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Editor's Note: Not all the letters were distributed at the time of their writing. Some didn't get mailed, for whatever reason, others didn't get published because they got misplaced, others didn't because they violated national security and/or obscenity laws.
Fellow Readers,
Sailing is not always wonderful. In fact, most of the time, it is like having small grains of sand dropped into your eyes, with brief periods where you are able to look on the face of God. You are forced to buy the sand, by the way; it's a buck a grain, and God turns out to look a lot like Mel Brooks.
The last twenty four hours were like that; the previous night was windy
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Despite the humor, it is still work to sail this boat in unfavorable winds without an autopilot. Two hour shifts suddenly
The next morning the sun came up, the weather warmed, the seas flattened out, the wind came more on our beam, and everyone relaxed into it. It was a beautiful day for sailing, we had gorgeous weather, everyone ran about with as little on as possible, dolphins swam along side, we played music and sang, had brunch in the cockpit, lazed on the trampolines, and just enjoyed ourselves.
We still haven't installed the radar unit. We looked around for a rigger in Aruba that could do it, but it isn't the place to find them. Trinidad just wasn't someplace I'd trust anyone to do the work, as it would have been overpriced and probably wrong. Maybe we'll find someone in Panama City. So far we haven't needed it, but the further North we get, the more we will want it.
I'd have also liked to have installed a few more solar panels. The one we have is only 55 watts and it really isn't enough to compensate for the frig, lights, fans, radio, stereo, and various other loads on the batteries. We have to run the engines every day to recharge them, which is loud, smells bad (especially since the wind is at our backs and the exhaust fumes blow over the boat) and it wastes diesel. My goal is to build a hard bimini (the roof over the cockpit area) and cover it with 120watt panels, enough to satisfy our thirsty electrical needs.
I'd also like to add a wind generator off the targa wing (the large fiberglass arch at the aft end of the cockpit, or, more likely I'll build another arch out of stainless steel just aft of it, and run the wind generator off a pole above it. There are so many things I'd like to do to this boat, but I need to get it back home before I can begin. I don't trust that the work will be done right if I'm not standing right there watching, so I might as well do it myself. Plus the cost will be significantly cheaper if I do it - not to mention the satisfaction of being able to say I did. SF is a fabulous place to get parts and equipment, and technical knowhow abounds there, so the real work starts when I get home.
Editor's Note: The above probably isn't true, judging from the photos, but there was definitely real weight loss when Robb spent two weeks in the San Blas Islands, with Jeff and Mota - with no one to cook, eating nothing but canned pineapple, octopus and mayonnaise.
We are heading past Columbia, the hippest place you can travel these days, which is a tantalizing forty miles off to our port side. About once an hour Jeff, or Mota, or Jen, or Mike, or MaryAnn will ask if we can stop at Cartegena. My job as captain, mostly, has been to say (repeatedly and without cessation) "No, we are not going to Cartegena, where the women are famed for their beauty and amazingly large, artificial breasts." or "No, we are not going to Bonaire, famed for its magnificent diving and topless beaches", or "No, we are not going back to lovely island of Aruba, adult playground for Cruise Ship passengers throughout the world, we are going to the Panama canal, the dirtiest ditch of water on the Western hemisphere."
It is a hard job being captain, mostly because I really want to go to all those places, and I'm watching myself turn into the Grinch while refusing to do it. At one point I caught myself yelling at the crew for roughhousing on the aft deck, I was about to say "Stop that this instant or I'll pull this boat over!" It occurred to me that perhaps I needed to just chill a bit. I made AnnMarie take off all her clothes and lie next to me in our bunk, a well known relaxation technique I learned from reading sailing books, and let the crew make as much noise as they want. I'm not sure if it improved everyone's moral, but at least two of us were happier.
Well, there's more to come, so to speak, but we'll close for now, at sea and rocking and rolling along.
Cheers,
Robb
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