And I kiss the ground that is Belize

It's been a rough few days.

First off, sorry about the whale shark video.  I just uploaded it last minute before we left Mexico and didn't realize I had to make it public.  Welcome to Youtube.  I put the link on the right.

Summary of the last 3 days.  Left Puerto Aventuras early Monday morning with high winds, 15- 20 knots from the southeast, the direction we were heading, and darks skies with the occasional torrential downpour.  Sounds bad and it was, however it was the best weather window we had for days with good forecasts for the next few days which we needed to get to Belize.

One of the only highlights from our trip:  Sunrise at anchorage

To kick things off, I threw up my Dramamine in the first 2 hours.  It is supposed to help against sea sickness.  Stan threw up later.  Before half a day was over, the rain dodger came loose on the starboard side and the starboard stern lifeline broke which is never good especially in rough seas however it did give me easier access to chum when required.  After 12 hours of this we got to our first anchorage without much incidence aside from the fact that I got the dinghy line wrapped in the prop.  This did give me the chance to actually have a use for the scuba knife I bought.  After a rough night's sleep at anchorage, got going around 6 am and after a bit of a rocky start were on our way once again to San Pedro, Belize.  We planned to sail all day, through the night, and arrive on Wednesday afternoon.  The skies cleared thankfully but the winds stayed strong making it a very rough and arduous passage.  We at least were able to get the sails up which kept the boat a bit more stable allowing us to stay un-sea sick.  After a full day, full night, and another half day of this and eating only 6 small cake donuts along with a bottle of water on a queazy stomach, we made our final turn for the inlet between the reefs into San Pedro.

It's a bit taxing, to say the least, after 2.5 days of rough sailing to have to find a 75 yard cut between a 23 mile long reef in 10 ft seas.  The only thing we had were the coordinates from the guide book which had already failed us once before.  With this cut being particularly tricky in that once you make it inside the main cut you have to make an almost due north turn, hard right, to avoid another reef dead ahead.  We were told this was marked by a yellow buoy.  I couldn't find a drawing of the harbor entrance so I drew this extremely detailed map of the reef entrance to show how tight it was:

We made a few calls on the radio for assistance on entering the harbor to no avail.  We approached slowly with the waves growing in size and strength and seemed to be online at least to a point where the waves weren't crashing on the surface in mighty blows but still no yellow marker.  Finally, with a pucker factor of 10 out of 10, we pushed through the main cut and it seemed we had passed the main reef safely.  I could make out the secondary reef ahead, so we turned north for a bit and after we took a breathe, realized we were safely in San Pedro harbor.  Stan had some friends here who greeted us at the dock with a much welcomed Belikin in hand for each of us.

So after that adventure, when the only thing you want to do is pass out face first on the beach, we have to hunt down the Port Authority, Immigration Office, and Customs Office to legally step foot on land.  The Port Authority is conveniently located at the southern most tip of the island well out of town.  As our taxi driver took us there on the 20 minute ride and the roads got worse and population got very sparse, I began to think he might be taking us "rich yachters" out to the desolate ship junk yard to rob us.  I kept thinking this will be funny for him because the only thing I had on me was about 7 pesos in the pocket of my swimming trunks which I wouldn't even want to get out since they could've probably stood up on their own after wearing them for the past 3 days at sea.  However that was just a passing thought.  Our taxi driver was a very nice guy and got us to the shack that was the Belizean Port Authority.  Once inside, they read our boat name was Mobius.  Then one said, "Ah, that was you on the radio calling earlier.  We thought you wanted water at the Yacht Club."  Strange because I specifically remember saying, "Anyone listening in the San Pedro area, this is sailing vessel Mobius.  We are seeking assistance to enter through the reef and safely into the harbor.  Please come in."  I guess somehow that got lost in translation.  We also asked them about the yellow buoy.  They said, "Oh yeah, that broke off Saturday in high wind.  We are looking into getting a new shackle for it."

So after that episode we had to go back in town to the Immigration Office for an hour or so, then next door to the Customs Office, where the official didn't have time to check our boat personally but took our word for what we were claiming and of course we were fine with his laid back island attitude.

Finally back to the boat to clean her up, shower ourselves, and eat.

In other news, this last trip was the straw that broke the camel's back.  As Stan and I came to heads, I decided to leave the Mobius and become a land lubber like the rest of you.  My goal now is to get down south to Placencia to see my cousin and her family who are here on vacation for the next week.  Recuperate, relax, wash my swim trunks, and after that we"ll see what happens next.  It is Lobster Fest now in Belize and my cousin and I always get into trouble so I am sure I will have some good stories shortly.

Hope everyone is well and I appreciate hearing from you.

Cheers,
Jay

Just a quickie

Well we got holed up in Puerto Aventuras due to poor weather farther down south.  Hopefully we are leaving tomorrow or the next day.  Still looks like a rough sail to Belize.  Have the foulies ready.

As for Puerto Aventuras, it's a luxury resort complex that has a multitude of lagoons where tourists can interact with dolphins, manatees, and sea lions for a fee of course but to watch is free.  There are shows throughout the day so it's always entertaining.  No matter how old or grumpy the guys are who go in the water with their families, they always get a child-like grin when they are getting pushed through the water by the dolphins.  Not sure what exactly is happening below the water line but it looks like a good time.

I took one of the days to go diving with whale sharks.  Figured most folks were tired of reading long blogs from me, so I spent some time and made a short video.  I put it on Youtube.  Here is the link:

Whale Shark Vid on Youtube

Enjoy.  (There is audio)

Also, one of my friends submitted one of my pictures to a USA Today blog and it got in.  The link is on the right.

Hopefully the next time you hear from me, I will be in Belize.

Cheers,
JB

The Yucatan

Hola y bienvenidos.

First off, I added a lot of photos to the Mexico link to the right under Images.  If you do anything, at least check those out.  I put captions on most of them to help fill in some detail.  If you are bored at work and trying to kill time in the afternoon, read on.  I've written two short stories further below.

Right now I am writing from the El Cid Resort Marina near Puerto Morelos.  It's a quiet little port town on the mainland between Cancun and Playa del Carmen.  Since there are no public marinas or good anchorages down south at Playa or Cozumel, Stan was kind enough to keep the boat here for a few days and gave me shore leave so I could head overland and take the ferry to Cozumel to do some scuba diving.  Also clearing immigration here is a lot easier than further down south, so Stan was ok with that too.  We plan to leave here tomorrow continuing south to Belize.  No marinas along the route so we will sail all day and then anchor at night for a few days until we get to San Pedro, Belize.  The icing on the pastel is that the Mexican Navy is trying to out do their welcome by giving us a generous send off.  We were informed from the customs/immigration officer at the marina that the Navy will be performing maritime exercises with live rounds down south.  They were nice enough to give us the coordinates to make sure we avoided those areas.  Follow along on my Spot Tracker.  Should be entertaining.

As for the Yucatan, between Isla, Cancun, Cozumel, and Playa del Carmen, Isla Mujeres is easily the winner.  The rest are tourist meccas overrun by luxury accommodations, an endless amount of hawkers, and expensive prices although Cozumel is worth it for the diving.  Isla does cater to tourists but only has one main street with tourist shops and restaurants.  A block away things have a more local feel.  Quaint and tidy cobblestone one-way roads criss-cross the islands north and south towns that are filled with brightly painted concrete houses.  The locals use scooters as SUV's packing their family of four on them while the tourists sit stretched out on their rented golf carts.  The only other cars on the road are the red taxi cabs I am guessing were bought on overstock.com from the video game "Frogger".  They always posed a challenge when crossing any street especially after a few tequila shots, taken by either the driver and/or the pedestrian.

I will admit, the island lifestyle is easy to get used to especially in Central America where siestas are a welcome habit.  The two things for me that took some initial adjustment are the native species.

Story #1 - Iguanas

Iguanas blend into almost everything on a tropical island.  With the brains of a beauty pageant contestant and the looks on par with the creature from the black lagoon, they have at least been blessed with an all mimicking camouflage which has helped them survive where others have failed along the evolutionary process.  While the pedestrian walks innocently down the street unknowingly approaching a sunning iguana, the iguana will sit as still as possible hoping the large creature approaching him will change direction or stop coming closer.  The iguana holds his ground until he realizes his bluff has been called.  The distance they allow one to approach is in direct correlation to the size of the iguana.  The larger the iguana, the closer they let you get.  This is then in direct correlation to how far the human will jump upon seeing a large reptilian object move around his feet.  One of God's little jokes.  Usually the unaccustomed human chooses the flight response of the "flight/fight" instinct jumping far enough to end up in the street trapped among the red taxi cabs in his own game of the aforementioned "Frogger" while the iguana scurries off to the best vantage point to see if it's game over for the human or if he gets out of the street safely to advance to the next level.

Scene of the attack

As the wiser of the two species, I assumed, I chose a prime location for my office/siesta location/reading nook (pictured above).  It was a hammock at the marina comfortably situated between 2 palm trees in the shade well above the ground, roaming territory of the iguana.  One afternoon while swaying between reading and snoozing, I felt a dull thud on my thigh.  I almost thought nothing of it thinking it was just some inanimate object that fell from the tree above, but as humans are inquisitive by nature, I looked over the top of my book to see a foot long iguana staring back at me.  Dear God!  They were now attacking from the sky.  They were smarter than I thought and accurate enough to land near one's man-hood.  I had under estimated my enemy.  This was his home turf after all.  I immediately sat up as best as I could in a hammock and gave him a quick swat strong enough to clear him from the vicinity of my crotch.  After the hammock stopped swinging wildly and my heart steadied, I looked for my adversary who seemed to have vanished into thin air.   Apparently they also have the skills of a disappearing ninja behind a smoke screen.  

After scanning the area to see if any bystanders were able to get some enjoyment from my apparent epileptic fit, none of which were so lucky, I went back to reading.  About 5 minutes passed before one of the other boat owner's dogs, Kiba, came up to say hello.  Kiba was always very friendly but something was different about his mannerism.  The hair was up on his back, tail at attention, and stiff as a statue pointing towards something directly under me.  I thought somehow this crazy iguana was back for more.  I looked on the ground under me and saw nothing.  I sat up a bit and felt something odd between myself and the hammock.  Sitting up a bit more I realized what a precarious situation I was now in.  Somehow when I "swatted" the iguana off my thigh, he had just haphazardly fallen off and ended up at the base of the "V" my hammock was making where I in turn sat on him.  He in turn felt it was as safe a place as any especially since his maneuverability was limited.  However now with a brittany hunting dog staring him in the face with only the mesh of a hammock separating him from his demise and just enough room to move since I had sat up more....well you can imagine the chaos that ensued.  Cue the dust bowl you see in cartoon drawings of the Tasmanian Devil fighting Elmer Fudd.  

After the dust settled, I was strung up in the hammock like a Mexican puppet that you've let a group of 4 year olds play with all afternoon.  The iguana's evolutionary chain ended after he became a chew toy for the dog.  The dog got bored after his toy stopped playing back and decided that all the activity deemed him a dip in the water while the owner came around to find his dog a soaking wet mess.

Lesson learned:  Don't ever underestimate the intelligence of a beauty pageant contestant.

Story #2 - Crabs

Crab traps (holes) litter the ground at the marina

Another pre-historic creature that calls Isla it's home is the land crab.  Walking around the marina's boardwalk, it's hard not to notice the large holes scattered throughout the property (pictured above).  I inquired as to what these holes were from and was told crabs.  I was also told they were harmless aside from the holes being ankle breakers at night.  I pictured small harmless crabs that had just continuously dug out one hole until it was the size of a human head.  Wrong.  These things needed every centimeter of the hole they dug to fit their body and one huge claw inside (crab pictured below drinking a Dos Equis)

Drinking buddy... after a bit of convincing

During the day these "harmless" creatures are hard to spot however the crabs come out at night, to poorly quote the hit Whodini song.  Walking off the security of the raised boardwalk at night is a bit unnerving to say the least.  You can hear the crabs moving before you can see them.  So you know they are there and just hoping they are not moving toward you.  

Once again I was in my acclaimed hammock reading at dusk.  A couple other guys came out to the deck to drink some beers and one pointed out that a couple of crabs had actually made there way into human territory and were up on the deck.  I began to look around for these crab conquistadors who were trying to claim our land as there own when I noticed one of them had the bookmark I laid on the ground in his massive left claw and was slowly making his way back to his lair to writhe in the glory of his new bounty.  

Well I had been duped by one of the native species already so this time thought it would be worthwhile to employ the help of the other two non-native bystanders, Jethro and Larry.  They were from Louisiana so I was sure this wasn't their first rodeo plus if anything at least there was safety in numbers in case this crab called in for reinforcements.  With the drinking they had already done in town, we devised a pretty intricate plan to contain the crab and retrieve the bookmark from his cold, dead, claw if force became necessary.  If we would've actually been smart, we would have set up the video camera to record our antics in trapping this crab as it would've made us $10,000 richer on America's Funniest Videos.  

When facing off against most wild animals be it a bear, a dog, a rabid rabbit, they will usually move in a back and forth manner when facing you.  When facing a crab, the natural motion of a face off can be thrown out the window.  When staring into the tracheal beady eyes of a crab and getting ready to make your move toward him, instead of the crab retreating backwards as one would expect, they scuttle quickly to the right or left starting an unpredictable arc that continues until they are behind you like a master jujitsu technician.  Again one of God's little jokes as the 3 of us are now in a competition to see who can jump the highest and not scream while the crab cuts around us each time we take turns trying to block it from entering it's home base.  

Finally, our numbers paid off and it makes just enough of a misstep for Jethro to give it a clean whack to its head that scalps the top part of his shell off.  Humans 1 - Crabs 0.  I still had to muster up some courage to wrench my bookmark from his tightened grip and did so with the assistance of my flip flop.  In the end we shared a beer with the poor fellow as he did put up one heck of a fight and I had to remember what page I was on so I could put my bookmark back to its intended use.

Lesson learned:  Beer bottles are handy in bar fights and in retrieving one's bookmark.

Life at Sea - Part 3

Welcoming committee in Isla Mujeres

Marina Pariso (not my photo - from their webstie)

After 400 miles of open ocean sailing and battling the Yucatan current, the first sign of land we saw was the white lighthouse on the the northern tip of Isla Contoy.  The island just north of Isla Mujeres.  From here it was just a few more hours of smooth sailing until we were tied up to our dock at Marina Pariso.  Just as Isla Mujeres was insight, with the large frigate birds greeting us from the sky, the sun began to set.

Entering any new harbour, much less at night, can be a tricky conquest but Stan had the authoritative sailing guide book on the area and all the waypoints correctly entered into his gps.  We just had to track the line on the gps screen.  The buoy lights marking the channels were hard to distinguish between the island's lights but we found the inlet with no problem and took a right to stay on course.  Just had to get around the beach on our port side, turn left and we were there.  The beach however did seem unnecessarily close to me with so much open channel to the right.  I asked Stan and looked at the gps screen which indicated we were right on track.  I went ahead, grabbed our big spot light and went to the bow.  When I turned it on and shined it in front of us, all I saw was beach.  The bearing the guide book gave us had cut the corner way too close.  I immediately told Stan to turn hard right but no sooner had the words left my mouth than we felt the boat bounce of the bottom and then come to an abrupt stop.  We were both in disbelief.  So close and now this.  We tried all the tricks in the book to get the boat off but were surrounded by shallow water.  On top of that, the waves were ever so slowly pushing us to what appeared to be a rocky outcropping extending out from the beach.

We were on the radio as well trying to ask for help from the marina or anyone.  Finally after an hour or so we got word that a coast guard boat was on its way.  Once they arrived in their fishing boat with a deteriorating coast guard symbol on the side, the scene turned even more chaotic if somewhat humorous.   Over a 2 hour period, the only thing their small boat with two 200 hp outboards managed to accomplish was add a few "Welcome to Isla Mujeres" tattoos on the side of the boat in the form of two holes and numerous scrapes.  At the end we were just trying to save the boat more from the coast guard than the sea.

With the boat basically sitting on her keel and alternating between severely listing either to starboard or port, things weren't looking good.  I told Stan to throw an anchor over so we would stop drifting towards the rocks and hopefully in the morning the tide would rise and we would have a better chance.

The coast guard came by one more time and asked if we wanted to stay on the boat.  The captain of any boat is held by duty to stay on board until she goes down.  However I was not the captain.  I could see no use in my spending the night on this see-saw only to abandon ship at a later point without a rescue boat, so decided to take the ride ashore.  Least to say it was an experience of it's own.

With my brief exchange with the coast guard who then transferred me to the Navy boat here is my impression of their application process and training:

Only one question on application:
Question 1 - Can you make sure to drink before coming to work and if time allows drink while at work especially it you are driving the boat?  Must answer yes.

Training:
If someone yells forward - apply the engine at full throttle in the opposite direction
If someone yells reverse - apply the engine at full throttle in the opposite direction
If someone yells stop - apply the engine at full throttle
If someone yells - apply the engine at full throttle

I think the point of training is that yelling only makes things worse.

After passing this training you are handed the keys to a revamped fishing boat and a six pack of El Sol cerveza.

Enough about our first, and hopefully only, encounter with Mexican authorities.  Just hope we really don't ever have to rely on them.

After 4.5 days on a rocky boat, one acquires what is called "sea legs".  Once on land, this skill can become somewhat of a detriment and cause one to appear extremely drunk.  However since I was in like minded company, although probably due to tequilla, I was not worried.  Went through some customs/immigration papers.  Had a medical, which I was told was routine for any "rescues".  (Dave Beaver -  no inappropriate comments please.)  After the exam the medical officer asked if I felt ok.  I stared at him blankly thinking about the last 4.5 days and mildly nodded in the affirmative.

I was told of a cheap hotel to stay at and while given directions at 2:30 am asked if it was safe to walk there now since I was unfamiliar with the island and had a single bag with all my expensive gear in it.  They said it was very safe to take the main street....but it would probably be a little safer to take a back street.  I grinned to myself and found the hotel a few blocks away.

In the morning I went down to the beach and to my surprise the boat was gone.  I walked to the marina and saw it moored in the harbour.  Stan said he kept motoring the boat, moving inches at a time and after 4 hours was in deep enough waters to motor to the anchorage.  After talking to the harbour master at our marina once we got settled, he said the guide book we have is good but the one thing they have wrong is the north entrance into Isla.  Really?! We told him we were radioing them for a while before entering to get some local knowledge on the area and he said "Oh, sorry about that.  It was my night off and I was really drunk anyway."

So now safely tied up to the dock we decided to take a vacation and spend a week on the charming island of Isla Mujeres -  the Island of Women.

JB

PS:  To get folks caught up, it has been a week and we will be heading south in a day or two to Puerto Morelos near Cozumel.  I have enjoyed my time here greatly and will write a few choice stories and download a bunch of pictures next time.  Hope everyone is well.  It has been great hearing from you.

Life at Sea - Part 2

 Interior of boat after getting things cleaned up in Isla

The head.  'Nuff said.

After the "good" omen of seeing Space Shuttle Endeavour blaze a fiery path across the night sky,  I settled back into my usual spot at the helm and watched the gps track our progress for the last 50 miles to Isla.  It was a bit strange because according to the gps we were only progressing about 1 kt/hr and the wind had actually picked up and the seas were going by quite swiftly so I was expecting us to be travelling at least 5 - 6 kts/hr.  Something wasn't right.  I decided to hold course and thought it was something flukey that would eventually be gone.  Stan came up for his shift a couple hours later.  We still had the same problem but just decided to keep holding course to get through it as I headed down.

It was always nice going down to sleep for 4 hours.  And by sleep I mean short naps you would try to squeeze in between getting violently shaken by large waves waking you up just to hope something from the opposite wall of the boat didn't fall straight down on you.  The Baba 30 is an extremely sturdy boat and is designed to make it through almost anything...as long as you can stay aboard.

I digress, usually after "sleeping" for 4 hours, it was nice to come up and see the progress we head made.  Hopefully 20 miles.  When I came up the sun was rising and I looked at Stan hoping to see a face of encouragement but instead he looked at me with the same face of bewilderment I had when he took the shift from me.  He also added a bit of desperation for emphasis.  We both sat there staring at our spot on the gps that hadn't moved in over 6 hours.  After digging through a few maps and charts we realized we had hit the northward flowing Yucatan current at full force.  This was a stretch of water mother nature put together that could only be overcome by sleek racing yachts or cuban smugglers in cigar boats.  We were neither.   With a current travelling at least at 4 kts/hr and a wind to help it out, a boat with max hull speed around 6 kts/hr under best sailing conditions, which we were far from, and using the motor, around 5 kts/hr....well it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what we were up against, so I'll let you do the math.

We decided to drop sails and just try to motor through thinking the sails were causing a bit of unwanted pressure in the wrong direction.  Again we were scoffed upon by Misses Nature.  At the time it seemed like she was taking all her pent up frustrations from the way humans have treated her in the past out on us.  A 30 ft boat with 2 guys who were doing a crossing for the first time in their lives.  She would make us remember this one.  We scratched our heads trying to think of a way to get across these last 50 miles.   I kept picturing us getting pushed out into the endless expanse of the Gulf with no choice but to head north and me ending up back in Houston.  1.5 months of travelling.  800 miles by sea.  600 miles by Greyhound Bus to end up back where I started.  Priceless.

The most reasonable option I saw was to choose a more westerly route that allowed us to at least inch across the current and then head directly south once across it.  Stan concurred.  We turned our bearing from 190 to 240 and held for a while.  After a couple of hours we could see progress.  2 - 3 kts/hr but it was progress.  On top of our directional shortcoming these were also the roughest seas we encountered.  Without sails up for good forward pressure, the waves seemed to use us for batting practice and were calling their friends in from all directions to take swings.  Auto pilot was useless in these conditions so Stan and I had to take 30 minute shifts fighting the helm constantly to keep any sort of bearing.  Finally after about 4 hours of tag teaming this never tiring opponent, we felt we had made sufficient progress to try a due south heading to the northern tip of the Yucatan.  Wind was in a good direction so we put up the sails, turned off the motor and were able to head south at about 4 kts/hr with the wind vane in use but still rough seas.  Now with that 12 hour delay behind us, we could be in Isla just after nightfall finally enjoying a cold Mexican beer.

Or so we thought.....

PS - Since this was a rough part of the journey, taking pictures was not at the forefront of my mind so I included pics of the boats interior to give you an idea of where we were living for the past 4 days.  Actually, being mostly on starboard tack, meaning the boat was heeled over about 20 degrees to the right most of the trip, we took turns "sleeping" crunched up on the right lasserette (couch).  In the picture above, we have re-stacked our gear there back at the dock.  During the trip it was all over the floor and other places.  Somehow a jar of jam made it's way from the refrigerator compartment to my zippered clothes bag and a pair of underwear ended up in the oven.   It was like the boat was possessed by Houdini.

Life at Sea - Part 1

 View from the helm surrounded by miles of open ocean

The setting sun gives the evening clouds a radiant hue

Made it to Isla Mujeres in one piece with quite a tale to tell so instead of writing one really long post that drags on, I'll make it into 2 or 3 really long posts;)

We left St Pete, Fl on Saturday, May 28th around 1:00 in the afternoon with clear skies and about an 8 knot wind from the southwest.  Our intent was to take a rhumb line straight from St Pete's to Isla.  An open ocean crossing covering 450 miles.  In a boat, when sailed well, can average around 5 knots/hour it should take between 4 - 6 days to make the crossing.

I knew this would be a marathon of a trip since we were just double handing the boat and would have to take 4 hour shifts the entire time so someone was always on watch especially at night.  Luckily, Stan does have a wind vane on the back of the boat which is basically an automatic pilot assistant that uses a wind rudder device with a network of pulleys and lines hooked up to the helm which sailors have been using for centuries.  So instead of constantly working the helm, we could just ease back and make small course corrections on the wind vane when necessary.  It was a life saver.

The first day, even though progress was slow, spirits were high and seas were calm.  As evening came, the cooling of the ocean air causes high cumulous clouds to build which include cloud lightening.  This was a normal occurrence each evening and luckily the lightening was never near us.  Most nights were clear but sometimes the leftover clouds in the evening would settle on the horizon and during the night you could not make out where the ocean stopped and the sky started.  It was literally like sailing into a pitch black void.  It did however allow for little cat naps while on watch since you couldn't see anything anyway but don't tell Stan that.

After the first night, the winds died drastically and we decided to motor.  Later in the day the wind picked up and shifted around to the southeast.  We put up all 3 of our sails this time on starboard tack and were making a solid 5 knots/hr again right on our rhumb line.  Seas were a bit higher but things couldn't have been better.

This sounds like the life but for anyone who has not been in the open ocean on a 30 foot boat this is for you.  I am sure you have visions of Stan and I kicking back, drinking beers, living the life of kings.  Please allow me to give you some perspective.  Even in calm seas, your boat is constantly rocked about and you feel like a monkey strapped to a mean bull at the Thailand rodeo.  After that first day, seas stayed at a minimum of 5 ft, maxed at 15 ft.  This means to move anywhere, especially below deck, the only thing that would have helped was if your parents happened to be Spider-man and Mary Lou Retton.  If you were this lucky, you may have had the athleticism to move about the boat without ending up with too many bruises.  But if you are like me and your parents are just hard working country folk, you may want to consider a set of X-games padding for your next sailing adventure.

Aside from it being a strain to sit, stand, or walk, there were also the duties of food and mother nature.  We definitely overestimated how much we thought we would be "cooking" when we bought our rations.  Anything pre-made was gone in the first couple days.  We were able to make pasta twice when we had calmer water for a couple hours.  And the two cartons of eggs I had optimistically boughten thinking a scrambled egg breakfast each morning would be great, were cursed sufficiently each time I had to dig around them just to get a water or ginger ale from the refrigerator locker.

And the head.  Imagine a small telephone booth that also includes a toilet and a sink.  Place that on the back of a monster truck during the middle of his freestyle competition, now go in and have a sit.  I felt like I was auditioning for a new Jack-Ass skit.  Can easily say, the most difficult thing I've ever had to do in my life.

So aside from that, the sailing lifestyle is fabulous.  We were making steady progress and at times had a little fun.  At one point I harnessed myself to the spin halyard and belayed myself over the life lines so I was just above the water line.  I got soaked a couple times by some small rogue waves but it was a refreshing rinse that took off a few layers of the sun screen/sea salt that had built up on my epidermis over the past couple days.

My favorite times were when Stan was below resting and it was just myself at the helm with nothing else in sight for hundreds of miles.  With the ever increasing population of the planet, it is hard to ever imagine yourself in these situations and is definitely surreal.  This was one of the things I had been looking forward to the most and was now finally getting to experience it.

Only with the occasional issue we sailed on for the next few days sighting only two cruise ships, a few gulls, and lots of flying fish.  It was now Tuesday night, May 31st.  We had 400 miles under our belts.  50 miles to go.  We were thinking of the beers we would be having the next afternoon in Isla.  I was just starting my night shift around 2 am and off the starboard side, there was a bright light that began etching a burning beam across the sky.  At first I thought, I was just seeing some weird reflection or other phenomena but I jumped up and watched the line grow and grow across the sky.  I thought the only other time I had seen anything like that was when I saw the shuttle fly over Austin one night on its way to land in Florida.  Working for NASA and keeping up with the STS-134 mission, I knew the timing was about right for it to return but couldn't believe I could have been that lucky to be sailing on a boat in the middle of the Gulf and see the final descent of Space Shuttle Endeavour.  Turned out that I was that lucky however our luck was about to run out and upon taking the plasma trail in the sky as a good omen for the rest of our journey, I could not have been farther from what the future held for us.  In other words, don't hire me as an astrologer.

To be continued......