KkwwyeBzCV0GaUJ5KFeyrikFhghyF5BTYEShvVBxURAjhBT3ff3uSMXlalMrq8Gzg0fpsV9rLKtwCM66df0HydyZl8kbRFsmKzQCQSUxC8/s320/Thanksgiving+Photo+06.JPG" border="0" /></a>ill be paradise. Still the old hippy.<br /><br />My friend Chip was back in Texas last month and I got him together with my son Billy and got him to bring me a suitcase full of clothing and goodies I have been buying on line. New Croc shoes and clothes that fit. I had ordered some handmade Hawaiian shirts to my new size back when I was still wearing 2XL as an added incentive. They fit great!<br /><br />November 29, 2006<br />A cruise ship here in the anchorage this morning, is it the death Nell of Bocas? Maybe not, Billy says one comes in every six months or so. It still worries me, I can see all those T-shirt shops on every corner and down the block in Key West and it is scary. The big bad development here is Red Frog Beach over on Bastimentos Island, where the have reportedly sold 200 mil worth of property. Last week we had a norther blow through and last for a week. The marina owners who have been here 14 years do not remember a norther ever having made it down here before. Anyway, some neighbors that were over to Red Frog this weekend said the million dollar beach is no more. The storm carved it away right up to the bar where the coco palms were falling into the surf. Didn’t need no F------ golf course here anyhow although I doubt a little storm will stop<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5cifM8N_p4bJSSB1BBRyE4bEAsvcP-hjcHrG5sdnhPNLcRI-qyCwKA28coKP7BW2TYZFkgm_Vb_BglhJwr0RMyOW_lQYcbCckwoDXIJmftc_jaHRQh09SCV0BJuk8fZ-H7YjgjiXWFQ8/s1600-h/Sea+Feather+sails+006.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043793058410765042" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5cifM8N_p4bJSSB1BBRyE4bEAsvcP-hjcHrG5sdnhPNLcRI-qyCwKA28coKP7BW2TYZFkgm_Vb_BglhJwr0RMyOW_lQYcbCckwoDXIJmftc_jaHRQh09SCV0BJuk8fZ-H7YjgjiXWFQ8/s320/Sea+Feather+sails+006.jpg" border="0" /></a> it.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div>January 31, 2007 Been awhile since I felt like writing, I may go back and fill in some spaces, but what brings me back now is my first real single-handed adventure on Sea Feather. I did make the one trip with Deborah who has not sailed before but she was still a big help. Today I took off with Coquina who I love very much but is of no help. We got away from the dock about 1 PM. Once I got headed to the southeast I picked up some wind and got the jib up and then the main. My plan, such as it was, was to head down towards Dolphin Bay. And then try to figure out the route into there. Just as I got down to the interesting part it seems my electronic chart in my chart plotter ends there. So, I turned and headed back into charted territory. Anyway by then it was getting late so I decided to head back up here to Starfish Beach as I would be anchoring after dark and felt comfortable with that. Last time I was here the jungle was restless, with the Howler Monkeys and who knows what else making a real racket. Tonight all is quiet?<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPJAFycm2uCOI5IfTUcJGS6hugkzy5TbU6sXmo_2uv85xbNYD8drphhj0wMAmuOed2No2JdAUJnqoF4anUlgqAEJXknM4KWax4zCgO5OYi7z4EWzRgBXB4V5vDJSrB7uCub-_lmf5F814/s1600-h/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+001.jpg"></a><br />I anchored a little farther out this time as I had some no-see-um problems last time. Anyway we had a little weather and my anchor seemed to be dragging some. I fired up the engine and started picking up the anchor and moving back out into better water. I had to reset the anchor twice, I am out there stark naked except for my ball cap and it is really raining. It was a down pour, with clothes on you would soon be chilled to the bone, but these warm rains are nice. Anyway it was a good adventure, running back and forth from the anchor windless to the cockpit letting out chain, backing the engine, I was having a really good time. It has been a while since my actions were really important to life and limb, I mean it wasn‘t like a hurricane or anything but I really loved it. Well midnight now and the anchor seems to be holding just fine, I guess I will get an hour or two sleep before I check it again.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPJAFycm2uCOI5IfTUcJGS6hugkzy5TbU6sXmo_2uv85xbNYD8drphhj0wMAmuOed2No2JdAUJnqoF4anUlgqAEJXknM4KWax4zCgO5OYi7z4EWzRgBXB4V5vDJSrB7uCub-_lmf5F814/s1600-h/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+001.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043636900913616466" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPJAFycm2uCOI5IfTUcJGS6hugkzy5TbU6sXmo_2uv85xbNYD8drphhj0wMAmuOed2No2JdAUJnqoF4anUlgqAEJXknM4KWax4zCgO5OYi7z4EWzRgBXB4V5vDJSrB7uCub-_lmf5F814/s320/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+001.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />February 1, 2007<br />Still at Starfish, no wind today so why leave, I may stay through the weekend. Having this beach to walk and take Coquina on is a real plus. This is a really fine anchorage. I can’t believe it is not used more although it is said that there are likely a 1000 great anchorages in the archipelago and none of us will see them all. Full Moon, no clouds, no wind, not a light on the horizon, not a sound to be heard that doesn’t come from the jungle and it is quiet again tonight. </div><br /><br /><br /><div><br />I pan seared a 2” thick tuna steak tonight, sorry to say I did notcatch it, but it came out great, I had wasabi and pickled ginger in the fridge. I did run over to the restaurant at Drago tonight (I went over for lunch also) to see if there might be an early social scene, but it was not happening on my time schedule.( before 7.) So coming home and seeing Sea Feather ridding on the hook in this magnificent setting it just came out of me, “Fu--, Osborne you did it.” And so I have, I never thought I would ever be able to retire, I discovered Panama and just did it, and my lifelong dream, a sailboat!!! And this week I am a single handed sailor! Yahoo!!!<br /><br />Well I started having trouble charging the batteries so I came back to Bocas Marina, I really wanted to stay out for a week or so. The electrician is here on the boat now and it looks like I will be needing a voltage regulator and an alternator. It may take a few days to get parts from out of town. I will be ready to go out as soon as I am running again. I hope to have a GPS receiver for my lap-top brought down from the States this week also and then there won’t be anywhere that is off the chart. I have most of the world charts on here and just need the GPS to show my position on them.<br /><br />I hope to get out of here next week, the electrician is going to try and get back with my parts on Sunday. My boat slip is the last inside slip at the end of the dock with only the end outside dock beyond me. I have a great view and good breezes. Next Tuesday a 165’ boat with a helicopter on board is scheduled to tie up at the outside dock. There goes my view and with a 30’ beam I would not want to try to get in and out with it there. If I can get running I will go out and stay for the two weeks the boat is scheduled to be here.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div>My continued Single Handed Experience. Hell, I always thought single-handed had something to do with masturbation. As an old Merchant Marine Chief Engineer and art dealer, what did I know about sail boating? Not a lot, I had done some sailing 25 years ago as a crew and that is somewhat different. Anyway I did the trip to Starfish Beach that I mentioned before, and this trip started out much the same. It is really a neat place, a great place to get Coquina ashore. There are not a whole lot of beaches near here, many mangroves. I went back up there on Monday Feb. 5th. The same wonderful anchorage, and as the sun is setting I am hearing a lot of bird sounds that seem to be real close by. I put away my book to investigate and it turns out to be from pairs of parrots all flying in the same direction, only in pairs and at a high altitude. They must be real loud up close and they do not seem to shut up, the chirping or whatever it is never stops. It went on I guess until dark then the Howler Monkeys took over. In the morning the parrots were headed back the other direction.(the mainland)<br /><br />There is an Indian family camped on the beach, a young guy and it looks like wife and daughter, he walked up when Coquina and I were walking & swimming but with my lack of Spanish we did not exchange much info. He asked if I was alone, which I am sure he found to be amazing, they seem to have worked out the partnership thing better than a lot of us. I have also had a pair of what I would guess to be Purple Martins make my boat their hangout while I am here; they stayed with me the last time also. (The Martins turned out to be Mangrove Swollows.)<br /><br />After 2 nights at Starfish and I sailed back through Bocas and went outside for my first single-handed experience outside the inland waters. It wasn’t a big deal, just a trip down to the Zapatilla Keys which only took a few hours but it really felt good to be back out in the ocean and feel the swells from the sea under me. The swells were about 10’ and spaced a good ways apart. It reminded me of the Pacific. I had all my sails up for a while but lost the wind and had to motor in. I am now anchored at Zapatilla Sur and what a beautiful spot. Nicer water than even Starfish, the island seems to be solid Coco Palms, a white sand beach all around. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWhSBBu6bUmjJFxE1uX5cmWawZB2Z0gEVCRzwhGlZAR69Kc89UhVcpBhvjfK8s9XvrcfEXbzXTGWM0quv1psr_e4kvUqMMFLlrQ-Mj8anylZNAOIngUb1jKbmgEduEwDRslhZ5UtaMd_w/s1600-h/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+015.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043762949613819522" style="" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWhSBBu6bUmjJFxE1uX5cmWawZB2Z0gEVCRzwhGlZAR69Kc89UhVcpBhvjfK8s9XvrcfEXbzXTGWM0quv1psr_e4kvUqMMFLlrQ-Mj8anylZNAOIngUb1jKbmgEduEwDRslhZ5UtaMd_w/s320/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+015.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />The Zapatilla Sur anchorage was a little more active than I had hoped for. Not too bad but I did not get the lee from the island I had expected, just not a big enough island. So this morning I picked up the hook and motored off. Had not a clue of where I was going, but as I got out to deep water and looked at my chart, Bluefields beckoned. It looks a lot closer from Zapatilla to Bluefields than it does looking back to Zapatilla. It is the elevation; Bluefields has it and Zapatilla does not. So I got to Bluefields about noon, motored around a bit past a small village and found an anchorage. Bluefields is the lagoon of the remote Valiente Peninsula on the mainland and something special, a deep lagoon in more ways than one. It is 4 or 5 miles deep and has water depths of 50’ to 70’ most of its length. The peninsula is shaped like a crab claw with the lagoon between the pincers, much like Haiti. My first choice of anchorage turned out to be a little too exposed to the entrance and as I was pushed into water with only 2’ under my keel I decided to move further on inside. Even though I was then being entertained by 3 pretty young Indian girls in a cayuca, the one with mature breasts was asking me where my esposa was and how old I was. Dream on!<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqIMkItpCXwW0PxzXBZ-cwZRLJ0hi9zGdRuUq9fJnr1SuJASIBQdY6nM61aIYGyuYg-qOhFLQh7iW5zyTMEn3zylJsthPqB9BNfI4NUPCtM8eOF3TKhRg7dGYUkbGRh9VWEQk1kllVjMo/s1600-h/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+019.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043760578791872098" style="" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqIMkItpCXwW0PxzXBZ-cwZRLJ0hi9zGdRuUq9fJnr1SuJASIBQdY6nM61aIYGyuYg-qOhFLQh7iW5zyTMEn3zylJsthPqB9BNfI4NUPCtM8eOF3TKhRg7dGYUkbGRh9VWEQk1kllVjMo/s320/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+019.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />The new anchorage is a delight, deep water, no wind but nice breezes and the required jungle backdrop. I have to get a jungle person to spend a night out here and tell me what I am hearing. I have no idea, birds or mammals except for those Howler Monkeys; they were so named for a reason. I had an old Indian come by the new anchorage tonight. They have their own idea of time or maybe no idea of time. They will come by, stop and hold off your boat and just smile at you and look at the boat for a half hour or more. Tonight’s guy was late 70’s at least, spoke English, said some people on boats paid him to take trash to the dump. When I understood what he was saying I said that sounded good and gave him a small bag I had ready to go. He was also complaining about needing glasses so I gave him a pair of reading glasses I got up at Changuinola for $1.50. We should all buy an assortment and find out who can pass them out. Can you imagine not being able to see simply because you do not have glasses! They are selling them for $1.50 a pair retail! I will check on doing something about that when I get back to Bocas.<br />Then this evening a young Indian in a cayuca came by and just sat out there and after a while we finely talked a bit and he gave me info about stores, restaurants, hotels in Bluefields. I gave him a $. There are many more people living here than I expected. But from everything I have seen from the boat is spotless, the place seems to be well kept. I will get ashore and walk around some tomorrow. The young guy that came by today was proud of limpiar has far as I could understand. Limpiar means clean.) I guess maybe I will put the sail covers on and stay awhile, this place sure seems to be nice. NO INSECTS!! It is a nice change from marina life. I put together a nice paella tonight, calamari, mussels, 2 kinds of clams, all canned but still a tasty dish.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdhqzSBFmpW7M6UNAI2Cniaug7nhVfjxbH5CgsDFkJUlw6wnaQmW9nZOqcjuTvzWfhTl0nawS_JVbrIbhviLe1I5fAsqFCxJdDpuOflYKZUNWnak-UAw2WcDEIZw0nMOv69VLC38LOusA/s1600-h/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+025.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043764083485185682" style="" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdhqzSBFmpW7M6UNAI2Cniaug7nhVfjxbH5CgsDFkJUlw6wnaQmW9nZOqcjuTvzWfhTl0nawS_JVbrIbhviLe1I5fAsqFCxJdDpuOflYKZUNWnak-UAw2WcDEIZw0nMOv69VLC38LOusA/s320/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+025.jpg" border="0" /></a> Friday, 9 February 2007<br />I took the dinghy for a shoreline tour of the end of the lagoon this morning. It sure is beautiful but I did not spot anything that looked like a store or a hotel. I did stop by the one other sailboat anchored here. The couple on her knew my boat as they had cruised with the previous owners. I took Coquina ashore to do her thing and found a small island just a few hundred yards from the boat that had a nice landing spot for the dinghy and some flat land for Coquina. It is amazing to me after every place else I have been down here but we were in the mangroves, and no mosquitoes or no-see-ums or as at Zapatilla Sur, biting fly’s. Hell, it can’t all be perfect but Bluefields is coming close.<br /><br />Billy the diver from the marina has been telling me of a phenomenal underwater show here at Bluefields. It did not happen last night so I will look for it again tonight. He says it starts out as a small light, and then just grows until it looks like a wave of light moving across the lagoon and you are supposed to be able to trigger it with a strong light shined into the water. Last night when I put the light on I did see some very unusual lighted fish? But no light show. Well I will get my 1,000,000 candle light out and give it another go. (Still no show?)<br />I finished my last beer today and my last wine. Well I only left port with a six pack and a couple of bottles of wine and this is day 5.<br /><br />Saturday<br />After taking Coquina ashore I decided to start heading back towards Bocas. The electrician has parts on order for my cruising generator and although my engine alternator is charging the batteries, I am forced to run the engine a lot more to keep them up, as I am doing at this moment. I will need to run it again in about 5 hours if I charge for an hour or so. So I headed on back over to Zapatilla Keys. As I was leaving the entrance to Bluefields, Daniel from the marina was coming in with a charter. Tonight I am anchored near where I was a few nights ago <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik45TrVepn0tjrPbNc4s7DTULUtvsQrmX6YNTHcbwiAZxfHY8ZVQ0Zpl84C9jACv85EU70ObuahES-J9aLXmf7qULzlVgOF6EmxN5wqGN8Tn14u4b5iB1A5skMZl66lSta9wxwMGMqWlo/s1600-h/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+016.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5044112934690069458" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik45TrVepn0tjrPbNc4s7DTULUtvsQrmX6YNTHcbwiAZxfHY8ZVQ0Zpl84C9jACv85EU70ObuahES-J9aLXmf7qULzlVgOF6EmxN5wqGN8Tn14u4b5iB1A5skMZl66lSta9wxwMGMqWlo/s320/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+016.jpg" border="0" /></a>although I stayed out in deeper water. It is not a very protected spot so I am hoping the weather stays tranquil. Right now there is not a cloud in the sky and no lights for many miles. The heavens are magnificent. I will probably do a little snorkeling after I take Coquina ashore in the morning and then head for Bocas and plan on getting in sometime in the afternoon. I plan on a few days to repair, refuel, re-supply, email and then doing this again very soon.<br /><br />Sunday<br />It was a tranquil night and we got headed back to Bocas under clear skies. It was another nice passage; we had enough wind to keep the sails full but still had to use a little engine power to make any time on our required heading. I caught a Cero Mackerel, lost a Dorado, and saw a huge Leatherback turtle. Arriving on Sunday there was not many people around so I landed the boat without any line handlers. I set up my bow and stern lines and ran them back to amidships on each side of my boarding ladder. My plan was to come to a complete stop and let the wind carry me to the dock. It wasn’t perfect. The wind was a little stronger than I accounted for and took me to the dock before we had come to a complete stop. Anyway when we got to the dock I jumped off with a line in each hand, Jeff a neighbor saw what I was attempting and ran up and took the stern line. It all went pretty well but Sea Feather has some new scratches from sliding along the dock for about four feet. I will work on them with some wax in the morning and see what I can do. And so another landing we walked away from and that is it until next time. </div><br /><div><br /><br /><div>Saturday, February, 22, 2007<br />I had been asking Jairo (pronounced Irow) a young local guy who works here at the marina and who’s father had been bring wonderful produce here once a week in his cayuca, where was His father? No fruit for a couple of weeks. He said he was working at something else and I said, “well where am I going to get those stocks of little bananas that I like so well. “Well he said "I guess you just have to take your boat over to his finca." I said OK, how about Sunday, and the following came about. (A stock of bananas is about $2, a trip over and back in my boat an all day affair.) It was more about the trip than the produce.<br /><br />Sunday:<br />What a nice day!! Jairo arrived at the marina about 0830 with wife and 18 month old daughter in tow and we cast off. Dead calm, did not even get the sail covers off, so not the best start, but it was really a beautiful day. We motored over to his father’s finca on the mainland east of Shepard Island and anch<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp1RfSVBxDkLJ6Ij4i6hXdH10UCzxFUyiwsDfZ0wzKaFWXaR41Cs0VGLrf9SDjY1i5JHk2ppygR6Tq3U8HReOd4OFLIHWT0vyrBGVwDmhPuxe0ZB_jMUbvRdk8JUYJTquQv9phltVPnE4/s1600-h/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+030.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043794583124155138" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp1RfSVBxDkLJ6Ij4i6hXdH10UCzxFUyiwsDfZ0wzKaFWXaR41Cs0VGLrf9SDjY1i5JHk2ppygR6Tq3U8HReOd4OFLIHWT0vyrBGVwDmhPuxe0ZB_jMUbvRdk8JUYJTquQv9phltVPnE4/s320/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+030.jpg" border="0" /></a>ored at the head of the bay. We then took the dinghy up a small river to Ricardo’s (his dad) place. What a beautiful spot, he has 200 acres of mountains and valleys. It was a short ride through a tunnel of mangroves to the head of the river and Ricardo’s lower pasture. We walked up along the creek a couple of hundred yards and then climbed up a hundred feet or so the the house. The yard is full of chickens, guinea hens, some turkeys, 3 dogs, a baby goat and five or six more of Ricardo’s 10 kids. Ricardo is a small trim guy in great shape in his early 50’s. He bought this place 18 years ago for $14,000 and in today’s market would likely fetch a million five. Jairo went with some of his siblings up to a spring and waterfall for a swim and I went back to the boat to get Coquina. I just brought her into the lower pasture and let her run around, I am afraid to bring her up to the house with all the animals, no telling what she might do. She is not the same dog she used to be (now 13 ) but she has killed a few possums and cats in her youth. There are also lots of cattle, horses, sheep and goats running around. </div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRI_6DeiNGFgGJfOsmOZNiLWvCZSmCZpiggXekYQqNsZP6KH_-yc_iV96JG8L8imOCcEjO3_4l7kO-ygOPPlI4n1vDEhfQMHG9uvhFzqJbumymp5l1D9oB5iIO4-q9njhTgMyRc3e5JqE/s1600-h/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+042.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5045863415260790962" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; width: 252px; height: 239px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRI_6DeiNGFgGJfOsmOZNiLWvCZSmCZpiggXekYQqNsZP6KH_-yc_iV96JG8L8imOCcEjO3_4l7kO-ygOPPlI4n1vDEhfQMHG9uvhFzqJbumymp5l1D9oB5iIO4-q9njhTgMyRc3e5JqE/s320/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+042.jpg" border="0" height="267" width="320" /></a><br /><br /><div><strong><em></em></strong></div><br /><div><strong><em>Ricardo's Teak Trees</em></strong> </div><br /><br /><br /><div>After I took Coquina back to the boat and returned to Ricardo’s, his wife served us a nice lunch of Jewfish, rice and beans and 2 new to me <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiMpeiLT33rVj3N-wI0LkiumHveaugROlAR_kR4t4WeSNjA854A3R5gZr6LFpW6OCpxInHXeNfuaNHh7mrZF1vY8zP1kL5vZXF4lT_br7dk9zeE3Ew1Vo8MARqP4YMzCzklViYC38jFig/s1600-h/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+044.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5045894970385514738" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiMpeiLT33rVj3N-wI0LkiumHveaugROlAR_kR4t4WeSNjA854A3R5gZr6LFpW6OCpxInHXeNfuaNHh7mrZF1vY8zP1kL5vZXF4lT_br7dk9zeE3Ew1Vo8MARqP4YMzCzklViYC38jFig/s320/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+044.jpg" border="0" /></a>root vegetables, it was all good. They do their cooking on a wood fire about 25’ from the house. Later the whole family piled into Ricardo’s big<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIRSxkoebqcM5QhOai88AU6HqDV0WxMBbBB3QPmNDf1b1JoligK0nrTXI2GxC0XCsroCxs4hBfiomsOnfaBe-ZLOrtRcawvHs3lvuhl70fWqowStv7NeiVJBew_Yq8hh6X_MNP2RU17z8/s1600-h/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+032.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043795308973628178" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; width: 261px; height: 232px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIRSxkoebqcM5QhOai88AU6HqDV0WxMBbBB3QPmNDf1b1JoligK0nrTXI2GxC0XCsroCxs4hBfiomsOnfaBe-ZLOrtRcawvHs3lvuhl70fWqowStv7NeiVJBew_Yq8hh6X_MNP2RU17z8/s320/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+032.jpg" border="0" height="253" width="320" /></a> cayuca (a dugout canoe that could hold 30 people) and went over to some property where he is helping a Gringo develop some home sites. </div><br /><br /><br /><div></div><br /><div>It is a piece of property that I looked at when I first came to Panama in 05. It has highway access, great views and waterfront where a marina is planned. Ricardo, his wife, Jairo and 2 ten or eleven year old sons fired up chainsaws and started cutting up and burning downed trees. I walke<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPklDVU10N1XwrcCNf8_EEJe2d97jNc9rOW8LFgQF4gaZ_Lfp74pl13zNsS3a2NxeyBNsms_DlSHNJzzA2m1uuy8KNic-khdMCPZd0ihyg1lHFs50oOBJ6Q7Pa3icyn0SFpg40Wq76KwU/s1600-h/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+048.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5045864974333919426" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPklDVU10N1XwrcCNf8_EEJe2d97jNc9rOW8LFgQF4gaZ_Lfp74pl13zNsS3a2NxeyBNsms_DlSHNJzzA2m1uuy8KNic-khdMCPZd0ihyg1lHFs50oOBJ6Q7Pa3icyn0SFpg40Wq76KwU/s320/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+048.jpg" border="0" /></a>d around looking for photo ops, took a swim and picked some limes.<br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div>Monday: I took Coquina ashore, came back and made a pot of pinto beans as I had a good bunch of cilantro, went under the boat and scraped the sensor on my forward looking sonar. The electrician had helped me make some adjustment to my solar panels and they are cranking out 13/14 volts and 11/12 amps in the middle of the day. </div><br /><br /><div></div><br /><div>I do not think I have mentioned it In my journal but the cause of this whole lifestyle change was a photo of me in Key West standing in my little 16’ boat holding up a Barracuda I had just caught and was getting ready to release. It was 15 to 18 years ago and my beard was still red and I had a tight body from snorkeling everyday. Anyway I looked at that photo, printed it and stuck it on the fridge. I told my friends that, that guy was still inside this 260# obese person I had <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHQhbkV-bn36Yd_A5xTKLNjtDYYsIgRnQw9Lwfrrg7L5d69XZjYpPDkb2SVRsXR4H67Udp_-CuHaTsh9fg-x2uZSBHe9nKLZWE7DcWhlgAfHsKoZQxJZ-GY8l8cOVvYMxCCEd5ITD5xq0/s1600-h/Sea+KW+Cuda.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043787439517341458" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHQhbkV-bn36Yd_A5xTKLNjtDYYsIgRnQw9Lwfrrg7L5d69XZjYpPDkb2SVRsXR4H67Udp_-CuHaTsh9fg-x2uZSBHe9nKLZWE7DcWhlgAfHsKoZQxJZ-GY8l8cOVvYMxCCEd5ITD5xq0/s320/Sea+KW+Cuda.jpg" border="0" /></a>become and wanted out of this prison of fat. That is what brought me to Panama. I got on the Internet looking for affordable tropical places to live where I could start snorkeling again. I came looking for property and stumbled on Sea Feather. It took me about 4 months in the marina to get settled in and make my plan. When I did on July 25th I quit drinking any alcohol, started walking and cut calories to 1500 a day. I gave myself 5 months to loose 80# and then did it by October 25th. Now I am living the dream among the wonderful islands, going where the wind blows, I really have no idea of where I will anchor tomorrow night. </div><br /><div><br />Tuesday: I awoke to a dreary rainy day and thought I would just stay where I was and then along comes a sucker hole of blue sky and sunshine and I got underway. Soon thereafter the sucker hole closed and the rain came back and visibility dropped to just a few yards. I motored on using my electronic eyes and decided to head back up to familiar waters and leave exploring these new frontiers down here for another day and set the auto-pilot for Starfish Beach. As we got near Starfish the weather broke and we anchored under clear skies. Coquina and I went ashore and had a good swim; this is the best swimming beach I have found, white sand bottom, no surf, no current. Yesterday Jairo put his arm next to mine and said “damn Gary you getting same color as me.”<br /></div><br /><div><strong><em>"Still a ways to go."</em></strong><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_xwYmD_Ynlr0ryq-Vaq-frjD36ZpPTcuut75J7HlNb92zxXTN-nP3SMh823fW4LhSXGSycXfSxyHcxbxc70wppmFhMwRPyjtqD320gUBrMqbHJHD6ZgV8QJDX78lUXT7N8vgpcu-SC5Q/s1600-h/Gary+Cabin.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5046706835168575778" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_xwYmD_Ynlr0ryq-Vaq-frjD36ZpPTcuut75J7HlNb92zxXTN-nP3SMh823fW4LhSXGSycXfSxyHcxbxc70wppmFhMwRPyjtqD320gUBrMqbHJHD6ZgV8QJDX78lUXT7N8vgpcu-SC5Q/s320/Gary+Cabin.jpg" border="0" /></a> Wednesday: Coquina woke me about 5AM with very loud barking. I went topside and there was some strange intermittent noises that I could not figure out. As it started to get a little lighter I could see the noise was the breathing of large dolphins surfacing near the boat. We got in an hour beach walk and our first swim of the day before coming back to the boat and cutting up some fresh fruit. Total blue sky and calm winds. Did some chores and then took the dinghy over to the restaurant at Bocas Del Drago. Had a whole Red Snapper, rice and beans, plantains and a small salad for $5. That is something I will be doing more of. After lunch I got a large trash bag off the boat and picked up all the trash on Starfish Beach. I did the whole beach in about a half hour. It feels great when one person can make a difference like that. The beach is about a mile long and unlike the trash on Texas beach’s, little of this looked alcohol related. One beer can, one bottle, no wine or liquor bottles, mostly plastic wrappers and Styrofoam cups. Yesterday was Fat Tuesday and there has been more people using the beach although by 5PM I have always had it totally to myself.<br /><br />Sunday: I stayed at Starfish until this morning, ate a snapper at Drago everyday and did a lot of swimming and walking then came back to the Bocas Marina. I just plan on getting supplies and the laundry done and getting back out in a few days.<br /></div><br /><br /><div>Thursday, March 01, 2007 Still at the Marina, yesterday I took the water-taxi to Changuinola and got an eye exam and ordered some prescription sunglasses. They will be ready in two days so I will hang out here until I get them. All I have had were clip-on and they are so scratched I can hardly see with them. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0hxOrGDhyphenhyphenKb0dmZmJnShCoNnKP3J-fB7DfdWNDnJucozNNCbNwAzA-diEYK4B-AeL11palUSL1ZAHWsddl3IDNhWxEuIRzwGBAbws1UzCCHA7T_n379WYzUJy8iOxCp5nouGvrgr0ix8/s1600-h/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+007.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5044043167241313138" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0hxOrGDhyphenhyphenKb0dmZmJnShCoNnKP3J-fB7DfdWNDnJucozNNCbNwAzA-diEYK4B-AeL11palUSL1ZAHWsddl3IDNhWxEuIRzwGBAbws1UzCCHA7T_n379WYzUJy8iOxCp5nouGvrgr0ix8/s320/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+007.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><br /><div>Sunday, March 04, 2007, Fired up the engine this morning and putted up here to Starfish Beach. I guess I have been a little too exuberant in my praise of the place; there are now 4 boats here from the marina, but still lots of room. Coquina and I had a good swim and a walk then I took the dinghy around to the restaurant at Drago and had my Pargo Rojo fix, all by 1300.<br /><br />Monday A nice calm night, with the Howler Monkey’s serenade. Another swimming and walking day, after all that is why I keep coming back here. The water is cooler than Texas in the middle of summer, just cool enough to feel refreshing but still warm enough to stay in as long as you care to. Swimming has done wonders for Coquina’s appetite; she is eating a lot more nowadays. Went back to Drago and had lunch with Tom & Susan off M/V Limerick another boat that came in yesterday. I had pataconies stuffed with shrimp so did not get my snapper fix, I may need to go back this evening for that. A 5th boat came in this morning. Sitting up on the bow at sunset, the beauty of this place is amazing. The parrots are coming over in droves but almost always in pairs and the Howler Monkey’s are off to an early start.<br /></div><br /><br /><div>Thoughts going through the mind, those idiots in the Middle East blowing each other up for no reason, is it because there is no beauty in their lives? And we let these assholes in Washington put us in there and throw away American lives that have had very little time to learn what beauty is. I really just try not to think about it and do a good job most of the time. It just intrudes from time to time.<br /><br />Tuesday A little change in the weather, nothing major some high clouds and some wind. In late afternoon the clouds let enough light through that the sky, the water; everything was either a bright gray or sparkling quicksilver. A striking sight, one that reminded me of photos I had taken from the top of Victoria Peak in Hong Kong many years ago, the same colors. The winds today have had me pointing at all points of the compass; I wonder how twisted my anchor chain is.<br /></div><br /><br /><div>Went 48 hours without running the engine, the solar panels have been charging well although I will likely need to replace my engine starting bank of batteries soon. We are down to 2 boats here now. I have been trying to learn to splice double braided line so I can replace the lines on my davits that lift my dinghy out of the water. Now this is something that might just push me over the edge. I set it aside for a day and will try to give it ago again today but my expectations are not real high. This may be more stressful than figuring out how that blog works. SOS, Same Old Something Else, OK SOSe. I believe I mentioned my new glasses that were supposed to be sunglasses and weren’t. Anyway the optometrist will be back in Changuinola tomorrow and I have made arrangements for the Changuinola water taxi to come by here and pick me up off the boat. Starfish is on the route about a third of the way in. And under the not so SOS, I ran out of propane today just as the water was starting to boil for my pasta. Not to worry I was able to finish it off on my BBQ grill and it was great, I used the first harvest from my basal plants growing in pots on my back deck. But I will need to head back to Bocas and gas up, likely Saturday when I will also likely post this stuff. I also spun out the prop on my dinghy coming back from Drago tonight and will need to deal with that. Nissan’s are rare down here. Double braid splicing has gone nowhere!<br /><br />Saturday Yesterday I limped ashore first thing to change out the prop on the dinghy and as I pulled in I saw what I thought was a monkey in a low tree. It turned out to be a two toed sloth and it was only about 20’ away. He just hung there until I hit the prop with a hammer to dislodge it and when I looked around it was gone. I did arrange for the Changuinola water taxi to come by the boat and pick me up so made that trip again and got the sunglasses ordered, again. Had lunch did a little shopping and the taxi dropped me back at the boat, great service for a dollar extra. That one bank of batteries is getting worse about holding a charge so I will be going back into the marina today not just for propane but to order batteries and will be there until that is taken care of and I will need to go back and pick up my glasses Tuesday or Wednesday. So we will get in another walk and a swim then pull up the hook and head back to Bocas. </div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br /><br /><br /><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043795910269049634" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTNzjQKURbMj2WDAccVa5BgN0QaxAAIbN-xegU39gStNGOy0-DY_juvHQNg36Xakye_WA4bYfUMUjScQcZ03kNcsExlwuDLTgbvNyr0_t_d9sXKVZmF9XDTQkAsm7SaiiLbZjhKS4Sb7E/s320/Ricardo's,+Blue+%26+Starfish+051.jpg" border="0" /> Tuesday, March 20, 2007</p><br /><p>Been at the dock over a week now and I am itching to get out. The shipment from West Marine I was looking for came today so I will have the fun of installing a new toilet in the forward head tomorrow. It has been a productive week, I had a hole in my sail patched, I learned about equalizing the batteries and it really made a difference. I just went over 72 hours on battery power with only my solar panels doing any charging, a big change from when I was running the engine 3 or 4 times a day. So maybe no new batteries for a while after all.<br /><br />Thursday<br /><br />Success, when I came back into the marina I was up ten pounds from the first of the year and I got back on my no vino, restricted calories and kicked my morning walk back up to 8 miles. This morning the ten are all gone. It is funny, I am more structured here at the dock, than out at those wonderful anchorages, it is almost impossible for me not to pop a cork, and watch the sun go down out there. Or pull a tab as it were, we get a good merlot in a box and they take up a lot less room in the trash bags. I may stay in the marina until the first of the week and work on loosing another 5 pounds before heading out. I have been getting a lot of work done also. I installed the new toilet in the forward head yesterday and it looks like I may need to change out my potable fresh water pump, Ho-Hum.<br /><br />Well the pump is fine but there is an intermittent connection somewhere that I am chasing. </p><br /><p>Mango Season, unlike those of you that are in HEB or other supermarket territory down here Mango’s come only in season and it has just started! Some of them are the size of large grapefruit and sweet, one I had this morning was almost too sweet, I thought about putting some aside for later, but ah, shucks I forced it down. While they are here I will make another batch of chutney also. Most of the other fruit we get year around, but Mango’s just 2 to 3 months a year. </p><br /><p>3 April, Tuesday, I know that because the restaurant at Bocas Del Drago is closed today. I have been here at Starfish for a week, doing the usual, no real adventures, a trip to Changuinola, swimming and walking Coquina everyday, she still does both but the swimming is much easier for her. She still looks great but she is sure slowing down. It is a sad time for me in that respect. I am sure there is a burial at sea in my not too distant future.<br /><br />On the way up here the other day we had a really nice encounter with some big Bottle Nose Dolphin that was a real nice interlude with the crystal clear water. And then as we were anchoring this white dog that I believe lives with the Indian family between here and Drago notices that we are back? She sits there on the beach and starts barking and then howling and of course Coquina replies. I went about my chores of taking care of anchoring, the dinghy, etc. and there she is, the white doggie swimming around the boat trying to get in the dinghy and swimming over to the boarding ladder. I got Coquina into the dinghy and let her follow us ashore. I haven’t seen her do that to any other boats? </p><br /><p>I ran out of water so I fired up my water-maker for the first time, just making a little over a gallon an hour. There may be some acid cleaning I need to take care of before I come out again but for now the rains have returned after a 2 month absence. I have captured rainwater for 3 days now and my tank is full up. (200 Gal.)<br /><br />Friday, April 06<br /><br />I came back to Bocas Marina yesterday. It had been a little rainy but didn’t look too bad and there was some nice wind, so thought I would go out and get the sails up. I did that and then the rains came with a vengeance, visibility went to almost nothing. I continued towards Bocas, got my sails down and anchored off the marina still in a driving rainstorm. It wasn’t really a very good travel day after all, but about 3 hours later it cleared off, the winds went away and I was able to bring her on in to our birth.<br /><br />Wednesday, April 18<br /><br />Mostly just doing the marina stuff, boat maintenance & picking up needed items from town. The big events have been Chip’s brother Jud flying down with my new Toshiba laptop with the 17” screen and a new prop for my dinghy, the 2nd Annual Bocas Chili Cook Off and of course Coquina’s 13th Birthday. That is 91 in people years.<br /><br />The cook-off was great fun, Chip won the prize with “Jake’s One Eye Texas Chili.” Jake is Chip’s 14 year old one eyed dog. There was a good turnout, great weather and a nice location on a grassy area on the beach next to a creek a couple of miles out of town. I think I will have to enter next year. Chip is the only one that didn’t use ground meat. He is trying to educate the locals about what Texas Chili is all about so I guess I will try to help the cause next year. I will need to see about replacing the cast iron pots I left in Texas.<br /><br />Sunday, April 22<br /><br />I am anxious to get out again; Jud was telling me where they have been getting a lot of Tuna, Dorado and Snapper. It is a sea mount where the water goes from 260 meters to 24. I have located it on my charts and I have even been near it before without realizing it.<br /><br />Thursday, May 24, 2007<br /><br />Still in the marina, I have been doing some work on the boat and keeping my walking up. I do at least 8 miles every morning and have been kicking it up to about 10 at times. I am planning on pulling out by the first of the month. I installed 2 more solar panels and then put a lightning diffuser on the top of my main mast. I have been waiting to get a heavy wire to hook up a ground to the system and I got it today and should have everything finished tomorrow.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Wed., May 30, 2007</span></strong><br /></p><br /><p><a href="http://www.itec-edu.org/map1.htm">http://www.itec-edu.org/map1.htm</a></p><br /><p>The above link will take you to another map of the Bocas Archipielago.</p><br /><p><strong><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"></span></strong></p><strong></strong><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5079327553011938658" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr_rf9d305AFZFJ5xOzB5YbuvhUQnMlgl9UGVZkE3yDZDl65KuiKNIw9e5O5MMt9Q6wOXs5QxIpn-vjIsPUDnqizaavq4P6jRewPP9w-Kr8jfiIsa6Y2vEqgUefFjgu2RWqygzcELaX-Q/s400/Bocas+Chart.JPG" border="0" /> Just about ready to pull out, tomorrow or Friday, I think I will top off my fuel, it will likely take 50 or 60 Gal.<br /><br /><br /><p>Saturday June 2nd, back at Starfish Beach, motored up here after taking fuel yesterday, only took 27 gallons that is good mileage for 48 hours run time.<br /><br />Well the new adventure did not start out so well. I had a step on my ladder going down to the solon that had been poorly repaired when I bought the boat. Anyway I did not take any action and last night when I went back down in the boat with my arms full of some heavy books, the step came apart and my feet went out from under me. It took me a moment to figure out what had just happened. My head was in-side the bottom step with the electrical stuff I keep there so that centered me as to where I was. Then I thought maybe my legs were broken as my knees hurt so much. I figured out I had my cell phone in my pocket so I could get help if I needed it. It turns out I didn’t. I moved one leg and then the other, the knees felt like hell but I could make them work. It did bring home how fragile my lifestyle can be, and how I need to be very careful about everything I do. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhljhPsNHy_2uHYZvRQ5DJAxJXrP5p8rJP1jwsjq0I0Yaks4DzKSoAqswavPMYE_jAqGj3Z9xW-EJ97V4ywsQtIZo7P13IGAXZipQsFYjmehxytM_cE-LXFemt1aLEkM4bTXj0uiqbLrI4/s1600-h/bird+island+1.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077801645620950322" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhljhPsNHy_2uHYZvRQ5DJAxJXrP5p8rJP1jwsjq0I0Yaks4DzKSoAqswavPMYE_jAqGj3Z9xW-EJ97V4ywsQtIZo7P13IGAXZipQsFYjmehxytM_cE-LXFemt1aLEkM4bTXj0uiqbLrI4/s320/bird+island+1.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The next morning I am sitting in my cockpit when I see a dinghy heading towards me. It turns out to be Steve another boat owner from the marina. He said he was going out to Bird Island to do some snorkeling so I jumped in my dinghy and off we went. It is a beautiful place, a <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi929OO-nzw_HKtjBdwuGaOX7wsxnZZttlqNIWF0UMzbPROEZbyJWpuWC3aOgoIbDVmfALZlnwpWO7wYXST2XJWQrmPTXPa9r1YvM0Ti_qEuInapPM7gWiOWUkFcIcH7_56k59-mplLFsc/s1600-h/bird+island+2.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077559400875521266" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi929OO-nzw_HKtjBdwuGaOX7wsxnZZttlqNIWF0UMzbPROEZbyJWpuWC3aOgoIbDVmfALZlnwpWO7wYXST2XJWQrmPTXPa9r1YvM0Ti_qEuInapPM7gWiOWUkFcIcH7_56k59-mplLFsc/s320/bird+island+2.JPG" border="0" height="220" width="281" /></a>bird sanctuary where no one is permitted to go ashore. </p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><strong></strong></p><br /><br /><br /><p><strong>BIRD ISLAND</strong></p><br /><p>Friday, 8 June 2007<br /><br />At anchor off Bocas Marina and working on the inverter problem. I have been anchored out here for about 3 days and finely got Kayving our local electronics guy out to the boat. We found and fixed one problem but not the main one. I am beginning to think that it goes back to my old batteries and I may need to bite the bullet and replace them. I talked to a guy off another boat that just replaced his batteries with new top of the line stuff and it sounds like I can replace 7 batteries with 2. $450 each but I am thinking it is the way to go. We also had a weather day today, lots of rain and moderate winds, filled my water tank. I was ready for that, as I was looking to turn on the water-maker soon.<br /><br />Monday, 11 June 2007<br /><br />I got up this morning took the dinghy into the marina and walked me and Coquina for a spell and came back out to the boat and pulled anchor. I did not know just where I was headed but as I got underway I decided to go for the outside and head down to the seamount. Got there about 11 and tried bottom fishing until I hung up and broke my line then came on over to Cayo Agua and found Daniel’s place. Daniel has an office at the marina and can take orders for West Marine and Marine Warehouse. He also has a trimaran that he charters. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq7015Aex-jHU58tQL-GWrkpM77FKYfezm76V3tHtjTHK2C2s_Hfdt_yD90-XpIL7Nf9ZayObY4-H22y0Lpu4qDhXjQvHDU5hqjCtv_e-8B11i_57rlVX8GiNHcrQeVObdMvLIuIUqgXE/s1600-h/cayo+Agua+Dan%27s+Palapa.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077536852297217234" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq7015Aex-jHU58tQL-GWrkpM77FKYfezm76V3tHtjTHK2C2s_Hfdt_yD90-XpIL7Nf9ZayObY4-H22y0Lpu4qDhXjQvHDU5hqjCtv_e-8B11i_57rlVX8GiNHcrQeVObdMvLIuIUqgXE/s320/cayo+Agua+Dan%27s+Palapa.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><strong></strong></p><br /><p><strong>DANIEL'S PALAPA</strong></p><br /><p>What a great spot, a couple of small beaches, huge rocks jutting up out of the water, lots of jungle, and a thatched palapa up on a high promontory overlooking the lagoon and across to Cayo Poppa a couple of miles away with views of the distant high mountains of the mainland.<br /><br />I introduced myself to a couple of Daniel’s workers took Coquina for a swim then went for a nice snorkel. Maybe the nicest and most interesting coral and sea life I have seen down here, a green moray some nice snapper, and lots of tropical reef fish. Soon after I anchored a young Indian came by and looked the boat over, he was in a small cayuca and had snorkel gear and a pole spear. A few hours later he came back by with 2 or 3 dozen nice fish in the bottom of the boat some still flopping around. I had just finished eating so I passed on buying any<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXmgtmPzbtfSJiMVOMrd2q1rRP3GatoaSwSfaTq8IDD3NQ0-HwlP-hUV4_wL5VMnepf8SWfDeMqKC1zMkMOsr7Ri-TRuDKR9P7FVglo5-wskBRLNpbked2Zbr4sR8r2jZBIjuBpigoXC4/s1600-h/Cayo+Agua+Sea+feather.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077559392285586658" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXmgtmPzbtfSJiMVOMrd2q1rRP3GatoaSwSfaTq8IDD3NQ0-HwlP-hUV4_wL5VMnepf8SWfDeMqKC1zMkMOsr7Ri-TRuDKR9P7FVglo5-wskBRLNpbked2Zbr4sR8r2jZBIjuBpigoXC4/s320/Cayo+Agua+Sea+feather.JPG" border="0" /></a> but it is nice to see that there are that many fish around. </p><br /><p><strong>VIEW FROM PALAPA </strong></p><br /><p>Later a young Indian family, (a couple, 12 year old boy) came by the boat in a big cayuca. Their total inventory of stuff to sell was 2 pina’s and a live baby pig, I got one of the pina’s and passed on the pig.<br /><br />What a nice evening, no other boats in sight. Calm winds, the absolute only noise I can hear is the gentle lapping of the water against my dinghy. Sunset, “red sky at night, sailors delight.” Getting dark now and starting to hear some sounds out of the jungle, Howler Monkey<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Mu0mxp6ublENzBBSE6jMLpMzYRVNINzYcblVwMcXuS5SqDJXNUVkP4aiUaRmbX8zfW0rlAEFiGLkKYLr5vZ2ZNKKFkFUESsAhrYMf91UlZ_r4ASylR-FMlfuNRRunmYxi7TaKpuqiug/s1600-h/Cayo+Agua+Long+Beach.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077564202648958226" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Mu0mxp6ublENzBBSE6jMLpMzYRVNINzYcblVwMcXuS5SqDJXNUVkP4aiUaRmbX8zfW0rlAEFiGLkKYLr5vZ2ZNKKFkFUESsAhrYMf91UlZ_r4ASylR-FMlfuNRRunmYxi7TaKpuqiug/s320/Cayo+Agua+Long+Beach.JPG" border="0" /></a>s and others I cannot identify.<br /><strong></strong></p><br /><br /><p><strong>CHECKING OUT CAYO AGUA</strong></p><br /><p>Tuesday<br /><br />More snorkel time and Daniel came in and anchored with his charter, a young couple, the guy is a biologist down here studying the different poison dart frogs on the different islands. Many of the islands have frogs found nowhere else in the world. One here on Cayo Agua has <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvKsyE2QbqTmD6cQfIvoUA1Dn3UWuaHJYNIQYmwgw-XvlQclJFkI2q-WdQxFmOelFQIwDXFHV6CshpvRqJNu2DUOoO5kU1gJ9GWuCMxtr7x4iLNuiT7eDWcU6fKqnDPvHdRm4vsZOPyCo/s1600-h/cayo+AguaSails.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077564206943925538" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvKsyE2QbqTmD6cQfIvoUA1Dn3UWuaHJYNIQYmwgw-XvlQclJFkI2q-WdQxFmOelFQIwDXFHV6CshpvRqJNu2DUOoO5kU1gJ9GWuCMxtr7x4iLNuiT7eDWcU6fKqnDPvHdRm4vsZOPyCo/s320/cayo+AguaSails.JPG" border="0" /></a>a lime green back, a yellow belly and red hind legs.<br /></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><strong></strong></p><br /><p><strong></strong></p><br /><p><strong></strong></p><br /><p><strong></strong></p><br /><p><strong></strong></p><br /><p><strong>CAYO AGUA SAIL</strong><br /></p><br /><p>Wednesday<br /><br />Planned on leavening today, but since Daniel is here and planning on going back towards Bocas tomorrow I will stick around and follow him. I have been trying to get someone to show me the route on the inside as it would be nice to be able to get down here and avoid the off-shore weather at times. Snorkel. Snorkel.<br /><br /><strong>CORAL CAY</strong><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4l1PvG4SQO7uhUJZDabMKXSA4dL5kxN7CUcJuua785iCjgbIkamPvoR3glR5NRDAC1A4K3GQMEQwaLsHMc8gxyYtA2XC1hb4PwUV3qQxWDYAiOxGFDh0lV9SSsDLpsTzSDwKRRKHufMQ/s1600-h/DSCF0027.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077561720157861122" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4l1PvG4SQO7uhUJZDabMKXSA4dL5kxN7CUcJuua785iCjgbIkamPvoR3glR5NRDAC1A4K3GQMEQwaLsHMc8gxyYtA2XC1hb4PwUV3qQxWDYAiOxGFDh0lV9SSsDLpsTzSDwKRRKHufMQ/s320/DSCF0027.JPG" border="0" /></a><br />Thursday<br />Another wonderful day breaking. I did some (surprise/surprise ) snorkeling today and then this afternoon we took off for Dolphin Bay. Only it wasn’t that easy. I had problems getting my anchor in and believe that can also be related to another battery problem. Anyway I caught up with Dan and we made it to Coral Cay as his charter decided as it was getting late they would like to anchor for the night and feed the famous fish of Coral Cay. A great move, we got anchored and came into the restaurant. Coral Cay is a great spot where all the building is on pilings out over the water and miles from anything else. It is a destination that all the tour and snorkel boats bring their customers for lunch. Only the bar is open after that<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5pz2thY7PAJxMbtIe3glqWBoDK4pNvmHpaenjrWaagoFiMAvhF8GFIWl_OBQFBso4NejZJzhAEWrn1UUxwSaPsxOaLSY80gGO3ELgPNoHP4Z5Atz0YkdvjYRpxvAyED4vGofBZedYUio/s1600-h/Coral+Cay.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077801649915917634" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5pz2thY7PAJxMbtIe3glqWBoDK4pNvmHpaenjrWaagoFiMAvhF8GFIWl_OBQFBso4NejZJzhAEWrn1UUxwSaPsxOaLSY80gGO3ELgPNoHP4Z5Atz0YkdvjYRpxvAyED4vGofBZedYUio/s320/Coral+Cay.JPG" border="0" /></a>.<br /><br />Of course Dan knows everyone from bringing his charters in here and he was talking the owner into opening the kitchen for him to use. Dan was talking about a sea food soup and I mentioned Paella. I had some stuff and so did Dan and he got the use of the kitchen. They even gave him helper to chop veggies. He made a huge Paella, they even had a perfect Paella pan and I had a bunch of Saffron. We were joined by the restaurant owner and a couple of others for a great dinner. It was a wonderful evening; we even had a thunder and lightning show.<br /><br />This is the place that has hundreds of big snapper living under the buildings, just by dropping some bread crumbs in the water they come out in a swarm reminiscent of the films I have seen of Piranha feeding. The next morning I took photos of Daniel’s charter couple in the water feeding the fish. We then took Daniel’s dinghy a couple of miles to some exceptional snorkel area and then we came back, pulled the anchors and got underway, Daniel to Dolphin Bay and me back to the marina to fix my anchor windless problem. </p><br /><p><strong>CLICK ON THE PHOTO AND SCAN TO BOTTOM TO SE<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheHP_aAH9PzV4hBjSBuH_mSVjyo9HrqRqQNIdy0OPhfFvH9dx9BIkZcWDfjtvlv9OT_PUCTuI65LBkc2cCqcA2-o_G7OhXIsOa1Vgit5Cd3MHJm7EuymS_oIqLngG-rwdQ5_p2PhdPU4Y/s1600-h/Coral+Cay+Snapper.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077536843707282626" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheHP_aAH9PzV4hBjSBuH_mSVjyo9HrqRqQNIdy0OPhfFvH9dx9BIkZcWDfjtvlv9OT_PUCTuI65LBkc2cCqcA2-o_G7OhXIsOa1Vgit5Cd3MHJm7EuymS_oIqLngG-rwdQ5_p2PhdPU4Y/s320/Coral+Cay+Snapper.JPG" border="0" /></a>E THE SNAPPERS BETTER</strong>.</p><br /><p>Monday 18th. I have been here in the marina for about 3 days, the anchor problem proved easy to fix and now I am going to run that battery equalization program again to see if I can extend their life some more. </p><br /><p>Wednesday, 20th. Today was the opening of a photo contest for a non-profit group called BESO which raises money for Indian schools. Anyway of 53 entries my photo of the sunrise that I have at the top of my blog won 1st place and will be on the cover of the next issue of The Bocas Breeze a monthly newspaper, and will also be on the BESO calendar that will go on sale in September. <a href="http://www.thebocasbreeze.com/">http://www.thebocasbreeze.com/</a> Click on July issue.<br /><br />The battery thing worked agai<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaTrKEAm7JN2LcTVxIlIQx_vGK7O9ubKviifwAdHo3Gny3bN1aNcyG_x2xjWfLpjV0MyrldHwZAbWyv8qZAPEzKMPkQlHADRURkx3fAkdHvmwHrXXy7s_p-JtehWCxcSe7oPOC-8Wz6eE/s1600-h/DSCF0016.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5089682855763984834" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaTrKEAm7JN2LcTVxIlIQx_vGK7O9ubKviifwAdHo3Gny3bN1aNcyG_x2xjWfLpjV0MyrldHwZAbWyv8qZAPEzKMPkQlHADRURkx3fAkdHvmwHrXXy7s_p-JtehWCxcSe7oPOC-8Wz6eE/s320/DSCF0016.JPG" border="0" /></a>n and it looks like I am good for a while longer! <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO829gAdHoaZpXpE9AFVUBwfdZ6S5cB3xaB54ENOzIH42O9WeB9-kOS1g1i8NbtH1wwmIU6KiXlIkJXVsuJ3WRCWIJ-PL0e3LmhQZNIr5lnFy5z0tTbA0d9ZarjKIZvJ4itVUHNsJHAjs/s1600-h/DSCF0011.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5089682864353919442" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO829gAdHoaZpXpE9AFVUBwfdZ6S5cB3xaB54ENOzIH42O9WeB9-kOS1g1i8NbtH1wwmIU6KiXlIkJXVsuJ3WRCWIJ-PL0e3LmhQZNIr5lnFy5z0tTbA0d9ZarjKIZvJ4itVUHNsJHAjs/s320/DSCF0011.JPG" border="0" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVPkX74LB8M_dHsXJDYdWgMSr3cNpj2eeaG4EyRs2TmMj9v-IHEi-lB6UBUCM3gX3vqn929jDDzJDce0On0FpxqLVm9bJj0wRXGiq2TYt2p_7cI12j2gFyQ51gXrFXO9fmg7BRgZK-STA/s1600-h/Bluefields.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5089682851469017522" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVPkX74LB8M_dHsXJDYdWgMSr3cNpj2eeaG4EyRs2TmMj9v-IHEi-lB6UBUCM3gX3vqn929jDDzJDce0On0FpxqLVm9bJj0wRXGiq2TYt2p_7cI12j2gFyQ51gXrFXO9fmg7BRgZK-STA/s320/Bluefields.JPG" border="0" /></a></p><br /><br /><br /><p><strong>Bluefields, surf, beach, jungle trail.</strong></p><br /><br /><p><strong></strong></p><br /><p>Panama 6<br /><br />September 07, Panama<br /><br />September, 23<br />I haven’t sat down to write for a spell, mostly in the marina and some trips back to my usual anchorages. I have bought a new (old) dinghy and have redone the bottom with fiber glass and gel coat, at 11 feet it is 3 feet longer that the old one and sure rides better, much dryer also. Anyway I left the marina a few days ago and headed down to Escudo de Vaguras, an island about 45 miles east of Bocas. It was a nice trip, had enough wind to sail or at least motor sail almost the entire way, just had to give up on the sails about 6 miles out. A friend told me to expect Jurassic Park, and he was not far off. I came in along the west end and around to the south side where the best anchorages are. The west is a long white sand beach with Indian’s thatched houses interspaced along the shore, beyond that it looks to be impenetrable jungle. Around on the south side there are huge stone fingers protruding out to the water ending in shear cliffs of about 25’ divided by small sandy beaches. The only things washed up on the sand are driftwood and coconuts, one I recognized from opening it yesterday, and topping the cliffs more heavy jungle. It is the clearest water I have seen in Panama also. Around on the east side are many small heavily forested stone island which are great to explore with the dinghy. I need to find out what this island is made of, it doesn’t look to be volcanic to me? </p><br /><p>Being only ten miles off the Panama mainland where it makes a big crescent, you can see many miles of it, (50 a 100?) yet at night there is not a light visible anywhere. No light pollution here, the stars are bright! Saturday night the winds picked up out of the west, which is the worst point as far as the anchorage is concerned and it got a little rolly, but I had dived my anchor and knew it was buried in good sand and I had a 9 to 1 scope out so was not too worried, but I ran the engine for a couple of hours just in case. </p><br /><p>ut after some dinghy exploring the next morning I decided to head off and headed back towards Bluefields, but after figuring out the time and realizing that I was bucking a good current, and the wind, I also decided it would be a good time to see what Tobobe had to offer. It is the only good mainland anchorage between Bocas and Colon at the Canal. As you will hear later I wish I had stayed there an extra night. I got in there and worked my way back into a small bay and anchored in 40 feet of water, deeper than I like and more than you normally need to in this area. It is another beautiful spot, with a fairly large Indian population. Within 30 minutes of anchoring I had about 10 Cayuga’s around me, most with pre-teen boys but some with women and small kids, some with nubile young ladies which I still appreciate. </p><br /><p>As the evening wore on and the novelties wore off I was left with an audience of one cayuca with a guy in his late teens and 3 with two boys each in the 5 to 10 year old range. The bay it turns out was full of schools of feeding Mackerel, and when I started trying to cast a lure to them and falling short the older kid took off paddling his cayuca and started trying to drive a school of them towards my boat. When the younger kids saw what he was doing the paddled over and got in line also. I had a line of sea going cowboys trying to head me mackerel, to no avail as it turns out but a neat experience. I got them all back to the boat and gave them tips for their efforts. </p><br /><p>Unlike Escudo with its many unpopulated beaches Tobobe where I anchored is mostly mangrove shoreline and Indian homes on most of the solid ground. I found a spot with fifty yards or so between two homes and landed Coquina there so she could take care of her business. The next morning when I needed to get her over there again I showed a women that was watching us some bills and thumb tacked a couple of dollars to a palm tree. </p><br /><p>After leaving Tobobe I was just passing Big Plantain Key which is one of a few small island just off of the mainland and I looked back to check on my trolling fishing line and saw the line up in the air rubber banding, and then saw a large dark fish dropping from about 6 feet back into the water. Whatever it was it threw the hook when it came out of the water.<br />Now the best and the worst, I think I will need to wait until tomorrow to continue this…….And so I did.</p><br /><br /><br /><p>I motored on to the east and entered the Laguna de Chiriqui and headed across towards Cayo Agua and bypassing Bluefields where I had thought of spending a night. (should have, would have…) Anyway on my way across I again checked my trolling reel and noticed there sure was a bunch of line missing! Looking way farther astern I spotted the wake of a fish on! Cutting back on the throttle I ran back and started to reel him in. Getting him up to the boat I used the gaff to bring aboard a 50” Wahoo! Yahoo!</p><br /><p>About that time I noticed that the sky from where I had just come from was really black and coming my way. I cranked up the RPM as I was only about a half hour from Daniel’s place on Cayo Agua where I was planning on spending a few days. Well I didn’t make it and the storm hit with a fury, 40 to 50 knot winds and driving rain, and in that I miss judged my course as I was being driven sideways with the wind on my starboard beam and setting me down to the reef on my port side. I went hard aground but by backing and filling, full astern and full ahead, I was finely able to back around into the wind and back off of the coral. As I came around and put my stern into the wind it caught the center portion of my plastic windshield which I had open and only attached with the snaps along the bottom and carried it away straight over my bow light a shot. There for a while I thought I had lost my boat. The port rail was in the water and water was being blown into the cockpit from the starboard side. Coquina was really scared, sitting up there in the cockpit whining. A little more excitement than I really needed. After getting off the coral I was able to get over in front of Daniel’s place and get a little bit of a lee and anchor, still in driving rain and just a little less wind. After making sure the anchor was holding I cleaned the Wahoo and bagged it for the freezer while lightning danced all around us, not my neatest job of cutting up a fish…..</p><br /><p>One time I was being interviewed for a chief engineer position and was asked what I thought my strongest suit was that I bring to the job. I told him I keep it all together when it all goes to shit. The interviewer did not know what I was talking about and I said, “You have never been to sea have you?” I didn’t take that job, as I couldn’t see working for a company that had someone like that in that position. At most companies I would have been talking to a Port Engineer with a lot of sea time behind him. It held for this time also, it was exciting but I stayed calm throughout it all.<br /></p><br /><br /><p>After I settled in and the wind let up a bit I fixed some Wahoo sashimi with soyu, wasabi and pickled ginger, opened a bottle of wine and hit the sack soon after dark. Today after taking Coquina ashore and waiting for the sun to get up I dove the boat and checked the damage. It could sure have been a whole lot worse; this is a strong old boat. All the damage is on the port side and I will need some gel coat and of course bottom paint, maybe a little fiberglass, but rudder and prop are just fine. I will get Daniel to look at it when he gets here also. Today I am taking it easy, I gave Daniel’s caretaker some Wahoo to smoke and I will cook up some for tonight’s repast. Let us hope my next entries in this journal are much more mundane.</p><br /><p>This is my 3rd night here and last night and tonight, so far at least, has been very tranquil, full moon no less. Yesterday evening a lobster diver stopped by and I bought 4 medium sized bugs for $10. I didn’t really need them with all the Wahoo but what the heck, after the stress of the other night figured I would go for it. Daniel came in today and dove on my boat and came up with about the same thing I saw, abet a more experienced opinion. He said that all the damage he found except for a two inch scrape on the keel were only into the gel coat with no fiber glass exposed. He said a year or so without a haul-out should not be a problem. Very fortunate indeed!</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLq_OTU67o2pXU-UxogrzNoA8875TeWd9KaFEUz3PStVnf_waKpx2kEtuHTzFg244x0eYR_T87D4brc9wkPfrWeyPBi7GUPU4Nt0n7szL8BpYwjXS9Q5goNXqxqhC3ajXwcGMvwdna7O0/s1600-h/Gary+birthday.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5129089596678760578" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLq_OTU67o2pXU-UxogrzNoA8875TeWd9KaFEUz3PStVnf_waKpx2kEtuHTzFg244x0eYR_T87D4brc9wkPfrWeyPBi7GUPU4Nt0n7szL8BpYwjXS9Q5goNXqxqhC3ajXwcGMvwdna7O0/s320/Gary+birthday.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><p>September, 27, 2007(Birthday)</p><br /><p>Two other boats that had been in Bocas came in and anchored nearby also, KaijaSong and Blow Me Away. I mentioned to Gary off KaijaSong that I was just taking it easy today as it was my birthday and later Lyla from BMA came by and said she had heard it was my birthday and invited me over for happy hour. We had cocktails and a nice visit, Gary and Kaija, Lyla and Aaron and then Lyla comes up into the cockpit with a brownie cake with candles on it, it was a nice touch. </p><br /><p>September, 29, I came on back into the marina. I will finish work on the bottom of the new dinghy, clean up Sea Feather, top off my fuel and get ready to go out again. Well the last 2 months have been pretty tame. I discovered a leak in my fuel tank and pumped all my fuel into barrels on the dock. Locating the hole and determining that the tank needed replacing took a few weeks and then deciding on what to do about it a couple of more. Anyway I have had the top cut off and I am having a fiberglass tank made that will slip inside the old tank. </p><br /><p><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong><em>September 2008</em></strong> </span></p><br /><p>I have not been keeping up my journal this year, here it is almost October and no up-dates at all this year, so looking back I will try to bring it up to date. Mostly I have just been working on Sea Feather and enjoying this amazing archipelago. I gave up my slip at the marina and spend most of my time at my favorite anchorages, Starfish, Cayo Agua, Bluefields and to a lesser extent the Bocas Marina anchorage. The Bocas anchorage I can pick up wireless Internet and get into town for supplies, but it is crowded with other boats and heavy water taxi traffic, I much prefer the quiet of Starfish and then the short run to Bocas to check email and re-supply every two or three weeks. </p><br /><p>Boat-wise, over the summer I replaced my house bank of batteries which I also relocated to a much more accessible location, my engine control cables, had the motor on my anchor windless re-wound and kept busy keeping everything running. On a boat this old, (1976) it is even more of a never ending project than on boats of a newer vintage. </p><br /><p>My old (7th grade) friend Tim Hays from California visited last December and Rick Pratt and Andrew Cleland came down from Port Aransas in March. Tim got here just as we were finishing up with the new fuel tank so we only got in a couple of days sailing before he had to get back home. We got up to Starfish and that was about it, Rick and Andrew were only here long enough to make quick trips to Cayo Agua and Starfish for a night each. </p><strong><em>DRYWALL DAVE</em></strong><br /><p>In July Eva and Dave Schlabach came down to visit, Dave known as Drywall Dave on stage as a great harmonica and electric fiddle player was from Port Aransas and Kerrville Texas.<br />Dave had sent me an email saying they were coming to Bocas and it would be nice to reconnect. They found me on Wed. at the anchorage just as I was pulling away from Sea Feather to take Coquina in for her afternoon walk around the marina grounds. Dave was after surfing info so we stopped by “Lily”a surfing friend’s boat and had a nice visit with Bruce and Patty. Later I suggested we take Sea Feather down to Bluefields Lagoon as it is one of the most delightful anchorages I have ever seen, and "they have surfing too!" Thursday AM we did a little shopping for supplies and weighed anchor and later anchored at the back of the lagoon an hour or so before dark. Night comes fast here, total nightfall by 7:15. We all turned in by 9PM.<br /><br />Breakfast of bananas and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and about 10AM we took the dinghy ashore and took the Indian trail through the jungle over to the beach, about a mile walk over a low ridge. Dave carried a 9' surfboard he had rented. The surf was not "up" but Dave went out and got a few rides, Eva explored the beach some and I walked up a couple of miles up towards an Indian village and to get a look at a reef. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB0OIfjjN7tSeojnO8HqGNdMMZ8XzWcCQzQlX9DxtTrrwhtbIwGMt1PbPMedH0Vh2bOcA-9KXYXUsB5lLlKXxBdK-nHJ2dFZqTl1AhiEaXO5KZyG1m2ksHhSaIfUUuL8sLpfizXkpdPe4/s1600-h/Dave+2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249955444980983234" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB0OIfjjN7tSeojnO8HqGNdMMZ8XzWcCQzQlX9DxtTrrwhtbIwGMt1PbPMedH0Vh2bOcA-9KXYXUsB5lLlKXxBdK-nHJ2dFZqTl1AhiEaXO5KZyG1m2ksHhSaIfUUuL8sLpfizXkpdPe4/s320/Dave+2.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />When I came back to where Eva was Dave came back in and mentioned how tired he had become out there, mentioned he needed to get a board to paddle on the Guadalupe River at home in Kerrville to get in better shape. He rested for just a short time and then he wanted to go out and see about spearing a fish. He got his snorkel gear and we walked back up the beach to where the reef starts just about 100' offshore. He only stayed out for 15 or 20 minutes and came in saying he really did not feel good. He complained of gas in his stomach. We walked back down to where Eva was lying on the beach and I went for a swim. It was not 10 min. before Eva called me to help. When I got to them Dave was totally comatose and never responded to anything we did. Eva ended up doing CPR for about 4 hours while I took off to try and get some help. It took me and hour and a half to get back through the jungle and take my dinghy out to the head of the lagoon where cell phone service is sometimes possible. I got the marina and they sent a fast boat down and took Dave and Eva back to Bocas. I believe Dave was gone in those first 20 seconds or so between Eva calling me and me making it to them. It turned out to be a blood clot. A fast way to go, in a beautiful place doing something you love in the arms of your wife, at fifty eight, much too young but a good way to go. Dave died on July 18. There was a memorial service at Angel Gurino’s ranch in Kerrville on August 30. </p><br /><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMEf6WIBXSUdqDTMKaSUOzA8OPGt3ziTDaDmqoyg-7gYg_VZTrVgq_qeK0tfpcd8B2Iko-vLu4_xgRzIY4NgeBHiYpCc36fUZs7dy-A8CbNKNlUucrBRKFeQ4463ZVJD7KjoTOkKXhEhw/s1600-h/Dave.jpg"><strong><em><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249956206703307874" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMEf6WIBXSUdqDTMKaSUOzA8OPGt3ziTDaDmqoyg-7gYg_VZTrVgq_qeK0tfpcd8B2Iko-vLu4_xgRzIY4NgeBHiYpCc36fUZs7dy-A8CbNKNlUucrBRKFeQ4463ZVJD7KjoTOkKXhEhw/s320/Dave.jpg" border="0" /></em></strong></a><strong><em>Dave Schlabach</em></strong></p><br /><br /><strong><em>1949-2008<br /><br /></em></strong><br /><br /><p><strong></strong></p><br /><br /><p><strong></strong></p><br /><br /><p><strong></strong></p><br /><br /><p><strong></strong></p><br /><br /><p><strong></strong></p><br /><br /><p><strong></strong></p><br /><br /><p><strong>August<br /><br /></strong>I spent most of August either at the Bocas Marina anchorage or in the marina. I replaced my engine control cables and a few other boat up-keep jobs. And something I should have done long ago, I had Coquina trimmed so she looks like a short hair dog. I think she is happier and what a difference in keeping the boat clean, that long hair really gave the old v<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidLwpYn5voQ-k3-pw5gI-niVss-a2wRC5G4-aUpbIdw4UneaTC3Qm0e5TP8Borg6D5Iw-6hyphenhyphen6Ta3sgSP1lIy26R8HpxpyMg9idrN_9kVOd8BJ74w5eQUXGruAKIqJQQKz0INp2l7xeYAw/s1600-h/DSCF0092.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250749362728472034" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidLwpYn5voQ-k3-pw5gI-niVss-a2wRC5G4-aUpbIdw4UneaTC3Qm0e5TP8Borg6D5Iw-6hyphenhyphen6Ta3sgSP1lIy26R8HpxpyMg9idrN_9kVOd8BJ74w5eQUXGruAKIqJQQKz0INp2l7xeYAw/s320/DSCF0092.JPG" border="0" /></a>acuum a workout. I also cut off my ponytail and started cutting my own hair this summer. I just sit on the fantail and run the clippers over my head.<br /><br /><strong><em>Coquina with the Panama Trim</em></strong> </p><br /><br /><br /><p><strong>September 15, 2008</strong><br /><br />I had been at anchor at Starfish for about three weeks and started running low on supplies so decided to head back to Bocas. I went outside through the channel at Bocas Del Drago on the north end of Isla Colon. (the island Bocas is on) I decided to go outside as the tuna were running thick and a friend had caught 29 fish a couple of days before. It was the first time for me to transverse the Drago channel. Soon after I got offshore and was going past Sail and Wreck Rocks and their extensive reefs, I was motor sailing with just my jib up in light winds. I heard changes in my engine exhaust sounds and I lost power. I went below and opened the engine room door and all I could see was heavy black smoke. Of course the first thing that comes to mind is FIRE! The smell though was more like exhaust and I could detect no flames. I propped the door open and went back to the wheel. Power had come back and I put it at dead slow with just enough way on to keep me away from the reefs I had also lost what little wind there was. I still was not sure what had happened but I was running OK at 2.5 knots so I headed on down to the Bocas ship channel. It took about 4 hours but I made it back to the marina and they found a temporary slip for me. I tied up and shut down and waited until everything cooled down the next morning to inspect things. It turns out my 8 feet of 3” exhaust hose had come apart and collapsed on the inside and the back pressure blew holes in the muffler. Filling the engine room with exhaust robbed the engine of oxygen and that is why I lost power until I opened the door and got some circulation going.<br /><br /><strong>September 24<br /></strong><br />I have replaced the hose and Worth, (who built my fuel tank) repaired my fiberglass muffler and I am now waiting on some fiberglass work on two elbows that go in the system. I hope to have the engine running by tonight? </p><p>No not quite, it was Saturday the 27th before I got the engine running, Happy Birthday to me. I think I will take it easy the rest of today and plan on changing the oil and scrubing the engine room Sunday and heading back towards Starfish on Monday on my shakedown cruise to see how everything holds together. 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line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> </p><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-size:14pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="line-height: 115%;font-size:14pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <br /><br />Panama, Our New Home Port, Red Frog Marina<br /><br />August 7, 2009: We have been here at Red Frog Marina for a couple of weeks now and like it better every day. First off, a little history about Red Frog. It is on the island of Bastimentos about five miles from Bocas. It was to be a huge mega development, homes, condos, golf courses, marina, Spa’s etc. They had labor problems (1200 employees) among other concerns and went into bankruptcy. It is coming back as a much smaller more ecologically friendly concern with plans to give some of the property to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, no golf, smaller homes, eco-tourism etc. The marina at present only has power hook-ups for a dozen boats and the price of $5 a foot makes for a very economical dockage. <br /><br />The tie ups are new state of the art floating docks in a very beautiful and well protected lagoon and yet it is just a ten minute walk across the island to the ocean with miles of white sand beaches with great body surfing, coral reefs, snorkeling and beach combing. There are also miles of golf cart sized roads that were put in for the big development that make nice jungle walking paths. These are the only “roads” on the whole island, in the town of Bastimentos there are only concrete walkways. My plan with all this available is to use it and get the old waistline (Now 40”) going back the other way again. I took off 80 pounds when I first moved to Panama but have put about 25 back on in the last three years so Surf City here I come! <br /><br />I haven’t written in my journal in a year or more, I had been just going to the same spots I had written about before, Starfish, Bluefield’s, Cayo Auga, Bocas, etc. and as much as I enjoy them all, not a lot new to write home about. <br />And then there was the murder of my youngest son Gary in April of this year in a home invasion, and I am still not ready to go into that very deep. His service was held on April 18th on what would have been his 39th birthday. Two hundred thirty people attended only four of which were family. Gary touched a lot of people in positive ways. Most of those that attended were the legions of fans and their parents of Gary’s “Tank” skate & bike park”. I am getting through it but no matter what I do or what else happens, 2009 will be the worst year of my life. But as they say “time heals all” and it does get a little easier. <br /><br />We have been going through a cool wet period, as of 7am on the 6th we have had 7” of rain this month and high temps in the low to mid 80’s. Bocas got 15 & ½ foot of rain in 2008 and we can’t be far behind this year if not ahead? Green, you bet!<br />Even with these rainfall amounts, potable water is a problem in Bocas as the rapid expansion of the town has totally overwhelmed the infrastructure of water, sewer, & roads, even dock space for dinghy’s and panga’s is hard to come by. Anyway water here at Red Frog is not a problem; they have tapped into an underground river and the quality and quantity is tops. The water pressure at the docks must be around 100 PSI; it is like a fire hose although with all the rain I have yet to take any dock water for my boat’s tank. <br /><br />Last week seven of us from the cruising community hired an Indian tour guide & his panga for a little sightseeing and to learn where to go on our own later. Our first stop was for lunch at a thatched waterfront building at the Bahia Honda Indigenous Community for some native fare then on to a small jungle creek where we were able to slowly motor for a half hour or so then the motor came up and we were paddled up stream for another half hour. Along the way we saw a dozen Sloths, both 2 toed and 3 toed varieties, a Caiman, a big Boa Constrictor, a Harpy Eagle, other birds, insects and the red poison dart frogs from which Red Frog took its name. <br /><br />We tied up at a small wooden dock and walked up a nice landscaped trail lined with pineapple plants to the home of an Indian family where we paid a couple of dollars each to walk across their property to a Bat Cave. Along the way to the cave were more Sloths and Red Frogs. The cave itself called for wading in water up to chest deep and was home to hundreds of nectar bats and had some very nice and colorful stalactites and stalagmites. All of this is within 2 or 3 miles of the marina.<br />I do like it here, only a handful of people living at the marina and not a lot more at Red Frog itself. It is very quiet, at night in my hammock or in bed with the hatch open, (no rain) the sound of the surf is the background music to which the sounds of the jungle play to. The musical song of the Montezuma Oropendola is frequently heard as are many other interesting and at least to me, unknown calls. The ten minute walk from the boat to Red Frog Beach is through some beautiful jungle. <br /><br />The beach is on most everyone’s Bocas tour itinerary and a lot of the tour operators have started using the same trail and docking their panga’s at the marina, so some more noise during the day but more bikinis’s also. A good trade off and they are all gone by 5PM. The beach is beautiful, jungle to the edge, then deep sand out to the clear blue water. Some reef at the north then sandy bottom to the south down to pretty much an impassable point of rock covered by an impenetrable jungle. By going back to a side road and taking a short trail you can bypass the point of rocks and come out on Turtle Beach. I have yet to see anyone else there, and from there, miles and miles of deserted beaches, little offshore islands, coral reefs, and lots of jungle. Here the beach is littered with driftwood, and many large toppled trees sprouting extraordinary bromeliads and orchids from their dead branches. Some of the bromeliads are 4 and 5 feet in diameter. The trees have been toppled by erosion from the sea although it does not look as though it is a real rapid process as many of the trees are long dead. They do impede beach walking as some must be waded around, climbed over or through their branches or short detours through the jungle taken. It is definitely not like walking on the beach in Port Aransas with its wide open beaches you can drive on. Going over, around, and through the branches and trunks of the fallen trees makes a mile take a lot of effort. The same can be said for the points of rocks except there is no going through them.<br /><br />Damn it’s wonderful and all within walking distance of my new home port. There is one thing that should be said about the beach, the water is sometimes treacherous, there can be wicked Rip Tides and the unwary and inexperienced can get in trouble. That said I have been getting in some really good body surfing! <br />My first evening in the marina a small Cayuco with 3 Ngobe Indian boys 5 or 6 years old came by Sea Feather and one of the kids could say cookies in English. I gave them a package that had 6 chocolate chip cookies and off they went, to Serenity my friend Steve’s boat where he gave them each a 4 pack of Oreos. Six cookies each, they likely went home wired on sugar. They have not come back by the boat, I wonder if mom might have had something to do about that as I see them on the trail or at the beach most every day. The sugar probably kept them up late, junk food is not likely much a part of their diet.<br /><br />August 8, 2009 Temps, low 74, high 85, Rain Total 1st. week August 7 ½”<br />Great Beach Day!!! Steve off S/V Serenity along with his visiting buddy Mike form Ohio, DeDe & Mike off S/V Joss, Justin from Red Frog, and I took a walk. We took the trail over to Turtle Beach and with a combination of beach walking and jungle trails walked south for a couple of hours. We had great weather, lots of sun and the surf had lain down considerably, so we took our snorkel gear along. Our first stop was about a ½ mile beyond where Steve, Amy and I had been previously. We all donned our snorkel gear and got wet. I was swimming about 200 feet from shore in only 2 to 3 feet of water when I came upon a series of deep crevices and some substantial schools of fish. The most fish I have seen in Panama. Blue Tangs, snappers, very big Queen & Gray Triggerfish, Parrot Fish, Squirrel Fish, octopus, and other reef dwellers. Justin got some great photos of an octopus. There were also schools of 50 to 100 fish about 2 foot long that I believe may be Bermuda Chubs, but I am not sure on that. I had my pole spear but did not get close enough to get one. Next time I will take my spear gun. The crevices were extensive and seemed to be pretty deep, a good dive spot on a day calm enough to bring a dinghy with dive gear out through the ship channel and down where we can get it inside the reef. <br /><br />From that spot we took a jungle trail on south for a couple more miles through the magnificent Bastimentos Rain Forest of huge trees, vines, giant bamboo, and flowers, etc., very few of which I am able to identify. We came upon a small three toed sloth hanging on a low branch that I got some good shots of. They have no fear, just look back at us and barely move. This one was a light reddish blonde color I had become used to identifying with the two toed variety? Doesn’t take long to think you are an expert. <br /><br />After crossing a little creek the trail brought us to a small protected lagoon and we decided to take another swim. Steve barrowed my pole spear and swam out around a point of rocks where it was not so protected and came back with a large gray triggerfish on the spear. He said that there were also 2 huge snapper and a nurse shark under the same ledge he got the triggerfish from. When he and Mike went back the currents had gotten much stronger and they could not get back in there. On the way back through the jungle I saw one of the large very beautiful bright “Blue Morpho” butterflies and got some nice photos of another of our small red frog friends. Our little adventure took 6 hours and later I joined Steve and Mike on Serenity for a very nice supper of triggerfish baked with a parmesan mayo topping and wild rice. Delightful!!! <br /><br />Thursday, 13 August 2009<br /><br />We have dropped below our one inch of rain a day average for the month, no rain for 2 days and just a short shower this evening, still hanging in there with 11”. Of course that still leaves 12 hours as my rain days run from 7 AM to 7AM. Courtney who lives at Bocas Del Drago (the other end of the island from Bocas Del Toro) keeps track and said yesterday we were at 140” for the year, where we had 187” for last year’s total. Yearly average is 120”. What’s with that? <br />Since our little adventure Saturday, I have just been working on the boat and walking over to the beach one or two times a day for some swimming and body surfing, and today I gave myself a haircut. Ho-Hum. <br /><br />The surf has been laying down a little each day. September is historically the calmest month of the year with October a close 2nd. The surfing will go away and the snorkeling will improve. I have an underwater camera ordered; it should be here by the end of the month. Looking forward to that! Now when Red Frog gets the WIFI up I should be able to get some photos/videos on line. My current connection just can’t handle them. <br /><br />I am starting to work more on paying attention to what I am eating to go along with my new more active lifestyle that Red Frog has helped provide. I have hung a pair of shorts up in the cockpit with my 40” August 1st waist measurement written on the waist band along with the target of wearing them by Thanksgiving. They are 36” waist. I am down 1” to 39” in 2 weeks, that first inch is always the easy one. Mostly all I have done so far is cut out the candy, cookies and soda that I used as a crutch to help me get off the alcohol. I just did not worry about my weight while I was kicking the booze habit. Now after being sober for a year this month I have cut out almost all the sweets also and shooting for as close to 0 sugar as I can get). I believe that sugar addiction is a big part of alcohol addiction. Sugar is a powerful drug and most of us are born addicted to it from our mothers. (See “Sugar Blues” the 1975 book by William Dufty. $6.99 at Amazon.com) (I do have booze on the boat, just to put future visitor’s minds at rest after my preaching.) Geeze, I just went on line and ordered 3 copies of Sugar Blues. Maybe that has something to do with the other crutch that I have been using? <br /><br />16 August 2009 Sunday, sunshine all day<br />I took off this morning on another hike to the south with Lance the captain of a 100 foot power boat also docked here at Red frog and Brett one of the partners of the development and 3 of his guests. This time we were in the jungle more than on the beach and went about twice as far as I had been before. Walking these jungle trails take a little doing. Almost anytime that the trail leads up or down it is wet and the mud is like grease and can be treacherous. Anyway we hiked down to Playa Larga, (Long Beach) and it is long and beautiful and deserted. We got in a little body surfing and headed back. There were fresh monkey tracks on the beach but I still haven’t seen one. Previously Lance & Brett had seen 15 to 20 monkeys on the walk down. I had planned on doing some snorkeling on the way back but by then everyone was ready to get back and find an easy chair, or in my case my hammock. <br /><br />There was a cayuca at the place where we saw all the fish last week and where I had planned on stopping to snorkel and they had a huge snapper they had speared. I just did not have the energy left and will save it for next time. Half of our group was about the same age as my grandson and I felt pretty good about keeping up the pace a month from my 68th birthday. I did fix a pain pill cocktail of an Aleve, 600 mg. of Advil and a couple of Aspirin before setting off. There will be more Advil tonight for the old knees; they really give me a hard time on the down hills. <br /><br />I had really been enjoying my old favorite anchorage at Starfish Beach, but Red Frog and Bastimentos has it beat by a mile. I would sometimes read a book a day when anchored there or when I was at Bocas, here I have just finished my 2nd book in 3 weeks. There is just too much to do here. <br /><br />Coquina is doing well but she cannot come with me on my hikes, at 107 in people years our walks are just up to the grass at the head of the dock and on the docks themselves. The main dock is about a 1000 ft. long. She likes the dock, but the short road to the grass is gravel as are all here, and she does not like walking on it. Tender old feet, in PA it was house, grass, beach, here in Panama it has been boat, docks, beach. She hardly knows what a rock is. The Vet has her on a couple of human meds, “Bonviva” used by old ladies for osteoporosis, one pill a month @ $78 a pill, and “Rimadyl” a daily arthritis pain med. They have worked wonders, her hips had all but collapsed 3 months ago, now she runs down the dock once she gets off the gravel. We have also both been on glucosamine for about ten years.<br /><br />18 August 2009<br /><br />Today I rode along as Brett gave Mike & Dede a tour of the Red Fog development. The neatest part of the tour was right at the start, not a quarter mile from the marina, a large female 3 toed sloth was crossing the road. I got some photos but I wish I had thought to use the video feature, it was sure slow motion. When I can up-load photos you will be able to see a place on her back where she must have been carrying a baby until just recently. When I first saw her on the side of the road and how she was moving I thought it had maybe been hit by a cart, but no that is just how they move, very, very, slowly….and she paid no attention to us.<br /><br />After the tour Mike and I walked over to the beach for our surf fix. When we first went in, we were out to about our chest and a bull Dorado swam right in front of us. That is a first for me, seeing Mahi-mahi in the surf. There was just small surf, but every few minutes a set of waves of 5 or 6 foot would come along and I got 8 or 10 good rides in a half hour or so.<br /><br />23 August, 2009, Sunday, only 2” rain last week, but steady rain this AM.<br />We had great weather yesterday, very small surf so I hiked down to the area where the deep crevices are with Mike and Dede to see if we might spear a fish or two. No luck on the spearing but the water was much clearer than before and there were many beautiful tropical’s out and about, just not the schools of large fish we saw last time. <br />The improved visibility gave us a better look into the crevices and they are spectacular. Deep overhangs and caves, it will take dive gear to really explore. They are volcanic in origin with coral overlaying. We did see a sea snake or a snake eel, I’m not sure which it was. If it was a sea snake it was the first one I had seen since Viet Nam. Over there when we were on shore bombardment the concussion of the 5” guns going off would cause a circle of sea snakes to surface all around the ship. It wasn’t someplace I was anxious to swim. They are venomous but have small mouths and no fangs so they have to get some small part to chew on to be harmful, but still???<br /><br />September 1, 2009. Down from 212# August 1st, to 190# and 38” waist. <br />Red Frog Beach body surfing has a lot to do with my weight loss but I am also working on following the advice in “Sugar Blues.” That book changed my life over thirty years ago and it is still relevant, I just strayed from the path over the years. <br /><br />September 27th. Happy Birthday to me! 185#, 37” waist, 15 pounds to go. Picked up the 13’ Boston Whaler that will be my new dinghy and took it over to Bocas Offshore Services where they will give it a bottom paint job and put on my new 40 HP Suzuki outboard, it should be ready on Thursday. That should get me scooting around the archipelago in style and rapidly also.I have been getting in some good time in the surf. The waves here are really breaking nice as far as catching long rides. In fact some of the waves I have come to realize might be a little too big for me. And this is the month with the historical record of having the least surf. I’m starting to wonder what it will be like in January. Three days ago I took the hint that I could not take every wave after being stuffed in the sand four times. I am trying to pick and choose a little more conservatively. (It’s a wonder I can even say that word) <br />Isn’t it great, that is all I have to worry about right now? A broken neck? <br /><br />October 1<br /><br />Or maybe not. I had a large one give me a good twist today that did not feel real good on my back. I am still a little sore. But it was pretty fine out there today. No wind and the surface of the water was very smooth, but there were some sizable swells rolling in from somewhere. It reminded me of the Pacific and I got some good rides in. I called it a day soon after doing “the twist.” Conservative, I really must remember that word.<br /><br />2010<br /><br />February 22, 2010 Weight 175#, waist 35 ½”, another 15# and it would make it 100 pounds down from my all time high of 4 years ago, and also about where I was when I joined the Navy at 17. I might not make that but maybe another 5 or 10? It is just that I am content enough now that I am not really putting a lot of effort into losing more although the last 5 came in the last month or so.<br /><br />Once again I have let this journal slide. For Thanksgiving I put together a dinner event for Red Frog, and we fed 75-80 people. I smoked two 20# turkeys and farmed out 2 more to people with big ovens. The rest was pot-luck and we had a hell of a feed. I found that a store in David carried the “New Braunfels” type smoker and had one sent over here. It is the same as I had in Port A. Now to figure out the different type of cooking hard woods down here. <br /><br />On Christmas Steve off of S/V Serenity and I smoked a couple more turkeys as there were no left-over’s after Thanksgiving and we both wanted some for our freezers, so we had a nice Xmas dinner on Serenity with Steve’s wife Amy and her mother. <br />Still getting in the body surfing most days, it has to be about the most fun you can have by yourself. And yes it does get too big for me on some days. In January we had a day of 14 foot waves that took away most all of the Red Frog beach. It is starting to come back but by moving all that sand off shore, the waves now break further out and it is harder to catch them without a board. It did this last year also and took a few months to build the beach back up. <br /><br />On February 9th I lost Coquina, my companion for the last 16 years. She was much more than a dog to me, it has been as hard as losing a close family member. My friend Andrew was down visiting at the time and his support was much appreciated. We took her about 3 miles offshore in 1000 foot of water and laid her to rest with the old anchor windlass from Sea Feather. <br /><br />Andrew’s Words for Coquina:<br /><br />Mother Mother Ocean, we now consign to you the body of the beloved Coquina. She had a long and happy life with a man who was always kind to her, and she was fey, strong and willful just like him. Rest now in the arms of the deep. Amen. <br /><br />I have been getting a lot done on the boat during this time also. We have pulled up and re-bedded all the deck stanchions and pulled out the ports in the aft cabin & reinstalled them with new teak frames. For now it looks like we have stopped all the leaks. Hooray!!! As mentioned above I installed a new windlass and ran new 1/0 cable to it. Just the cable ran near $1000. As they say, that is what “boat” stands for, “Bring On Another Thousand.” Also had new covers made for the v-birth cushions, and sanded and then oiled all the topside teak, cap rail, boarding ladder, etc. I went with teak oil as I’m just not up to tackling varnish work. <br /><br />While Andrew was here we took the Whaler up the creek to the Bat Cave and also made a run down to the crevices at Polo Beach and took it in through the reef. My first time doing that but with good visibility and someone on the bow it was pretty straight forward getting across the reef. The GTO Memorial Dinghy has made getting around and exploring the area a real pleasure.bocasgaryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10535260029841395996noreply@blogger.com10