05/01/2008, Milagro Marina
Heading south today. First stop may be Isla Pasion on the north end of Cozumel or perhaps Puerto Morales. Well see how it goes.
A sad goodbye to all my new friends here. I hope I see you all again sometime soon.
HEA
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04/29/2008, Isla Mujeres, Mexico
"when you've got a Big Johnson"
the inscription on the tee shirt of a giant mexican guy as wide as he was tall with a face that looked like someone had let half the air out of an inflatable easter island statue. He stood behind me in the tiny internet cafe with the dimensions of a freight elevator where we got our visas. I was actually too close to read it myself...like on the front row of a drive-in movie. Janeen told me about it.
You should interpret my lack of logs for the past few days as a sign that I absolutely love Isla Mujeres. The weather, the people, the water, the island herself all conspire to keep a person as engaged and entertained as you care to be and the days slip past one after the other like fresh succulent oysters down a parched throat. Hell, even my wallet loves Isla and that grouchy bastard don't like nobody. You stick your little card in the ATM and it takes a couple hundred American dollars and gives you back thousands of pesos which you stuff in your pocket. You then stride around for days, depriving yourself of nothing, eating out constantly at the many, many restaurants which, to my experience, all serve delicious food, the freshest of fish, great wines, two for one drinks, which may or may not be a good thing, and when you check your wallet later there are still thousands of pesos left. You wonder if they are breeding in there.
It would be dead easy make the jump and join the thriving ex-patriot community down here. I have had the privilege of meeting a fair sampling of that group during my stay here. These are not assembly line production humans. They are the one-offs, the conceptual versions and custom designs that perhaps the mass market can not fully understand nor appreciate. But they are my people and Isla is the mother ship. I could easily be talked into shopping for real estate here...........in fact there is this pretty real estate agent I've met with a half visible tattoo................
Of the many things I have learned here in Isla, one is that Canadians really do talk exactly like Bob and Doug McKenzie from Second City TV's "Great White North". I had always suspected this. It is true. "Gimme another beer, eh? Take off, ya hoser." Just like that.
Another thing I've learned is that the time it takes me to go from charming to mildly irritating in the eyes of a pretty and smart Canadian woman is exactly 3.5 days. This is good news considering that since the weakening US dollar is now only worth about 0.98 Canadian dollars I should be able to remain charming with a US girl well into the fourth day before getting the first eye-roll. Of course this is only a theory.
Yet another lesson learned here is that southern boys must send out some sort of homing signal when they are separated from their brethren and placed in a foreign land. This primordial vibration allows us to find one another, gather together and mangle the King's English in the way that only we can. Considering the fact that a prudent shopper can get beer here for around fifteen cents apiece I'm surprised there's not more gun-racks, gumbo monster mudders and Confederate flags down here. Perhaps it's due to the fact that there are no mammals here that are legal to hunt down and kill. Also it could be that riding a moped with a little helmet on is just too far removed from the average redneck comfort zone for a mass exodus to occur. You know what they say about mopeds.......... Anyway, henceforth I will refer to this phenomenon as "The Brotherhood of Y'all" We are many, we are thirsty, we are ubiquitous.......whatever the crap that means.
"I heard dat!"
"Myself!"
So it is with great regret that I am plotting my escape from Isla Mujeres for tomorrow.....or maybe the next day...when I'll sweep up my remaining brain cells and make for Isla Pasion on the north end of Isla Cozumel where the Rauscher guide tells me lies pristine bonefish flats there for the exploration. The weather promises to be good which is no surprise as it has been nothing if not beautiful for the last week or two. No rain at all, nothing but sunshine and gentle trade winds. From Cozumel then its Punta Allen, Banco Chinchorro and Xcalak to clear out of Mexico then on to San Pedro on Ambergris Cay to clear in to Belize, then a slow mosey down to Guatemala through the turquoise waters of Belize protected by the second largest barrier reef on the planet.
I've put more pictures in the gallery. I always forget to take pictures. There's a party tonight, I hope I remember to take some people pictures. When I get far enough from here to avoid repercussions I'll tell you all about them. Alias's will be used of course. ;)-
On the homesick side I'll miss the Wooden Boat Show at Pirates Cove this weekend. Somebody have a bushwacker for me. Anybody wanna come to Belize, let me know by email.
HEA
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04/22/2008, Milagro Marina, Isla Mujeres, Mexico
The Mojito, for those of you who don't know, is a lovely little drink they make down here. Best I can tell it consists of rum and sugar water with a handful of mint, at least I think its mint...... tastes like mint anyway, thrown in then served to you in an unpretentious water glass. It sits there before you on the table perched on an equally unpretentious napkin-coaster and you are taken in by the flawlessness of it all. The perfect beads on condensation so pearly and uniform and somehow unmarred even by the waitress's fingerprints, the inviting snow melt murkiness of the liquid and semi-transparent chunks of ice floating on a bed of green mint leaves. Muy Rico! None of the flashy and arrogant flamboyance of it's cousins the Margarita or Mia Tai who come at you brazen and full bore with their goldfish bowl glasses and fruit headdresses, plop down in your lap and look you straight in the eye with lipstick smeared outside their lip-lines and black-penciled eyebrows raised in challenge and say "......Hallo Gringo.....ju are man enough for me, no?!"
But not the shy and demure Mojito. She is a temptress, not a seductress. She sits there quietly in front of you, head slightly bowed, one perfect smiling eye staring up at you, the other obscured behind silken strands of hair that fall gracefully across her face. "Senior?" she says with that cute little roll of the "r" at the end.......".....eff ju will pardon my brazenness, I can sense that you have just completed a long journey and that you are very tired.....eff it pleases ju, I would be happy to show ju my wonderful country. Ju will come along....yes?!" Impossible to refuse, you say and you dive in. And, because the whole experience from the placing of the order to the presentation is a delight for the senses you repeat the process over and over. Somewhere during the night you surface for a rare moment of clarity and introspection and are actually quite surprised to find yourself doing tequila shooters directly from someone's belly button. And you remember the Mojito, that shy girl who took your hand and led you off into the Mexican night. You see her there across the room, the fifth of her rarified sisters who have graced your table that night. She smiles at you ...only this time it's a sad and wistful smile..one of polite understanding that yet another gentlemen traveler has been stolen from her by her sleazy step-sister Tequila. And she holds you transfixed in her gaze down the gun barrel of an elegant arm, hand raised with fingers in a gentle fist save the index which points straight up and wags side to side, its movement independent of the steady hand from which it ascends. (This gesture, I'm told, if done with a smile is a gentle rebuke that translates essentially as "you naughty boy". If delivered with a frown it means "I have a knife in my pocket" or words to that effect.) This gentle censure causes you a moment of shame but the one smiling eye assures you in that soulful voice that only you can hear......she says "don worry, senior........I know ju like me......I will see you again sometime soon, yes?!" and with this she spins and vanishes down Hidalgo into the tropical Mexican moonlight in a swirl of silken hair.
Parts of that story are true.
Anyway, day two of my stay here in Isla. The checking in process is still not yet complete but I've seen immigration which finally took place at 4pm yesterday not in some government office but rather in the back of the closet like internet café that the official operates as a side business. I could describe this scene in great detail but it would take too long. I've seen agriculture and I've seen health whom I assured that the vermin residing on my ship are free from disease. I assume they are as I've heard no coughing or anything from the bilge. Today I must complete the final step of going to see the port captain. I also can do an importation on the boat but that requires a trip to Cozumel so I'll save that for later.
I am staying at the Milagros Marina owned by Eric and Shelly from California. They were here but left yesterday. I landed here quite by providence, I had planned to anchor out but since I've never been here before I was cruising around looking for a place to drop the hook when they hailed me over the radio wanting to know if I was looking for dock space. I took em up on it and the whole crowd on the dock helped me get tied up in and plugged in. I could not be more pleased with the place, the staff and the other cruisers tied up here. I had dinner last night with the crew from another boat and some friends of theirs that have a house on the island and we laughed the night away, had a fantastic meal, watched a seven member all girl Cuban salsa band for I'm not sure how long but not long enough. I could go on about that for a few pages as well. Don't get me started.
Anyway the staff here is fantastic, the people are smart and interesting and funny and I am having a ball of a time here in Isla Mujeres.
The passage down:
I left Fort Myers Beach on Thursday for the 420 mile passage to Isla. It was blowing 15+ out of the east and I set a southwest course on a broad reach on the rhumb line toward the buoy that my chart plotter said marked the safe passage over the reef on the north end of the island. I would later find out that I had steered the whole way on a buoy that did not actually exist but hey, whatever, I got there. It was a rolly ride in the following sea and I kept the motor on motor sailing at 6.5kts to get off the coast as quickly as possible. Along about noon I shut the engine down and continued on under sail at 4 to 5 knots in a dying breeze. By sunset the first night the winds were down to 10kts or less so I left the full suit of sails up and started my catnaps. The motion of the boat, rolling like it was, not bad but constant movement made me feel a little queasy, not sick just lethargic, no appetite...just yucky. I was still unable to get much sleep but I think I would sort of slip into twilight every once in a while. Then the wind kicked in, shifted a little to the southeast and piped up to 20. I put a reef in the main and headsail and screamed along through choppy seas till daylight. The electric autopilot packed it in about then. Day two was a great sailing day. Southeast winds pretty steady at 15 or so right on the beam. The wind vane would steer the boat happily and without complaint for the next two days until the wind got so light that I cranked the engine again for the final night crossing the Yucatan Channel and across the axis of the Gulf Stream current. By this time I had taken the autopilot apart, swapped out a fried gear box with another that I cannibalized off another similar unit that I have and was back in business autopilot wise. The wind vane won't steer the boat under power.
As far as fishing goes, the above picture shows my meat catch. This 20+lb dorado was caught 40 miles off Isla in the middle of the Gulf Stream. Sort of a challenge getting it aboard and dispatching the beast but she's in the fridge now. After that and just as I was coming up the steep rise from 3000 feet to 500 feet deep I was trolling along and the reel begins to sing. I grabbed the rod, slowed the engine to idle and there standing on the back of my sailboat commenced to battle the biggest fish I have ever personally snagged on a hook and line. It was a sailfish, maybe 6 feet or more and it was tail walking 100 yards behind the boat and putting distance between us fast, each new aerial display fifty yards aft of the last until during one jump he spit the hook. I was actually happy to have my lure back; no way could I have landed the brute on this boat. Anyway as I was reeling the line back in it was attacked a second time, this time by another species, probably a white marlin and he did the same dance as he sped away. This time he took the lure with him.
At length I made it across the bar at the north end of the island around 5 pm Sunday and was settled in here an hour or so later. The last two days of the trip by the way I felt much better, got my appetite back and could have carried on for much longer had I needed to. It's all about getting your sea legs. The water was unbelievably blue and the conditions nearly perfect and the destination so far could hardly be any better.
So I'm off to have today's fun.
HEA
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