Day 17 Roundup

July 23, 2012, 1926 UTC
09 21.310 S, 130 18.278 W
Day 17

Hello, friends. Greetings from the morning of Day 17. As we were warned, long passages are a bit of a roller coaster ride - sometimes everything is great, the sun is shining, the fish are biting, and you are blistering along at 9 knots. And sometimes, everyone is turning into Jack Nicholson at the end of the Shining, and you wonder if full complement of Papillon is going to arrive at the other end.

Here is a brief overview of the past week:

Day 7: A winner! With the main and mizzen spinnakers flying, we were making great time. Erik caught a mahi-mahi for dinner. A great meal to end a great day.

Night of Day 7: Worst. Night. Ever. In short: tack ring tore out of main spinnaker. Repaired. Tack pennant blew on main spinnaker => snap shackle failed on mizzen backstay (in only 10 knots of wind) => mizzen mast bent forward like a bendy straw. Stabilized the mizzen. Skied a halyard. Yelling ensued.

Day 9 - A pod 20-30 dolphins swam with the boat for about half an hour. It was the absolute highlight of the passage. I will post a video when we reach the Marquesas, and you will all cry with jealousy.

Day 10 - The once-again-repaired main spinnaker tore itself apart completely. We are now without a light-wind sail. We are getting by sailing wing-in-wing (main out one side, jib poled out the other.) This is rolly, slow, and less than ideal.

Day 11- Freighter Forest Kishu kindly agrees not to run us down in the middle of the night.

Day 12 - The One That Got Away. Erik hooked a huge fish, fought it for ages, then lost it when the hook chafed through the leader cable at the eye.

Day 15 - Erik caught a tuna for dinner. Good, but not as good as the mahi-mahi. We are now very picky about our fish. I can no longer tell the difference between Velveeta and Roquefort, but fish we know.

Day 16 - The freighter Manon passed by in - you guessed it - the middle of the night. Thankfully, collision was not imminent.

Every Darn Day - Erik travels up and down the main mast hanging and adjusting chafe gear. Because stuff on a boat likes to break other stuff on a boat! Yours truly mans the winch handle, and is developing overly-muscular arms. The girls and I spent a morning making new baggywrinkle, but we didn't have enough old line aboard to make as much as we'd like. Hopefully we've covered the worst of it.

We should reach Fatu Hiva in a few days. We'll take a more serious look at the mizzen, then move on to Nuku Hiva. Wish us some boring, routine sailing between here and there.

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Pets At Sea

July 17, 2012, 1608 UTC
8 deg 31.595 S, 115 deg 45.228 W
Day 11

It is inevitable that, after travelling 1600 NM over ten days and being completely alone on the water, the very first boat we should see would:
a) Be a freighter.
b) Appear at midnight.
c) Be on a collision course with Papillon.
I mean, honestly. Thankfully, the good people aboard the freighter Forest Kishu answered our hail and were very accommodating about not smashing into us. And that's why, boys and girls, even in the mid-Pacific, we keep a careful watch. Thus ended day 10.


Growing up, we always had a cat. I love cats. Not to court a dog-vs-cat debate, but cats have it going on. It was to my everlasting sorrow that I finally had to admit to my cat allergy. It was only when I moved out to attend university that I discovered the joys of breathing. I still didn't want to admit it was that bad, but allergy testing a few years later proved me wrong. It was that bad, and no house pets for me if I want to enjoy the continued use of my lungs.

Stylish has wanted a pet from the moment she could talk. As a baby, her hands were a flurry of activity as we would walk in our neighbourhood, signing Cat and Dog with great excitement whenever she saw one. The writing was on the wall.

I explained early and often why we couldn't have a pet at home. (I took the blame on myself, but the truth is, I suspect Erik loves my allergies. Having grown up in his parents' veterinary practice and being possessed of a sensitive nose, I think he exceeded his lifetime quota on animal smells quite some time ago.) Stylish accepted my explanation, but her desire for a pet was undiminished. We bought some goldfish. And while Goldie, Blackie and Speckles were fun to watch, you can't cuddle a fish. So Stylish gave her love to her stuffed cat named Dinah, and continued to quietly hope.

As the years rolled by, I heard a lot about her friends' pets. I knew every new animal that passed through her peer group. And each time, Stylish would turn to me with big eyes, wondering if today would be the day Mom cracked.

And I wanted to crack. Having a snuggly, cuddly, purring, hair-shedding, asthma-inducing… no. The answer was still no. Stylish consoled herself with the notion that, as soon as she moved out, she could get any pet she wanted.

I've been amazed at how many cruisers have pets aboard, and a goodly percentage of those animals are big dogs. Like, German shepherd-sized dogs. I don't really see how that works - washing the decks of enormous doggy-do at regular intervals... where does that get fun? But, more to the point, Stylish (and now Indy) got to play with more cats and dogs. And desire grew.

In Cartagena, friends found a tiny kitten near the marina, seemingly abandoned. They poured this bit of fluff into Stylish's hands, and begged us to please consider adopting her. Well, I ask you. Stylish actually tried to steal off the boat a few hours later to mount a rescue attempt. Tears ensued. Mom still said no. (Mercifully, we saw said kitten a few days later with her mother and a sibling, slipping through a crumbled wall. Phew.)

Yesterday, the cat discussion came up again. We had received an email from friends who were battling a rat issue (it swam out to their boat from shore). This gave Stylish ideas.

"Mom, what if a cat swam to our boat?"
"We would take it back to shore."
"But what if we were already at sea?" She looked at me anxiously. "You couldn't just kill it."
"You can't kill it!" piped up Indy.
"What? Since when do I kill cats? Of course we wouldn't kill it."
"Then it could stay," said Stylish.
"Until we got to shore."
"But we aren't going to get to shore for another three weeks."
"That's true, but we don't have a cat onboard."
"But, Mom, what if a cat got onto Papillon and it has been hiding?"
"We've been out for almost two weeks, honey. I don't think a cat would hide that long."
"But what if it did? What if there is a cat hiding on the boat right now? You said you wouldn't kill it," she reminded me.
"I'm not going to kill anything!"
"So we'd have to keep it," concluded Stylish.
"Keep it! Keep it!" shouted Indy.
"Look," I said. "If there is a cat aboard right now, you can have it."
"REALLY????"
"Yes."

A frenzy of searching ensued. The hypothetical cat had become real in their minds. If they could only find it, the holy cat grail would be theirs.

After a day of looking, the urgency wore off a little, if not the desire. They still think that, maybe, there is a cat here somewhere, somehow.

But I'm a little disappointed. I kind of hoped they would find a cat.

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Pacific crossing, day 6

5 22.864 S, 103 40.145 W
875 NM from the Galapagos

Hello, friends! Papillon greets you from the wilds of the Pacific ocean. We are on day 6 of our passage, with 14-18 days to go.

It has been an exciting time, filled with sail rearrangement, broken sewing machines, bored and cranky children, and, of course, seasickness. Thankfully, that last faded around day 4, so I can now rejoin the functioning complement of the crew. To wit, I am cooking again, which everyone appreciates. Hooray for me, because I calculated correctly beforehand. Before leaving San Cristobal, I cooked a big pot of chili, a roast chicken and two pizzas. Those things ran out just as I was feeling better, so no one was subjected to endless peanut butter sandwiches this time, a la the Chesapeake.

Stylish lost a tooth this morning, so we had a Lost Tooth Party at lunch, complete with fresh hummus, vine leaves and other tasty treats. She is preparing a note for the Tooth Fairy, so she can find us at sea tonight. This fiesta doubled as a Spinnaker Party. The winds have slowly been dying and moving astern of us, so we sadly packed away the main and jib, said goodbye to our 7-8 knots of speed, and pulled out the light wind sails.

For those of you not familiar with a spinnaker, these sails are very big and very light. It is rather like flying a house-sized K-Way jacket in front of the boat. For all that, they pull like heck. At the moment, we are flying two - a main spinnaker and a mizzen spinnaker. Erik hastens to mention that we tried to fly the mizzen staysail (which the girls named the candycorn sail for its orange and yellow stripes), but it tore after two hours. He then broke the sewing machine trying to repair it. I think he only did that so he would have something to fix this afternoon - we all make our own fun on passage - but that may be untrue. Then again, yesterday he spent the day running new cable for our SSB. Some days, I shake my head at the gulf between us. Anyway, the current sail configuration is giving us 6.5 knots, which is not bad in 9 knots of apparent wind. May the K-Ways hold out.

As for the ladies, it isn´t all bickering and kicking. They are busy doing crafts and playing Barbies and Duplo. They stroll the decks, clearing the scuppers of flying fish and small squids, and throwing them back into the water. We´ll start school in a little while, which is fun and eats up the hours. We are all working on our constellations when the sky is clear (I highly recommend H.A. Rey´s The Stars - A New Way To See Them). And the days roll on.

We are running the SPOT tracker once or twice a day (to conserve batteries), but it should give you an idea of where we are. Cheer us on!

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Home Passage Simulator 1.0

Our time in the Galapagos is rapidly coming to a close. I can tell,
because I have a monstrous headache, and wake up in the night
wondering if we have enough onions.

First, pictures. Well, there should be pictures, but Blogger isn't
being my friend right now. So you'll have to imagine a giant sea
turtle swimming about four feet away. Now, a giant tortoise in the
grass. You're in the Galapagos!

Second, The Big Passage is upon us! The maybe-twenty- maybe-forty-day
passage across the Pacific to the Marquesas. Oooooh!!!

I know some of you are wondering about that. Some with a raised
eyebrow, some with a shaking drink in your hand.

Passage-curious sailors, I am here to help. Below you will find
instructions for the Home Passage Simulator 1.0. Experience the
thrills and chills of a long passage from the comfort of your own
home, and see what Papillon is forever going on about.

Simulate the Boat
Before you leave, you have to get ready, and as any passagemaker will
tell you, good preparations lead to a happy voyage.

1. Move everyone into kitchen/living room. Welcome to your new living
space! (Yes, that's all you get.)

2. Disable your telephone, internet, television – all of it. And
don't cry; you'll be okay. Even Erik, the Blackberry addict,
eventually got over the shakes when we moved aboard.

3. It is time to provision. Break out your folding dock cart and get
walking. To accurately simulate your choices, you may either a) do
all of your shopping at your local convenience store, or b) visit your
local supermarket, but you may only buy things from aisles 2,5 and 10,
and you have only 39 seconds to grab what you can in the fruit and
vegetable section. Be sure to take a good list with you, because once
you are aboard, you have what is there. That's it.

Simulate the Passage
All this preparation is well and good, but what does it really feel
like on passage?

4. Prop up the side of your house about 10-15 degrees. Now you're
heeled over. Tip the house gently forwards and backwards, making sure
to add in some random shaking or corkscrewing once in a while.
Doesn't that feel nice? Now try to cook something, or even open a
cupboard. Oh, didn't you lash everything down before you left? Tut,
tut. If you want to avoid getting brained by jugs of olive oil every
time you open the pantry, you will need a strategy to hold it all in
place. Bubble wrap and old fishing nets work well.

5. Paint your ceilings black. Add many tiny white dots. These are
called "stars", and they appear at night. If you live in the city,
you've probably never seen more than three at a time. Don't be alarmed
– they are perfectly normal, and the sky is full of them offshore.
Along with phosphorescence and the sound of dolphins, they are one of
the best parts of doing a night watch.

6. And speaking of watches, you need to set a watch schedule. Someone
needs to be stationed at the window at all times to make sure you
aren't going to get flattened by a car carrier. Watch trajectory of
every car (freighter) or pedestrian (sailboat) going by to make sure
they won't collide with your house.

7. Make a list of every system and moving part you have in your house
and car. Furnace, alternator, toilets, even door latches – anything
that serves a purpose and can conceivably fail in some manner. Cut
the list into individual strips and drop them all on a jar. Set some
alarms on a random timer (preferably set to go off between 11pm and
4am). Whenever an alarm sounds, grab a piece of paper out of the jar.
That is what just failed on your boat. Go fix it.

8. Realize you are eating your fifth uninterrupted meal with your
family, with none of the distractions from point 2. And no one can
leave! Mwahaha! But really, do you see how relaxed you all look?
And how everyone is laughing? You may feel like you are all on top of
each other sometimes, and that can lead to friction, but, for the most
part, passages are relaxed and delightful.

9. Try out seasickness. Drink 18 cups of coffee within 30 minutes,
then spin around as fast as you can. When you come to, you will want
to end it all. Welcome to seasickness. It is horrible, but keep in
mind that even a hard-core mal de mer sufferer such as myself, locked
in a migraine hell and resistant to all treatment, appears to come out
of it by day 4. (I'm trying to keep that firmly in mind right now.)

10. Plan a party. Every long passage descends into tedium at some
point; a party is the perfect way to break up the routine. On the way
to the Galapagos, we had an equator party. It was fun, it involved
planning (read: killed time), was different from our regular day, and
everyone got involved. And any excuse will do.

11. You're in the groove now. Keep going for a month.

Wasn't that fun? No? Well, the real thing is better, I assure you.

Now, for some housekeeping. That is going to shock you, but we're not
going to have email for a month. I know, it's tragic. I'll use the
ham radio to write posts when I can, but that will about do it.
However! Do not view that as a chance to stop writing to us. We love
your notes. They make us feel warm and fuzzy. I expect to hit the
Marquesas and open my inbox to an overflowing heap of mail from you
people. You can also follow our progress on the tracker (we'll put up
a GPS point every day). And we'll see you on the other side…

When Sealions Attack

People, I've been busy.  Not just because we are in the Galapagos, but because...

Ta da!

And ta daaa!

...we have surprise visitors!  And not just any visitors - our most frequent visitors, Grannie (6 trips) and Little Red (3 trips)!  They came on Sunday to surprise the girls, and are here for a glorious week.  This trip only got booked on Thursday, so I want all of you to bask in the glow of spontaneity emanating from my mother, and to apply this lesson to yourselves.

"All right, Amy, well and good.  Your mother is a shining example to us all.  Now what is this I hear about a Dangerous Situation?"

And right you are for asking.  As you may have noticed in earlier posts, I am keen on the sealions.  They are delightful and adorable.  They sleep twenty-three hours a day, and eat and frolic the other one hour.  They are truly the cats of the sea.

Whose turn is it to be cute right now?

But!  Who knew that danger lurked around every corner?

Witness the vicious attack Erik sustained from this baby sealion :

Come play with meeeeeeee!!!!

I know.  It's shocking.  The baby's mother was swimming back and forth nearby, barking at her pup in a most annoyed way.  You could almost hear her say, "Baby, leave those snorkelers alone.  This is a nature reserve and we aren't supposed to touch anything.  Baby!  Let go of that fin!"

But Baby was not finished.  Young Indy was standing at the water's edge, watching everyone else swim, when nip!  Love bite.

Baby strikes again.

Indy was outraged, but it didn't keep her (or anyone else) out of the water.  Grannie and I took her for a short walk.  And when we returned, what did we find?

Not again.

Right.  Stylish got a love bite, too.

We decided that was enough fun for one day, and we packed up before Little Red could join the group of Baby's potential playmates.  I hope that little sealion found someone to play with, because she was desperate, poor thing.

Time to Talk

Like many North Americans, my foreign language skills were never the greatest.  It is a sad fact of life that English is the new Latin.  You can get away with anything as an English-speaker - where is the push to branch out?  Growing up, French was something you studied in school because you had to.  Oh, maybe you would visit Quebec someday, and having a second language looked good on your university application.  But mostly, you didn’t have a choice, and it was more about the grade than the learning.

I’ve hesitated to write this post.  I have held back, because I don’t want to write anything that well-meaning keener parents are going to wave at their children and say, “See, this is why we encourage you to study.”  But the fact of the matter is this: the single most useful skill I’ve brought to this sailing adventure is my ability to speak other languages.

I learned German for the usual reason: because my boyfriend spoke German.  Erik took a job in Switzerland, and I thought it might be handy when I visited.  (Of course, Swiss German turned out to be an entirely different animal, but no matter.  I had some basic grammar and vocabulary under my belt.)  And then we got married and moved to Germany, and German became not just handy, but essential.  I practiced, I got over my shyness about my hideous accent, I got a job, and my German got better.  And I met some cool people.

After a stint in Boston, we moved to Montreal.  And you had better believe that you ought to speak French in Quebec.  So I practiced with the doormen in our building, and my terrible French became slightly less terrible.

I thought my foreign language days were at an end... then we moved aboard Papillon.  And if I had thought about our intended route at all, I would have taken a Spanish course.  Because my Spanish sucks.  I’ve never taken Spanish, and I feel lost without the basic grammar.  I’ve cobbled together some phrases and worked really hard to understand the people around me, but I still haven’t mapped out the basics.  I’m pretty much back on “Yo voy,” “Yo deseo,” and “sobre el barco.”

But here is the thing.  And while you are breaking your back for your 95% in French or loafing at the back of the room balancing pencils on your nose, you might not see this.  But the real, actual, completely-for-true reason we learn other languages is to talk to other people.  Not to order at a restaurant on vacation or get directions to the Metro.  That’s crap.  You learn it because people out there are interesting, and different, and funny and cool and generally awesome, but you are never going to know that unless you try to talk to them.  Not in English.  In their own language.  If you want to get to know people, it is time for you to do some of the heavy lifting.

One of the conversations I’m most proud of happened with one of the guys working on the dock in Cartagena.  It was Christmas, and I managed to explain the difference between “wrap” and “rap” entirely in Spanish.  I was forever La Señora Rap after that, and my friend would go into a rapper pose whenever he saw me.  That is success, my friends.

We made friends in Cartagena on the strength of Erik’s Spanish.  That’s how we got to spend New Year’s Eve in the Barrio.  We had painters aboard for four months, and by the end Erik was spending Sunday afternoons at their house playing dominoes.  The man who rented us lines and tires for the Canal crossing told us about how his son got shot in Colon in a case of mistaken identity.  We talked to the Kuna people living on Miriadiadup about how village life is disappearing.  Our policeman friend from Providencia invited us to visit him in Cali.  And so on.  We’ve met so many interesting people – some for a few minutes, some for much longer – that we never would have known otherwise.

Because here is the thing.  You can kind of make friends with someone when you are making them speak English.  But you are going to come out a lot further ahead when you can speak a little of their own language back to them.  And the other thing?  Not everyone speaks English.  I know!  It’s a shocker!  And even more shocking is they shouldn’t have to.

When we arrived in San Cristobal, we found two German boats and a Swiss boat here.  We have five kids between us, and we have seen a lot of each other over the past week.  The kids got past the language barrier right away, just as some of Stylish’s best friends on this trip have been from France and Quebec.  We have had a potluck and a birthday party with our new friends, and I have hauled out my rusty German to the best of my ability.

I know I make mistakes.  I forget my grammar, I forget my vocab, I lose the thread of the conversation sometimes.  Once upon a time, it would have really bothered me that I wasn’t speaking correctly.  But now, when I see the relief in other people’s eyes that they can relax and speak their own language without catering to the North American, I don’t care how many mistakes I’m making.  It’s worth it.  Now we’re moving on to the Marquesas, and I’ll have to dredge out my high school French.  And I’m actually looking forward to it.

So, kids, learn those languages.  Learn six words if that is all you can manage.  But do it.  And use those six words whenever you can.  I promise you, what you will get out of it is better than any grade in school.

The kids understand.

Swimming with Sealions

I took 127 photos today.  I know, I have a problem.  And I know this doesn't constitute a proper post, but these are my two favourite pictures from the beach this afternoon:

Tell me that doesn't look like fun.

Fun in the Southern Hemisphere

After nine days of (pretty good) passage, the Papillon crew was ready for some action.  First up, crossing the equator.  We anticipated this milestone for days.  Stylish filled a conch shell full of messages and pictures for Poseidon/Neptune.  I baked a cake.  And we waited.

Ready when you are, equator.

Finally, at 0516 on June 14th, the moment arrived!

W00t! Equator!

The young ladies, while they had earlier assured us they wanted to be woken for the big event, both complained bitterly when I actually did try to wake them, so they slept through it.  However, they were quite keen on the Equator party we had at breakfast.

Stylish threw her offering to the gods.

All hail the gods of the sea.

And there was much rejoicing.  And grape juice and sparkling cider and chocolate cake.

Par-tay!

Business complete, we were now ready to make landfall.  Indy kept a good lookout.

You have the bridge, Number One.

And soon enough, there was San Cristobal.

I have tortoises and blue-footed boobies!

We arrived in port this morning, did the usual song and dance to check in, then went for a walk.

But even before we left Papillon, we saw the sea lions.  They are everywhere.  They completely own this place.

At the beach.

At the park.

On the benches.

Along the sidewalks.

I can tell I'm going to have hundred of shots like those before we leave here.

We debated a long time about which island to visit in the Galapagos, and we couldn't be more delighted with our choice.  We are all looking forward to a rest and a chance to explore the land of Darwin.

Rolling, rolling, rolling...

Good morning, campers! And hello from 01 20.178 N 8 34.136 W! We are seven days into our run to the Galapagos, and the end is in sight. Not according to our navigation program, which consistently claims we are 3.2 days from our goal, but that´s software for you.

The good news: my seasickness diminished to manageable levels after day 4-5. Hooray! This makes me feel much better about the big Pacific crossing.

The bad: Indy, leaping about the cockpit like a young gazelle, fell and split her head open beside her eye. We were two days from shore, so Captain Fantastic stitched her up while I held her hand (and fought seasickness), and Stylish read aloud from Junie B Jones to keep everyone´s spirits up. Success! Indy has three beautiful stitches, and a week in, they look great. All compliments to Erik for performing surgery in rolly seas. At night. In the cockpit.

The other bad: Winds being what they are, we are permanently heeled over at 15-20 degrees. While still rolling around. Trying to cook like that, or even open a cupboard on the wrong side of the boat, means taking your life in your hands. Erik tacked the boat early this morning, throwing Stylish out of bed and earning her a fat lip. The dangers of boat life, I tell you.

The good again: We are all having fun. We have a good routine of school, reading, playing, sleeping, and generally getting along. A week in, we have our pattern, and it works.

More news when we get to an anchorage. We intend to go to San Cristobal, and anchor in Wreck Bay. I know some of you have visited the area; if you have recommendations or advice, please drop us a line.

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The Best Laid Plans

I spent yesterday day reading Dickens (The Old Curiosity Shop, for those interested). And while I enjoy the gentlemen and his humour, he does produce the effect of making one´s prose rather more florid than is usual. So, small doses. Also, not to spoil the book for those who haven´t read it, but the author resorts to his all-to-familiar plot points of killing off the villain by usual way of the Thames (which I don´t really object to), and killing off an innocent child beloved by all (which I do, as this occurs 96% of the way through the book, just before her dear friends find her after a book-long search. Ripoff.)

Shallow literary criticism aside, how did I find the time to read this book all day? Friends, I can´t recommend my methods. Wednesday evening I was decanting pasta from the pot into a colander, and the hot water splashed back on me from the sink and scalded my belly.

It was agony. Erik ran to help me, we iced the area and I lay down, but it was grim. Definite second degree burns over an eight inch by two inch area. I was feeling better with the ice, but as my skin warmed again, the pain returned in force. Out came the first aid kit and the burn dressings. The gel on the dressing helped, but there was a good half hour of teary eyes to endure first.

Before leaving home, Erik and I took a marine medicine course from St John Ambulance. And while you always hope you won´t need that sort of thing, you do. I broke my finger - we used it. Stylish sliced open her chin - we used it. Thankfully we were within spitting distance of a clinic in that case, so a proper doctor did the stitches. But right now, we´re in the middle of nowhere, with not even another boat to call on. Now we have the responsibility to determine whether the burn is bad enough to warrant a return to Panama City. In a few weeks, we won´t even have that option - we´ll be mid-Pacific. But I´m taking my antibiotics and resting as best I can. The medical staff among you may be tut-tutting, but what else can we do?

Oh, and did I mention Erik came down with a high fever Wednesday night and slept all of yesterday? Young Stylish has been my hero, feeding her sister and keeping the pair of them entertained.

In any case, we haven´t moved on today as planned. Soon, I hope. Soon.

Do not try this at home.  Ever.

Postscript: Just in case you are ever feeling blase about dealing with hot water, I can tell you that it took almost two months for the burn to seal up.  It stayed angry for months, and a year later I still have purple scars.  And I still think I got off lucky.

Achieving Escape Velocity

We did it! We left civilization behind! Yesterday we chugged out of Panama City and made our way to the Perlas. Here we sit, at anchor at the mouth of the Rio Calcique, the only boat in sight.

Which begs a question - where is everybody? The Caribbean was packed full of people. In some anchorages in the San Blas islands, we were jammed in with fifty or sixty boats. Cartagena and Panama City were no different. The Perlas are both beautiful - imagine a rugged, rocky landscape like Georgian Bay, with long, sandy beaches - and very close to the mainland (the northern islands are less than 40 nm from Panama City). Why isn´t this place overrun? Not that I am complaining; we have certainly earned the peace.

Some people don´t like leaving the city, and I can understand that. You never have to plan ahead in the in city; it is a fly-by-whim type of place. Oh, I forgot to buy yoghurt. I´ll walk 100 m to the convenience store. Oh, I feel like going out tonight. Should be see a movie, or hear music, or go to the theatre, or the opera, or or or... It is easy. Options galore! And when we find ourselves city-proximate, we take advantage of those things, too. We took the girls to a children´s play last week. In Cartagena, I wandered over to the grocery store almost every day to get ice and drinks for our painters. The girls and I hiked over the bridge to the (free) gold museum pretty often. It was fun.

But leaving Panama City was a different thing. That´s it for cities until November. So we had to suck the marrow out of this city before we left, and I mean that solely in terms of supplying the wagons, as it were. Every time we set foot in a store, we had to remind ourselves things like,¨"I won´t be able to buy cheese again. How much cheese can I reasonably fit in the freezer?" Erik prowled the aisles in the hardware tiendas, picking up plumbing parts and various nuts and bolts and asking himself what was going to break during the next six months, and could he fix it with what he had? It´s all about planning and forethought, and it is easy to put off departure just one more day to pick up such-and-such or more of this-and-that. And I know full well I´ll run out of some things early and be mad at myself, and other things not at all and wonder why I bought so much, but that is the way the cookie crumbles. Maybe we´ll have to live on peanut butter and tuna fish for a while. (Preferably not mixed.) I can handle it.

For us, the boat is much more fun when we can swim and explore, so we had a strong pull to finish up and get out. The girls were going mad, we are sailing late in the season in an El Niño year (which means weak winds for our Pacific crossing), so we needed to move. We wanted to move. And the appeal of just one more bag of whole wheat flour eventually wasn´t enough to keep us there. And now we´re free.

We´ll catch our breath for a few days, explore the river, then press on to the Galapagos. That will be a long passage - likely 10 days or so - with no wind, because that is how the equator rolls. But we´ll make it. And I´ll try to send these shortwave radio updates as I can.

As an administrative point, we won´t have much in the way of bandwidth for the forseeable future. Please do continue to write to us - we love it! We can´t talk to just each other forever, you know! But keep it text-only, if you please. No attachments, or our SSB-email program will ruthlessly delete your note. I know, it is tough out at sea.

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Getting clean

With all of the excitement of Canal transits and missing toilets and new antifouling paint and and and, I have failed to mention a very exciting development aboard Papillon.

We bought a washing machine!

I know!  I’m dancing in a circle, too!  Because what have I been complaining about since the Earth began cooling?  Yes, the very smelly state of our wardrobe.  Having to haul bags of said stinkage to shore, wash them in machines of dubious quality, dry them (if we´re lucky), and try to get everything back aboard in a still-clean-and-dry state.  It was a thorn in my side.

But laundry needs water.  And, funny enough, water is in short supply on a boat.  So, no washing machine.

Enter our days on the hard.

Cruisers love to sell things to other cruisers.  Life is a perpetual garage sale out here on the water.  Everywhere we go, we participate the local morning VHF net.  It lets people share information, contact each other – all of those regular things we all do every day.  And everywhere we have been, there is a category called, “Treasures of the Bilge.”  Sometimes people hawk their old Corningware for weeks on end.  Sometimes they offer up a 12 volt windlass (to raise the anchor), and it is gone within milliseconds.  We got rid of our surplus blueboard from the fridge project in this fashion.  It is a good system if you don´t abuse it.  By which I mean, if you can keep your spouse from going bananas.

The marina version of this is the bulletin board.  And boy, did Erik love walking by that bulletin board.  “Amy, I bought a new outboard!  It has a service manual and a full set of spares!”, “Amy!  Our neighbor has these great solar panels!” and one day, “Amy, there is an awesome watermaker posted!  We´ll sell our old one – it will be practically free!”

I opened my mouth to say, “Our watermaker is fine.  Low volume, but fine.  We don´t need a new one.”  But Erik continued: “It does 17 gallons per hour.  We could buy a washing machine.”

The words died in my throat.  A few weeks before, we had witnessed the laundry bliss of friends from Quebec, who had squeezed a cheapo machine into a locker.  For $150, they had clean sheets.  Clean.  SHEETS.  Whenever they wanted!  I coveted that flimsy plastic thing.

So instead I agreed.  And Erik bought the watermaker.  And we sold ours.  And we began the drama of getting new reverse osmosis membranes for the darn thing, a saga that is still continuing.  And in the meantime, Erik borrowed a car and went to pick up a washing machine.

And it was so pretty.  So little and pretty.  And light!  30 kg, compared to the 95 kg of our Miele.  We hoisted it on deck while we were still on the hard, and there it sat, wrapped in plastic, smugly promising me washing delights to come.

Squee!!!

I cleared out the designated locker, and Erik measured it one last time.

Let me just build a shelf for this thing, and we´ll be all set.

We lowered it gently through the forward hatch.  And I was as careful as I could be except for my foot.  My right leg went through the hatch, and the back of my thigh came down hard on the hatch frame.  I sported a purple bruise about six inches per side for weeks.  Once Erik was done yelling at me for endangering the precious washing machine (and where is the love, I ask you?), we got it the rest of the way inside.

Only to discover that the locker opening was half a centimeter too narrow.

“No problem,” said Erik.  “I though that was likely the case.”  And he set about gently knocking out the inner teak trim from the doorway.

We squeaked that machine in by millimeters.

Almost...

there...

Got it!

I read the instruction manual, learning the joys of such interesting settings as “Fuzzy” and “Jean”.  And so, just as I have never had a job without a work visa for a foreign country, I have never had a washing machine with an English display.

Meh.  It can´t be too hard to figure out.

Once it was piped in, there was nothing to do but try it out.  By now, Papillon was back in the water, so we had somewhere for the waste water to go.  We decided to discharge into our main bilge to give that oily place a little freshening up.

We loaded the machine.  It began to fill.  And gently whirr.  And drain.  And fill again.  And drain again.  And fill again.

By now, Erik and I were looking at each other with some concern.  That was a lot of water.  The machine had seven water levels, and we had chosen number five.  Clearly a mistake.

And, sure enough, we ran the tank dry.  We scrambled to pause the machine, switch tanks, bleed the air out of the system and restart before the washer gave up.  And we made it, but barely.

We have had a couple of practice loads since then, but I won´t be all high and mighty about my clean clothes until the watermaker is fully operational.  And water level two appears to be the edge of my comfort zone.  I check the machine anxiously as it runs, and keep an ear out for the telltale pump complaint that tells me a tank has gone dry.

Watching, watching..

I´ve heard this crazy rumour that, on land, water comes to your house through a pipe, and you don´t even have to do anything but pay for it!  Fairytales, fairytales…