If you speak even a little Spanish you're probably familiar with the word "pendejo". It can be used in that friendly, guy-insulting-guy way as in, "Hey, Pendejo, how's it going?" Or, it could be directed at someone who just did something really stupid, like backing out of their parking space without looking and almost running you over...."you stupid Pendejo (kind of redundant, but you get the jist).
Well, last year during our very fun visit with Dave and Lilka aboard Scappatella, we had an unforgettable "pendejo" moment. We had left our favorite little bar in Culebra, Mamacita's, and were riding back in the dinghy at night, with no light. I briefly saw something in the water and yelled, "hey, what the...". This was immediately followed by a loud CRUNCH and then several "Oh Shit's". We had run the dinghy aground, right into the rocks off of Point Something-or-Other. I can't remember what the official name of the point was, but after that experience we all jokingly referred to it as "Punta Pendejo". Louis, being the Captain of the dinghy that evening, was the object of that affectionate but insulting term, loosely translated to "Point of the Stupid Idiot Driving the Dinghy"....although, as Lilka pointed out, we were all the "pendejos" that evening! Since then, Punta Pendejo has become a sort-of code phrase among the four of us to describe something really stupid one or the other has done.
Well, a few nights ago we were at a farewell party for our Venezuelan friend, Julio, who's finally leaving Curacao after 3 months, 14 days, and 6 hours. (He had a rough time in the yard). Anyway, a friend Moss asks about the use of the word "Pendejo". She was told it meant pubic hair, and wanted confirmation of its meaning. (us yachties have many such high-falutin' conversations). She was immediately corrected by several people who threw around other meanings like "asshole", "stupid idiot", and "dumb-ass". Louis hears all of these definitions and looks up at me with disbelief in his eyes. "Pendejo?" he says softly. "No....not pendejo....that means dangerous, doesn't it?"
I just about spewed my wine all over the cockpit, I began laughing so hard! It seems Louis had conveniently forgotten the meaning of "pendejo" that Lilka had clearly explained in the dinghy - "No, it's not just an idiot...more like a STUPID idiot" - and apparently confused it with the word "peligro", meaning "danger". So all this time "Punta Pendejo" has meant "Dangerous Point" to Louis, instead of "Point of the Stupid Idiot"!
Amazing what the mind is capable of!
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We've seen some odd things in our time here in the yard. Like the guy today who walked over to his car, opened the door, and took a piss right there in front of the office. Twice. "It kind of blows my mind", Louis said. "I mean, why would he do that? The bathrooms are just around the corner...about 30 paces away". Go figure.
There's our neighbor, Joost, (in the photo) who's using an acetylene torch to melt the lead out of his keel. Apparently his boat is a bit stern-heavy, so he's lightening his load by taking some weight out of the keel! I suppose the fact that the keel (beneath the boat) is ballast for the mast (above the boat) isn't a concern? Guess he'll find out...
And then there's "the blue man"- this really nice yard worker, Ellison, who gets some of the nastiest jobs like sanding bottom paint, the ultra-toxic stuff you put on the bottom of your boat to slow down barnacle growth. He's sanding away wearing just a tank top and a dust mask! No long sleeve shirt. No hood. No respirator. He walked by covered head-to-toe in blue paint and I thought maybe he was heading to an audition for The Blue Man Group. By the way, this is the same job Louis did last year wearing hooded Tyvek coveralls, shoes, a respirator and glasses. The only exposed parts of his entire body were his eyebrows. And they tingled for a few weeks. Seriously.
And how about our shower the other night? Louis and I shared a stall so our friends, Gino and Mel, could each have their own. Gino's a big guy, plus, they had just that day been put in the water after 5 months working in the yard. Anyway, right as Gino's about to end his shower, we hear him say "naah, I'll hold it - I gotta pee over the rail tonight!" It seems he was going to pee right there in the shower, but the excitement of their boat finally being on the water and being able to pee over the side just got to him. Guess it doesn't take much to excite you after 5 months in the yard!
But nothing quite beat the sight I saw in the nasty unisex boatyard bathroom yesterday. This woman had pulled up a couple chairs in front of the sinks and was reading a book, right there in the smelly, hot, mosquito-infested bathroom. That's odd enough, but she had her computer with this HUGE screen propped up onto another chair! It was like having a big-screen TV in the boatyard bathroom. Weird. Really weird for Louis, as he went in later to "do his business". He's sitting there making his daily deposit with this lady basically watching TV and reading a book, just a few feet and a stall-door away from him! That's enough to send the average Turtlehead running the other direction. But not for Louis - he just sat there quietly and went about his business. (Fortunately, there were enough poo-tickets in there for him and he didn't have to ask the lady to pass some extras under the stall...a common occurance in these bathrooms).
So, UFO's we don't have...but strange sightings? You betcha!
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Well, it wasn't pretty but we did it - we're in the water at Curacao Marine in a slip adjacent to the yard. All of the slips on the leeward side of the dock were full (that's the easy side to come in), so we had to go around to the windward side (much more challenging). That itself wouldn't have been a problem for the talented Cap'n Louis - he's pretty damn good at this stuff - but we had to back in so our bow will be into the wind when we put our new sails up. Backing our boat is very difficult: the prop kicks the bow off to one side so it's near impossible to go in a straight line. In addition, it was very windy and there wasn't a lot of room to maneuver in coming into the slip, and, let's see...what other excuses can we come up with?
Well, the long and short of it is we ended up sideways to the dock with our bow inches from Curacao Marine's racing boat! Luckily we had the help of several hundred onlookers (just a few, really) who swung us around and, with the help of our GIANT inflatable fender (aka bumper), we avoided any scratches and such. Meanwhile, I forgot all of my "line-handling" skills so in addition to the Captain's sideways entry we had a bumbling line-handler on board. "First boat?" I could almost hear the crowd saying.
Anyway, we're here and tonight Louis gets to pee off the boat - he's pretty excited!
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It's 10:00 pm and I sit across the "salon" table from Louis...the heavy-lidded, dog-tired stare he's giving me doing absolutely nothing to curb my " I-just-finished-my-1st-coat-of-varnish" enthusiastic jabber. He gives me a knowing look while I wonder aloud if those slight varnish over-runs are going to mar the smooth-as-glass surface of my recently sanded wood trim. "What", I innocently ask, thinking that Louis, the Woodworking God, is about to impart some secret pearls of wisdom to me, his Varnish-Virgin. "What are you thinking?", I eagerly prompt him.
"Help, I'm talking and I Can't Shut Up" he responds, momentarily crushing my puppy-dog enthusiasm. But only for a moment. His comment sends me into hysterics as I realize it's right on the mark - I'm in one of those "Jabberin' Janet" kinda moods that Louis found soooooo adorable when we first got together. I try to contain myself and quietly begin my new blog entry. The moment would be much better portrayed, though, if I could truly capture the essence of his exhaustion via a photo. I grab my camera and try to pull one off, but he just looks pissed (go figure). The 2nd attempt gets me a shot of the bottom of his foot, put forth in a "talk to the hand" kind of way, and for some reason this just sends me into more hysterics. "Are you on drugs or something", he asks. (I do get a little smile out of him when I show him the photo, though")
The boat is engulfed in silence as I eventually go back to my blog-typing and Louis sits there, pondering the next day's tasks, no doubt. A loud "WHAP" breaks the silence as he goes for his 10th mosquito kill of the evening. "Missed him, the fucker" he says.
More silence (him) and out-of-control laughter (me).
He gets up to bring our dishes to the sink and dryly comments, "Boy, that was a rippin' dinner". He's referring to the lukewarm, dry, chicken wrap we just ate. It was the other half of our lunch we saved so we wouldn't have to bother cooking dinner. For some reason this just cracks me up more, and on I go with the hysterics. I really must have inhaled some varnish fumes today!
Maybe, though, I'm just in a giddy state because my CRAP-O day ended so wonderfully! After spending hours and hours this afternoon scraping and sanding off the oil sealer I had so meticulously applied the day before (because it didn't harden...bummer) I got my 1st coat of varnish on and, I have to say, it looks GOOD. Plus, there's a full moon out!
So, all-in-all, life is good!
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Our friends Dave and Lilka decided to paint the interior of their house a while back. A buddy of theirs wisely told them, "you can't afford to paint". Puzzled, they asked their friend what he meant. He explained that once you paint a few walls, all the other walls look so dingy that you just HAVE to paint them. And, then, of course all that fresh new paint makes the living room carpet look really old and dirty, so you have no choice but to rip it out and replace it with bamboo flooring. Now, next to your "brand new living room", the kitchen really begins to look outdated, and while you rip into the kitchen you might as well tackle that rewiring you've been meaning to do. Of course, the bathroom is right above the kitchen, so if you're going to be bustin' into the ceiling maybe you should do that bathroom expansion you've been thinking about....and on it goes (and on they did!)
Boat projects are a lot like that. We started with a lengthy "to do" list which included standard maintenance items like painting the bottom, varnishing the wood and waxing the boat. But next to that newly-sanded wood was a really ugly white caulk joint that would look much better in black. And beyond that clean, new black caulking were some bungholes that needed repairing (so, that's where that term came from!). And you know that waxing we were planning on...it's not quite doing the job, so maybe we should rent a machine and apply rubbing compound to really polish that fiberglass. Oooh - that looks nice and shiny now, but that gloss brings out the imperfections even more! Maybe we need to wet-sand the entire hull to get rid of those color blotches......and on it goes.
So, we've decided to forgoe sailing this season and instead spend the next few months working on Scappatella....NOT! But it's easy to see how people spend year after year working on their boat and never leave the dock. You really can get too anal about all this stuff!
Anyway, enough about bung-holes and such...back to painting the bottom - although at $400 per gallon, maybe we really can't afford to paint!
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For any of you couples out there who are thinking of joining us on a (sigh) romantic vacation in the Caribbean sea, a word about pole-dancing may be in order.
On our boat, there are two cabins: a spacious aft cabin (ours) and a not-quite-as-spacious forward cabin (yours). Yours, except for right now. Since the aft cabin is currently in the "sanding zone", we've been sleeping in your bed, so to speak. And your bed is, well, "interesting".
It's what is called a "v-berth" which, for once in boaty-speak, is exactly what it sounds like. It's basically a v-shaped cabin at the bow of the boat. Picture how a boat narrows or v's at the front, and you'll get the idea. Your feet are at the narrow end, and the berth widens out substantially as you move "aft", where your head rests. It's standard on monohulls, and is actually a pretty spacious "2nd bedroom" for a boat our size. But there's one quirky thing about our v-berth: there's a pole running vertically down through it! It's actually a piece of 3 ½" pvc pipe set just off center, creating a "big person side" and a "little person side". Our anchor chain runs down thru this pipe into an anchor well under the bed. "Why the heck did they design it that way", you might wonder? They didn't. It was a (smart) solution implemented by the previous owners for a common problem many boats deal with: as you haul up the anchor with the electric windlass (a motorized anchor-puller-upper) the chain piles up into the anchor locker and eventually jams. Then someone has to go down below and "tickle the chain", pushing the chain further down into the well to un-jam it. Usually, it's just a hassle but it can actually be quite dangerous if, for example, the winds change and you need to leave an anchorage in a hurry! Or, of course, if the pirates are bearing down on you and your weapons have all been checked in at customs.
Anyway........where was I? Oh yeah, pole dancing. Well, let's just say that the "sport" of pole dancing takes on a whole new meaning in our boat...one which I think may require a lot of practice! Unfortunately, it also brings up terrorizing memories for Louis of his "bachelor party gone bad". If you haven't heard the story, ask him (gently) one day.
Bottom line: if you come for a visit with your sweetie, you're bound to have some laughs as you "learn the ropes"!
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I like that word: "crap". It can completely convey your point or feeling, without using more colorful (and negative) words which I wouldn't want to put in our blog. Yesterday we each had that kind of day. Louis was patching gelcoat (the fiberglass surface of our boat) and I was chemically stripping varnish (the picture actually shows the heat gun phase - that's actually the "fun" part of the job.). Anyway, Louis mixed up this very potent, toxic batch of white gelcoat "goo", mixing just the right amount of brown and yellow coloring to match our cream fiberglass. He had just finished patching various dings all around the boat when a wind came up and knocked the boat cusions off of their storage spot. He grabbed them (so they wouldn't fall in the gelcoat), dripping his tub of goo all over the place, and stepping in his patches in the process! Grrrrrrr! After cleaning all of that up, he waited. And waited. And waited. It seems he didn't put enough hardener in the gelcoat, and it wasn't "going off". (He was, though!) So....back to square one (or square minus-one, actually, as he now needs to remove the goo, mix up a new batch of gelcoat, try to rematch the color, and do the entire process over again! Crap!
Meanwhile, I was stripping the wood with a chemical stripper to get the varnish out of the crevices in the wood which remained after the heat gun step. I carefully taped all the edges where wood-to-be-stripped meets wood-not-to-be-stripped. Since we couldn't find the $50+ per roll "solvent-resistant tape", I used the standard 3M blue tape. I put several layers of that on, and then went over it with duct tape (my goal being to keep the stripper from stripping the good wood). Well, you can guess what happened. The stripper ate the tape and bled a little, peeling up a bit of the finish from the "good wood". Crap! Plus, it was a friggin' mess! Gooey, dusty, caustic chemicals dripping all over the plastic protectant, and me in the process. I had to shut the hatch to work on it, so I was sweating up a storm through my glasses & dust mask and could barely see...this stuff sucks! The good news is that the "good wood" I damaged is actually an already-damaged area we had decided not to tackle this time around. So, it's not a pristine area or anything. More good news: having learned this lesson, I will not be using stipper in hatch #2 (in the photo), where the beautiful pristine wood IS.
Anyway, that pretty much fit our definition of a "crappy" boat day! How was your day?
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If you know me very well, you'll know by this picture that I must be getting a bit tired by now from all of this woodwork! I rarely eat fast-food - like, once a year at most. And when I do, it's almost always an In-and-Out burger (hey, those are pretty good for you, right?). So for me to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken - well, it's just not normally "in" me. Well, tonight it was not only in me, but I suggested it! And, man, was it good...Louis and I inhaled most of a bucket of Original Recipe Fried Chicken (they didn't have extra crispy) while watching a pretty stupid Denzel Washington / Angelina Jolie movie. A great ending to an exhausting day of deck laying, caulking and varnish stripping!
Our great night was followed by a very fun day! Now, if you know Louis very well, you know he's a "worker". And he doesn't like to play games. (I'm not talking about the head-trip kinds - although thankfully he doesn't like those either!) Anyway, today we were invited for brunch on "Meow", a neighboring Catamaran in the boatyard. Her owner, Mel, invited us and another couple to eat enchiladas, drink Mango-mimosas, and play Mexican Train (a dominoes-type game). We spent all of Sunday afternoon - from 1:00 to 6:30 or so - hanging out eating, drinking, laughing and playing Mexican Train! Two firsts in a 24-hour period: KFC for me, and a day OFF playing games for Louis. You KNOW we're tired!
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Well, today we got some awful news: 3 good friends of ours were involved in a serious accident back home and 1 of our friends, Dennis Colbath, didn't survive. We are heartbroken. Dennis and his partner, Steve, are 2 very good friends of ours who were hoping to visit us this year on Scappatella. Several years ago Steve and Dennis joined us sailing in Mexico on "Basta" (Doug Nichoson's boat) for 10 days. This photo was taken in Ballena Bay-? in the Sea of Cortez, where the 4 of us were clamming, trying to avoid the killer crabs that kept attacking our feet. This trip, like many other times with Steve and Dennis, was filled with laughter and great memories! Dennis is - was - a fun-loving, smart, sweetheart of a guy and we will miss him very much. Bob and Linda, our other friends who were involved in the accident are ok, thankfully, although each will have a 3-month healing process from broken ribs (Linda) to a fractured vertebrae & broken clavicle (Bob).
I flew home as our "Caribbean emissary" to attend Dennis' memorial and support our friends. Louis stayed with Scappatella, keeping her safe and continuing the work that needed to be done. It was strange, but very good, to be home again. And I'm so glad I came home - it was good to spend time with Steve, Bob and Linda, and to be among friends while we all shared stories of times with Dennis and collectively mourned his passing. A few days later we continued that process, but in addition celebrated the inauguration of President Barack Obama! A day marked by intense sadness coupled with hope and excitement.
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New Year's Day we headed down to Scappatella...excited, and a bit apprehensive, to climb aboard. Apprehensive because we left her for soooooooo long...we've heard some horror stories involving theft, mold, water damage, and the like. We opened up the hatch, stepped inside, and all seemed ok! No funky smells and our systems were powered up (we'd left a solar panel hooked up to trickle charge our batteries while we were gone). Looking a bit more closely, however, we discovered a thin layer of mold over all of the wood and in a few more spots. Bummer! But luckily it hadn't done any damage (heavy mold can destroy finishes on wood), and it was pretty selective about what it grew on. Also luckily, we had put all of the linens, pillows, bedding, etc. in air-tight bags, so at least that stuff was still clean! Still, it took 3 days wiping everything down with vinegar to get rid it all but, finally, Scappatella was clean once more!
Once the basic stuff was done, we got to more serious tasks: ordering sails! Yup, we bit the bullet and ordered a new mainsail and a new foresail (genoa) for Scappatella! Our sails are over 20 years old, so it was pretty much a necessity, even though it dented the pocketbook quite a bit. Then, Louis began working on our decks -repairing and replacing some of the teak decking, and I started working on the "brightwork". With a name like that, you'd think I was working on the stainless, right? Nope, in boating, brightwork refers to the woodwork - go figure! Ours was more aptly called dullwork, as it had been let go of late. The process so far has been: cleaning the fiberglass surrounding the teak of previous varnish stains (duh...should have done that later, I learned); heat-stripping the old varnish off of the teak (my new favorite tool!) and finally, chemical-stripping and hand scraping the remaining varnish that wouldn't come off with the gun (this part sucks big time!). I have about 3 days into this phase, with about 3 more to go, I'm guessing. Then I have to make repairs, sand the wood down, apply 3 coats of sealer, and finally apply 8 - 10 coats of varnish (1 coat per day, sanding in between each coat). It sounds pretty daunting, but I'm excited to see how it looks a the end! (And, no matter how it turns out, if you visit Scappatella it would be a good idea to rave about our new "brightwork"!)
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