The Adventures of Daydream

I got back to Daydream at the marina in Bundaberg in November. Everything was in perfect shape, exactly as Susan had left it the previous April. By the end of the year I was ready to see some new territory so with help from Janine Davies, I took the boat down to Gold Coast and went into the Southport Marina there. The boat had a couple of problems on the way and we had up to 30 knots of wind so I was lucky to have Janine along cause she’s an excellent sailor. We did have one tiny little disagreement on the way down though. It involved a bet about what time we’d arrive and Janine had her money on a much earlier time than me. During her offwatch the wind went down to zero and while some people would motor in that situation it seemed best to me that we drift for a while, increasing my chances of winning the bet. Unfortunately the silence woke Janine up and shortly afterwards we agreed that motoring was the more appropriate thing to do.

A couple weeks after I moved to Gold Coast there was a huge flood in Bundaberg and around 80 boats were destroyed, part of the marina was swept away and there was at least one death, so I was lucky not to be there. This was the second 100-year flood in Bundaberg in 2 years, with the crest at 9 meters above normal high water.

Gold Coast was a fabulous place to spend a few months. It has a beautiful beach that’s probably 30 miles long, friendly people and a lot of interesting things to do. I joined a couple of running clubs, a surf life-saving club and took surfing lessons. Mostly I worked on getting the boat ready for the trip this year.

The cyclone season officially ends April 1 so I started heading up the coast. Amira Karaoud crewed for me from Gold Coast up to Gladstone. She had never sailed before but took to it quickly and did a great job. We spent 3 days at sea then stopped in Bundaberg overnight and caught up with friends there, then headed to Lady Musgrave Island in the Great Barrier Reef. This is a beautiful little island with an enormous surrounding reef. It has a difficult entrance and no wind protection, but the reef makes it a flat anchorage in most conditions. There’s some pretty good coral and reef fish and we saw a couple of turtles as well. Probably the most fun was climbing the lighthouse for overhead photos of the reef. We were there for a couple of days with about 25 knots the entire time, but when the weather service began predicting a gale we decided to find somewhere better. We made a super-fast passage to Pancake Creek, in fact we topped 12 knots a couple of times which is pretty unusual for Daydream. Amira turned into a fishing machine early in the trip and we ended up catching two nice wahoo. Wahoo!

From Gladstone to Airlie Beach, Luisa crewed for me. We stopped at a couple of reefs and also a number of islands along the way. The last island was Daydream Island in the Whitsundays.

I spent a couple of days in Airlie Beach then did the rest of the trip to Townsville alone. On the way to Townsville, Daydream took the biggest knockdown she’s had in the last 7 years. There was water in the cockpit and things down below that had never moved before, ended up on the floor.

I’m at the Townsville Yacht Club now. This is a friendly little club right in the centre of downtown. Hard to get to in Daydream cause the creek doesn’t really have enough water, but a great place to be. I’m provisioning the boat for the next five months and waiting for crew, Manon, to arrive. If the weather is good I hope to leave here next week and head for the Louisiade Islands in Papua New Guinea, then East Timor, Bali in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and then Thailand.

Have a look at this link for some photos from the last 6 months.

We’ve had an incredibly busy year. We started out in San Carlos, Mexico and now we’re in Bundaberg, Australia.

From San Carlos we made our way down to La Cruz, a beautiful little town near Puerto Vallarta, to prep for the trip across the Pacific. This was an exciting time for us but we knew that we’d soon be missing Mexico. Wayne’s Mom and Dad visited us there and helped with advice for preparing the boat and storing vast quantities of food and supplies. We eventually reached the end of the list and in mid-March we left for the Marquesas Islands. This is a trip of approximately 3000 nautical miles that took us 22 days. Mostly it was a bit tedious, with the occasional moment of terror thrown in for variety. We ended up doing the last of the trip without our largest headsail after its halyard broke; not a dangerous problem but it slowed us down a bit. Our general feeling about the trip is “the Pacific is really, really big”.

The Marquesas Islands are a remote part of French Polynesia. The islands are incredibly rugged with vertical cliffs rising hundred of feet straight out of the sea, fabulous, lush vegetation and nice people. Unfortunately those cliffs mean that there are not a lot of great harbours and the islands are also home to  voracious little sand fleas that have teeth fit for a tiger. The lush vegetation was also a clue to the prodigious amounts of rain that fall there. The place wasn’t without its ‘fleas’ but we enjoyed our time there.

Next stop was the Tuamotu atolls. The group is also called the Dangerous Archipelago because of the low islands and hundreds of low reefs. Pre-GPS this was an extremely difficult place to sail around safely. The Tuamotus have some of the clearest water in the world and fantastic diving. We snorkeled every day for weeks and along with brilliant coral and colorful fish we also saw more sharks than we ever thought we would. At first we thought we’d be eaten, but eventually we started treating them like large stray dogs. We were wary, and if we felt threatened at all we always swam toward the shark rather than away. We met up with friends on another boat here, Scott and Mary and their boys Finn and Tim on “Whisper” from Seattle. We seemed to like all of the same things, which means mostly eating, hanging out and snorkeling, so we ended spending a lot of very enjoyable time with the crew of “Whisper” as we crossed the rest of the Pacific.

We stopped at Papeete in Tahiti for a few days; it’s pretty much like any big city. The island of Tahiti is quite beautiful although we didn’t explore outside of Papeete. Next we enjoyed a couple weeks on Moorea, which is a truly beautiful island. It has fabulous mountains right to the ocean, white sand beaches, great snorkeling, and fantastic French bread.

We had one fascinating snorkel there with sting rays and sharks. The local dive companies feed the sting rays and as a result there are a few dozen that come every day to one small area. We had a couple of hours snorkeling amongst them, even touching them. They feel sort of like your tongue, rough but smooth and spongy. I was petting one under the chin when I accidentally put two fingers right in his mouth. He closed his mouth because people all around were feeding them but instantly figured out that he had my fingers rather than food and opened back up. I didn’t even get scratched. These flying, magic carpets had an average wingspan of about five feet. They do have a stinger and yes, we know that one accidentally killed the crocodile guy but they’re not normally dangerous unless they’re threatened. We made a couple more stops in French Polynesia including Huahine and Raiatea and finally Bora-Bora. Bora-Bora was nice but it wasn’t Moorea.

Our next passage took a few days and brought us to the atoll of Suwarrow in the Cook Islands. Suwarrow, also known as Suvarov, is a lovely, isolated atoll that can only be visited by private boat. This was one of our two most favourite places so far in the Pacific; the following are excerpts from an article we wrote for Latitude 38 magazine about our time there.

Our stay there in July was nothing short of spectacular and if the season hadn’t been rushing us along, I think we’d still be there.

This anchorage is protected from prevailing trade winds, however most of it is 50 feet or deeper and there are lots of coral heads just waiting to foul your chain. Usually this isn’t a serious problem if you allow a little time for untangling when you’re ready to leave although if and when the wind switches around, it can be interesting to see where everyone ends up depending on which coral head they wrap around.

John is the park ranger and you couldn’t find a nicer guy for the job. With his wife Veronica and their four terrific boys they enhance your park experience while giving us a glimpse into rustic island life. Because they are there for six months at a stretch without re-provisioning, gifts of fresh fruit, veggies or meat are really appreciated. Don’t feel that there’s any requirement to contribute food, but if you do you will likely find fresh fish on your boat from time to time as John is a consummate fisherman. John and Veronica are kind enough to welcome us all into their home to visit, play games, learn about Cook Island life as well as hosting social gatherings for all the boaters. In settled weather John also arranges day trips to the surrounding islands. Veronica is a bit shy but once you get to know her, you’ll never forget her infectious laugh and her kindness. Susan enjoyed learning some local palm frond weaving techniques, especially palm frond boxes.

As Suwarrow is a National Park, there are some rules for visitors. The most important rule is “No spear fishing in the lagoon.” This is a rule that John feels very strongly about because there are many sharks in the area and they are instantly drawn to injured fish. Since his kids and visitors like to swim most days, the last thing he wants is a shark attack. In addition, John asks that all fish parts be dumped on the pass side of Anchorage Island, since the sharks like them as well. Most days the kids host a small gut-dumping ceremony at about 5 pm. This is well worth seeing as sharks ranging from two to seven feet boil the surface just a few feet from shore. Usually you’ll see black tips, white tips and a few bigger and more aggressive grey sharks.

Another of the rules is that you must obtain permission to anchor anywhere except Anchorage island. This anchorage provides good protection in trade wind weather but when we were expecting a blow from the SW, the crews of “Daydream” and “Whisper” asked for permission to move to the Seven Islands area on the East side of the atoll. John asked us to be as careful as possible about the coral, to try not to disturb the nesting birds on the islands and reminded us not to spear fish and then sent us on our way. This turned out to be one of several highlights of our stay although the anchoring was very challenging for a keel boat among the dense coral pillars that rise straight up from 30 feet. The water visibility in this area is approximately 100 feet. The coral formations are the most fantastic we have seen anywhere in the world. The fish are friendly and the sharks are timid. So needless to say we enjoyed every minute

There’s also an old steel shipwreck on the outer reef near the Seven Islands. The wreck is sitting in about three inches of water at low tide approximately 500 feet from the outer edge of the reef. It’s hard to imagine the power of the waves required to move it that high.

Since they are endangered they are out of bounds for eating, but John and Veronica’s eight year-old twins were happy to find us a coconut crab so that we could take some great photos. These monstrosities are big colorful crabs with pinchers that can break your finger. They look like a wild combination of lobster and crab wearing tie-dye colors. After his photo shoot, we released the crab and he disappeared up a coconut palm in record time.

The sharks on Suwarrow have a reputation for abundance which we did experience and aggressiveness which we did not experience. They are however very used to humans in the main anchorage so we normally would have two to six of the black tip reef sharks cruising lazily by the boat.  When you went for a swim they tended to let you get a lot closer than normal before they turn away. We didn’t feel threatened but always tried to keep an eye on them. If one headed toward us, we would always swim toward it. We know they can be dangerous, because when the twins caught a fish from the dinghy one of our friendly little sharks took about 5 pounds out of it as a shark-tax before they could get it aboard.

The crews of “Whisper” and “Daydream” were snorkeling near Entrance Island one day when 10-year old Tim from “Whisper” noticed an unusual lump out near the outer reef. After a long slog through knee and thigh deep water across the reef this proved to be a dead sperm whale 51 feet long, by 6 feet wide by almost 10 feet tall. From the condition of the flesh and the fact that the smell wasn’t yet overpowering, it appeared to have been on the reef for about two days. John gave his permission for an attempt to remove the whale’s lower jaw for transport back to Rarotonga. John’s son Jeremiah, Scott from “Whisper” and Wayne from “Daydream” headed out early the next morning with wood saws, fillet knives, an axe and Vicks Vaporub to combat the smell. The stench of rotting whale meat had increased considerably and a large surf coming over the reef constantly threatened to push us under the whale or down its throat but over a period of about seven hours, a significant part of the jaw weighing approximately 250 pounds was cut off. The water around the whale varied from one foot to four feet depending on the tide but for some reason there were no sharks around during the entire bloody operation. However, as Jeremiah pointed out there were shark bites on the whale that had to have happened while it was adrift, leading us to believe that the whale had died prior to grounding on the reef. Returning the jaw to park headquarters at Anchorage island proved much more difficult than expected because the park’s backup boat, an aluminum dinghy named “Boring”, that was carrying it has serious leaks. Between filling up with blood, incoming seawater, the incredible perfume and the near-constant bailing; the four miles motoring back across the atoll was pretty exciting. The jaw is now ashore near the park headquarters and we expect the flesh will rot out over the next several months so that it will be possible for John to return the bones and teeth to Rarotonga at the end of the season. The three of us considered lighting ourselves on fire to burn off the smell but settled for multiple baths instead.

We had originally planned to stay in Suwarrow for a week but one day turned into the next with new and interesting things to do every time we turned around. Somehow over three weeks had sped by. There are still a number of beautiful reefs that we didn’t have time to snorkel and some electrical work on park headquarters that we should have completed, but eventually we were dipping the same onion over and over to make coffee and decided that it really was time to go. It was difficult to leave having become close friends with John and Veronica and their kids and knowing that we are not likely to see them again. We now think that Suwarrow is the most interesting place that we have been to in the South Pacific and recommend it to everyone.

That dead sperm whale was truly spectacular. Imagine a dead animal the size if a city bus, with forty or fifty teeth the size and shape of small elephant tusks.

From Suwarrow we made our way to Pago Pago Harbour in American Samoa. Although the island itself is quite beautiful, the harbor itself is a rather grubby place that we only went to in order to access the US Postal system, however we were stuck there for several weeks for a number of reasons. Part of our time was taken up trying to arrange a rescue for a boat that had lost its rudder and had been drifting for four weeks. The couple on board was in no danger but they could not control the boat and so eventually they would run out of food or run up on a reef. Wayne and Scott from “Whisper” walked from government office to government office every day for a week trying to arrange help. We would have thought that the first visit to the US Coast Guard office would have solved it, but their response was a) we don’t have a boat (!!!) And b) its New Zealand’s responsibility unless they get within three miles of US territory(!!!) The harbor master was no better although he did offer to send a tug if needed. We finally found an organization called Marine and Wildlife that has a giant inflatable boat suitable for towing. They were all good people who wanted to help but until we guaranteed that their costs would be paid they couldn’t approve it. Eventually it all came together and when the boat “Avatar” drifted within 14 miles of the island (all the way from Bora-Bora), we went out to get them. “We” included Wayne who talked his way onto the rescue boat. It was a long boring day of towing with many broken tow lines and a certain amount of sea sickness amongst the Marine and Wildlife guys but eventually “Avatar” was safely in. We were trapped in American Samoa for a few more weeks by bad weather but eventually decided that we had to leave. After a very unpleasant trip, we made it to Tonga.

Tonga was our other favorite place. The Vava’u group of islands is super spectacular with clear, calm water, beautiful islands and best of all, hundreds of humpback whales in season. Whales come there to give birth and raise their young for a few months. The Tongan’s have a tourist business of taking people out to swim with the whales. After we had tried on our own with no success, we finally hired a guide. The guide took us and the crew from “Whisper” out in a fast boat and we looked for whales all day. When we found a whale it was always a female with a baby. The baby in this case is the size of a pickup truck and Mom is the size of a greyhound bus. The boat would get close and then we’d go over the side with our snorkels in a mad scramble, swim as hard as we could toward the whales, which would tolerate us for a few minutes then flick their tails and disappear into the deep blue. We each got within a dozen feet two or three times for a few seconds. It was a great experience.

While in Vava’u, a large earthquake occurred between Tonga and Samoa triggering a devastating tsunami in Samoa, American Samoa and Niuatoputapu, the northern island group of Tonga. Many people lost their lives and the damage to property was severe. We were lucky as the effects that we experienced in Vava’u were very minor. We are very thankful that we weren’t still in American Samoa or Nuiatoputapu although our hearts went out to those that live there or were visiting.

By this time the sailing season was well along. Cyclone season was fast approaching and we had to make a decision. Initially we had planned to head to New Zealand from Tonga like most of the other boats that we had traveled with across the Pacific. However, we had a bit of a glitch in our plans as we found out that New Zealand wouldn’t allow us to leave the boat there for an extended period of time while we went home to Canada. So the decision was made for us and we turned our sights on Australia instead.  As we still had thousands of miles to go, we sadly said good-bye to our good friends on “Whisper” and to Tonga and headed to Fiji.

We only had a few days in Fiji and that was in the capital city of Suva. This is definitely not the best way to see Fiji. We’ll have to come back at some point and see some of the other things that Fiji has to offer. Another fast passage and we were in Noumea in New Caledonia. New Caledonia is part of France so it feels like the first world, kind if a shock after the last few months but we were happy to have access to wonderful baguettes again. All too soon we set out on our last passage for the year which took us to Bundaberg in Australia.

We’ve been here since early November living on a river in front of the town of Bundaberg about ten miles from the ocean.  We’ve seen kangaroos in the wild and eaten kangaroo (yummy) from the supermarket. We also went to the Australia Zoo which is Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter’s, zoo. A bit of a shocker at $110 for two but it was a good day and we saw big crocs, koalas, kangaroo, wombats and cassowary. This last is a huge, weird bird that looks like a dinosaur. We’d like to see a platypus, but they are rare so we’re not holding our breath.

We plan to store the boat for a while here in Australia and fly home to Canada in February.

For the first time we had an underwater camera along and we put it to good use. Don’t miss out on seeing some of this year’s photos especially the ones from Suwarrow. There are more photos to come from New Caledonia, Fiji and Australia so keep checking back. To see more photos from our adventures in the South Pacific click here.

If we were to describe the last ten months in a couple of words, they would have to be “carefree” and “relaxed”. In fact, from the time we purchased the new “Daydream” in late 2004 right up until February of 2006 we seem to have been under constant time pressures to be somewhere else and to be there quickly. Since March, we’ve finally felt that we truly had “nothing but time” as one of our favourite sayings goes. We’ve only covered about 1700 nautical miles since returning to the boat in February and all of those miles have been in the Sea of Cortez. Our only time pressure was to be well north in the Sea during hurricane season in the summer and fall.

We escaped from chilly Canada in late February and spent the rest of 2006 enjoying one of our favourite places; the Sea of Cortez. There were many lazy, hot days in the summer, great sailing, snorkelling, desert hiking, beachcombing, and, of course, plenty of socializing. We enjoyed some fantastic encounters with nature’s wonder including whales galore, pods of dolphins, enormous sea lions, high-diving pelicans, low-diving grebes, a large, hairy tarantula and most exciting of all, whale sharks! Of course, it wasn’t all whales and sunsets. There was the usual amount of equipment breakage, routine maintenance and snotty weather to contend with which is all part of life on a boat.

During the summer and fall we enjoyed retracing our path made in old “Daydream” in the far northern part of the Sea of Cortez. We made that journey in 1997 and found ourselves retracing it almost exactly 10 years later; seeing all of the old places along with many new ones. The further north we went, the less changes we could see.

Wayne

One cool spot that we returned to is a little island called Isla Estanque. We had visited here with our friends Albert and Terry and their boat “Northern Summit” back in 1997 and had sketched the entrance to the anchorage then. Naturally we assumed that we knew all about how to get into it, but when we arrived we promptly went aground. One of us (no names need be mentioned) said “Give it a little more gas and we’ll bump over it!”. The other one said “No, let’s back up!”. Naturally we gave it a little more gas, got stuck even more, then tried that crazy backing up idea. Backing up works as it turns out so we carefully tucked our tails between our legs and slunk away.

Susan

We even made it as far north as Puerto Penasco way up on the mainland coast again. The tides in Penasco are still just as impressive at over 20 feet. That’s a lot of water to move in and out of that very small harbour every 6 hours! Which may have contributed to our inadvertently (as our friend Shelley would say) taking a piece of the dock with us when we left. There will be no more disussion on that particular subject so as not to make ourselves look silly. The new fuel dock in the harbour has to have a really, really long hose to accommodate the rise and fall of the boat being fuelled which makes for a couple of interesting photos at high and low tide.

Susan & Wayne

It was a good summer in terms of hurricanes in the Northeast Pacific; meaning very few. This resulted in only one hurricane that was of concern to us called Henriette in mid-September. Luckily Henriette stayed well clear of our hideout in Bahia Gonzaga. We had decided to try something new this year so when Henriette was getting close, we found a tiny little cove, which we named Twiggy Cove and backed the boat into it. We put two anchors out in front and six lines to shore. It was such a comfortable arrangement that we spent several weeks enjoying our private little spot. This bay is one of the nicest in the Sea with clear water and abundant sea life.

Wayne

While we were in Gonzaga Bay our friends Jim and Shelley on the boat “Ebeneezer” came to the bay to do a little work. “Ebeneezer” is a 40-foot catamaran and they wanted to paint the bottom with anti-fouling. Most boats have to find a ship yard and be lifted out of the water for this job, but because catamarans have two hulls they don’t tip over the way a monohull does if you try to set them down on the bottom.

Jim and Shelley carefully took “Ebeneezer” into a very well-protected bay with a nice flat sand beach that dries out at low tide. After removing the rudders which hang down below the bottom of the boat they anchored in a few inches of water then waited for the 15 foot tide to recede. After a few hours “Ebeneezer” was high and dry and perfectly flat. Over the next couple of tide cycles the painting was completed

The whole thing went smoothly except for Grover. Grover is the dog that adopted them when they lived in T’aiwan and he just happens to look exactly like a smallish coyote. Gonzaga Bay is full of coyotes all of whom would get together and sing to us most nights. These coyotes seemed to find Grover fascinating, possibly as Chinese food, and they came out to circle the boat every night to visit and/or sauté him when the tide was out. Fortunately Grover is too smart to date coyote ladies so he escaped intact.

Susan & Wayne

Whale sharks are giant sharks, in fact they are the largest fish in the oceans. They have no teeth, are covered in large white spots and are extremely docile. The Sea of Cortez is famous for them but we have never seen one before this summer when we had occasion to see four of them! Our best sighting took place as we were sitting on deck trying to stay cool one afternoon. Susan thought that she spotted a shark swimming toward us with it’s long lazy swing of the tail fin. Seeing a shark in this area is pretty unusual so it got our attention. As it approached the boat, we were able to clearly see the unique white spots all over its body. It turned out to be a fairly small whale shark; only about 20 feet long. They can get up to 50 feet long! It swam right up to our boat and then on past, lazily scooping up lunch with that giant mouth. We jumped in the dinghy and headed out in front of its projected path. We shut off the outboard and watched as it swam towards us and passed within a few feet totally ignoring our presence. Knowing they are harmless and not wanting to miss out on a rare opportunity, Wayne decided to jump in and see if he could swim alongside or maybe even catch a short ride. Whale sharks have enormous mouths which look like they could at least gum you rather severely if not swallow you whole by accident. Anyway Wayne worked up his courage and hopped in and got within about six inches before it decided that it had had enough and disappeared into the depths.

Wayne

My favourite whale encounter this year was with a pod of humpbacks. There were probably 20 of them doing a lot of whale-type business and going generally in the same direction as us one afternoon. These guys are always fun to watch as they spout and lift their tails out of the water, all the while moving at a pretty similar rate to ours. Normally whales ignore us and we try not to bother them either but on this day there was one that found us particularily fascinating and decided to play with us a little. It surfaced first on our right side maybe 25 feet away and blew loudly . This is a sound a little bit like a truck makes when it puts on its brakes so out in the middle of the ocean it is cause for heart palpitations. Then it turned toward us and dived. Twenty seconds later it surfaced on the other side and blew again, scaring us once more. This went on for five minutes or so and while we grew accustomed to the noise we couldn’t get used to the idea that a 40-foot long, 20,000 pound animal was maybe playing tag with the keel of our boat.

One other whale encounter happened just at dusk one afternoon. We were sailing when we realized that there was something on the surface of the water just a 20 feet or so off one side. It was already dark enough to have trouble figuring out what it was but when it blew and dived we realized that we had scared a sleepy whale. Just a few minutes later we spotted another one right in front of us and so close that we had no time to turn. As we braced for impact, it woke up with a start. Because it was pointed toward us, when it started moving, it came even closer to the bow of the boat. Somehow it missed us but only by inches when it dived out of sight.

Susan

This last year featured visits from my sister Barb and also from our nephew, Algernon. Both of them visited while we were in the lovely city of La Paz. It was fun to see La Paz through Barb’s eyes as someone who had never been there before. It really is a wonderful place. We also enjoyed a close encounter of the sea lion type in the dinghy with Barb along. As for Algernon, he got the four star arrival treatment when the dinghy was approached by a couple of large, interested dolphins as Wayne was bringing him out to the boat for the first time.

We are currently enjoying our time in and around La Paz. We are looking forward to a visit from my folks along with my sister in mid-January and also a visit from Wayne’s sister and various members of her family, including our first great-niece later in January. Further plans this year consist of leaving the boat on the hard in June in San Carlos while returning home for a four month visit to Canada. When we return to the boat in October, it will be for our last taste of Mexico. The plan is to sail south and west to the South Pacific islands early in 2009 if all goes according to plan.

To see more photos from the Sea of Cortez taken in 2007 click here.

To see our Photo Album click here.

Last year at this time we were aboard “Daydream” in the lovely Los Roques island group off the north coast of South America. Since then we’ve had a busy, long-distance travel year both on the boat and on land.

We had our hearts set on sailing to the Panama Canal, through it and up the west coast of Central America before summer. This would have us returning to one of our favourite cruising grounds in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico before the hurricane season began again. It may not seem like it to some of you but this is a fairly long journey in a sailboat. It would be easy to spend years covering this route but fortunately we had already covered the west coast from the Panama Canal to Mexico twice on our last adventure. Thus we were determined to spend as much time as possible seeing the area between Venezuela and the Panama Canal and then move very quickly from there up to Mexico.

We really enjoyed the remaining two island groups that were the next stops after Los Roques. Los Aves (The Birds), as these areas are called, are mostly coral reefs with a couple of tiny dots of low-lying land. The enormous reefs provide incredible protection from the relentless waves generated by the ever-present trade winds. It was a fabulous lesson in boat handling to weave in among these coral heads lurking just below the surface. Wayne had a permanently blistered nose and lips from standing at the bow for hours at a time peering into the crystal clear water and directing me which way to turn, to stop (quickly!) and in some cases to jam it in reverse to avoid a collision. It was an interesting experience to learn to ‘drive blind’. Since I had my eyes glued to the compass and depth sounder, I simply listened to Wayne’s directions hardly ever looking at where we were going. It was certainly a fantastic exercise in trust and working together.

The islands and reefs are basically uninhabited although there were a few military/coast guard personnel on one island and literally thousands of birds. We never did see the coast guard guys and spent most of our time in complete isolation, snorkelling, exploring and generally enjoying ourselves. For company, we did pick up a couple of hanger-ons who we called Bill and Bob. They were two enormous (between 3 and 4 foot long) barracudas that liked to hang out behind our boat waiting for table scraps to come their way. They freaked me out a bit but you soon got used to them lurking about.

These reefs have had many, many ships and boats wrecked upon them over the years. Some of which are still visible above the surf. There is a rumour that a treasure fleet was lost here hundreds of years ago so we searched a little. We found no gold bars but we did drag up an old brick that didn’t belong there.

We would have stayed longer in these idyllic places but I had developed a terrible chest cough at Christmas and just couldn’t get rid of it. We read all the medical books that we had and tried all the options including antibiotics and home-made cough syrup when we ran out of store-bought. Just so you know you can make a pretty effective cough syrup out of lemon, gin, and honey. As the coughing continued unabated, it was time to seek professional help in the civilized world of the ABCs.

To see photos from the Aves click here.

So one quick down-wind passage later we found ourselves back in civilization when we arrived in Bonaire. Even the slow pace of life on this island was quite a jolt to the senses after spending so long in isolation. Certainly waking up to find a cruise ship cuddled up to us wouldn’t have happened in the islands that we had just left behind. Bonaire is a lovely island with some of the clearest water and most abundant tropical fish that we’ve ever seen. You aren’t allowed to anchor in Bonaire so we pulled up right in front of the main town of Kralendijk and picked up a buoy. We spent only a few days there. Just time to see a doctor about my cough and to do a little restaurant eating! Bonaire is part of the Netherlands Antilles just like Sint Maarten but it is much more “Dutch”. We suffered a bit of sticker shock, as it had been a while since we’d spent any money at all and the prices were a lot higher than in Venezuela.

All too soon we headed west to the island of Curacao where we would spend almost a month stocking up and doing some upgrades on the boat including ordering some items from the U.S. Curacao is a very modern, bustling island that is also part of the Netherlands Antilles and has a very strong Dutch influence. I’m not sure how long we would have had to stay to pick up some of the language.

We spent our time anchored in the very well protected, amazing anchorage of Spanish Waters. It’s a good thing it was well protected as we experienced 20-25 knots of wind and rain squalls almost every day. A twenty-minute bus ride would get us to the main city and harbour of Willemstad. The architecture and colour of the buildings is just amazing. In between stocking up and working on the boat we squeezed in a little time for socializing and catching a few movies at the theatre in town.

To see photos from Curacao click here.

Wayne

The trip from Curacao to the San Blas Islands is reputed to be fast and rough especially in the winter months. However, with the wind from behind it couldn’t possibly be all bad, could it? We finally got away from Curacao on February 9th and had the fastest passage that we have ever done. “Daydream” was in her element and flying. For the first several days we had winds up to 30 knots from behind, rough seas and a current pushing us along. Other than the roll, this was really fantastic sailing. The boat was near hull speed all of the time and the sky was bright blue. It’s true we were being tossed around a little and some of us may have tossed our cookies a few times but that’s they way it goes. (Susan: easy for him to say). On the first day we did 180 nautical miles. The second day we hit 196.5 miles, which now stands as our 24-hour record. Then the current turned against us and on the third day we only managed 163 miles. The last full day we only did 157 miles and then reached Isla Pinos in the San Blas Islands a few hours later. We had come much farther than a straight line between these two ports because the weather just off the Columbian coast produces some of the highest seas in the entire Atlantic. As a result we were well off of Columbia until just the last few miles before we arrived at Isla Pinos. Even so, in the middle of one night a helicopter appeared out of nowhere, had a good look at us and then apparently decided that we were not involved in anything too nefarious and disappeared back towards the mainland.

The San Blas islands are officially part of Panama, however the indigenous people, the Kuna Indians, have managed to hang onto some degree of sovereignty and much of their unusual culture including their own language. The Kunas call their island chain of 365 islands and their strip of land on mainland Panama, the Kuna Yala. Only about 50 of these spectacular islands are inhabited.

Isla Pinos is unusual in the island chain because it stands a couple hundred feet high as compared to most of the islands, which are exactly the height of the tallest palm tree, plus about 3 feet of sand. Isla Pinos is near the eastern end of Panama, very close to the Columbian border and is in the least developed area of the Kuna Yala. The people here live in houses that you can see through. The walls are made of upright sticks and the roofs are thatch. There is very little electricity although some villages had a TV with DVD and a generator or solar panels to run it. There are no cars and very few outboard motors.

Most of the men are either farmers or fisherman. If they are fishermen, they use a hollowed out (by hand) log canoe to get to and from the ‘office’. If they are farmers, they farm mostly coconuts but also some mangoes, bananas, platanos and a few veggies. The coconuts are the main crop and the main source of export earnings. Every town has a little concrete dock that the coconut traders dock at to buy coconuts. They show up in extremely colourful and dilapidated old wooden shrimp boats and buy coconuts for 10 cents each and sell flour, sugar and luxuries like potato chips to the locals. Because most of these boats are operated by Columbians and these are the only outsiders that many of these folks normally see, they often asked us if we were Columbians.

One of our favourite sights in the Kuna Yala was the pigsties. For some reason that we never quite figured out, they build little one-pig sties about 3 feet off the ground, right on the ocean front. Anywhere else in the world this would be million dollar real estate!

Susan

The other important industry in Kuna Yala is the making of molas. The women mostly undertake this work. ‘Mola’ means blouse and is the traditional dress for Kuna women. They sew the mola panels by hand using a unique multi-layer method that involves cutting through the top layers to display the colours of the layers beneath. The good ones are painstaking works that can take months to make and it is almost impossible to see the tiny stitches. Two matching panels are sewn for each blouse and then connected together by a neckline and sleeves. Molas are often characterized by rather unique colour combinations due to the Kuna’s love of red, burgundy and orange!

Wayne

The eastern half of Kuna Yala has never had any industry to speak of and as a result has never been carefully charted. The Spanish made the last ‘official’ chart around 1810. We have a guidebook on board written by a guy in a sailboat that provides much better information than the official chart, but even so, one of us was on watch on the bow of the boat the entire time that we were moving through this area. There were many times where we had only a few inches of water under the boat and many uncharted reefs. Of course we did go aground once, but got off again just a few minutes later.

Susan

We spent over a month working our way slowly NW through the island chain. We enjoyed our time immensely. It was the most unique area that we’ve ever visited. The people were very friendly and the culture very interesting. The area was highly photogenic. Between the colourful people themselves, their fascinating villages, the uninhabited coral island paradises and the underwater gardens of diverse coral; it was truly a slice of heaven. We could go on for hours discussing the San Blas but it’s time to move on. Please take a moment to see some of the incredible photos from this area on our website.

To see photos of the Kuna people click here.

To see photos of the San Blas Islands click here.

All too soon it was time to leave paradise. We had begun to hear rumours of long wait-times to transit the Panama Canal. At this point it was mid-March and many other cruisers in the Western Caribbean were also preparing to transit the Canal in preparation for heading across the South Pacific. It was time for us to get in line.

We had one quick stop in the historic port of Portobelo before reaching the Panama Canal from the San Blas Islands. Portobelo was one of the ports along the route of the Spanish treasure fleets. We only had a day to spend here but Wayne took some great photos of the old Spanish forts surrounding the bay.

To see photos from Portobelo click here.  

Our last stop in the Caribbean was the, less than lovely, city of Colon. It is, however, a necessary evil as this is where all boats wanting to transit the Panama Canal from the Caribbean to the Pacific end up. If you are lucky, the wait is short, but we arrived at one of the busiest times of the year for small boats to transit in this direction. We arrived to find out that some of our friends had been here waiting for over four weeks! We immediately set about going through the process of “getting in line”. This involves being measured (the boat, not us) by a Canal official, filling out piles of paperwork and finally parting with $850 US, which was the going rate for an over-50 foot boat. That fee seemed like quite the deal compared to the alternative of sailing around the tip of South America!

Luckily we had a relatively short wait of only 12 days. That wait was filled with checking out the daily rescheduling to see who had been bumped and who had been moved up and talking to all the other people waiting to transit about the latest rescheduling. Other hot topics of conversation were the problems suffered by boats that had gone through the day before and the arranging of line handlers. Line handlers were definitely the topic of the day. Each small boat that transits must have a total of five crew aboard in addition to the advisor that the Canal provides. One person to steer/pilot the boat and 4 people able to handle the long lines used to secure the boat to the lock walls during the transit.

We made some wonderful friends and had some great parties during this wait time. It was truly a multi-cultural meeting place as the boat crews waiting to transit represented countries from all around the world. Sadly we were the only ones intending to head north up the coast after the transit so we didn’t have much time to enjoy these new friendships.

While waiting for our transit, we crewed as line handlers on a yacht called “Sarema” from Finland. That transit was fairly uneventful with one small collision with another boat. It was hard work but we were happy to have the experience again in preparation for our own transit. We were line handlers for our friends in 1996 but a refresher never hurts.

When the afternoon came for our transit on April 1st, we were ready. Our three extra line handlers were our new friends Michael & Janine who were doing a boat delivery to Australia and Kathy from “Ariel”. Our Panama Canal Advisor was scheduled to arrive on the boat at about 5 pm but I think it was closer to 7 pm when he arrived. Of course by that time it is as dark as the inside of a cat. He had us pick up our anchor and begin circling in the dark waiting for the ship that we were to follow into the canal locks. It was already apparent that our advisor didn’t have much experience with this and wasn’t going to be all that helpful. When the time came to head up the channel toward the first lock, he kept urging me to move further to the edge of the channel until I noticed that we were in only nine feet of water! We draw seven and a half! He obviously wasn’t thinking about the draft of a sailboat. As we were waiting, a 700-foot ship was approaching the lock. At about 1000 feet away he suddenly dropped his anchor. Our advisor was able to find out that the ship’s reverse gear had failed! If he were to hit a lock while up in the reservoir, he could at least theoretically break the gate, which would uncontrollably drain the reservoir and destroy the Canal at least for a few months, and maybe for years.  Wayne assumed that they would use a tug to take him back to the anchorage but instead they used a tug to put him in the lock, and the next morning he was anchored near us in Lake Gatun, presumably fixing his transmission. 

Our next task was to have a small Czechoslovakian sailboat called “Argo” raft up to the side of our boat before we entered the first lock as we would be going through the first three up-locks together as if we were one boat. The rafting went surprisingly well in the dark and then we were off. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any time to figure out how 50 foot “Daydream” would manoeuvre with 25 foot “Argo” tied to the side. To add to the difficulties we had 25 knots of wind from behind pushing us forward and a huge current coming out of the Canal towards us. Let me just say, it was a rather stressful few minutes until we figured out how to work the controls of the two boats together to maintain control while trying to inch into the locks behind a power yacht. My hands were welded to the wheel and the gearshift control. During all the excitement our Canal advisor had snuck off to the bow of the boat, as he had no idea how to help. The rest of the transit up the three locks went by in a blur for me with no further problems. By the time we came out of the final up-lock into Lake Gatun it was about 1am and I had a massive migraine headache.

Wayne

We spent what was left of the night anchored in Lake Gatun as there was no room left on the buoys. Early the next morning when our advisor arrived we discovered that the anchor was hooked on a tree. Sounds funny, I know, but it wasn’t. The valley was flooded in 1912 to make the reservoir but it was never logged. Then a few years ago, they dragged a giant chain over the bottom between two tugboats in order to clear it. Obviously they didn’t get all of the trees. The one that we got hooked on was either very big or still rooted because we were able to pull the bow of the boat right down to the water with our windlass. I estimate that we were applying at least 1000 pounds of force trying to free ourselves. We thought we’d have to get a diver out but finally managed to get clear. Then we had to hurry to catch up to our friends in “Argo”, the boat that we were rafted to the night before. We had agreed to tow them the 25 miles through the centre portion of the Canal as they didn’t have the horsepower to maintain enough speed. If they had had to go through under their own power, they would have had to pay a fine of $400 because they could not get to the down-locks in time. We quickly overtook them and threw them a line for towing. With his engine at full power we moved along at about 7 knots and arrived at the other side in plenty of time. When we reached the 1st down-lock, we stopped in order to raft “Argo” to one side of us and another 50-foot sailboat called “Interlude” to the other side of us. We would stay tied together moving as one boat for the final 3 locks. Luckily we had a very competent advisor on this second day of the transit and we spent a few minutes testing how the boats handled together. Basically “Daydream” became the power and the steering for all three boats so Susan had a lot of work to do while the other two helmsmen had a bit of a break. It was a good thing too as between the first and second down-lock “Interlude” lost their steering. He was able to get an emergency tiller rigged while “Daydream” pulled them along. Soon we were exiting the third and final down-lock and being flushed out into the Pacific.

The number of mechanical problems amongst boats at the Canal was astonishing. During our wait in Colon almost every day one or two out of the three to five boats going through broke down. Problems included, lost steering, engine won’t start, gear shift failure, and broken bolts to the prop shaft. I know that some of these boats are not that well maintained, but the number of failures still seems pretty surprising. It’s almost as if the boats are scared to go through. One other interesting, little known fact about the Panama Canal is the direction in which you transit. Most people would think that you would travel from east to west when coming from the Caribbean side to the Pacific side when in fact you transit from NW to SE. The Panama Canal is an amazing engineering marvel and quite the experience in a small boat.

To see photos from the Panama Canal click here.

Susan

Now we were back in old territory for us. We could feel the pressure of the upcoming hurricane season so we didn’t spend very long in Panama City. Just enough time to stock up with fuel and provisions for the upcoming miles ahead. This time our journey up the coast of Central America was done in the dry season and it was such a pleasure. The last time we had been in this part of the world, we had seen more rain and thunder and lightning than we thought possible. We hopped up the coast of Panama re-visiting some of our favourite stops along the way but not staying anywhere for more than a day or two. We then made a direct passage from the north end of Panama to the north end of Costa Rica. At that point, we had had so little wind that we really needed diesel fuel. However, the fuel dock that we knew of had been closed long ago so we continued on again making a direct passage from Costa Rica to the southern end of Mexico at Puerto Madero arriving with at least some diesel fumes left in the tanks.

We had an uneventful crossing of the dreaded Tehuantepec (our third time across) at the beginning of May and then continued up the coast of Mexico stopping at some of our old haunts. We were happy to be back in one of our favourite countries and even happier to see that things hadn’t changed that much in the eight years since we had been here. The people are still wonderful, friendly, happy and helpful, the food is still fantastic and the prices are still quite reasonable! Best of all, we were heading back into the desert zone where the scenery is pretty spectacular and rain is a rarity. One thing we are missing is the incredible clear, blue-green of the Caribbean water and the white, white sand. However, the trade-off here in the Pacific is the incredible quantity and variety of sea life.

We didn’t have too much time to ‘stop and smell the roses’ as we had a reservation to haul-out the boat in San Carlos near the end of June. We did finally slow down a bit once we reached La Paz in Baja California. This is still one of our favourite cities and it is even prettier as they have made wonderful improvements on the waterfront malecon. We enjoyed the many anchorages north of La Paz as we worked our way up to Bahia Concepcion along the way drinking in the spectacular desert/ocean landscapes. Here we stopped for our final bit of cruising this season before heading across the Sea of Cortez to San Carlos. The weather was really heating up and Concepcion lived up to its reputation as ‘the oven’.

To see photos from the Sea of Cortez click here.

We had a fast sail across the Sea of Cortez and spent our final few days preparing the boat for haul-out and storage through the summer. We had to time our haul-out very carefully as there really isn’t quite enough water at the haul-out spot for a boat with our deep draft. This was also the first time that we have ever hauled out using a hydraulic trailer rather than a Travelift. It was a bit unnerving to see our baby come out of the water at an angle but it all went without a hitch. Once they had us out of the water, the boat took a little road trip down the highway to the storage yard a couple miles away.

Once “Daydream” was settled in for the hot summer months, we hopped a bus to Phoenix and flew home to Vancouver Island with plans to enjoy the summer months in our house, visit family in Alberta and Saskatchewan and take on a little real estate project. Everything went according to plan except the project, which began to stretch out, a bit longer than planned. Also Wayne managed to mess up his knee early in the summer and spent much of the summer on crutches or with a cane. Working his magic, he managed to get himself operated on at the end of September with great results.

To see photos from Canada click here.

A few days after the surgery, we decided to drive down to Mexico to launch the boat and then return to Canada to continue with our project. Due to our deep draft and coordination with the high tides, we had limited opportunities to launch the boat. It was a long three and half day drive to San Carlos. We then spent four or five days preparing the boat for launch including new bottom paint. The launch went smoothly and was followed by a week or so of putting the boat together, meeting new people and seeing old friends. When we were ready we sailed across the Sea of Cortez back to the Baja peninsula. We then enjoyed about 10 days of wonderful weather and socializing with old and new friends. All too quickly it was time to get the boat ready to stay alone and head home again. The threat of the final hurricane of the season on the day that we needed to leave wasn’t appreciated but thankfully it didn’t have any serious effect. We took a short, rather hair-raising, flight back across the Sea in a small Cessna. From there we picked up our car and drove back up to Canada.

To see photos from the San Carlos area click here.

So that is where you find us at this point in time. We are still working on our project but hope to wrap that up and return to the boat as soon as possible in the New Year. Since we’ve returned to Canada at the beginning of November, we have been inundated with the worst weather imaginable. We’ve been through record-setting weather of all sorts including torrential rainfall causing massive flooding, over a foot of snow which, stuck around for almost two weeks which is unheard of in this area, and wind storm after wind storm causing widespread power outages with thousands of trees falling over. So you can imagine how the call of the boat and warmer climates is very strong.

We’ve certainly covered a lot of ground this last year and seen some incredible places. Our words can’t possibly do these places the justice that they deserve so please check out some of the photos on our website.

To see our Photo Album click here.

Wayne

Susan

June finds us sailing down the chain of Caribbean islands. We are finally on the move! Since our last update, there have been a lot of changes in our lives. In late April we moved ourselves and our giant heap of boxes (almost a thousand pounds of stuff that we had shipped here from Canada) aboard the boat. Needless to say it took more than a few days to find a home for it all but we finally made it and discovered that we still had plenty of spaces to fill. Thank goodness we bought a big boat.

It felt great to be living aboard our new home even though life on a dock isn’t our favourite thing. One problem is that we still hadn’t finished all of the carpentry work on the interior of the boat so we learned to live with sawdust as a side dish to every meal. We love the boat. The design of the saloon and galley that we worked out makes it a very comfy place to live. We continued to work hard on the interior of the boat as well as finally getting around to some of the mechanical, rigging and electrical work that we wanted to do before leaving. Click here to see the most recent renovation pictures. 

We had hoped to be leaving St. Maarten in mid-May before the official hurricane season began on June 1st but you know how things go. The list of jobs was long and we had been on the island so long that we knew where to get everything done. We also had a good relationship with a number of local businesses not to mention our carpenter, Bernhard. It was hard to call a halt to the upgrades and endless boat shopping. Our credit card glowed with the heat of extensive use in stores with the word “marine” in the name. Not to mention the three trips in a rental car one day to stock up with groceries. It took almost 3 days to put it all away. Once again, it all disappeared into the cupboards with some room to spare. It wasn’t our intention but my guess is we could now survive for perhaps a year with all the provisions on the boat.

On June 1st it was finally time to cut the ties (or at least untie the lines) as we called a halt to the carpentry work and moved off the dock to a nearby anchorage in Simpson Bay Lagoon. It was a wonderful feeling to be at anchor again. There was much more privacy to be had with your closest neighbours hundreds of feet away and it was soooo much cooler with the wind always coming from the bow of the boat and getting scooped up by the hatches. Not to mention the feeling of moving silently at anchor with the wind.

Within a week we had tackled the final list of jobs including testing the water maker and generator and hiring some unlucky soul to clean 8 months of heavy growth off the bottom of our boat. He joked that he’d destroyed an entire reef down there. It was finally time to leave. Hurricane season was officially underway and we were anxious to get some distance closer to the edge of the zone.

During April and May we had almost no time to spare for fun. We did get to know some of our neighbours on the dock and enjoyed some great happy hour conversations with these new friends. We look forward to meeting up with some of them further South.

At the end of the first week in June, we were finally ready to get going. The morning that we passed under the open bridge to leave Simpson Bay Lagoon was a red-letter day for us. Wayne referred to it as leaving ‘boat jail’. I can’t say we’ll have the fondest memories of St. Maarten. It was a place of heat and really hard work for us. Perhaps if we had just been visiting for a week or two, we would have a different lasting impression. Regardless, it is one of the best places in the Caribbean to have boat work done so we were lucky to have purchased Daydream here.

Our first stop upon leaving Simpson Bay was only 5 miles away in Great Bay where the town of Philipsburg is. This is still on the island of St. Maarten and gave us a chance to go for a test sail on our way there. Our true shakedown cruise began the following morning when we set sail for the island of St. Eustatius more commonly known as Statia. It is part of the Netherlands Antilles and is about 30 miles away from St. Maarten. An interesting thing about sailing here in the Caribbean is that the next island/country is usually visible from your last port of call. We enjoyed the day of sailing with favourable winds and were able to work out a few more kinks and learn even more about our new boat. The most important being that she is FAST compared to our last boat. On a close reach with reduced sail, we saw speeds on the GPS of over 7.5 knots. This makes her a rocket in our eyes. We’re loving the cutter rig and are so happy that we added a roller furler to the staysail because we are, after all, lazy at heart. I also love the electric roller furling on the yankee (see note on laziness above). Wayne won’t admit to liking it yet although I think he secretly does. The brand new, full battened main sail is an absolute wonder to sail with too. The boat definitely has a much more solid feel especially going upwind. Not that we’ve had any downwind sailing yet to compare with. Upwind she sails close to the wind and fairly flat and very stable. It feels much more in control in wind over 20 knots on the nose. Our hydraulic autopilot is also a champ and so much quieter below decks than our noisy old Autohelm. We can’t wait to get some photos from the dinghy of the boat going upwind with full main, yankee and staysail up.

The anchorage at Statia was just off the historic town of Oranjestad, which was the trade capital of the Indies in the late 1700’s. At that time you could see a couple hundred trading ships at anchor off this tiny island. Much of the ruins of the original sea wall and old buildings can still be seen. We didn’t go ashore but enjoyed a wonderful swim in the first crystal clear water that we’ve seen and then a lovely sunset.

Early the next day we were off to the small island of Nevis. We had a great day of sailing mostly in the lee of St. Kitts that kept the seas to a more comfortable size. We were also able to sightsee along the coast of St. Kitts as we sailed by just offshore. We anchored off of a beautiful white sand beach with tons of palm trees just North of the main town of Charleston on Nevis. The water was again perfectly clear and we enjoyed another Caribbean sunset.

Early the next morning we headed off to the island of Montserrat. The island is currently experiencing an active volcano at the South end. In fact the island is now at least a mile longer because of it. Soufriere Hills has been erupting on and off since 1995 and apparently almost half of the already small population has left the island. The main town and port of Plymouth has been completely evacuated and it is now a ghost town. We anchored up near the new port at the North end of the island after a rather unpleasant day of sailing hard into the wind, making very little progress each hour. The seas were large and confused with multiple trains coming from different directions and the wind was up and down as we were passed on either side by sizable squalls. We got lucky with the squalls until we were within a few miles of the island and then we got hammered with lots of rain and wind and seas. We finally motored into port just before dark. Both of us were rather tired from a hard day. Even a day at the office started to look good to me at the end of that day. We stayed at Montserrat the next day as well as the weather forecast wasn’t promising. Also we had a broken impeller on the generator and our spare didn’t fit properly so Wayne went ashore to see if he could find one. No luck in such a small place. We need the generator in order to make water as well as to provide power for our batteries in addition to solar power. We would need to get a new impeller within a few days or find somewhere to take on water. If we continued South to Guadeloupe, we were uncertain of the what we would find there in terms of boat parts and our French isn’t necessarily up to the task either. We decided to head East to Antigua which we had planned to skip as we had seen the island last year while boat hunting. We knew that we could get anything that might be needed for the boat as well as enjoy the protection of a great harbour there until this unpleasant weather system blew through.

So we left early for Antigua the next day prepared for a wet, uncomfortable upwind passage. However the rain quit almost as soon as we had the anchor up and the wind was such that we were able to reach the island with only a couple of tacks. The seas were quite large and very confused but luckily the wind stayed strong enough to give us the speed and power to move through them with relative ease.

We arrived at the mouth of Falmouth Harbour in Antigua late in the afternoon. Having read all of the guide books and charts we prepared to enter the complex harbour with care following the leading lights as recommended to avoid the huge reef on one side of the entrance. As we were lining up to enter having slowed down to a safe speed, a large motor yacht screamed up behind us and then passed us by to hurry into the harbour. At first we thought they must know something that we didn’t as they charged through heading in on a course that would take them right over the just barely covered reef. In a few seconds we watched them make a very abrupt turn, as they no doubt discovered that there was no water there. I was prepared to hear the large crunch of a million dollar yacht driving up on a reef at full speed but luckily they were able to get turned just in time. We, feeling quite justified, continued with our careful, slow approach into the bay.

So here we are in Falmouth Harbour in Antigua. We will likely stay a few days to get our parts, fix a few things, catch up on laundry and hopefully see the last of this unpleasant weather blow through. From here we’ll continue south with the next stops being in Guadeloupe and then on to Dominica. Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic) is the last of the Leeward Islands and then we tackle the Windward Islands starting with Martinique. We’ll continue to move along quickly until we reach St. Vincent and the Grenadines where we hope to spend a little time enjoying the area. Click here to see a few photos of the Leeward Islands that we’ve visited so far

Daydream is a very different boat from our last one and we still have a lot to learn about how she sails but with every mile we cover, we become more comfortable. We are very happy with our choice of boat in every way and expect to enjoy many miles, many years and many interesting places aboard her.

Susan

Well the end of March finds us still on the island of Sint Maarten/Saint Martin in the Caribbean. We’ve been busy with continued boat renovations since Christmas. Renovation isn’t really an accurate way to describe the scope of the project. We are really building half of a boat interior. We’ve made great strides though and it is looking more and more like the inside of a proper yacht these days. Check out the renovation pictures by clicking here. Be sure to refresh the page if you don’t see the recent photos.

We haven’t had much time for enjoying the ocean or socializing. In November we met a couple of fellow Canadians from Port Moody on a boat near ours. We got to know Art and Corinne quite well and really enjoyed their company. They abandoned us in January to head south but we are looking forward to meeting up with them again in Venezuela this fall. We spent Christmas and New Years with Art & Corinne and their visiting friends and Wayne’s niece and her boyfriend. We enjoyed a fine Christmas tradition of snorkeling and then stuffing ourselves with food. The Caribbean didn’t disappoint as we found a great snorkeling spot that had thousands of colourful fish mobbing you for whatever food you might have with you. A Ziploc full of squished chickpeas was a real hit with the local fish population. The snorkeling was a great reminder of the life that we have been missing for years and we’re certainly ready to experience more of it.

As much as we would prefer to have been done the renovations and been long gone from here, we are very happy that we were stuck here of all places as the health care on the French side of the island is superb. I was diagnosed with early cervical cancer in December and in January an attempt was made to remove it during a simple day surgery. Unfortunately, that didn’t quite do the trick and in February I went back to the hospital for a hysterectomy. If you have to have major surgery with a long recovery period, then it’s best to do it somewhere warm. Recovery time was also a great excuse for me to get out of working on the boat for a while. Thankfully I was given a clean bill of health in early March, which was a huge relief after a lot of worrying. 

The medical care provided here on the island was fantastic and very, very quick in contrast to the long waiting lists for surgery at home. I also discovered that not all hospital food is bad. I felt quite pampered in the new hospital here. I had my own private room and was served excellent French cuisine. I’m not kidding about the food. It was better than any restaurant meal that we’ve had here.

We were scheduled to move onto the boat at about the time I found out I needed surgery so we had to postpone the move to the boat and instead moved to a studio apartment in the same hotel complex where we had been staying. We moved a few feet to the new room and settled in again amongst our 30 boxes of possessions. We were lucky to get the room as the 25th Anniversary of the Heineken Regatta was here on the island at that time and almost every hotel was booked. 

During all of this time, Wayne and Bernhard, our local carpenter, have continued working on the boat and have made fantastic progress. The island is actually a great place to be if you are doing any kind of work on a boat. There are well-stocked chandleries, hardware stores and sail makers. It’s not quite the same as being at home in terms of selection but it is pretty good considering the size of the island. It is also a duty free island so we’ve been able to order in a few things that we couldn’t buy here without having to deal with customs and duties. 

These last few weeks have been especially busy as we are preparing to move to the boat in early April. We’re quite excited about settling in to our new home but it will be a big adjustment. First order of business is to find a permanent home aboard for the contents of the 30 boxes that we shipped from home. Then we’ll have to adjust to living in an ongoing construction zone. We’ll be living at a dock for at least the first few weeks. We’d rather be at anchor but we have more work to do before we get to that point. Regardless of the adjustments to be made it will be a big step towards getting out there and going sailing. 

It certainly feels like a good time to get moving as the temperature is on the rise again. When we arrived here in October last year, it was right at the worst of hurricane season and hot as can be. According to the weather channel most days got up to 110 with the humidity factored in. There was no wind and it was stifling. It started to cool down in November and we quite enjoyed the weather throughout the winter. The trade winds are strongest during the winter and they help to keep you cool. It was still a bit hot for hard work without the option of jumping over the side into the ocean, but livable. In the last few weeks, we’ve noticed the temperature starting to climb again although the humidity is much lower than it was in the fall. Definitely time to be living at anchor enjoying the ocean breeze and cooling dips in the ocean. 

At the moment, our plan is to have wrapped up the majority of the work by early May ahead of the hurricane season. We then plan to sail south from here in mid-May working our way through the Caribbean island chain to the coast of Venezuela. So here’s hoping our next update has more fun and a little less work in it.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We’re writing to you from sunny St. Maarten in the Caribbean where we are currently living. We’ve come a long way from Canada and a lot has changed in our lives over the last year.

February 2004 was a big month. Susan quit her job and we completed the sale of our company, which resulted in Wayne quitting his job too. We also sold our house in Victoria and bought a piece of land on the harbour in Ladysmith, BC which is just south of Nanaimo and about one hour North of Victoria on Vancouver Island. Over the next four months we were busy clearing the land, drilling a well and building our tiny house.

Sadly in July our cat Twiggy moved on to the great mouse hunt in the sky. We spent a lot of years together and are very sad to be without her. She had a great life especially for a pound kitten. She grew up to be a world traveling sailing cat, a proven swimmer (not by choice), and a good guard cat that could be counted on to bite almost everyone that we ever conscripted to look after her.

In July we took a road trip to visit family in Calgary and Prince Albert. Wayne hadn’t been to Saskatchewan for several years and it was nice to catch up with everyone once again.

We had been looking for our next boat off and on for a long time. We had learned a lot while cruising on our last boat that helped us to create a clear picture of what we did and didn’t want in our next boat. Unfortunately having a very clear idea of what you want means that it can be rather difficult to find a boat that meets all of your needs.

While we were in Calgary we found a boat on the Internet in St. Maarten called “Solitude Road” that seemed like it might fit the bill even though the current owner had removed part of the interior including the galley (kitchen) and saloon (living room). We decided to get on a plane and go have a look. So in August we flew down and ended up buying it. We returned home for a chaotic three weeks to pack up and ship everything that we would need on the boat, close up our new house and tie up all the loose ends of Canadian life. It was a bit of a rush but we made it back to St. Maarten in time to close the boat deal.

We’ve been here in St. Maarten since early October and are making slow but steady progress on finishing the boat the way that we want it. It is a giant undertaking. To make it easier to work on the boat, we are staying in a hotel for now but hope to move aboard early in the new year.

We’ve just completed the Canadian registration on the boat allowing us to officially rename her “Daydream”. When we sold the original “Daydream” in 1999, the new owners gave up the name and miraculously we were able to get it back again after all this time.

We hope to be heading off to new and exciting places sometime next year. Please keep in touch, as we love to hear from everyone (see Contact Us page). Our door (or hatch) is always open for visitors so let us know if you are planning a getaway that might cross paths with us.

We went to Palm Desert, California to visit Susan’s parents for a few days from San Carlos. This was an easy trip for us as San Carlos is so near to the border. We had a nice time visiting Howard and Shirley, eating fast food and buying stuff that we couldn’t get in Mexico. On the way back we had a funny experience crossing back into Mexico. You have to understand that Mexican Customs is always confusing for us. Inevitably, we have a lot of odd industrial looking packages and between our tortured Spanish and the typical border guards indifference to the peculiar laws regarding importing parts for yachts we worry about delays, seizures, fines or (heaven forbid) bribes. Neither of us had ever been through the Calexico/Mexicali crossing before and we didn’t know where to go. Howard has dropped us off about a block from the actual border and we were struggling along like pack horses with all of our gear. The cars were all stopping at the little customs booths but everyone was ignoring us. We kept wandering along unenthusiastically looking for a customs official until suddenly we found ourselves in downtown Mexicali. Oops! We later learned that there was a pedestrian tunnel, but clearly our way of simply stumbling through the car lanes was better.

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 Every year or so we have to have a crane of some sort lift the boat out of the water and paint the bottom to keep the barnacles from growing out of control. We had two options this time, an Americanized operation in San Carlos or an authentic Mexican yard in Guaymas. The Mexican yard was a little less expensive and we liked the manager better so we decided to haul the boat there. What an experience! There were no showers, only one hose in the entire shipyard and extremely basic restroom facilities. To flush you need to toss of full bucket of water down the toilet. Good bathroom etiquette demanded that you then refill said bucket and leave it beside the toilet when you were done. If you’ve never worked on a boat in a boatyard before this may not sound too bad, but these places are always dirty and working on the bottom of a boat makes it much worse. We were there for three weeks and it was about all we could stand. We did have a little fun with the local “wild” life though. The place was full of stray dogs. None of them really had anything to eat so we temporarily adopted the four smallest puppies. These little dirt coloured mutts were about four inches tall and all ribs and ears when we arrived. Everywhere we went in the yard the four of them formed a four-point honour guard, protecting us from shadows and wind gusts. We fed them anything and everything that we wanted to get rid of including old rice, vegetable scraps, melted ice-cream, assorted bones and of course pigs ears (we bought those for them as a treat). By the time we left they all looked like the might actually belong to the race of dogs. Of the four, Sad Sack and Leaper were so healthy and aggressive that we thought that they’d do OK, but Limper and Mooch the Pooch (the blind one) didn’t look as good, so on our last day we bundled them up in a box and surreptitiously ‘delivered’ them by bus to the marina where the well fed softy foreigners lived. A few days later, when we returned there with the boat, they were fat and happy and seemed to think that they had gone to heaven.

 Leaving the shipyard after the paint job proved more difficult than we expected. The crane put the boat back in the water just as the tide was going down. Then the pilot boat led us directly into a shallow part and “Daydream” went aground. This was really our own fault, we knew where the channel was, but had allowed the staff to convince us to follow the pilot boat even though we had seen them put three other boats aground in the previous week. We quickly put up the sails, reved the engine and the pilot boat towed, putting us even higher up on the mudbank. Finally, we realized that we wouldn’t be getting off the bottom until the next high tide, so we settled back and had dinner. Just after moonrise, the tide was high enough for us to start moving, we bumped along over another two or three hundred feet of shallows before finally getting clear.

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 My sister Fey (actually she likes to spell it Faye) came down for a visit while we were in San Carlos. This was her first visit to Mexico so we had fun showing her around. Faye also went out of her way to entertain us. First there was a short hike during which she missed her footing on a steep slope. As she fell down the hill she reached out and gave a cactus a big bear-hug. Later, after we were able to stop laughing, Susan and I each extracted a couple hundred cactus spines from Faye, including one that had completely pierced an ear. The following week we anchored up after a hot afternoon of sailing and Wayne and Susan were immediately over the side for a quick cooling dip. It took Faye a little longer to get in as we were getting out. While drying off Faye asked if we ever got stung by jellyfish. I began a long winded explantion about how rarely that happens etc, etc. Midway through my explanation, Susan interrupted to point out the painful looking sting marks all over Faye’s body! When we looked over the side, there were literally thousands of jellyfish all around the boat that had timed their arrival with Faye’s swim. Faye took these mishaps with such astonishingly good grace that we started to get suspicious that she was planning revenge. Sure enough, a few days later we were boarded by pirates! Actually we were never able to prove that she had caused this incident, but since it was the only time in four years that it ever happened, she must have had something to do with it! We had spent the night in a quiet little bay right near the city of Guaymas. As this was squid season there were fisherman in and out of the bay all night long in open pangas. Just at sunrise, Susan heard a sound outside and I went up to investigate. There was a panga right beside us and one of the three men onboard, was holding onto “Daydream”. This was a little weird but these guys often need to borrow some gasoline or a few fishhooks so it wasn’t completely unexpected. In this case they wanted cigarettes. “Sorry we don’t have any.” “Oh…what about breakfast?” “Sorry.” “Well, we need some water”. You just can’t refuse to give people in an open boat water, so I went down to get some. When I returned, one of them was standing on our deck which is very odd. I explained that people were asleep below and asked him to step off, which he did. They left and we went back to bed. Twenty minutes later they were back, this time with cigarettes in their mouths and needing a match. I went down to get them a match and immiediately started to hear some very strange noises from up above. Susan thought that their boat had hit ours and was yelling at them to be careful, but the noise continued. Finally I went back up just in time to see one of them leaping back into their already moving panga with an armload of our dive gear. I went over the rail after him and just made it into the front of the panga as it reversed away. The ‘pirate’ who’d just left our boat saw me coming and continued running right off the back end of the panga and into the water. He was fully clothed in foul weather gear and boots and we probably should have started worrying about him being able to stay afloat. By this time the panga was about 100 feet from “Daydream” and the other two were cowering at the other end staring toward me. I was dressed rather stylishly in glow-in-the-dark pink flamingo boxers but that didn’t seem enough to explain their looks of awe. Finally, I looked over my shoulder at “Daydream” and discovered that there was a certain short blonde person out on deck waving a steak knife and endeavoring to launch our dinghy for a rescue effort. My two remaining pirates gave up the fight at that point, explained that it had all been an ‘error’, delivered me back to “Daydream” and finally rescued their sputtering cohort from the ocean.

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Finally the boat was painted and we were ready to head South. We waved good-bye to San Carlos. It felt great to be moving again after sitting still for so long. That feeling lasted all of a few hours. It’s only a short hop across the Sea of Cortez and down towards Loreto but the Sea decided to make it a doozy. Susan doesn’t remember much of it as she had her head inside of air sickness bags the whole way across. To finish off that lovely voyage, the wind quit as we approached our destination of Ballandra Bay so we decided to motor the last ten miles or so. The transmission gods thought not. The transmission promptly spit out all of its oil and quit working. Needless to say we sailed, very slowly, to Ballandra and there we slept the much deserved sleep of the dead. From there on down to La Paz was a great trip. We had big North winds behind us most of the way giving us excellent speed between anchorages. We hopped along until we landed in Ensenada Grande on Isla Espirito Santo. It was a real pleasure to find our friends Tom and Liz on ‘Feel Free’ anchored there. We put off our push to get to La Paz and enjoyed a few idyllic Mexico days. It was to be our last real free time in Mexico before leaving for Hawaii as there was still a lot to do. Those days embodied all we loved of cruising in Mexico. A beautiful, uninhabited island, clear water, great scenery, nice weather and just great fun with good friends, partying, snorkeling, hiking and picnicing on the beach. It was hard to leave but time was passing so off we went to La Paz.

 We made it into La Paz just in time to be a half hour late for a surprise birthday party for our friend Gaye. It was great reunion and we are glad we headed in when we did as David and Gaye left for the Marquises the next day. Perhaps we’ll see them in B.C. in a couple of years.

 The next month in La Paz was cram packed with final boat preparations and saying good-bye to old friends departing in all directions. I also had to fly up to Palm Desert and deliver Twiggy into my parents apprehensive hands. We decided that we didn’t want to quarantine Twiggy in Hawaii for two months as it is manditory for all incoming animals. In retrospect, it was a great decision. We missed her terribly but she wouldn’t have enjoyed the passages or quarantine very much. By all accounts from home my parents did a great job of showing her the good life.

 We arrived in Cabo San Lucas at 2 a.m., had a quick nap and headed ashore for our last day in Mexico. We got checked out by Immigration, had lunch and bought a few last minute veggies. Then literally one hour before we planned to leave, we discovered that our fuel tank was leaking. Repairing that delayed us overnight but early the next morning we were finally on our way.

 (paragraph about how long it typically takes to get to Hawaii, our first huge passage, nervous, but excited, no anchorages, very little sleep, on your own)

There was no wind in the anchorage when we left but just over a mile outside of the anchorage there was 20-25 knots of wind from the West. To top it all off within just a few miles of Cabo San Lucas we encountered the biggest wave we’ve ever seen. Wave heights are normally very difficult to estimate because there is nothing to compare them to. Normally waves that are twelve feet tall look pretty big and are unusual in the tropics. In this case we were within ½ mile of a big tanker when it took a sea squarely on the nose that reached as high as the top of its bow. This would have to be 40-50 feet above sea level! Seconds later as we were still staring, gape-mouthed at the freighter the wave got us too but we floated gently up to the top of it and just the last couple of feet at the top broke and gave a good soaking. This was a pretty exciting start. There was 25 knots of wind blowing and it didn’t drop below 20 knots for the first six days. We got the sails up and the wind vane on and six days later we had yet to run the engine. The wind vane had done all the steering except for a couple of hours when it had broken a control line that needed repair. Here’s an excerpt from our log on day six. “Right now we have a North wind of about 17 knots with a four foot swell. We’re going due West at about six knots and heeling about eight degrees. We’ve been on the same tack since we left Cabo. Does it get any better than this? We’re running down the 19^th parallel and we passed 120 degrees West this a.m. According to NMC (explanation) the trade winds are here blowing E-NE 20-25 knots. We’d really like to see those East winds because the chainplate for our starboard whisker stay has developed a crack. We’ve got a line leading from the end of the bowsprit out to a spinnaker pole and back to a winch. It’s as tight as a violin string so it should hold the bowsprit if the chainplate goes but life would be a lot easier if the wind would just go East.”

(1 light since Cabo, manoverboard buoy rescue, mileages)

We started our watch schedule several days prior to leaving in order to be reasonably well rested during the first few days. As a direct result we had the best long passage ever. We were well rested and fed and the boat was kept in perfect order.

This is day 15 and a bunch of stuff has happened. We finally decided to motor for a while when the wind got down to about 8 knots. Exactly one hour after we started the engine, the transmission quit working. The next morning we dug out the manual and decided that we could repair it. By this time we were in a flat calm with the only movement being provided by a big old ocean swell. The transmission’s control valve came out easily but then we discovered that we’d need a press to get it apart. The calm only lasted about 5 hours but it was followed by only very light winds. We only made about 50 miles that day. The following morning the wind quit again and this gave us an opportunity to build a press. It’s really ugly, we call it Franken-Press, but it worked. Everything went back together and we started the motor. Unfortunately, the transmission was still spitting out it’s oil. We made only about 25 miles that day. The next day the wind came back. By that evening, we had 15 knots from due North and we were making 6 knots due West. We passed a 176 foot schooner that night, talked to them on the VHF radio and asked them to email Dennis with our present position. For several days we’ve had steady North winds of about 15 knots and we’ve made pretty good time. On the 13^th day we were about 100 miles from the halfway point and moving really well with the wind off of our quarter. We had just put the genny up when we heard a loud crack. A couple minutes later there was a louder crack. Our forestay had broken off at the top swage but the halyard was still holding everything up. Of course the wind was blowing about 25 knots with 8 foot seas and darkness was falling. We frantically rolled the sail up and then unbolted the foil at the bottom and lowered the whole mess into the sea. The entire time the foil was slamming from side to side threatening to take out the spreaders. Once we had it down and under control, we were able to heave it up onto the deck and get a sail up onto our inner forestay. As far as we can see everything is OK except that we may have damaged a section of foil. (inner forestay addition holding things up). We even have a spare forestay but don’t want to go up the mast to install it out here. It’s been 36 hours now since the forestay came down. We’re still averaging better than 4 knots and we even got motivated and tried the last thing that we could think of to fix the transmission but so far there has been no need to motor. We have less than 1100 miles (give or take a week and a half) to go now so it feels like the home stretch.

We passed the halfway mark two days ago and opened the best half way present imaginable. It was from Tom and Liz on “Feel Free”. They’ve done lots of long passages and clearly know what’s needed at this point. The package included balloons, large size handywipes for showering, junk food, pictures of Tom and Liz in Canada looking cold, and best of all, stick on tatoos.

The rest of the passage went very smoothly only a couple of other minor things broke. We did have a funny experience about 4 days away from Hilo, Hawaii, we passed an office tower floating in the sea. Actually it was a drilling rig being towed from L.A. to Singapore. It was the most amazing sight, it looked like a 200-foot tall building hundreds of miles out to sea.

We spent one month in the city of Hilo on the island of Hawai’i. This is a nice small city with all the good things…

repairsa;;;volcano…RAIN.. etc

From Hilo we sailed overnight up to the Island of Maui. So far this has been our favorite place in the islands. We were in a rush of course so we only spent a couple days at the town of Lahaina. It has a great climate and a very interesting history.

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We left Oahu on the 2^nd and had a week of upwind sailing in the trades. The wind was strong but steady so we made good time and other than blowing out our stay-sail this part of the trip was trouble free. By the 12^th the we were approaching 40 degrees North and the winds were light but finally we were able to point toward Vancouver Island. In the 72 hours starting on the 13^th, our barometer dropped over 24 millibars, by which time we had a full gale blowing with seas of over 15 feet. We were still able to make some progress but eventually the wind turned a little and started forcing us South. At that point we took down all the sails, even then we were still doing six knots and had breaking seas on deck every few minutes. After a few hours of that, we dragged some lines over the stern, that helped bring the speed down and allowed us to control the boat better. Like all storms this one eventualy ended and other than being a long way off our course and having mostly wet cloths and bedding we really had no damage at all. Actually when I say the storm ended it was not really all that simple. In the blackest part of the night the wind absolutely stopped leaving us with giant seas and no way to steady the boat. This is pretty much the original design for a vomit comet, so Susan started the engine for the first time on this trip and began to motor. Within just a few minutes a line floating in the ocean wound itself up in our prop and stopped the engine. We went back to drifting and being uncomfortable. At first light I went over the side with a knife to clear the prop, but it was obvious that the boat falling off of ten foot seas would quickly bash in my head, so I gave up. We didn’t really care anyway, cause by this time the wind was back. A few hours later we had a really beautiful warm blue day but with about 25 knots of wind on our beam. We still had big seas leaftover from the storm but on a day like this its impossible to believe in any bad thing so I had the boat beam onto the seas and doing its best speed straight toward Victoria. Susan was asleep in the sea berth with a pillow over her head when I heard what sounded like a freight train coming toward us. This is what a breaking wave sounds like, but this one just kept coming and coming. Finally just as I was heading up to make sure that it wasn’t really a ship making that noise, the breaking wave hit us squarely on the side. Daydream was knocked down flat and water squirted in through the closed portholes drenching Susan and the last of our dry bedding. Susan lifted the pillow off her head, opened one eye, said a bad word and went right back to sleep.

 The day after the big knockdown we started to hear tiny unintelligible voices on the radio. We always kept our radio on no matter what, but at sea it was not unusual to go thousands of miles without ever hearing a peep, so this was pretty exciting. We turned the volume up and listened as hard as we could. After a few hours we began to get bits and pieces and realized that we were listening to a fishing fleet in the middle of a search for a lost boat. We eventually were able to raise them and offer whatever help we could. The search was being coordinated by a fishing boat called the Ocean Pearl and they said that one of their friends had reported he was in trouble and then gone off the air. They asked us to keep an eye out for a life raft. We did what we could, and listened into the radio all day long. Finally near the end of that day, the fisherman reported that they had found their friend and he was OK, but his radio had been ruined by a big wave over the side. At this point we jumped in and asked the Ocean Pearl if they had the ability to email or call Dennis and let him know where we were. There was a long pause after we gave them the email address and finally the captain came back and said “Dennis was on this boat the day we left Victoria and we tried to talk him into coming along.” It’s probably impossible to express just how unlikely this is, but if you realize that the Pacific ocean is bigger than all the dry land on the planet combines and we were just about as far from land as its possible to be, you’ll have some flavor of it.

 We were getting close to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and we still had that rope in the prop. We decided that we really should try to get it off cause the Juan de Fuca is a dangerous place, full of ships, fast currents, fog, and rocks, and ultimately we’d have to get to the customs dock in Victoria harbor. We chose a day when the seas were kind of reasonable, dug out the thickest wet suit we owned and Susan boiled a pot of water, She filled my wetsuit up with hotwater and I went over the side on a line. It turned out that a knife was useless for cutting through 20 feet of 2 inch nylon line, but eventually we got a hacksaw going and I was able to saw it all away. I dropped my dive knife and was mesmerized to see it spiraling off into the clearest water I’ve ever seen, maybe 10,000 feet deep.

Starting in Puerto Vallarta 9 months ago, we covered some familiar territory like Mazatlan, La Paz and Puerto Escondido until April. I left Wayne and Twiggy to fend for themselves in Puerto Escondido while I headed to California to begin a whirlwind tour of Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia to visit with friends and family. When I returned at the beginning of May we headed North into the Sea of Cortez or Gulf of California as it’s also known. This skinny sea separates the Baja Peninsula of Mexico from the mainland coast. It is a truly unique, remote, and fascinating place. You could spend years up here and still not see it all. We’ve been as far North as Puerto Peñasco which is pretty much at the top end and we’ve seen many, many places along the way. Currently we’re in the San Carlos/Guaymas area on the mainland coast midway down the Sea.

After leaving Puerto Vallarta in January we stopped at the uninhabited island of Isla Isabela located half way between Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan. Besides its very striking topography it’s also a bird and whale magnet. The birds are Frigates, which are really beautiful flyers. Around this island there are literally clouds of them. They’re so thick that from a distance they look like smoke, forming huge tornado shaped structures that extend thousands of feet in the air. Frigates have long, narrow wings with which they can soar almost forever without effort. They can only take off from high places so they never set down on the water. In order to feed, they fly very slowly, only a foot or so above the surface and without stopping they dip their beak and yank out a fish. Whales also feed near the island, and there are usually several in sight blowing and diving.

A boat named “Breezy” also heading for Mazatlan left Isla Isabela a few hours ahead of us. Later that night, they collided with a fishing boat and lost their mast. Dismasting is a catastrophe on a sailboat. When it happens, hundreds of pounds of mast and rigging fall from thirty or forty feet above, endangering boat and crew. In addition, the force necessary to dismast a boat may also tear the top of the boat off. Finally, once the mast is down it remains attached by its rigging and in any kind of seas could puncture and sink the boat. In “Breezy’s” case the mast crashed down squarely into the cockpit and certainly would have injured anyone there. Fortunately both Jay and Didi were below and they were able to clean up the mess enough to limp into port under power. We helped remove the wreckage in Mazatlan and had a chance to hear the whole sad story. It seems that “Breezy” was under power and Jay was on watch, but below making coffee. He didn’t see the shrimp boat before the collision and they were unable to avoid “Breezy” because of their net. Jay’s view was that the collision was entirely his fault.

We had an exciting experience ourselves that night. It was pitch black and we were closehauled in about twenty knots of wind. The seas were big enough that they were consistently coming aboard and running down the deck. Susan was on watch and I was asleep with a pillow over my head. We both heard something bang down the hull, sounding like a log. Then Susan yelled and I jumped up on deck. Our greatest fear is of someone going overboard at night. In case it ever happens we have a life-ring with a light attached that should be thrown after them to pinpoint their location. A large wave had torn the ring’s bracket, the ring and the light over the side, automatically turning on the light. In just those few seconds we were already losing sight of the light behind the waves. We quickly turned downwind, then gybed toward it. Without anything for a visual reference we had no idea how far away we might be so we steered directly for the light, until suddenly, we passed it. Instantly we turned up into the wind and the boat stopped dead in the water within a couple feet of the ring! That was as close to a real night-time man-overboard situation as I ever want to be.

While in Mazatlan we had a chance to take in a bullfight. They take bullfights very seriously there. The one that we went to was jammed with every seat filled and every bit of standing room crowded. The actual fights were conducted from horseback and were a disappointment. The horses were beautiful and fantastically well-trained but there was never any sense that the matador was taking any kind of risk. As a result it felt like watching a ritualized butchering. The only contest other than the one between the horse and the bull didn’t even involve the matador. There was sort of a half-time in each fight at which point the bull would be well and truly angry but not yet seriously injured. This next bit was way too risky for the wussy-girl matador so he hid in a closet and they brought out the amateurs. These were young, unpaid, and untrained but very macho Mexican men. They were dressed in street clothes except for one – hereafter referred to as Victim – who wore a red Santa Claus-like hat. Victim and his five friends entered the ring on the opposite side from the bull with Victim in the lead and his friends spaced a couple of feet apart in single file behind him. Meanwhile the bull was being kept busy on the opposite side of the ring. As soon as Victim and friends were in the ring, Victim began prancing toward the bull with everyone else following along behind. The bull charged! Just before the collision, Victim started to run backwards still facing the charging bull. You have to understand that the bull weighed 900 pounds and was probably doing 30 mph. As they impacted, the bull put his head down and slashed with needle-sharp horns. Victim was hit just below the waist, doubled up and thrown onto the bull’s neck with his legs hanging down in front. Without any noticeable reduction in speed the bull slammed into each successive friend until the whole gang was piled up on his horns. They were furiously digging in their toes to try to slow him down before he could crush them against the wall. A thousand people were holding their breath and there was a collective sigh of relief when they got the bull stopped. Immediately friend #5 peeled himself off and grabbed a foreleg, #4 took the other foreleg and one by one the others separated themselves and took hold of various appendages near the front of the bull. Last off was Victim. Astonishingly he was not only ungored, but he also seemed to have the use of all of his limbs. Victim then ran around to the back of the bull and took a good grip on the tail. The friends simultaneously let go and scattered and Victim was dragged at top speed around the ring. Bull naturally was not overjoyed at this treatment but was unable to turn sharply enough to discipline Victim effectively. Eventually when they passed near a wall, Victim let go and dived into the crowd before the bull could finish him off.

Leaving on the passage from Mazatlan to La Paz was more difficult than usual mainly because I had a bad stomach bug. However, as always, we had a deadline to meet. In this case Susan’s upcoming trip home. Anytime that you leave a harbour for a major trip, there are always plenty of people who have nothing better to do than tell you how dangerous it is out there, or how bad the weather will be. Usually these are the same people who haven’t gone anywhere in years and if they ever do, it’ll be in a convoy, at top speed, under power. We’ve learned to ignore them and make our own decisions which are more likely to be based on whether we’ve finally got the boat ready rather than external factors. On this day, several boats had left early (you know, before noon) and returned reporting high winds and seas and extreme difficulty making progress toward La Paz. “Ha!” we said. “Wind is just what we like, a requirement for sailing you know.” Naturally we expressed this opinion vehemently to all those who felt a need to force-feed us advice. Out we went, to discover big, uncomfortable seas and a strong wind blowing straight from La Paz. In a sailboat, your perception of both wind and seas is directly related to their direction. Twenty-five knots of wind and eight foot seas from behind or abeam, means a fast, exhilarating sleighride. If the same conditions are from dead ahead, you’ll only be taking off your snorkel to make use of a bucket. (Speaking of which, the next time you’re flying, could you bring home the air-sickness bag for us? Thanks.)For once, all of those harbour sailors were right. The wind was dead ahead and the horrible seas were converging from two different directions. Needless to say we were more than a little uncomfortable. In addition, since a sailboat cannot sail directly into the wind, conditions were forcing us to head for Cabo San Lucas, rather than La Paz. Susan expressed her discontent by doing a firehose imitation with her lunch (properly known as projectile vomiting). Meanwhile everything that I ate or drank was dropping straight through without even slowing down. If only we hadn’t been such big-mouths, we could’ve gone back! Finally after 20 hours of downright inhumane conditions we realized that we were becoming dangerously tired and weak. In our desperation we concocted a brilliant plan. We would return to Mazatlan, but rather than going back to the harbour we had started from, we would hide our red faces at the opposite end of town. What a relief! We anchored up and went to bed and followed that with four days of recuperation. When we finally got going again, it was a pleasant uneventful crossing. Arrival in La Paz completed our 2000 mile upwind journey from Panama City.

Having been to La Paz many times before we thought we knew all of the landmarks. We were thus surprised to see a very tall radio tower on the waterfront as we approached. When we actually arrived the radio tower turned out to be the mast of “Endeavour”. She was an America’s Cup boat in the 1920’s and she is gigantic. At 130 feet “Endeavour” is easily the largest sailboat that we’ve ever seen. Her mast is 165 feet tall and the boom is so wide that you can have a picnic on it. We were told by a member of the crew that it takes nine people just to tack. “Endeavour” was recently overhauled for an unbelievable $10 million! If you’re thinking about chartering a sailboat, she’s available for only $60,000 U.S. per week. Any takers?

In April, I set out to visit home. What was I thinking? Saskatchewan in April! I know there’s such a thing as culture shock but how about weather shock. I hitched a ride from California to Saskatchewan with my folks in their motorhome. Forty-eight hours after leaving sunny California we found ourselves driving through a good old prairie snow storm. Visibility was nil and the highway was coated with slick ice below the blowing snow. We limped and slid our way into the haven of a Moose Jaw motel parking lot. That motel and every other motel was full of highway refugees. We elected to spend the night in the motorhome to keep the water pipes from freezing and to leave room for stranded motorists in the motel. Even with the heater going full blast, I found myself wearing two pairs of socks, sweat pants, jeans, a turtleneck, two sweaters and mittens and I was inside. Outside it was -35°F. Welcome to Saskatchewan!

Perhaps as a direct result of my complaining about the weather in Saskatchewan we were treated to a rather warm summer here. We can’t say that no-one warned us. ‘They’ told us we’d be hot if we dared to spend the summer in the Sea of Cortez. We smiled and thought to ourselves, “Wimps!” Now we too can carry on the tradition of warning others how hot they’ll be if they dare the Sea in the summer. It was unbelievably hot! We’re pretty sure we’d have melted without our fans and awnings.

I’ll try to give you some idea of what it was like through July, August and September. Sometimes we’d go to bed with an inside cabin temperature of 95°F and wake up to a cool 92°F. Crank your thermostat up at home and give that a try. The worst nights were the ones where we finally gave in and went to bed when the temperature was 94° to be awakened shortly thereafter by a hot, dry, devil wind that rapidly brought the temperature up to 100°! We can only imagine what the temperatures were like outside in the sun when we were registering 98° inside where it was shaded, breezy and half below the surface of the ocean.

Considering that we were on the edge of a desert, we were really surprised by the number of days with extremely high humidity. The heat and humidity combination was lethal. One remedy was to slither over the side into the ocean as soon as you could drag yourself out of bed. We’re sad to say we never did figure out a way to sleep in the water. Our final solution to the heat was to abandon all thoughts of doing anything useful like boat maintenance, housework or cooking. Instead we accepted our lot and became even lazier than usual. We can proudly say that we survived a summer in the Sea by reading tons of books, snorkeling and swimming until we developed gills, and moaning to our friends while floating around on pool toys sipping cool drinks.

Early in the summer we were reminded once again of one of the greatest joys and sorrows of this gypsy life. The nature of our travels means that we get the chance to meet tons of different people. Every once in while you have the luck to meet truly fantastic friends. Friends for life, but sadly friends that are usually only crossing paths with you and ultimately going their own way.

We met Richard and Dea from “Southern Cross” on May 7 and chatted for a few minutes. We met up again a few days later and spent the next ten days sailing, eating, laughing, swimming, eating, snorkeling, eating, and just generally having a great time with these two. On May 21 we hosted a farewell pancake breakfast – during which we ate – to say a sad good-bye to our new friends as they headed back to Los Angeles. Once again we were truly amazed at the speed and intensity of these friendships. After meeting so many people over the last three years we certainly treasure the special friends we’ve made along the way.

Since we last wrote we’ve had some spectacular close encounters of the whale kind. We’ve been treated to a show of numerous immense humpback whales feeding not far away. When they breach the surface, you can’t help but think of a submarine. Just the size of their long, almost delicate, pectoral fins is incredible. On a night passage in the Sea when it’s calm, you can hear the finback whales surfacing to breathe all around you. They are sometimes so close you can smell their breath. The finbacks have given us many hours of entertainment as they always seem to be going somewhere that leads them across our path, right in front of the boat. There isn’t a more tremendous experience than watching a couple of whales traveling across your track on a beautiful cloudless day, with the boat ghosting along under sail over a deep sapphire blue ocean. We happened upon the rib bone from one of these leviathans. It was 13 feet long and about 8 inches in diameter! We wanted to take it to the museum in the nearest town, but between its size and a weight of approximately 200 pounds, we had to abandon that idea.

Giant rays are another fantastic sight. On moonlit nights they often leap right out of the water and do a somersault before crashing back down. Since manta rays can be 25 feet across and weigh a ton, it’s a wild experience to see half a dozen of them somersaulting around you.

One of the best things about sailing in the tropics is the nights. Twenty minutes or so after the sun touches the horizon, the night is a dark as it will get. If there’s a full moon, there will be enough light to read by. Without a moon, there are more incredibly bright stars than you’d think were possible. We’ve seen stars that shone so intensely that we mistook them for lights on ships. One of the things that we’ll really miss when we return to the ‘real world’ is a perfect night sky undisturbed by man’s lights.

There’s always something interesting to see in the night sky. Shooting stars are very common but they’re so dazzling and brilliant that we never take them for granted. The Hale-Bopp comet took up all of our attention and a big chunk of the sky for quite a while. Around the same time we witnessed a full lunar eclipse. The oddest thing has been the UFO’s. We’ve both seen bright streaks of light that look like shooting stars in terms of speed and brightness but instead of disappearing in a ruler-straight line, these lights curve sharply and then simply blink out of existence. We really don’t have a clue what they are; so far we haven’t seen any little green men.

Some nights the sea is full of phosphorescence. Occasionally there are creatures that look like light bulbs glowing deep in the water. There are fields of them, miles across, that go down as deep as you can see. Looking at it makes you feel as though you are free falling through an infinite number of moons. Once we saw what looked like a universe-full of translucent, round soccer ball sized jellyfish drifting slowly by. There were jellies to a depth of at least thirty feet and they stretched for miles. The average distance between them was a couple of feet. We guessed that there were at least hundreds of thousands and suspect that they might be our mysterious light bulbs.

The most common type of phosphorescence is an invisible little beast that is only luminescent after it has been disturbed. As the boat sails through one of these microscopic countries the water changes from inky black in front and beside, to a shining green searchlight in our wake. Frightened fish leave a jagged lightning bolt gleaming in their path and dolphins and seals leave blazing light trails behind.

We soon discovered that hopping overboard for a swim just before bedtime made it much easier to sleep in the heat. The first time we tried this it caused quite a stir. We found ourselves swimming in a world of sparkling light instead of darkness. The phosphorescence left a trail of green, twinkling lights whenever we moved. With some experimentation we were able to make perfect ‘water angels’ which are closely related to ‘snow angels’.

On our way up the Sea we stopped to visit Mulege. It is located on a freshwater spring one mile from the sea and has got to be one of the prettiest towns in Baja California. Spanish monks founded the town as a mission 400 years ago. These monks planted date palms all around the spring and the river that it produces. The monks are gone but the palms have prospered and they almost completely overhang the river now. Although the river is too shallow for “Daydream”, we made our way up it in the dinghy. This seemed to us the most exotic way possible to visit a desert city.

Our favorite place this summer was a series of anchorages called Refugio (Refuge) on Isla Angel de la Guarda (Guardian Angel Island). Refugio has soaring, red cliffs, thirty-foot tall organ-pipe cactus and crystal clear water overflowing with fish and sea lions. The island is inhabited only by lizards and birds, but fisherman who visit occasionally, have built a tiny 6 foot by 4 foot church. The only other sign of man is a deep cave where someone has stored an old anchor and a gunnysack of salt. We had the whole place completely to ourselves for weeks on end. We enjoyed the isolation and spent our time charting the bays and exploring the area.

The Boobie birds at Refugio are really odd. Normally Boobies fish by getting about 50 feet up then folding their wings and plummeting into the water to a depth of ten feet or more – very exciting if you’re swimming nearby. After the dive they pop to the surface and flap wildly while running on the water until they achieve escape velocity. In Refugio however, they skim along the surface looking for a fish. When they see one, they do a very flat dive to a depth of perhaps one foot, grab the fish, pop back through the surface into the air, then spread their wings and continue their flight. We’ve never seen this behavior elsewhere, but here the Pelicans, also known as ‘flying trucks’, try to imitate the Boobies, providing us with endless entertainment and themselves with headaches.

Until a few weeks ago spear fishing was how we got most of our fish. One day I poked an Opal Eye, but before I could get it off the spear, an octopus reached out from underneath a rock and stole it. This was the first ‘pus I had seen so it was quite a shock. Since then we’ve seen quite a number and we’ve taken up petting them. They feel sort of like your tongue, unless you touch a sucker which will actually vacuum onto your finger. Just like a chameleon, octopi can change colors as they glide over the bottom. Once in a while they shoot out black ink, but usually they just squeeze under the nearest rock and sit there changing from purple to yellow to brown to red while you pet them.

Due to a broken spearhead, spear fishing has fallen out of favour on “Daydream”. We could always take up fishing from the dinghy, however, with temperatures running over 100° and very little breeze the smart place to be is underwater. So we’ve taken up underwater fishing. This involves taking a line and a hook and going snorkeling. Once below the surface, we dangle the hook in front of a tasty looking fish and voilà, supper! It sounds silly, looks a little silly too, but it works! With a little practice we’re even getting good at hooking the fish that we want and avoiding the rest. We’ve also done a lot of diving for scallops. They are one of our favorite foods and coincidentally a favorite of Triggerfish which conveniently are also one of our favorite foods. Harvesting a scallop sets up a miniature perpetual food machine. It goes like this. First we find the scallop, knife it open and clean it underwater. The good part goes in the foodbag and the rest goes onto the underwater fishing line. Sergeant Majors, Hogfish, Sargos, Parrotfish and Triggers gather in clouds. If we can keep all the others off the hook for a few seconds, the Triggers will bull their way in and grab the bait. With the IQ of a carrot they manage to steal the bait and avoid the hook two times out of three, but eventually we can usually outwit one. Our biggest food problem lately is that we haven’t been able to hook any Ice Cream Fish or Potato Chips clams.

While we’re on the subject of diving, we should tell you about the delicacies that we’ve been enjoying. There are three kinds of scallops that we’ve become very friendly with, so friendly that we often invite them to dinner. They are rock scallops, pen scallops and swimming scallops. All are fabulous, especially wrapped in bacon then fried or barbecued. Then there are butter clams and an old favorite chocolate clams. Both kinds are delicious steamed, battered, barbecued or made into chowder. And, of course, there are always fish of which there are at least a dozen kinds that we like. About the only thing that we haven’t found in the Northern Sea is lobster but don’t feel badly for us; it’s shrimp season now. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re having for dinner until an hour before but it’s a rare day that we can’t have seafood if we want it.

During all of this diving we are sometimes visited by sea lions. They are amazingly fast and graceful underwater. They’re always curious and sometimes five or ten of them will swim right up to us then pirouette away, circling and barking while making rude remarks about our swimming abilities. They are up to eight feet long and outweigh us by quite a bit but they never seem to mean any harm.

While snorkeling one day I came across a live seahorse! I couldn’t believe it! Its a fairly rare event especially while snorkeling. Seahorses are normally found in deeper water and they are so well camouflaged that they’re tough to spot. This one was about seven inches long and so incredible to hold. Until this day I was pretty much convinced that a seahorse was only a fairy tale creature.

There’s a group of islands called the Enchanted Islands way up in the North end of the Sea. Since nobody ever goes up there the charts are a joke, but we had some overhead photographs and lots of time. We couldn’t resist going. The effort was worth it because the Enchanted Islands are really impressive. They are volcanic and quite recent in origin. The striking rock formations make up for the complete lack of vegetation. There are enormous vertical cliffs that tower straight up out of the ocean for hundreds of feet and mountains of jumbled razor-sharp rocks the size of houses. Much of this rock is pumice – the rock that floats. Perhaps the name ‘Enchanted’ is explained by the difficulty that early navigators would have had charting an area full of floating rocks.

The Colorado River empties into the head of the Sea of Cortez. We thought that it would be cool to go up the river a ways. Maybe visit the Grand Canyon! Unfortunately our chart of the area was drawn in 1873 and I guess that it’s a little out of date ‘cause the river is dammed now and all of the water is used long before it reaches the Sea. We did get to Puerto Peñasco though which is the most Northern port. It wasn’t anything special as towns go, but after six weeks without ice cream or restaurants it looked like the Big Apple to us.

The summer of ‘97 produced eight hurricanes on the West Coast of Mexico. Two of them gave us quite a scare. The first, Linda, was the most powerful storm ever recorded in the Eastern Pacific. It had steady winds of 160 knots (about 200 miles per hour) with gusts to 190 knots. When it turned toward us at a distance that it could cover in just twenty-four hours we started making serious preparations. Of course, no boat – or building for that matter- is likely to survive 200 mph winds, but if a hurricane misses you by as little as 100 miles the winds could be half of the peak force. By doing everything that we could to protect the boat and wearing our rose-colored spectacles we thought that there was a good chance that “Daydream” would come through. Linda seemed to know about our superhuman efforts, because as soon as we were ready she turned away, then petered out.

A week later hurricane Nora decided to take a run at us. Nora was more normal-sized with only 100 mph winds. She did have a few unpleasant habits though, like holding up in one place, then speeding up, then slowing down, but always heading more or less toward us. Eventually she got down to business and came straight for us at top speed. Gale-force winds started at sunset and built until two in the morning when we had sixty mph. We were in a great anchorage so the waves weren’t large, but with that much wind howling through the rigging it felt like we were at sea. Every other boat in the area was also in this anchorage so at the height of the storm we had rocks just 100 feet behind and a fishing boat 75 feet directly upwind. That fishboat caused us a lot of worries. They had begun the storm three or four hundred feet away but as the wind increased they kept getting closer. Usually this would mean that their anchor wasn’t holding. Being upwind of us they would eventually hit us or their anchor would pick up our anchor and we would be dragged onto the rocks. The crew was wide awake and out on deck most of the time so we were pretty sure that they were aware of what was going on. When they got within 75 feet we couldn’t stand it anymore. We called them on the radio and asked, in our fractured Spanish, if they were having a problem.

            “Oh, everything is OK we are just bleep-bleep-bleeping our anchor”, they said.

            “Sorry, our Spanish is not too good. What are you doing to your anchor?”

            “We are bleep-bleep-bleeping it, Señor.”

            “Uh… OK, are you guys all right?”

            “Oh yes, everything is good.”

We never did figure it out. Maybe they were letting out more rope, or maybe they were praying over the anchor. In any case they didn’t get any closer.

We were never in any danger but we spent the whole night watching to be sure that our anchor didn’t give way. Nora passed seventy-five miles West of us rotating at 100 mph and moving North at 20 mph. Shortly afterward she went aground on the Baja Peninsula and continued up into Arizona causing flooding and storm damage before dissipating. In the Sea of Cortez only one yacht was lost. “Slo’ Dancing” went up on the rocks and was seriously damaged at Isla Tiburon. The crew and cat made it safely ashore and were picked up by the Mexican Navy the following night.

It’s not unusual to see groups of porpoises here. They seem to like boats and often surf in our bow wave. Usually they appear in groups of three to ten, but recently we’ve been seeing pods of hundreds. Porpoises seem to have three modes, which are; fishing, when they jump, bang their tails and dive over and over in a small area; commuting, in which they appear on one horizon, leaping through the water at high speed in an absolutely straight line and then disappear over the other horizon; and playing, unquestionably their real occupation. Near Bahía de Los Angeles there is a huge pod of resident porpoises. On several occasions we saw them in the same area, leaping, diving, slapping their tails and racing around at top speed. We did our best to estimate their numbers and thought that there were 500 in sight at one time. There would likely be double that number below the surface at any given moment.

Once while we were anchored in a small landlocked bay, a large pod of dolphins came in fishing. They jumped and dived in a precise formation, right up to the end of the bay, turned around in unison and retraced the exact same path back out. I gathered up my courage and went swimming with them. Visibility was only fifteen or twenty feet and all I could see were ghostly glimpses as they shot past, but Susan said that they were all around, clearly interested in what was going on.

Mid-October is when summer ends in the Sea of Cortez, which means that the temperature comes down 20°F and the prevailing wind switches from South-East to North-West. This change of direction is helpful to us, but since it switches back and forth a few times before settling down it can also cause some big problems. The worst is that most anchorages are open to one direction or the other and if you choose the wrong one your comfortable refuge can quickly turn into a rough and dangerous lee shore.

For three days we’d had North winds, but on the way out to the Midriff Islands it switched so we anchored on the North side of Isla Partida. During the night the wind returned to the North and although there was no problem, the boat was pitching wildly in the wind-waves and we spent a very unhappy night. When morning finally came we gratefully moved around to the other side of the island. That afternoon a big swell appeared and started rolling the boat through 40 degrees. There was no wind, but boats further South were reporting strong winds heading our way. Up came the anchor and back we went to our first anchorage, which had become flat and comfortable in our absence. Shortly before we went to bed we felt the first breath of wind from the North. Within a few minutes it was tearing through the rigging and big, dangerous seas were slamming into the boat before crashing onto the rocks behind us. It was almost too late to leave but we knew that if we stayed much longer the choice would be taken out of our hands. Seas were bursting over the bow as the anchor came up and with the engine at full speed we were just able to make 3/4 of a knot against the storm. Our dinghy, hanging on the davits, was getting slammed by every second wave and our inflatable which was suspended beside the boat was being tossed around like a toy. The moon had already set and the night was pitch black but it didn’t matter because “Daydream” knew the way to the other side of the island. We were anchored again by midnight and spent an uncomfortable and sleepless, but safe night.

We’ve started to prepare for our return to the ‘real world’ next year. The thought of the upcoming voyage to Hawaii is both thrilling and a little scary. It will be our first passage of more than 5 or 6 days. It may take us well over a month to sail the 2900 nautical miles. Certainly the thought of being out of sight of land for so long and traveling at night doesn’t bother us but you have to wonder what it will be like on Day 20. Will we be bored, tired, thrilled, or possibly stark raving loony? The only way to find out is to try it. I’m sure our arrival in Hawaii will bring with it a tremendous feeling of satisfaction, having traveled so far under our own steam, so to speak. Somehow it sounds far more romantic to have sailed there using your own skills rather than just buying a ticket and hopping a plane. The final leg home from Hawaii to Victoria will be a considerably shorter journey of only 2100 miles.

Even more scary than the long voyage home is going home itself. We’ll have been gone for four years. If you say it really fast it doesn’t sound like much. Not only will the ‘real world’ have moved on, but we have changed as well. We worry that life at home has sped up while we’ve learned to slow way down. One thing that we’re looking forward to is finally getting a chance to sit down and do some serious catching up with many of you.