Sequitur

Michael & Edi have headed out on a slow, thorough exploration of the globe.

Vessel Name: Sequitur and Zonder Zorg
Vessel Make/Model: 2007 Hunter 49 and 1908 Wildschut Skûtsje
Hailing Port: Vancouver, Canada
Crew: Michael Walsh & Edi Gelin
About: For our current location click, on Map & Tracking, then on the Google Earth logo.
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13 January 2014
26 April 2013
24 April 2013
27 October 2012 | Harlingen, Friesland
29 September 2012 | Sneek, Netherlands
19 September 2012 | Hoorn, Netherlands
13 September 2012 | Aalsmeer, Netherlands
20 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands
11 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands
10 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands
08 August 2012 | Nieuwe Zorg: Aalmmeer, Michael & Edi: Vancouver
28 July 2012 | Nieuwe Zorg in Aalsmeer - Michael & Edi in Vancouver
26 July 2012 | Nieuwe Zorg in Aalsmeer - Michael & Edi in Volendam
17 July 2012 | Michael & Edi in Leeuwarden, Netherlands
07 July 2012 | Edi & Michael in Vancouver, Sequitur in Saint Augustine
27 June 2012 | Saint Augustine, USA
07 June 2012 | Saint Augustine, Florida, USA
20 May 2012 | Fajardo, Puerto Rico
11 May 2012 | Terre Le Haut, Les Saintes, Guadeloupe
01 May 2012 | Carlisle Bay, Barbados
Recent Blog Posts
13 January 2014

Another New Book Released

I am delighted to announce that my new book: Carefree on the European Canals is now in print and is available on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca [...]

26 April 2013

New Book Released

The proof copy of my new book arrived by courier today. I have approved it and it is now listed on Amazon for pre-order, with a publication date of 30 April. It is a rather large book at 680 pages in an 8.5 by 11 inch format with 315,000 words illustrated by over 2400 colour photos, charts and maps. [...]

24 April 2013

One Year Out of Brazil

One year ago today we sailed Sequitur out of Brazil after enduring more than six weeks in the least-friendly country that we had experienced during our three-year voyage. In the early evening of 24 April 2012 we crossed the line on the chart dividing Brazil from French Guyana and breathed a huge sigh [...]

27 October 2012 | Harlingen, Friesland

Planing a Metamorphosis

We have added a new post to the Zonder Zorg blog at: Planing a Metamorphosis.

29 September 2012 | Sneek, Netherlands

Onward to Friesland

We have arrived in Friesland and have added a new post to the skûtsje's blog at: Onward to Friesland

19 September 2012 | Hoorn, Netherlands

North From Aalsmeer

We have moved northward from Aalsmeer and I have added two new posts: Heading North From Aalsmeer and North From Amsterdam

13 September 2012 | Aalsmeer, Netherlands

Taking Possession

We are back in the Netherlands, and I have added some new posts to the ZonderZorg blog at: Taking Possession and Settling-In and Making Plans

20 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands

Added a New Website

We have added a new website: Skûtsje ZonderZorg. Zonder zorg in Dutch means without worry. Our intention with the site is to provide a place to share some of the history, geography and culture of the skûtsje as we discover it. We will also use this place to document [...]

11 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands

Still More Skûtsje History

We continued to attempt to track-down Douwe Albert Visser, who was the owner of Nieuwe Zorg in 1941 when she was re-registered. One of the problems we repeatedly encountered in our online searches was the effect of currently having Albert Visser and two Douwe Vissers as very competitive skûtsje racers, [...]

10 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands

Some More Skûtsje History

While I was researching the history of Nieuwe Zorg, I finally found her first registration details obscured by an apparent typographical error in a transcribed online spreadsheet. She was listed as having been built in 1901 instead of 1908. I emailed the webmaster of the [...]

To Isla Isabel

26 February 2010 | Isla Isabel
Michael
Shortly after 1100 on Sunday morning I walked up to the marina office to pay for the moorage and to pick-up our departure papers. When I had visited the office on Friday to announce our Sunday departure, Myriam had told me that there would be no problem, the office is open 0900 to 1700 on Sundays and that she would be there and she would have our papers ready. On my way up I had wondered if the papers would be ready, but it turned-out there was no immediate answer to my musings; the office was closed.

I went back to the boat and we continued to prepare Sequitur for sea. At 1215 I went back to the office to find it still closed. This time I had brought my camera, and I used the time and the trip to shoot some photos. I checked the office one more time on my way back to the boat, and Myriam had just arrived. She told me she was the only one in, and didn't have access to the files, so I would need to bring her our documents so she could fill-out the exit papers.

Eventually, after three round-trips and a little over an hour and a half, we were cleared to go. At 1250 we slipped from the float and headed out the channel, which we cleared at 1307. At 1315 we rolled-out all three sails in a 10 knot westerly wind and set off southward on a beam reach, making 5.5 to 6 knots.


In the late afternoon Edi spotted a whale breaching over toward the eastern horizon, and then another and another. We watched as they moved past, a mile or so away.


I tried to shoot some photos, but at that distance, with the rolling and pitching of the boat and trying to anticipate where to be pointing the camera for the next whale to appear, and convincing the lens to focus on the whale and not on the nearest whitecap, most of them ended up a tad blurry.

The sunset at 1806 and found us with 2 metre westerly swells on our beam, and a breeze, which had gradually backed to the north and eased. We were slopping around in the 6-7 knot breeze from astern, and the autopilot decided to take a break. I flashed-up the engine and rolled-in the sails while Edi steered, and then I spent some time re-setting Otto. We motored into the night, setting our speed at 5.3 knots to arrive off Isla Isabel at sunrise.


Following a nice sleep after my 2100 to 0200 watch, I was back on deck for sunrise at 0631. We were 3.5 miles north of Isla Isabel, according to the radar, and about 1.8 miles northeast of it according to the chartplotter.


Before we left Mazatlan, I had printed an image of Isla Isabel from Google Earth, and had marked on it the latitude and longitude of a small islet in the anchorage on the island's south side.


I placed a waypoint on the chartplotter corresponding to the position of the islet, and used it as a point of reference to tie the radar overlay to the Google Earth print-out. This combination and a close eye on the depth sounder led us confidently and safely into the anchorage.


At 0745 we came to 35 metres on the Rocna in 10 metres of water about a cable off the rocks to the west, north and east of us. On the chartplotter we were 1.5 miles southeast of its interpretation of the anchorage, but exactly the correct range and bearing from the Google Earth waypoint.

Edi had stood the 0200 to 0700 watch, so shortly after we had secured the snubbers, she went to bed to catch-up. We had a late breakfast, with the toaster in the cockpit and a basket of bagels and home-made raisin bread, some cream cheese and banana and a pot of fresh coffee. We spent the remainder of the day relaxing onboard. I did some reading and writing, and Edi continued on the pair of socks she is knitting for me.


When we were in New Brunswick last May visiting my family, my sister, Mary-Elizabeth showed Edi some of the socks that she had knit. Edi was intrigued, and asked to be shown how to do them, and she received pages of handwritten instructions, expanded by detailed verbal explanations. Many months later, Edi decided it was time to start knitting, so she dug-out the instructions and some yarn and needles, and began deciphering the notes and trying to remember the verbal explanations. After many false starts and some internet browsing for clarification on crucial points, she finally completed a sock last week, just before we left Mazatlan. This morning she was rounding the heel of the second one, demonstrating clearly that she has mastered the art. I'll now have warm feet in Patagonia.


After breakfast on Tuesday morning we took Non Sequitur ashore, through the narrow entrance and into the little inner harbour, which is protected by the small islet next to our anchorage. We hauled the dinghy up on the coarse sand beach next to a line of fishing pangas and secured the painter to a jagged staghorn of lava at the back of the beach.


The crescent beach is rimmed with fish camps, which support a very active fishery. There have been pangas coming and going through the daylight hours since we arrived in the anchorage.


We walked along the beach and across the short low-tide isthmus to the islet and climbed to its top through the roosting grounds of the resident boobies. They were not at all timid, and they remained in place, and apparently unperturbed as we passed within less then a metre of them.


From the top we looked down on a panga at the base of the cliffs. We had seen many others anchor in the same area since we arrived, without realizing why. This time our bird's eye view showed us what they were doing there. They were dressing their catch, either cleaning whole fish or cutting fillets off and throwing the remains to eagerly waiting birds, mostly pelicans.


We instructed the booby, which had commandeered the summit cairn, to keep a close watch on Sequitur for us, and then we retraced our route back down and across the isthmus. We headed up the narrow space between the low trees and the rim of the cliff, passing as we climbed many nesting frigate birds.


Their nests are at eye level, and we were able to look in on many young family groupings, which watched us with no apparent concern. In the nests were many rather recent hatchlings, which were still fluffy balls of down.


Among the tufts of grass in the rocks that rimmed the cliff tops were nesting boobies, and we continued to be amazed at the lack of fear they demonstrated. We happened on a downy chick out on a stroll by itself, and it calmly watched us pass close by. Its mother seemed equally unconcerned.


From the ridge top we looked down onto a lake in the ancient volcano crater on the one side, and on the other down the sheer cliffs onto the beach, off which Sequitur lay at anchor. Across the island, to the east lay a couple of offshore rock spires standing steeply out of the water.


We headed back down the ridge to the beach, and walked along it past the line of fish shacks. At the western end of the beach is an extensive nesting area for frigate birds and boobies, and nestled near its centre is a wildlife research facility.


The area was alive with male frigate birds with their red throated mating display, nesting females and downy chicks. We had happened to arrive on Isla Isabel at the perfect moment to witness this phase of their cycle.


Some of the little ones were just starting to fledge; there were the beginning of wing feathers. This little one looked almost as if it were dreaming of flying away.


There were many wonderful family groupings, but there was also some courting in progress.


Near the beach was a booby nesting area among the tufts of coarse grass. It was not unusual to find chicks wandering around on their own, seeming totally unconcerned about our presence.


Also in the grasses were iguanas. The ones we saw ranged up to 60 or 65 centimetres in length, and although rather tame, they seemed a bit more wary than were the boobies and frigate birds.


I spotted a large one, well over half a metre long, that was slowly walking across a slab.


It spotted me, stopped and went into a let-me-make-myself-look-bigger posture. It remained in varying degrees of erection for several minutes as we watched it.

We then visited the research facility, which at first appeared to be abandoned and no longer in use. I looked through a window into one room, which appeared to be a combination of office, kitchen, dining room and storage room. The stack of dirty dishes on the table didn't have a very thick growth of mould on them, indicating, I thought, that someone had been there within the last week or so. Overall, the place was in a very poor state of repair, apparently without maintenance, repairs or cleaning for many years.


We strolled back through the nesting trees of the frigate birds to continue our wondrous observations. One small grouping I fancied was the boys sitting around, boasting and showing-off. Overhead there was a steady circulation of frigate birds coming and going between the nesting trees and their fishing grounds in the bay.


We continued to be delighted with the tameness of the birds, which seemed almost to welcome our presence. It was as if we were entertaining them as much as they were us.


We walked back along the crescent beach past a couple of fishermen preparing their nets for their next trip. We stopped to ask if we could buy some fish and were directed to a shack at the eastern end of the line. The two men there pointed us to the fifth shack along the line, and the two men in that one told us to try the third one back along. We eventually tired of shack hopping and returned to Non Sequitur.


On our way back out to Sequitur, we stopped at a panga anchored off the inner harbour's entrance. The two men in it were taking fillets off their catch, one holding the tail and the other using the knife. We indicated that we wanted to buy some.


Gathered closely around the panga were pelicans and gulls, waiting for the filletless carcasses to be tossed. We had to be careful as we bobbed up and down next to the panga, that their low-tech rebar anchors didn't puncture our inflatable's tubes.


Once the last fillet had been removed, they were all skinned. The pelicans, knowing the routine, remained on station and ready to receive. While the one man skinned, the other dug into a tub and hauled out a supermarket bag full of supermarket bags, and selected one.


I indicated we wanted four fillets, but they put their entire stack of freshly processed fillets into the bag. I asked for la cuenta, the cost, and was told it was free with their blessings to us. Blessing them in return, I dug into my pocket and pulled-out two 50 pesos notes and they excitedly accepted them.

Back onboard, I washed and dried the fillets and sorted them into six meals. Five pairs of large fillets were for the freezer and one serving of four smaller pieces was for the evening's dinner. The fourteen fillets weighed a total of about four kilos.

In the evening I quickly sauteed the four smaller fillets in butter and a julienne of garlic and served them with tarragon basmati rice and asparagus with mayonnaise, accompanied by Concha y Toro Espumoso Brut. The asparagus and the rice were delicious. The fish was oily, and not at all firm, reminiscent of low-grade tuna scraps tinned in oil. It had a mushy texture, even though it was quickly cooked. We tried to think of some way to prepare it to advantage, but short of battering it and deep-frying, or making fishcakes, we could think of nothing.

The wine had a wonderfully active and persistent mousse, but that was one of its few positive attributes. It had very subdued fruit, a hard acidic edge and a bitter finish. We have been trying to find a good bubbly to replace our nearly depleted stock of Segura Viudas, which at around $17 a bottle in Vancouver, was our favourite Cava. We had stocked-up heavily with it when we found it at $6.50 at Albertson's in Moro Bay. We'll have to keep on looking; the Concha y Toro Brut cannot justify its price at 115 Pesos, about $9.50. In fact it could barely justify a price of half that.

The weather continued clear and warm, with a fresh breeze blowing through the anchorage and keeping comfortable the temperature, which hovered in the mid-to-upper 20s. On Wednesday for lunch Edi made some tomato salsa and guacamole, and added a dish of refried beans, and we lazed in the cockpit dipping nachos, sipping cold Tecate and drinking-in the wonder of the place. We continued to be the only boat in the anchorage.


With the clear sky and our southerly latitude, our solar panels were really paying back. I had installed six 87 Watt Kyocera panels, for a total of 522 Watts above the awnings at the after end of the cockpit. I had toyed with the less expensive route of putting in fewer, but larger panels, but the dramatic drop in a panel's output with even the slightest shading on it, convinced me to take the more panel route. They are managed by a BlueSky Solar Boost MPPT controller, which gives our panel array a theoretical maximum output of 30.7 Amps, and I have seen the gauge show the output as high as 29.6 Amps. We can have partial shading on two panels and still see over 20 Amps.


Mid-afternoon on Wednesday we took Non Sequitur ashore to the beach at the base of the cliffs to our north. We had looked down on this beach from the cliffs the previous day, and I had seen a plausible dinghy route through the off-lying rocks.


We timed the surge of the swell and its occasional series of breakers, and made it safely through the rocks to the coarse sand beach. The tide was rising, so later on we would have an easier launch through the rocks. We hauled the dinghy up the sand bank and secured its painter to a slab of lava.


We skirted the base of the cliffs, hopping from rock to rock and weaving between fallen blocks, watching the colourful crabs scurry out of our way. In a few minutes we were at the southeast point of the island, marked by a low arch. The low tide had exposed an isthmus connecting the point to a small islet, and we walked across it.


It was quite windy, and the islet was a rather barren, windswept rock composed mostly of conglomerate and porous lava. As we were climbing a low face up from the beach, I heard a screeching, and saw a red-billed tropicbird fly out of a nearby pocket in the rock. I quietly and carefully searched, and found three others nearby, one of which eagerly posed for me.


Further up on the sparsely vegetated top, we paused to watch a pale green footed brown booby supervising its downy chick's basic flying training. The young one appeared to be going through the fundamentals of wing control.


A brown booby with huge pale green feet welcomed us to the top of the rock. We continued to be amazed at the tameness of these birds. They acknowledged our presence, and as long as we moved quietly and gently, they watched us with curiosity, but with no apparent concern.


We left a pink-footed booby watching over Sequitur, and then we headed down off the rock and back across the tidal isthmus, which was now considerably narrowed by the rising tide.


We climbed from the beach up the low cliff and walked northward along the east coast of Isla Isabel. Along the cliff tops was a narrow band, five to ten metres wide of rock and tufts of coarse grass between the cliffs and a dense thicket of low trees. In the tree tops were many hundreds of frigate birds, and on the rocks, in the grassy strip and under the margin of the trees were boobies. Here we spotted our first blue-footed boobies.


We watched a group of blue-footed boobies chatting in the shade at the edge of the trees, while behind them another was nestled-down and incubating.


We have been fascinated with boobies since we had one land and ride for a couple of hours on the roll-bar of our Rocna anchor as we weathered gale-force winds off California's Cape Conception in mid-November. That hitch-hiker had been a brown booby, with pale yellow-green feet, and in this photo, its cousin seems as fascinated as we are by the blue-footed booby.


As we walked along, in many places it was difficult not to come close to the nesting boobies; there were often half a dozen and more, spaced within a metre or two of each other.


Also, we had to be careful not to step on untended eggs; we saw a rather casual attitude to incubating, with the boobies stepping back to look at their egg from time-to-time, and some wandering off for a while, and then coming back. This one seems to be saying to its egg: "I know I haven't been using an egg-timer, but you must be ready by now".


We could almost hear this one saying: "OK, you kids be good, I've got to get away from this booby hatch for a bit"


We have often watched the boobies rather clumsy take-offs from the water, and lately have seen their difficulty in getting airborne from level ground. This is likely why they roost in wind-swept areas and near steep drop-offs. We have seen many perched right on the cliff edge.


As we were watching a blue-footed booby incubating its eggs, a large iguana walked up onto the neighbouring rock.


The iguana paused to warm itself in the sun and from the residual heat in the rock. It graciously posed for us.


We then encountered a very curious little blue-foot. It kept a constant inquisitive eye contact as it ran through a wonderful range of fascinating poses for us.


The booby showed absolutely no timidity, even as we moved to within less than a metre.


We encountered a couple of brown boobies commencing a mating ritual.


We got the impression that the male's paltry offering of nesting material didn't meet with the lady's approval. She began preening and fluffing feathers, and after a while she walked away and abandoned her suiter.


At many of the nests, both the male and the female were present. They spell each other off with the sitting during the six-week incubation. One sits while the other guards.


The females are larger than the males, they have a longer tail and their feet are a deeper blue. Regardless of sex, both were equally curious, and seemed as fascinated with us as we were of them.


The tide was rapidly rising, and we needed to get back around the base of the cliffs at the island's south point, so we retraced our route. Along the way we encountered a brown booby with yellow feet and a pink beak.


As we reached the point, we saw on the rocks above the surf a pink-footed booby with a blue beak.


The tide had risen to cover the isthmus and to block the passage around the point. We crawled through the tunnel, which was still barely above the water level, and we made it around the point without having to get our feet wet.


We arrived back at the dinghy and sat for fifteen or twenty minutes watching and analysing the swell and the surf. About every minute and a half a series of swells came in, with ten or a dozen of them cresting over a metre high and breaking. The troughs between the breakers allowed us to plot in our minds where the rocks were, and to plan a route out to deeper water. I consistently counted to forty-five during the lulls between the sets of swells.

We turned Non Sequitur's bow to seaward and into the water. We then stood beside her and crouched to see the advancing swells and to brace against their crashing surf. At the appropriate moment, at what I hoped was the beginning of a lull, I signalled Edi to climb in, then I shoved off and hopped in over the transom, dropped the motor and scooted out between the rocks and into deeper water. It went more smoothly than I had imagined, and in a couple of minutes we were back aboard Sequitur.

We have spent an idyllic three days on Isla Isabel, and our two short excursions ashore have given us a wonderful insight into the life cycles of the seabirds that nest here. It amazes us that the birds allowed us to spend this time so intimately among them, invading their privacy and their security during their mating, their nesting and their rearing of young chicks. It is such a vulnerable time for them, and through it all we continued to feel welcomed by them. Isla Isabel gave us experiences we will long cherish.
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