Kids These Days

We have been pretty laid back on this trip.  It was not for nothing  we adopted the motto, “Just Roll With It.”  That principle has reduced our stress, led us into surprising and delightful situations and friendships, and kept me from committing The Murder every day we are stuck on the hard.  But we can’t always just let things roll for the kids.  School: fine.  Family time: no problem.  But, friends: issue.  So we work hard to find other kids and let our girls run wild with them.

One nice thing about cruising kids is they are all in the same boat, as it were.  (Oh!  Inadvertent pun!  Boo, Amy, boo!)  They all want friends.  This neatly overrides considerations of age, gender and language.  Our girls will play with anyone within a decade of their own age.  They have learned to be gregarious.  Stylish has overcome the shyness I regret having passed on to her.  (Indy escaped that trait; she is her father’s daughter, and can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to talk to her.)  But this constant making and leaving of friendships has given me an interesting peek into Young People These Days.

In the early days, we met land kids.  We were travelling down the east coast of the US in late fall, and all of the boat kids were ahead of us in the Bahamas.  So we would go ashore, haunt the parks and find someone to play with.  I was nearby only due to Indy’s tender age, and I did my best to fade into invisibility.  (Kids do not need us in so many ways, and Erik and I are delighted to see how independent and resourceful the girls are are when we step back. [/end Amy’s parenting philosophy])

Stylish had her first great success in the Carolinas.  She befriended a quiet girl of about nine, and the two of them played Ninja Training School on the broken tennis courts for days on end.  As they practiced jumping kicks and Indy ran in circles around them, I was able to observe other vignettes of small town kid life.

One afternoon, two teenage girls hopped onto the swings.  They were almost identically dressed – clean faces, athletic pants, ponytails, t-shirts and hoodies.  My instinct said volleyball team.  They sat for a while and chatted, until clones from other group came along.  Two girls wearing dangly earrings, makeup, tight jeans, Ugg boots and sideswept hairstyles approached.  The sporty girls immediately hopped off the swings and left.  The posh girls took their places without batting an eye, as though it were their natural right.

This shook me to my core.  Growing up, I’d been a fan of the Molly Ringwald oeuvre of movies, and, if pressed, I still could probably recite the entire script of The Breakfast Club.  These films depicted the cruel world of a high school class system so sclerotic, so immutable that the British aristocracy of centuries past would have thought it all a bit inflexible.  My own high school was too small and Canadian for such cliques to form, and besides, this was film.  It wasn’t real – these things weren’t true.  But, apparently, they are.  The way the cool girls effortlessly booted the athletic girls –without a word, without a raised eyebrow, without a blink on either side – it was terrifying.  I’m stupefied.  Who knows how the entire hierarchy is built, but I am grateful my girls don’t have to find a place within it.  Yuck.

You mean, we don't have to stay in our tiny little social boxes?

But not everyone lives in a John Hughes movie.  As we pushed further south, male friends came along, older friends came along, younger friends came along.  Indy hit a milestone not long before her third birthday by making her first friend completely on her own, a boy in Guatemala who spoke no English.  The two of them bonded over a mutual love of Lightning McQueen.  Racer showed off his Cars stickers; Indy presented her Cars t-shirts.  This accomplished, they ran after each other and tumbled in the grass like puppies for about three days.

Buddha makes an excellent babysitter.

Sometimes we met kids the girls loved.  In Cartagena especially, we met boat after boat of wonderful kids.

It has been interesting to be in this marina for so long, because the kid-dynamic is different again.  There are a lot of kids here, enough that cliques are forming. 

Know thy place.

And I shouldn’t be surprised that ten-year-olds form packs, exclude other kids, tease, trick, and otherwise act like monsters, but there it is.  I don’t think I could teach in middle school; I think it would put me off the human race..  Happily, the girls, while bewildered by some of the behaviour they have witnessed, aren’t involved in it.  They have found some nice friends here, and have bonded over diving for toy torpedoes and pushing each other in the water.  May that happy self-assurance last.

We’ll just march to our own beat, thanks.

Life On The Hard

Here we sit, at the mouth of the Panama Canal, in a marina.  And wouldn’t you know it?  There are two worlds here.  The regular dockside marina, with shore power, restaurants, and people wearing jewellery and clean clothes.  And then there is The Yard, where paint, dust, and other familiar dirty things are the order of the day.  We are repainting the antifouling on the bottom of our hull, and so here we are, on a gravel field, packed amongst other boats undergoing improvement.

Up we go!

It just doesn't look right, somehow.

Delightful things about being on land again:

• Laundry, laundry, laundry.  Before we arrived, I hadn’t done laundry except in a bucket since January.  Enough said.
• Power hookup.  This means we don’t have to rely on our almost-dead batteries.
• A tiny store.  Even buying tomatoes can be exciting when you don’t have to get in the dinghy first.

Small inconveniences related to being hauled out:

• No toilets aboard.  They run on saltwater... and we’re out of the water.  Since we can’t flush them, we can’t use them.
• No sinks aboard.  We can’t drain our greywater tank, so no sinks.  All washing is accomplished via a garden hose hanging over the rail.
• No fridge.  This also needs saltwater to run, so we have spent the past week trying to eat everything before it went bad.
• The rickety ladder tied to the hull to allow ascent and descent.  We have drilled the girls in proper ladder technique, ie. control your monkey impulses.  So far, so good.
• Cooking.  As I don`t have use of a sink, this is a bit of a challenge.
• Washing the dishes on deck in a bucket.  Not my favourite job to begin with, I didn`t realize how good I had it before.

Our week has been filled with fun tasks like watching Erik attempt to electrocute himself while grinding in the pouring rain (this is the dry season, apparently) and slathering the kids with DEET to keep the nighttime hordes of mosquitoes at bay.  But we have gotten past sanding tiny spots of aluminum and actually put zinc chromate primer on the hull today.  And that may not sound exciting (or comprehensible) to you, but I am dancing a jig, here.  That means that actual barnacle-killing paint is not far behind, and we can get ourselves back into the water.  Because sleeping on a boat that doesn`t move just feels weird.  (And when it does move, it feels terrifying.)

Your correspondent remains a woman of glamour and mystery, even wearing lab gloves, a face mask and that hat.  In the rain.

What do you mean this doesn’t look like paradise?  There are palm trees in the background, aren’t there?

As an extra bit of excitement, the local firemen kicked us off the boat briefly this afternoon.  Because they were spraying a colony of Africanized killer bees in the bushes 50 feet away.  And that may sound bad enough, but two days ago, while the girls and I were out, Erik chased a swarm of over a hundred enormous bees out of our boat armed only with a can of roach spray.  The last bees were leaving as we arrived home, and they were each the size of my thumb.  Were they really killer bees?  They certainly looked scary enough.  But they didn't kill Erik, so maybe they were some of those so-called domesticated Africanized killer bees.  I think I`ll still leave the antihistamines where I can find them easily.

The man in the bee suit pouring poison in a bucket isn’t really what you want to see next door.

What will the next week “on the hard” bring?  Well, we still need to weld that leak in the aft fuel tank and wrestle the centerboards back in, so don’t worry about us.  Excitement abounds!

Con-ga! or, Top O' The Mornin'!

Last Saturday was St Patrick’s Day.  And what do we all think of on St Patrick’s Day?

Why, the Portobello Conga festival, of course!  And my apologies to the Irish among you, but it beat the heck out of drinking green beer.

Sorry, Seamus.  You just can't compete.

 The whole town was dressed up.

Squee!  Cuteness overload!

Busloads of conga troupes arrived.

No, they didn't paint that bus for the festival...

The buses always look like that.

As at any good outdoor party, street-meat was the order of the day.

Mnohm nohm nohm.

The party began with a boat tour around the harbour.

Then the troupes danced their way from the dock to the town square.

(And if you can’t appreciate the delicious illumination of human nature as illustrated by a woman flipping off her friend while marching in a parade, I just don’t want to know you.)

Even the cops couldn’t resist taking pictures.

Even the police need to get their conga on.

Sure, everyone got a little distracted now and again.

We interrupt this parade for an urgent text message.

Can’t.  Sit.  Still!

But they all pulled it together.  Each troupe got to strut their stuff on stage, and they were fantastic.

I wish we knew more about the symbolism of their outfits; the fertility symbols were pretty easy to figure out, but the dolls hanging from everyone’s clothing made me curious.  There were also a couple of men dressed as construction workers - orange pinnies, hard hats – and that really has me stumped, since the rest of the men onstage appeared to be kings or devils.  Where does the dressed-for-safety builder fit into this mythology?  On a similar note, I saw one of the off-duty kings step on part of a broken bottle.  He stopped, reached into his decorated bag, and pulled out a large black telephone receiver which he used to knock the offending glass off his Croc.  And while I applaud this creative repurposing of a now-useless device, I ask you: do you carry old-timey phone parts in your purse?  Because I don’t.  These fashion trends are passing me by.

Used as the manufacturer intended.

Eventually the rain came, and it was time to go home, happy and full.

When even the queens are hiding under superhero blankets, the party’s over.

Best.  St Patrick’s.  Ever.

Sewing and other occupations

This week has been a series of dizzying highs and terrifying lows for Papillon as we float here in Portobello and the howler monkeys bellow through the hills.  The good: Stylish writing notes to the family in Cuneiform.  I asked Stylish to tell Erik what we had been talking about in school that day, and Indy burst out: “Hammurabi!  Babylon!”  The bad: I came within a hair’s breadth of permanently breaking the generator.  (Who knew that water + diesel engines = apocalypse?  I guess I kind of forgot.  I have been sentenced to learn and internalize the diesel engine chapter of Calder’s Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual.  It is going to be a slog, but I suspect I got off easily.)

At least I wasn’t in front of that cannon.

But let’s take a step back in time and talk some more about the San Blas islands.  We did more than read and dig sandcastles, you know.  Oh, yes!  We also bought molas.

For those of you unfamiliar with Panama, Kuna Yala is an autonomous province east of the canal on the Caribbean side, and the San Blas are a part of it.  The Kuna Indians live there.  And while their old way of life is slowly falling away, the Kuna still make reverse appliqué fabric art pieces called molas.  This involves many layers of fabric, tight stitching, and obvious artistic flair.

These are normally worn by the ladies as a panel above the waist on the front and back of a blouse.

And, inevitably, some are sold to gringo tourists.

My mother is a quilter.  No, a Quilter.  Perhaps even a QUILTER.  In short, she sews any bit of fabric she finds that isn’t otherwise occupied, as well as some that are.  She attends a quilting camp with her buddies for two weeks every summer, learning fancy sewing stuff from other experts.  It’s like that.  So Mom had molas on the brain before she even arrived.

I knew that was coming.  What I didn’t expect was Erik’s interest.

We arrived in the San Blas about a week before my parents.  From the first day, the cayucas were padding up to our boat, and the ladies showing off their wares.  Normally, the ladies would have a five gallon pail neatly filled with molas.  We would invite them aboard, they would show us their stuff, we would get excited about a piece or two, buy them, and everyone left happy.

Except this was happening every day.  By the third round, the cayuca arrived, and I said to Erik, “No, we have enough.  No thank you.”  “Okay,” he nodded, then invited the ladies aboard and bought a mola anyway.  Ugh.

It only got worse when mom arrived.  Some of the master mola-makers came out of the woodwork, and who were we to decline the chance to see their wares?  And some of their traditional pieces were truly beautiful.

By the end of my parents’ visit, we were all getting strict with each other.  “No more molas.  No really, no more.”  Then we went for dinner with a family on Miriadiadup.  And while some people were focused on the right things, like making friends and seeing birds...

Priorities straight.

...some of us looked at molas.

Hey, look!  Molas!

By the time my parents departed, we had accumulated a dizzying number of pieces.  Sure, some were gifts, but most of them were just too pretty to pass up.  If you ever visit the future Casa Schaefer and find a room covered in fabric, that’s why.

This was our combined total.  And I wish I could say they are almost all Mom’s, but a lot are ours, too.

I know, I know.

My parents went home with all of the molas, so they don’t rot on board.  Phew!  Mola-free.  We got ready to check out of the San Blas, when master mola maker Lisa knocked on our hull.

And...

Two more molas.

How could I refuse?

What We Do On Holiday

So.  What did we handsome devils do during our vacation in the San Blas?

A fine-looking group.

We tried to keep Papillon off the reefs...

Saw turtles and fish...

Played on the beach...

Bought food out of passing lanchas...

Loafed in the hammock...

And read and read and read.

Bread, Glorious Bread

Continued apologies for my infrequent posts. My parents were visiting, we still don't have internet... it's the same old story. It has been a busy day, what with setting up the awning and putting out the spinnaker pole for the girls so they can swing into the water. Whew! I'm bushed.

We have moved closer to the Panama Canal, awaiting our appointment to haul the boat out and repaint the antifouling on the bottom of the hull. This means we have left the palm trees and sandy beaches of Kuna Yala behind. It also means that we can restock on supplies. This is important because we haven't bought food except from local fishermen since we left Cartagena a month ago. And my parents gave us a breadmaker.

Ta da!

Back home, we were bread eaters. Toast for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch. I liked a certain brand of fancy multigrain. Erik and the girls liked proper German graubrot. The stuff we bought was bakery-fresh, and worth every cent. Alas, as with all things, availability and quality have been less than consistent as we pressed south. Sometimes we got lucky and found an awesome baker (mmm, Guatemala). Sometimes we were stuck with the local Wonderbread equivalent (country withheld). But wherever we went, two-thirds of our freezer space went to bread storage, insurance against dark days we knew were to come.

Over time, I learned to make my own bread (occasionally) and pizza dough (more often). We made cookies and bread balls and pancakes, and generally compensated for our uncertain bread supply. So, when my parents offered us a breadmaker, I was delighted. Fresh bread! More freezer space for meat and other perishables! When I did my month-long provisioning run before we left Colombia, I decided to be conservative and buy extra flour in anticipation of the new machine. We had four pounds of flour on hand, and I bought another thirteen. Seventeen pounds of flour - it seemed ridiculously generous. It was going to turn into a weevil hotel before we could ever use it all up.

Loaf 1.0

 When the machine arrived, we were like kids at Christmas. Make cinnamon raisin bread! Olive bread! Try the Firm setting! Bake a chocolate cake! Make pizza dough! And we did. We ran through that recipe book like we'd never eaten starch before, cooking two and sometimes three loaves of delicious bread each day. We set the timer to have it ready just before breakfast, and usually had the machine refilled for a second run before the elements had cooled. We gorged. Our bellies became - pardon the expression - doughier. And my flour stocks dwindled.

My parents had only been with us for a week when I realized we were going to run out of flour. I calculated that we had enough flour for one loaf per day until they left - no more. No more cakes. No more oven-fresh thick slices. The rationing began.

We barely made it through the week. Erik miraculously found a further four pounds of flour in Carti when he dropped my parents off. Hooray! But still, two passengers lighter, we were still careful with our bread. Who knew when we would find flour again?

We sailed to Portobello, rejoining the world of towns and stores. We stopped into a mini-super (a term I love), aka a store the size of my old living room. And they had flour. And I bought seven pounds. That should last the week, shouldn't it? Hooray for bread! Flabby tummies, be damned!

Dangers in Paradise

My parents are just wrapping up their two-week holiday with us here in the San Blas (boo). We have had a wonderful time eating lobster, reading, buying molas, reading, swimming and reading.

But even here amongst the palm trees and gentle waves, dangers abound. Here is a list of injuries sustained aboard Papillon during their visit. (Names are withheld to protect the clumsy. Although you may be surprised which injury applies to whom.)

-Slice along shin. (Occurred while climbing over a fabric-covered lifeline. How one generates a cut, not a cloth-burn from such an activity remains a mystery.)
-Bruised/strained thumb. (Injury extended from top to base of thumb. Sustained by slipping off the motor while climbing into the dinghy.)
-Toe stubs. (Many and as expected)
-Metal shavings in feet. (Remnants of work on the boom, despite weeks of shop-vac-ing. Bare feet make the best vacuum cleaners.)
-Knot on top of head. (Sustained jumping off the companionway and hitting head on ceiling.)
-Portugese Man-o'-war sting. (Luckily, this nasty jellyfish was only the size of my top thumb joint, or we would have been in trouble. Ammonia helped the sting, and the welt was gone in a few days.)
-Pin in finger. (Sewing-related injury. Lots of blood.)
-Bruised elbow. (Tripped over shop-vac.)
-Sunburns. (As expected. Many and varied.)
-Inner thigh bruise. (Skin caught in Ascender while going up the mast. Could have been ugly, but the skin was quickly pulled out by a helpful, spouse, and not too much was pinched.)
-Thumb flattening. (3 lb sledgehammer to the thumb. Twice.)
-Forearm bruise. (A winch flew apart, mildly injuring the person turning the winch and smashing a portlight. The captain may have been heard to mutter he'd rather the arm had broken.)
-Leg bruise. (Bumped into a rounded bench.)
-Bite. (Something akin to a deerfly. Large painful welt on back of the knee.)
-Forehead bruise. (Sustained by not properly securing the fridge lid, then leaning inside for something. Smack - down came the lid.)

So beware, friends. We may not be slipping on the ice, but even here, danger lurks at every turn! Also, delicious fish and sandy beaches.

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What Have You Been Missing?

Here we are, on another fine day in the San Blas islands. My parents have arrived, and we are spending quality time doing what our family always does on vacation: reading. Oh, sure, we also go swimming and eat too much, but it isn't long before two-thirds of us have a book in hand and are flaked out in the hammock or on deck. Just the way a holiday should be.

And, while we are having this relaxing time away from fixing toilets and sewing sail covers, what am I not writing about?

Amy's Rejected Blog Topics

1. We Are Slow. But you've figured that out already, haven't you? For example, the other day it took us all afternoon to fill the water tanks. That was the only thing we accomplished that day - figuring out where to get drinking water, sailing there, talking to the guys on the dock, waiting for the boat ahead of us to finish, moving the boat, filling, touring the little island, deciding it was too late to move on and putting down the anchor again. Everything on a boat takes a long, long time.

2. Concealed Injuries. Last year I broke my finger, and I never heard the end of it. Stylish and her two sets of stitches also generated a lot of mail. So when, months ago, Stylish gotten bitten by a dog, I didn't say anything. She is FINE! The wound is totally healed, and the tiny scar has been given the Grandparent Seal Of Approval. Ditto when, mid-scuffle, Indy hit Stylish on the head with a rubber mallet and Stylish kicked Indy in the face. I have photos of the two of them lying on the bunks in the salon, each with a glum expression and a bag of ice. You see? You're worried, now. These are stories that cause needless stress.

3. Hey, Something Broke! Well, you actually get subjected to this story a lot. But you would be astonished at the volume of repairs and adjustments you are not privy to. So very many smelly trips into the bilge. But I try to keep to the more interesting stories.

4. And Then We Went Here, And Then We Went There... This is not a travelogue. I'll only talk about where we are and what we're doing if I have a good reason.

And that's what you haven't been missing. Since this is my vacation, too, I'm going back to my book.

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