Quick Robin, to the "Batwing" Mobile!

PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY

Hey All,

We've been hanging out a lot with Ron & Diane on "Batwing". Diane is a tall, athletic woman with a deep tan and a bright smile. She seems quite poised and refined along side her husband Ron, who is about sixty, looks maybe late forties, and has the exuberance, humor and enthusiasm of someone just entering puberty. He loves to kid, tease and harass everyone, and will clown about without the slightest reserve, which usually results in the rest of us groaning at his antics, and Diane rolling her eyes. But, he is disarmingly charming, makes friends everywhere we go, has become the self appointed mayor of the marina and both Diane and he have spent a significant amount of their time getting to know many of the marina workers, offering them classes in English andhelping out where ever they can.

I drew this picture of them, using the above photo as a guide, and gave it to them when they left. Diane is an excellent artist in her own right and does beautiful water color postcards. It is amazing the level of talent we've come across among the folks we've met while cruising.

They are both delightful folks to be parked next to and consummate low budget sailors, giving us many tips about the best deals in town, best routes, cheapest gas, etc. While I really appreciate all the information and help, I don't think Ron quite approves of my approach to sailing. He has almost no electronics (and little expertise about it), spends almost no money unless it is absolutely necessary and makes everything last as long as possible. When I showed up he was amazed at the gear I had on board, the level of technology I wanted to make part of my sailing life, and the size and cost of my boat. We've had many discussions about our different approaches, and while I very much admire their approach, and it does work well for them, it would never work for me. I'm not a sailor for the love of sailing, or a traveler willing to forgo the comforts of home. I like having lots of gear. They don't. To each his own, but we love teasing each other about it, and it makes for a constant low grade sniping. I call him a failed Socialist; he calls me a raping Capitalist, we both make cutting remarks about the other and we enjoy every minute of it.

They been sailing the last few years on a "Junk Rigged" boat called Batwing. Now, junk rigged may sound like it has torn sails, or a duct taped mast and fouled lines (which, in this case isn't too far from the truth), but it is actually a style of sail rigging that eliminates the
need for guy wires (the forestay, backstay, shrouds, etc.) that normally attach the mast to the boat. This approach has lots of advantages, which Ron will recite for you continuously and without cessation. He is an evangelist for it, and knows more about it than anyone I've ever met. He will rattle on about its origins (it dates back to ancient China, as does Ron), its current state of technology and the various uses on sailing vessels, dingies, kayaks, canoes and probably a skateboard. Within minutes of meeting them, he was showing me vast amounts of documentation he had collected over the years. When Robinson came aboard last week it wasn't long before Ron was trying to make another convert. Here is a picture of him preaching to us about the wonders of a junk rig. I'm just surprised he doesn't have a T-shirt that says "Ask me about my junk rig", but on second thought, that might not parse quite the way its intended.

What is most amusing though, is that despite their intention to go low tech, they still have a strong dependence on some technologies such as GPS, SSB Radio, RADAR and their laptop. In the short time I've been with them, they've had problems with almost all of it. In some cases, I could fix what was wrong, but their low budget approach means that their gear is usually very old, rusted, and in desperate need of replacing. A case in point was their SSB Radio, which was made during the last world war, and was never intended for marine use. And it didn't work. No matter how I tried, I just couldn't convince Ron that it made sense to get a new, modern one. Instead they rely on a small, portable radio to receive reports, but they can't transmit a message except on VHS, which is only good for line of sight. I guess for them this is okay, they really enjoy the aesthetic of being "out of touch", but in the mean time, they are carting around about twenty pounds of extra junk. To each his own, but so far, I'm pretty happy with my approach.

On the matter of communications, we've had a few problems using the local infrastructure. Nicaragua is a temperamental country where power is concerned. There is almost always a black out during weekdays, and getting electricity is sporadically available during evenings and weekends. That coupled with a pretty bad internet service provider at the marina meant that we could hardly ever get email or download weather data. The HAM/SSB radio has only been marginally useful at the dock(they don't work well within harbors or near other tall masts, trees or buildings) so I've had to rely on my Motorola Satellite Phone, which has worked flawlessly. Of course, the downside is that it is expensive, but getting to say hello to AnnMarie and let her know I'm still alive is more than worth it. We met another couple, Jeff & Stephanie on "Musetta" who had a different brand of SatPhone, I believe it was called Global Star, and it has never worked for them and been a huge disappointment. This is exactly the same experience that most of the West Marine customers I met had. If you decide to get one, make sure its the Motorola version .

Well, that's all for now. I have crew coming in soon, and need to get this boat cleaned up a bit. Hope all is well back home and I look forward to seeing everyone shortly.

Cheers,

Robb

PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY

Down and Out In Beverly Hills.

PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY

Dear reader,

I've been unable to get motivated today. I'm sill feeling like death warmed over, and can't seem to get caught up on sleep. This is a shot one of my crew mates thought best represented my natural state. To make matters worse, it has rained on and off all day and evening; the humidity weighs on you. It feels, at times, like you are breathing through wet blankets. I've managed to get my cabin mattress back together, put on sheets, find clean towels, clothes, arrange my laptop and paperwork enough to be able to do some basic record keeping and make sure the various computer programs and devices I'd brought down were working. This effort was exhausting. The boat still looks like an tornado hit it. There are things stacked in piles about the cabin, my prior attempts at putting the boat away for storage, but I haven't had enough good weather to start putting everything back in its proper place. It has rained on and off since I got here. Not enough to force you completely indoors, but enough to make working outside for any length of time damp and impractical, if not down right discouraging.

So, if you can't face your problems, back up to them. I spent most of the afternoon inside, trying to get the electronics working. There are several new geegaw's I've picked up this trip. My favorite has turned out to be a folding table for the laptop computer. I realize that this is just two pieces of hard plastic with a hinge, but it allows me to place the laptop on my lap while still providing airflow and eliminating the "hot spots" you get when the computer rests directly on your lap, raising your testicular temperature to the melting point of Molybdenum. I'm told that this may be the reason I've never had children. It also makes things more stable and secure, plus it fits nicely in the briefcase I use to hold the laptop. It is maybe five dollars worth of material, so I probably paid about fifteen dollars more than I should have, but it has worked out well and allows me to write comfortably while sitting in an airport, or on a plane, or even in bed. I only wish that laptop manufacturers would start making split key keyboards as part of the native laptop. My wrist ache after a few hours of typing in this position.

I've also managed to get the Garmin GPS chart plotter maps downloaded today. This turned out to be hours of fun. That is, if your idea of fun consists of following several web pages worth of instructions written originally in Japanese by someone who had never seen or used the product, and then translated into our native tongue by a Korean whose keyboard didn't include commas, semi-colons, or the letters T, H and E, and then edited by a Taiwanese tech writer who learned English through a correspondence course. Plus, I'm already annoyed with Garmin because I was unable to do any of this while at home. They've set up their system so that you can only use the "map" info with an unlock key, and they won't give you the key unless you know the serial number of the target GPS unit. That's fine unless you happen to be in the states, and the target unit is installed on your boat in Nicaragua, and you don't remember your serial number. The tech support staff were of absolutely no help what so ever, but ever so cheerful about being useless. I think they learned that "chipper, smiling, happy while I fuck you over" behavior from California highway patrol officers: "Here's your ticket for going three miles an hour over the speed limit, Ma'am, and you have yourself a real nice day."

What pisses me off is that I wasn't downloading the map into the GPS directly, I was burning it into a data card that would be installed into the GPS. I just wanted to make sure that all the new hardware I'd purchased would work. They could have just as easily set up the software so that the download didn't require the unlock code, or there was a one time use mechanism, or it was possible to download some demo map that didn't require an unlock code, or any of a thousand other approaches, but instead they've made it as difficult to use as possible. Their claim is that this prevents illegal reproductions, but the reality is that this doesn't actually stop the folks who want to abuse the system, it just makes it harder for the rest of us to use their products. If you applied their logic to the rest of the commercial world, you wouldn't be able to open a can of peaches without a working desktop computer, high speed internet access and half an afternoon of free time.

It also meant that I had to wait until I was back down here before I could try any of it out for the first time, which meant that if anything went wrong I'd be fucked unless I could get AnnMarie or someone else to bring me down the right parts. Internet communications are feeble at best here, and the power goes out every few hours, which kills the internet servers in the marina, so fixing a tricky electronics problem from here is, at best, great fun-- in that "you have yourself a real nice day" sense of the word fun. Since I began writing this email, the power has gone off, and come back on three times. Frustrating just doesn't adequately describe the emotion. We need a new word or phrase (something like "road rage" or bad drivers) to describe the desire to reach through the internet and strangle that useless little support script reading fuck wearing a headset; maybe "disk rage" or "web-roid".

As it turned out, it was many hours before I was able to get enough of a connection through to the Garmin website (after being repeatedly cut off when either the power failed or the signal grew too weak) before I had everything working. At one point the wireless signal here became so weak that the only way to continue meant having to sit outside-- naturally it started to rain just as I was about to complete the download transaction. I could have maps for my upcoming trip, but only if I was willing to saturate my laptop to do so. Good times, good times. To make matters worse, the 16Meg blank data card I bought was defective. I happened to find another card someone had given me, otherwise I would have been stuck until someone from the states arrived with additional hardware.

This evening I was invited over to "Batwing" for dinner with Ron & Diane. I had just started to begin organizing the boat, but a home cooked meal is never to be passed up when cruising. We were joined by Tom and Ann, a retired couple from Washington who've been out sailing the west coast for a while. It seems that you can quickly tell the folks who are coping well with the cruising lifestyle. I watched as the two of them paddled their sailing canoe up to the dock and gracefully got out without so much as a glance between them. Now, that doesn't sound like much, but getting two adults out of a untethered canoe isn't as easy as it looks, and they managed it quickly, effortlessly and with aplomb. This kind of unspoken, choreographed movement from an unstable platform takes practice and communication, and that only happens when both parties are in sync with each other. I've seen other couples have trouble just walking side by side while holding hands.

We all sat around chatting, eating and drinking, telling tales out of school and generally enjoying each others company. The evening sped past us. It was after 10pm before I made it back to the boat, and any energy I might have had towards organizing quickly vanished. Oh, well, another day in paradise; I just wish it didn't rain so much, or was so hot, or so difficult to get around, or...oh, wait, I'm hanging out on a comfortable catamaran, in a brand new marina located at the edge of a breath-takingly beautiful tropical jungle, with delightful friends, and no one is shooting at me. Life could be a lot worse.

I hope your day was as traumatic.

Cheers,

Robb

PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY

The Saga Begins.

PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY


Hey All,

I arrived very late last night in Managua, but didn't want to take a cab in the dark, so I checked into a local hotel for the night. Getting through customs and immigrations took no time at all. While on line I started talking with an older women next to me. I thought she looked like someone visiting from the bay area; actually, I thought she looked like someone you might see riding on the back of a motorcycle as part of Dykes on Bikes. I think I might have been wrong; she was a nun and worked for an evangelical charity.

She pointed me towards a shuttle that would take me to "The Mercedes", a part of the Best Western Chain of hotels where I could spend the night. On the way over I met Wim, a very nice man from the Netherlands, who was working for an NGO doing charity work in Nicaragua. When I got to the hotel, there were two people in line in front of me. Both of them were carrying very large, well thumbed bibles. The man behind me was chatting on the phone about setting up a prayer meeting. I may be the only unbeliever in the entire country. They put me in room 666, but I'm sure that is just a coincidence.

So, no trip is complete without at least one horrible cab story. This leg of our journey started with the front desk person telling me it would cost $150.00 for the taxi to drive me to the marina. "Okay", please ask the driver to come here", I say, knowing already how this is going to go. He doesn't speak English. "Explain to him that I will pay only $150.00 and nothing else, and he must take me directly to the marina." I tell the clerk. They chat in Spanish for a few minutes.

She then tells me that he doesn't know the way to the marina, do I have a map. I show him the stuff I got off the marina's website. He says he doesn't know how to get there, but that the roads are impassible. It is amazing that he can both not know how to get there, and also know about the road conditions getting there, but this kind of Zen knowledge is part of the Cabbie From Hell job qualification. He tells me he can only go as far as Chinandega, the closest major town, but will only charge me $100.00. I explain that that doesn't help me at all, I need to get to the marina. The desk clerk asks for the number to call the marina, so I begin to look it up, but the power fails, and all their internet connections drop. I've got a map off the marina website which is almost as useful as the Microsoft Help Desk. I realize that the webpages I have saved off don't have the local marina number, and my cell phone doesn't work in Nicaragua yet so I can't call Ann to ask her for this info, and "telephone information" is a new concept in Nicaragua.

Realizing that I'm just wasting time waiting around for the power to come back, I decide to get in the cab and head to Chinandega, but I'm not feeling comfortable about the situation. As we are driving past another hotel I see a huge sign for car rentals, I realize that cab rides for the crew are going to add up, and I could just as easily rent a car. I tell the cab driver to let me off at the next hotel we come to, and I inquire about rentals. The price is $10 a day for the car, and $14 a day for the minimum insurance. That is still cheaper than what it is going to cost me, AnnMarie, and Robinson in cab fares, plus I'll have the ability to go into town when I want. I rent a car and head off into the jungles of Managua.

Now, most Americans will find this hard to believe, but there are no maps for sale in Managua, or parts near by. The reason for this is that there are no street names in Managua, or in parts near by. The idea being that if you don't already know your way around here, you are probably a foreign spy. I thought it was odd that the directions listed on the marina web site didn't mention street names, and included comments like "turn right when you see the rock shaped like a bear", but it didn't occur to me that I'd be navigating my way there. Had I known I would have brought my compass and GPS/Chartplotter along. I stopped about twelve times along the way, each time asking for directions.

Nicaraguans don't like giving simple directions, probably because it takes a lot of Spanish words to say "turn left after you've gone past Jose Gomez's barn that fell down". The fact that I speak eight words of Spanish which don't include "right", "left" or "road" didn't help. Basically, at each fork or intersection, I'd stop, find the most anal retentive looking man I could, and ask him to draw a map. Fully fifty percent of the maps were wrong. I'm sure that if given enough time, I will be able to find my way back to the airport, but I think I may need to hire a guide for the first trip. It is really quite impressive. Even CalTrans could hold their head up high compared to this place.

On the way to the marina I was stopped by police. At least I thought they were police. They were wearing police uniforms, and had guns. They were pointing at my car and directing me over to the side of the road, so I pulled over. There were two officers, and it turned out they wanted a ride up the road. They were not police, but guards at the local factory, and were on their way home. Hitchhiking while fully armed and in uniform is a new one for me. None the less, I spent a few tense moments realizing this, then another ten minutes wondering if I'd just made a really stupid mistake picking them up. They turned out to be very nice folks, we tried our best to communicate, and I even learned the word for "farm", which is all we saw as we drove along, but I've since forgotten it.

Eventually I found my way toward the marina grounds. At about this time the paved roads became gravel roads, and gradually the gravel roads became dirt roads, and then ruts, and then ruts filled with water, and then parts that were just water. At some point along the way I realized I'd made a horrible mistake in not renting a 4x4, preferably a truck. Or maybe a HumVee, if not a tank. The ground was saturated, and I found myself having to do some pretty tricky driving to get past some bad spots. On top of that, it was starting to get dark and I really didn't want to get stuck out in these parts at night. About a mile from the marina I encountered a really bad patch of muck, and pushed the poor little rental car to its limits getting it through. By the time I was driving down the marina driveway my vehicle looked like I'd just finished a Baja cross country race.

As I drove up the driveway I encountered Ron & Diane on bicycles coming the other way. Ron had been watching my boat for me while I was away, and I was bringing down some boat parts for him from the states, so it was a delightful accident to bump into them just as I arrived. Ron is a bit of a character; he is tall and lanky and always making jokes with everyone. He is the kind of guy that somehow knows everyone by name, and is able to befriend even the most reluctant natives. He and his wife Diane have been teaching English to many of the locals, and they have come to recognize his goofy antics and also make fun of him. We hit it off immediately, and have been teasing each other ever since. Its fun to watch him interact with Diane, who just shakes her head at his jests and rolls her eyes as if to say "Can you believe this guy?" They are a very cute couple.

They were bicycling along the road with another cruising couple, Tom & Ann, and were all on their way to dinner at a near by restaurant. We ate at a palm covered palapa overlooking the ocean. The hilltop sloped down to a beautiful beach with what, as I'm told by the local surfing tourist, Brad, is an amazing left break with two hundred yards of run that tubes most of the way. At least, I think that was what he said. I don't speak Surfer any better than I speak Spanish. I just pretended I understood and nodded dumbly. He had brought his guitar, I borrowed one from the restaurant and we sat and jammed after dinner. Eventually we hiked back to the car and I drove into the marina parking lot, glad to have managed to get this far.

So, I've made it back to the boat, which is still floating and doesn't seem much the worse for wear. The battery was dead when I got here, but that was because one of the marina workers decided to shut off the power to my boat but didn't turn it back on. When ever there are serious blackouts and the marina needs to use their own generators, they walk along the docks shutting off everyone's boat that isn't occupied. This is something they've started doing and it really is the only problem I've had with the marina so far. Power is such a rare commodity here that the folks will do anything to reduce their load. Unfortunately, it killed my battery. I've plugged everything back in and started charging it again, but it isn't clear if it will come back. I've decided that batteries are like small infants. They will die unless constantly attended to.

Beyond that, and being unbelievably tired, things are good. I trust the same holds for you, and hope everyone is enjoying themselves as much as I.

Cheers,

Robb


PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY