Condesa Memory
Clark July 19th, 2007
Stunned in San Francisco
Clark July 17th, 2007
The photo accompanying the last post was done by a friend (Mick!) in good fun. Thanks to those who jumped to my defense, but in reality I have no shame, and plus it’s true.
This website is about sailing and I’m not doing any sailing. However I will be sailing in about ten days when I fly to Honolulu to bring a Transpac boat back to California. That trip should take a few weeks. In the interim I am trying to adjust to life in the urban world, here in my borrowed apartment in San Francisco. Here are some of my impressions of the Brave New World after sailing the hinterlands for so long.
1. Everyone is really busy. Time is allocated and compartmentalized in fifteen minute increments. There is little time to just hang out and see what happens.
2. There seems to be an inordinate number of people wandering around muttering. There are wandering mutterers all over the world, and I’ve done my own share of wandering and muttering, but there seem to be more of them here. At first there really seemed to be a lot, but then I learned to weed out all the people who were talking on mobile phones with hands free headsets. Still, the disenfranchised and the slightly nuts are on the streets in force. Avoid Haight street after 10PM.
3. Computerized dating is OK. During my last visit to California it was still somewhat stigmatized. Now couples openly declare that they met on match.com, eharmony.com, jdate, you name it.
4. You’re in trouble without a customer loyalty card. What ever happened to just handing over money in exchange for goods and services? It’s all very fair that they reward you for your information, as this helps them manage their inventory by tracking consumer behavior, but they really make you pay through the nose and feel like a schmuck if you haven’t got the card, even at the drugstore.
5. People are pretty polite. When I’m away I tend to think of Californians as angry people stuck in traffic. By world standards people here are quite considerate and friendly. On the road there is very little horn blowing and screaming of obscenities, and most drivers will let you into a line of traffic if you’re the one pinched out. Clerks and attendants, even the ones who aren’t pandering for fat, American-style tips, tend to greet people with a smile and send them off with ‘have a nice day.’
No Respect
Clark July 13th, 2007
You open your life and your photos to the world at large and look what somebody does. One of the great moments of life reduced to this? What kind of sad, debauched people are reading this website?
The Start of the Transpac
Clark July 10th, 2007
I’ve been back in California for about a week now, and immersed in the Transpac regatta (from Los Angeles to Honolulu). My older brother David is racing, and I’m delivering one of the race boats back to California after the race. I went to the big celebration dinner in Long Beach a few days ago and got to rub elbows with Roy Disney and other sailing rock stars.
I read the sailing instructions and rules, and was overwhelmed by the amount of safety requirements and gadgetry. My brother had to attend an all-day safety at sea seminar, each boat carries a tracking device that constantly transmits their position throughout the race, and each crewmember wears a transponder that can be tracked from the mother ship or emergency craft in the event of a man overboard. I certainly didn’t have any such stuff for my recent driftings around the Horn and Southern Ocean, and it seemed like overkill for what is a pretty tame hop through the Tradewind belt to Hawaii. Better safe than sorry, I guess, but how much does all this stuff cost?
We went out on our family boat to watch the start of the race. The boat my brother was on had its tracking device mounted on the pushpit rail and each crewmmber was wearing an automatically inflating life preserver and electronic locating device, but this didn’t stop one of the crewmembers from nearly severing his finger with a rigging knife about an hour after the start. We charged at full speed to take the injured guy off, but a fast catamaran beat us to it and took the guy to the ER. My brother’s boat had to restart the race with seven people, since they have to finish with the same number they started with.
I suppose there is some lesson here about all the money and gadgetry in the world being no substitute for common sense and good seamanship.
In California
Clark July 3rd, 2007
Condesa is put to bed and I’ve flown home.
It turned out the cheapest way to get here was to fly to Tijuana via Mexico City and cross the border on foot. It made for a long night, arriving in TJ in the heat of a June morning.
When the plane arrived in Mexico City I had to pass immigration and stand in line for about an hour. When I was getting close to the front of the line I noticed a Peruvian gal from my plane looking green. Soon she collapsed on the floor.
It is absolutely amazing that a group of adults, assumedly educated, can behave like such idiots when somebody faints. You’d think there’d be a doctor in the line, or at least someone other than me who had taken a basic first aid course. I don’t take charge too often in life, but when I take charge I take charge. I burst in and said, “Soy medico,” which is a little ambiguous. It’s not really saying I’m a doctor, but could be interpreted that way.
“You, stop slapping her! You, stop fondling her! You, get your hands out of her mouth. You, help me get her feet up. Now, who has some Mexican pesos?”
“I do.”
“OK, you go over to that shop and buy some orange juice or something with a lot of sugar. And you, standing there with the walkie-talkie looking like you’ve seen a ghost, call the airport doctor and get him over here.”
I have fainted spectacularly in public several times in Mexico City. It’s over 7000 feet, so if you fly from sea level the altitude gets you. Combine it with having low blood sugar before breakfast, being a little dehydrated, and down you go.
The gal was well-dressed, forty-ish, and traveling on her own.
I knew what she was going through, so I made sure the first thing she saw when she awakened was my smiling face saying, “You’re fine. You just fainted. It’s the altitude and it’s happened to me lots of times. Don’t try to get up or it will happen again. We need to get some sugar in your stomach first.”
She understood, but I saw the three expressions on her face, the very same three I had each time I fainted. First, where the hell am I? Second, crushing embarrassment and self consciousness. And third, the realization that you have been completely unconscious, that *everything* has relaxed, and oh God, did I just pee myself or crap my pants with all these people watching?
I tried to convey with my relaxed manner that she hadn’t done anything embarrassing.
Before the orange juice arrived the airport doctor showed up. When somebody says ‘call a doctor,’ this is what the universal mind conjures up. He was the spitting image of the doctor on the old TV show Emergency! with his little tackle box and his white lab coat, flecks of gray in his dark hair. He followed very proper procedure in doing the handoff from me as the attending physician, asking me all of what had gone down and what I’d done.
Finally they mopped her off the floor and took her away from the crowd, but the original orange juice made its way to her. I started feeling faint shortly therafter and got one for myself.
Home In Lima
Clark June 24th, 2007
I finished the check-in process and it wasn’t that bad, especially since I was the first foreign yacht to break down the wall of doing it without an agent. Peru is one of those countries that doesn’t distinguish between recreational yachts and cargo ships, so I had to fill out forms about how many crewmembers had died of the plague, when the ship was deratted, and how many tons of bunker fuel I would be taking on.
It’s a shame because Peru has a terrible reputation among cruisers, which is entirely undeserved, although it may have been true in the past. The yacht club here is very friendly, and aching to be more part of the international scene. The west coast cruising route has been pushing further and further south every year, to where now Ecuador is definitely on the circuit with a few nice yacht clubs and marinas. Peru would be next in line, and the yacht club in Callao is a safe place to leave the boat and go to Cuzco, Machu Picchu, and all that Peru has to offer. Chile got about seventy foreign yachts this year, I would guess Ecuador saw a couple hundred, and Peru has had four.
It’s not so hot for the locals either: Peru charges a luxery tax on yachts of five percent of the value of the boat anually. A lot of locals have their boat registered in the US or Ecuador.
So this will be Condesa’s home for the next few months. I’m shopping for plane tickets to come on home for the summer.
Safely In Callao, Peru
Clark June 23rd, 2007
My computer, and thus all communications, went down during the trip. I arrived last night and began the labyrinthine process of being one of only two or three foreign yachts that check into this port each year, and the first to ever do it without an agent. So far I’m pulling it off and saving some cash, mainly because they think I’m some sort of famous daredevil, a fiction encouraged by the yacht club manager, who’s been a saint by helping me through the process.
Shown the Door
Clark June 19th, 2007
June 19, 2007
17 degrees, 54′ South, 70 degrees, 55′ West
I’ve had to leave Chile hastily and now I’m about 200 miles offshore. The Port Captain called me in for a ’special meeting’ on Sunday to inform that I would probably have some serious problems in trying to extend my permit on Monday, and that it was probably best for all of us if I just left. We started the process of preparing my exit papers, which always takes them an hour or so. While I was sitting around the commanding officer’s office chatting, the subject of my voyage came up. As they always do, he asked me how I supported myself. I issued my pat answer, saying I was pretty much broke, but that I made a little extra money as a writer. He answered, “I know.”
Could it be that the Chilean Armada has honored us with its presence at www.condesa.org? Could it be that the Commander of the First Naval Region didn’t like reading that he had been promoted to the level of his own incompetence? I’ll never know for sure, but they seemed to want to be rid of me and with my expiring permit they had their means. It’s sort of like Hugo Chavez closing that TV station in Caracas: It’s not censorship; he’s just not renewing their license.
Oh well, I’d had two good nights sleep, filled the water tanks, got more food, and there wasn’t so much to do in Iquique anyway. Arica was the only remaining port in Chile, and once you’ve seen one port in the middle of the Atacama Desert you’ve seen them all.
The wind has been pretty light, and I’ve been slatting along at 3-4 knots with five sails up…can’t do that with a sloop. With a 650 mile passage to Lima, not enough fuel to motor the whole way anyway, and diesel at a buck a liter, I’m just living with going slow.
I tried to bake a strawberry cobbler out of these canned strawberries I’ve got, but it ended up looking like a pan full of head wound.
A Genuine Catch-22
Clark June 16th, 2007
June 15, 2007
Port of Iquique
20º12′ South, 70º09′ West
Catch-22 is a horrendously misused term. People often use it to mean ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t,’ but this is not what a Catch-22 is. I haven’t read the book in a long time, but I believe I’ve just had one that Joseph Heller would give his blessing.
My new passport was supposed to be sent from Santiago to the Chile Express office here in Iquique. The toils and frustrations to make this happen back in Santiago are too horrible to repeat in front of children, but suffice to say it actually worked and the passport was here waiting for me. After going to the wrong Chile Express office and waiting for the end of siesta, I finally got to the right place, paper in hand, and got in the right line. My turn came at the window, I presented my paper, and said I was there to pick up. The gentleman pulled my envelope from a cubbyhole, filled out some papers, and then asked me for something, which after asking him to repeat it several times I realized was a word for an ID card that I had never heard before (not ‘carnet’ or ‘cedula’ but some fascist Pinochet thing). When he figured out that I wasn’t Chilean (difficult because of my perfect accent) he asked for my passport. I told him that my passport was in the envelope. What a coincidence that the very thing he was asking for was the thing he was holding in his hand.
He repeated that I needed my passport or some such document to pick up such an important package. I told him again, ‘The passport is in the envelope you are holding.’ He got the girl from the next window, who looked at the paperwork and repeated that I needed to show identification…like my passport since I was a foreigner.
It isn’t so much that the rules or their interpretation are ridiculous, but when the person on the other side of the glass fails to see the ridiculousness and just stares listlessly it really makes me wonder.
I hadn’t slept in three days, I was a little slap happy, and I started to get the giggles. This happens to me sometimes after being extremely sleep deprived after a long passage and I just lose control, even when it’s totally inappropriate. This may be a little crazy, actually. I said, ‘Let’s take in steps: First, open the envelope. Second, look at the picture in the passport. Third, look at my face. If the picture looks like the face, I think we’re all done, no?’
‘We’re not allowed to open the packages.’
‘Then give me the package and I’ll open it and show you the picture.’
‘I can’t give you the package without your identification.’
Textbook Catch-22…put it in the Hall of Fame.
At this point the long line of people behind me were getting very antsy and starting to grumble. Usually when under pressure, like when in a fight, my Spanish fails me, but in this case I was able to get out fairly concisely, ‘He needs to see my passport to give me the package, but my passport is in the package and he won’t open it.’
‘Ahhh!’ The crowd was behind me and started saying the equivalent of, ‘Just open the stupid envelope, you bean counter!’
I was laughing out of control at this point. This must have been the funniest thing to happen in the Chile Express office all year, maybe ever. Ha ha. Me needed sleep. I thought the guy behind the window should have been laughing with me, and I think this is also an indicator of insanity, but we’ll leave that one for later. He wasn’t laughing, but was perplexed and deadpan.
I’ve had this nasty cough ever since Bariloche and my laugh soon turned into an uncontrollable coughing fit, so I had to keep giving him the sorry just a second hand signal over and over until I regained my composure.
I got it halfway together and told him to just look at the paper that I had brought from the Chile Express office inside the US Embassy. He looked at me like I might have stolen it from the real Clark Beek. ‘Compare the signatures!’ This seemed to work. I had to sign for the documents, he compared the signatures, but still wanted a higher-up to approve this horrible breach in protocol and the higher-ups were still out to lunch.
‘Look, slip it halfway through the window and we’ll open it together.’ (The gloves were off and the people in line were gasping and hissing and making wisecracks.)
He slipped it through and it wasn’t even an envelope. It was a plastic pouch with a little snap on it that he could have easily unsnapped just to take a little peek. All I had to do was undo the snap and out slid two passports, my good old one with a dozen visas and hundreds of stamps, now with several holes drilled through it, and my crisp new empty US passport. I showed him the picture of me at 9AM on a Monday morning in Santiago, sick and pissed off because I had to retake the photos because the photos I brought were 2mm too narrow.
The guy behind the window showed a moment of relief, then terror at coping with the angry mob.
My next Catch-22 will start tomorrow when my temporary import permit for Condesa expires, but the customs office doesn’t open until Monday. Do I stay and gamble they will renew it after it has expired, or run for Peru? There may be a man who can help me, but I have to meet him at 9AM at the end of the wharf. It will be foggy.
Condesa with wharf rats in Iquiqu
Oops
Clark June 13th, 2007
24º14′ South, 71º14′ West
Still charging north under every available bit of canvas, but I made an unpleasant discovery this afternoon. Condesa’s temporary import permit to Chile expires on the 16th, in three days. Most countries are pretty unforgiving on these matters, and the fine for exceeding the date is usually the price of the boat, or some some ridiculous amount. If they won’t extend it, and I get to Iquique on the 15th or 16th, and my new passport is there waiting for me, I could check in and check out of Chile on the same day, but that will make for a lot of solo sailing without a break. If they won’t extend it and my passport isn’t ready yet, I’ll be in a fine kettle of fish. I’m figuring I better play it safe and charge straight to Iquique no matter what, because any stop along the way would push me past the 16th for sure. They could give me an extension and I can relax, but the Armada de Chile hasn’t been exactly easy-going thus far. Soo, at least two more nights at sea, maybe three to Iquique.
I know I’ve said it before, but I think it might actually be getting warmer. It is certainly getting clearer: I’m forty miles offshore and the mountains look like I could touch them. I can see observatories on the mountaintops. There is legendary atmospheric clarity in this part of Chile and several countries have observatories. Last night was the first night without running the heater.
