Leaving Panama

Clark February 15th, 2008

To say I’m leaving Panama is a relative term. I’m officially checked out, but I probably won’t actually leave port until tomorrow. Then it will take a whole day to get down the river, then a night at Boca Chica, then a night out in the islands, then finally around Punta Burica into Costa Rica. So I won’t actually be leaving Panama for four days, but this is my last hurrah at the Internet cafe.

Since I’m officially checked out and it’s not likely that the officials visit this website, I can declare that they are corrupt theiving bastards! Actually the Port Captain’s office and Port Authority are on the up-and-up, fast, efficient, and friendly. The agricultural inspector, the immigration guy, and the customs guy are slime.

The agricultural guy asked me for $35, which I gave to him, then he gave me a receipt for $15. I balked and he made up some crap about another inspection and said he would give me a reciept if I had a piece of paper. He scrawled out a reciept on a piece of notebook paper which means nothing. He scammed me out of $20 and there’s no way I’m getting it back. So now I can tell the world: Santiago Ruiz is a bad man! He abuses his authority! I guess it’s not really corruption because corruption would mean he’s stealing money from the Panamanian people. The Panamanian people got their $15 bucks, but I lost another $20 that went into his pocket, so I guess it’s abuse of power to con and steal.

The immigration guy now has thousands of retired Americans living in the area so he’s ‘in business.’ He is famous for kicking people out of the immigration office for wearing shorts: You must be respectibly dressed to be in a government office. Meanwhile he is unshaven and usually wears a white, but yellowed, sweat stained, short sleeved polyester shirt.

I went into the immigration office at 4:30 one day, just before the office closed. He asked me what time I got into port and I stupidly said 7:00. Since this is outside of business hours he said I’d be charged overtime charges of $45, payable in cash to him, plus I’d have to go to the national bank and pay $10. There was a long standoff and he came back with the ubiquitous, ‘¿Que hacemos?’ This is Spanish for, ‘Show me the money and you’re done.’ Since I’m on a strict anticorruption policy, I said I’d go to the bank in the morning when it opened and see him afterwords. Funny thing, the next day when the office was packed with employees and visa applicants he didn’t mention that $45.

The customs guy has been scamming every boat for $20. I just said, ‘No, there’s no charge for customs. Never has been. I’m not paying.’ He was furious, but there was nothing he could do.

Sadly, Panama has been the most corrupt country I’ve visited in the world. It’s the only place I’ve ever paid an all-out bribe, $100 to a Port Captain eight years ago. In hindsight, I don’t know if I actually did anything wrong, but he’d confiscated our passports, arrested me, and alluded to confiscation of Condesa, plus he had a gun.

Some argue that a corrupt system is still a functional system, that it’s just our cultural bias that prevents us from accepting it as it is. Sorry, corruption is bad. It means jobs don’t get done and money doesn’t go where it’s supposed to. The victims and the Panamanian people suffer for it. I guess I’d be singing a different tune if I were buying myself out of some jail time, but strangely enough, I seem to usually be on the right side of the law in these situations.

Anatomy of a Broken Boom

Clark February 11th, 2008

Back at home most people would just pop into Beds, Booms, and Beyond to pick up a new boom, but here in the hinterlands we fix things, because we don’t have a choice. Not only do we save ourselves a little money, but we help reduce the growing problem of broken sailboat booms overflowing the nation’s landfills. Here’s how:

First, we break a boom. This was due to pure laziness: using a vang when I should have used a proper preventer. Idiot!

Note the boom, now disentangled from the main sail, lying on the side deck. The inboard stub is still attached to the main mast. Also note that with a ketch we’ve still got another boom back there, but we’re crippled and this situation must be tended to at the next opportunity. See the dark clouds in the background? That’s the remnants of the squall that got us.

After arrival in Nuqui the Bond Girls deserted me after the kidnappings and left me to my fate with the terrorists. It was time to get to work. I selected an appropriate piece of mangrove timber and transported it back to Condesa.

While the piece of mangrove was fairly round, I had to debark it and make it rounder.

Note the look of determination on my face. The plane and I were one. After several hours and many trials, the shape was getting close. It also made a big mess:

Finally it was finished and ready for a ‘compression fit.’ I had already carefully hacksawed off the daggy bits of aluminum on either side of the break.

While this repair is a triumph of ingenuity, if I do say so my self, it is only temporary. Wood doesn’t like damp enclosed spaces, and our mangrove probably started to rot the moment I stuck it in there.

After crossing the Gulf of Panama I made my way to David, Panama, where my old buddy Domenic has settled and has a shop:

Domenic is English, so henceforth we shall refer to the material from which my boom is constructed as aluminium, which is what Sir Humphry Davy decided to name it after he discovered it, so we Americans can just suck it up.

Domenic took over from here, starting by riveting a stout aluminium sleeve inside the two broken halves:

And after that he heliarc welded the break:

Kudos to Domenic. It’s probably stronger than before. Domenic also fixed my broken outboard in his shop. It turned out to be a seized piston ring. It’s good to have friends like Domenic, who work for beer and homemade enchiladas.

The boom is now back in place and ready to head out of Panama this week for Costa Rica and points north. By the way, I made it all the way up the river to David on pure memory from eight years ago, and didn’t run aground once. Hoping for a similar result on the way down.

If only Domenic could fix computers. Mine is now on it’s way to San Francisco via FedEx.

In Panama

Clark February 1st, 2008

The anchorage at Boca Chica, Panama:

After all that easy downwind sailing up the South American coast, I forgot how truly miserable an offshore passage can be. By 2AM on the second night I’d made a pact with myself to sell the boat and become a bean farmer. Such sentiments always drift away after a cold beer and a good night’s sleep.

I left Colombia, as planned, at 5AM. I intended this to be after a good night’s sleep, but I had a coffee late in the day-the only way to fire up any motivation in that sticky heat-and ended up cleaning the boat at 1AM and only getting a few hours sleep. There was not a breath of wind and I was actually feeling guilty about burning so much fuel. Ha ha. No wind didn’t mean calm though: It was horribly rough and lumpy. It was rough and lumpy with no wind eight years ago too, so I can only conclude with my sample size of two days that the Gulf of Panama is always like that. Anyway, they were the kind of conditions that make people seasick who don’t get seasick-violent rail-to-rail rolls all day long.

Then the wind came up and started to howl. It turns out that strong offshore winds are the norm for Panama in January and February, but I didn’t know this before I set out. They were exactly like our Southern Californian Santa Ana winds: hot, dry, strong, and gusty. Of course they were right on the nose with the continued violent seas. I suffered through the first night of this, not getting a wink of sleep. If I could have thrown in the towel and reached off to somehwere-anywhere-I would have, but my options were the Galapagos or Isla de Coco, both many hundreds of miles away. So I had to keep closehauled and pounding into it.

I slogged upwind with the sails reefed down to nothing, the first time I’d reefed since the Roaring Forties. I’ll spare you all the horrible things that happened to me, but some highlights are: A) scalding very sesitive parts of my body (solo in the tropics-why wear clothes?) when the coffee pot jumped off the stove. B) Having the fish cleaning board fall on my foot…still bruised. and C) Well into my second sleepless night, and after not getting but a couple hours the night before I left, the sleep situation was getting desperate. I finally found that the only place on the entire boat that held any hope of sleep was on the floor in the aft cabin. I put a camping pad, a sheet, and my pillow there, along with the requisite Casio alarm clock, set to go off at 15 minute intervals. By the way, I don’t need to hear the sound of that Casio alarm clock again for the rest of my life. The next alarm clock I get is going to have a selection of different alarm noises, one of them perhaps being a sexy woman’s voice saying, ‘Clark, please wake up.’ Anyway, at this point I was pretty close to Panama and was just motoring straight into it for the last 30 miles. I’d opened one porthole to get some ventilation when the boat rolled hard to port, scooped about a thousand gallons of seawater into the scuppers, then deposited much of it on my sheet, my pad, my pillow, and the one place on the entire boat that held any hope of getting any sleep. I took it with maturity and grace: ‘Evil God! Why hath thou forsaken me!’ By then I was getting into the shipping lanes from the Panama Canal and decided I shouldn’t be sleeping anyway.

I finally made my landfall in the wee hours at Punta Guanaco, a horrible, rough anchorage, but I didn’t care. I slept for five hours somehow, woke up to a violently rolling boat, and couldn’t go back to sleep. I sailed her another ten miles to the east to Banao, where there was a very protected anchorage and a great surf break. I slept, I ate, I surfed great waves and talked surf talk with the locals.

When I was walking back up the beach after surfing I looked out at Condesa and she looked unmistakably small. I stopped in my tracks, looked at her, and thought geeze, I just sailed across 200 miles of storm-wracked ocean in that little thing? And then I imagined what I must have looked like, a hundred miles from land in the middle of the night, up on deck bathed in the spreader lights-the only light for a long way around-struggling to reef the main, getting slammed by waves and spray. Amazing little machines, these cruising sailboats.

The next few days were halcyon cruising, although those offshore winds turned into some violent williwaws close to shore and some of the big gusts were about as much wind as Condesa has ever seen. I took three days to western Panama, stopping at a perfect anchorage every night. This is definitely the season for Panama with these dry conditions. It isn’t the wet and rainy Central America I remember, but a dry, clear place with visibility over 50 miles. And a strong contrast to Colombia, which was dank.

As I neared my final destination a huge helicopter came out of nowhere with a giant TV camera hanging out the side, flew a couple circles around me, waved, and flew off. Am I going to be on the Panamanian evening news?

I was into my old stomping grounds from eight years ago and pulled into Boca Chica, where eight years ago it would have been a surprise to see another boat. Now there are twelve! And two resorts. And Frank’s place, which used to be a very basic backpacker’s affair, is now a triple-level place with flashing lights everywhere. Frank hasn’t changed a bit, still a rude, mean krout, only grumpier from another eight years of dealing with customers, whom he obviously hates.

Now I’ve had two good nights at a mill pond anchorage and socialized a bit with the cruising set, which is strange since I’ve grown accustomed to having a whole country to myself. But today I was getting ready for my foray into to town when I went into the aft cabin to get some clothes. Normally I never go back there unless I’ve got guests. There was still the remnants of my wet hamster nest from the passage, a quick flashback to the misery I have now so willingly forgotten.

My computer woes are still dire, but I can publish some of the photos that are still on the cameras:

We were warned about the evil pirates and terrorists on the Colombian coast. Here’s proof:

Here’s the broken main boom off Cabo Corrientes, Colombia:

Leaving Colombia

Clark January 24th, 2008

I’m going to get a very early start tomorrow morning, hoping to make it to western Panama with just one sleepless night…not a good part of the world to be napping in the cockpit with all those ships barreling out of the Panama Canal. Worry not! With my computers dead I won’t have Sailmail, so it could be a week or so until I’m back online. Looking forward to hitting some of my favorite spots from oh so many years ago when I passed this way.

Pacific Colombia

Clark January 23rd, 2008

It’s been a long time, and for good reason. This is a long one, in the style of the old Condesa emails before the blog.

At the moment I am in Bahia Solano, a little town on the Pacific coast of Colombia.

Nobody sails to the Pacific coast of Colombia.

For many years sailors gave this area a wide berth, like 300 miles, because of guerilla, paramilitary, narcotraficking, and pirate activity. But I asked the question, is this still the case? What if it isn’t, and like Peru, this coast of Colombia suffers from a bad rap that is well out of date? After much consultation with the Colombian consulate in Guayaquil, we decided to be the first cruising sailboat to visit in a long time. The consulate affirmed that these waters are some of the most patrolled in the world and that Condesa would be safe. Hmm.

At the moment I am under martial law because the FARC (Fuerza Armada Revolucionario de Colombia) just kidnapped six tourists on the beach, a Norwegian and five Colombians. According to the Comandante of the National Police, who I hang out with sometimes, the gringo on the yacht would have been a much more attractive hostage, but the FARC are jungle-dwelling terrorists and didn’t have a boat to come get me. The people were abducted when they landed on the beach in the nearby national park in, guess what?, a boat. The air is abuzz with helicopters and C-130’s all searching the area because the terrorists and hostages, on foot, must still lie within a 10-20 mile radius, but it’s easy to hide in the rainforest.

To digress, in a crash jibe I broke my main boom, which is now splinted with a piece of mangrove timber. My outboard is dead so I have to paddle the windsurfer board a mile through bull shark and crocodile-infested waters to get to shore. I couldn’t get any paper charts for this coastline-because nobody cruises here-but I figured with my computer and chart software, and a backup computer with chart software, I’d be OK. Both computers died the same day: What are the chances of that? There are no banks or ATM machines here-there are no roads to this part of Colombia, only bugsmasher and boat access-so I have $40 to get me out of Colombia and across the Gulf of Panama. And on top of that, I’m now all alone. My three Bond Girls (more on them later) flew out on Friday along with the mad rush to evacuate the area after the kidnappings. There were only about 15 tourists here anyway, and now that they’re gone-along with the region’s fledgling ecotourism industry-I am the only one.

Sitting duck, you might say? Just the contrary. This is probably the safest possible time to be here. They’ve already got six hostages and the heat is on them. There’s no way they’d go for another with the mass military mobilization to the region. So I get to enjoy my rock star status as the only tourist, the first sailboat anyone can remember (somebody said there was a Quebequois about 3 years ago), and the guy who can surf a windsurfer board over half a mile through the break to get ashore. Today I got to hold an Israeli-made assault rifle, remove and replace the banana clip, and try on a Kevlar vest. Too bad no pictures allowed. For all the activity the military guys are really laid back and friendly, as is everyone around here.

This place is as beautiful as Kauai or Costa Rica. The stark contrast between rich and poor, so evident in most of Latin America, is absent here. Everyone is poor in pure economic terms, but rich in natural beauty and the bounty of nature. Thus, these are some of the happiest, friendliest communities I’ve ever visited. Not even kidnappings and terrorists can dampen their spirits. The population is about 90% black, descended from slaves, and 10% indigenous, whose women still run around bare-breasted, even in the heart of the town. When it cools off in the afternoon everyone comes into the street to chat and play games. Bingo and card games are popular, but they also play all manner of board games, many of which I haven’t seen since the ’70’s: Parchesi, Chinese checkers, and Trouble!

Now that my boom is fixed, I’ll probably get my exit papers in the next day or so and head on to Panama. Even though I don’t feel particularly threatened, it’s a little unnerving that everyone I hold a conversation with is fingering an assault rifle.

To backtrack, a lot, Condesa left Lima in the beginning of December with the first Bond Girl, Jimena, codename Bianca, my better half, Peruvian scholar trained in self defense, diplomacy, knitting. We took a week to make it up the Peruvian coast, stopping in small villages to eat fabulous seafood. It was freezing cold-like wool hats and boots at night with the diesel heater running-until we rounded Cabo Blanco where everything changed. Cabo Blanco is the westernmost point of South America, or thereabouts, and the warm equatorial currents start to be felt. In one hour we went from the cold conditions we had known to the balmy tropics. Condesa spent the next month bouncing back and forth between Mancora and Organos, two of the hippest beaches in South America.

Enter the other Bond Girls: Edulia (who I met a few years ago trekking in India), codename Random Task, French lesbian trained in martial arts, foreign languages, runway modeling…fiercely attached and will die for the love of Benedicte, codename Viper, L’Oreal model, weapons expert. The two are openly affectionate lipstick lesbians, very sweet (when not engaged in mission critical combat) and the two of them are beautiful together. Final Bond Girl, Josefa, codename Natalia, Peruvian 20-year-old swimsuit model and explosives expert. Together they formed the Condesa crew, and I was their captain. Median age, 21. Oldest of them, Edulia, 24. I did my morning inspections to make sure the Glocks were securely strapped to their thighs and not interfering with the cuts of their bikinis, that the dive knives were properly strapped to their ankles, and that spearguns, surfboards and any other superfluous weaponry was carried properly.

It was my finest hour and I was at the height of my powers. Jaws would literally drop as hundreds of world travelers looked on as we motored in from the lone yacht and my four perfect 10 Bond Girls jumped out in the surf to carry the dinghy up the beach. Men followed us, just hoping to pick up the scraps, not knowing they are really barking up the wrong tree with the gay French girls. Such would be life for Christmas, New Years, and the height of the Peruvian summer.

Keep in mind that just eight months ago I was by myself in the Chilean channels with ice in my beard. We also got robbed: When Jimena and I were ferrying water bottles and belongings down the beach for a dinghy launch late at night, somebody nabbed the dry bag with mobile phones, Ipod, wallets, clothes, memory stick, sunglasses, all kinds of stuff. It cramped my style for the next few weeks while I got a new debit card sent from the US. Thank God I keep some cash on Condesa for just such emergencies. Usually it’s $500, but it was $260 in this case, enough to live, but not live it up. Such ups and downs in this life.

After New Years Condesa sailed for Salinas in Ecuador, where the officials were abusive and rude. I filed a written complaint against the customs guy who sexually harassed the girls, but the health inspector was the worst, harassing me for everything from the way Condesa was tied up to having expired medicines in my surgical kit. This has been a running theme lately: The Port Captain wouldn’t let us leave Lima because I didn’t have a captain’s license (we don’t need them for recreational boats in the US). He actually suggested I stay there and study to get a Peruvian captain’s license before I could leave.

Once stocked up and having done our research, we fled the bureaucracy of Ecuador and made a beeline for Tumaco, our port of entry into Colombia. Enroute we crossed the equator and the three girls went from being pollywogs to shellbacks, and I initiated them accordingly. With my computers dead I can’t publish any photos, but imagine a photo of three dripping wet, pretty young girls who had been force fed Champaign and Tequila, baptized with seawater, covered in smashed eggs and flour, and holding a sign that says ‘Shellbacks!, January 10, 2008.’

Speaking of milestones, January 10th marked nine years since Condesa left Balboa Island, AND on this same day I crossed my path at Isla de la Plata, thus completing my circumnavigation. I have now officially sailed around the world, with all rights and privileges appertaining. I may now piss into the wind, and put my feet on the table in the British officer’s mess. How about that, nine years, completing my circumnavigation, and crossing the equator, all on the same day?

We’d heard Tumaco was kind of a dowdy town, but our first entree to Colombia was a pleasant surprise. We were the first sailboat anyone could remember, so we were quite the novelty. Whole families came to see us down at the wharf, where we were tied alongside a rusty freighter. Unfortunately we had to use an agent to check in, and this set us back $150, but it got us in and out in one day so we could charge to our next destination, Isla Gorgona.

Isla Gorgona is a national park, lying about thirty miles offshore. It is tropical and wild, and was home to a prison hosting 2000 of Colombia’s most notorious criminals until it got park status in 1984. But to us it was still somewhat of a prison and we would soon call it Fascist Island. Part of the park’s operations had been turned over to a private concession, and everything cost money. We didn’t even have what they were asking of us, so in the end they cut us a deal, but it still ended up being the most expensive place to anchor a boat on earth. With park entry fees and nightly fees for each of us, it ended up being about $70 per night. Then we had to pay extra to go on walks with mandatory guides, or even to go snorkeling. We saw a big boa constrictor coiled in the grass.

From there we charged to Nuqui, snapped the main boom in a storm, yada yada, wrapped the genoa around the headstay, yelled and screamed in the driving rain, and limped on under reduced canvas. It’s not the first time.

When we were struggling to anchor in the dark with no charts in Nuqui, after almost running aground, a fast boat full of men bristling with assault rifles charged up next to us in a cloud of outboard smoke. I thought, ‘This is it,’ but it turned out they were Colombian Coast Guard, and after some initial bluster were very helpful and said we could call them on the radio for instant help, day or night.

The girls flew out the next day, and were lucky to squeeze on the planes. I sort of fell in love with little Nuqui…everyone was so curious and friendly. Hanging out in the Internet cafe, whose owner, Heller, is a peach, I also got to know the Comandante, who gave me his mobile number in case I ever had any problems.

The next day I went down to the wharf where I’d tied the dinghy up before it died. The wharf is also home to a military checkpoint that checks all traffic going up and down the river. I dare anyone to steal a dinghy tied up there. I DEFY anyone to so much a lay a finger on a dinghy tied up there. I wanted to get a photo of the ten soldiers with assault rifles guarding the wharf, but alas, no photos of any military stuff allowed…and you don’t want to argue with a guy with a loaded assault rifle. I was hanging around talking to the guys-they mostly want English lessons-when they all screamed, dove for their weapons, and ran for cover. Once again I thought, ‘Oh shit, this is really it,’ but it turns out they were all scrambling to get into full battle dress because the lieutenant was coming. He showed up and it was that lieutenant, my friend from the Internet cafe. All he ever wants to talk about is the girls, and like all men in South America, he was devastated to find out that the French girls were gay.

I set sail solo from Nuqui for Bahia Solano and poked my nose into Ensenada de Utria, the very place where the kidnappings took place. The national park is temporarily closed, of course, and for good reason since the guerillas and their hostages are still in the area, but in better times this inlet would be the absolute primo highlight of the whole Colombian coast: Ensenada de Utria is a perfectly-protected anchorage, several miles deep, which would put a cruising yacht in the heart of a national park of primary growth rainforest, just spitting distance from an amazing diversity of flora and fauna. The sounds at night at anchor must be amazing. So tauntingly close, yet dangerously out of reach. Alas, perhaps in another life.

The latest terrorist activity will probably scare the tourists away from the Pacific coast of Colombia for another ten years. It’s kind of nice to know this place is the way it is. In another fifty years the terrorists could be gone and this could be the next Costa Rica. In the interim there are no roads, so no logging or deforestation. These tiny towns are served only by tramp steamer and the occasional prop plane, and the pace of life is slow and easy. Nonetheless, a little voice in the back of my head is telling me to GET THE HELL OUT, before something bad happens.

Surfing the Andes

Clark December 24th, 2007

I’m a little behind. I’m actually in northern Peru with Condesa, but I’ve been away from Internet for a few weeks so we’ll backtrack a bit.

My friend Tony flew down from California to take a surf trip on Condesa, but everyone cautioned us against the dangers of an exploration of northern Peru by sea. In the end we rented the Pride of Callao, a Nissan Sentra, and put almost 2000 km on it.

The northernmost point of our trip was the legendary Chicama, supposedly the longest wave in the world. We caught it great for two days, with our hotel room’s balcony overlooking the break. Even when we weren’t surfing it, we were always watching it…mesmerizing.

Peru is a dry and desolate country west of the Andes. Most of what we drove through was sand dunes, like where you could just wander off and die of thirst. Occasionally the desert was puncuated with Israeli-style agricultural projects, where they were turning the desert into green. My favorite visual part of the trip was the northern Peru Conduit Project. I liked to think it was some mad artist, like Cristo, who had strung this stuff for hundreds of kilometers, but I think they’re going to run fiber optic cables.

Tony sprained his toe and we were aching for a change of scenery, so we decided to head up into the Andes to Huaraz. The map didn’t show that this involved crossing a 14,400 foot pass, higher than the highest point in the continental US. Of course we did this in the middle of the night. The damage to the Pride of Lima was less than $100, which is amazing since we bottomed her out over 200 times and high-centered her twice.

Zen mind, beginner’s mind, birdshit mind

Clark November 27th, 2007

Fragile

Clark November 14th, 2007

Feeling a bit better. I’m still sleeping about 15 hours a day and feeling fragile, but seem to be on the mend. Now I have my loyal manservant John (not Juan, but John) to do all the heavy lifting: he scrubs, he pushes the shopping cart, and right now he’s cleaning the bottom of the boat. I’m embarassed to say how little I pay him per day, but he seems delighted, and he’s supporting a family of four. The bird shit situation is just too dire to take on alone.

We brought her into the dock for a whole day of scrubbing, and this at least got off all the loose stuff and cut down the smell. At to the permanent cement, I’m still at a loss. I thought I was onto something with the vinegar (I bought 3 gallons) but after leaving vinegar-soaked towels on deck overnight it only partially softens it. I’m pinning my hopes on a product called Disolve-It, made by Bird Barrier, but I have yet to hear back from the manufacturer.

Bad to Worse

Clark November 11th, 2007

My first meal in Peru gave me food poisoning. Bad Pollo a la Brasa!

I’ve had a 103 fever, and other associated symptoms of food poisoning, all weekend. In my delerium the birds were pecking around on deck just above my head and I kept hallucinating that they were pecking me. Also, in a bizarre electronic anomoly, the stereo kept turning itself on and off at intervals with Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief coming on and off at low volume. I thought I was hearing things, but it turns out it was real. Some of the songs on that album are dark, really dark.

My fever broke midday today, but I’m still weak. I’ve reserved a slot at the dock tomorrow for assisted bird shit removal, but the prognosis is bleak. It just won’t come off.

That was, without contest, the worst weekend of my life.

Back In Lima/Condesa Turns 40

Clark November 9th, 2007

I thought the worst thing that could happen to me today was over when I cleared security at LAX. The shoreboat took me out to Condesa to find her covered in bird shit! I didn’t know this kind of thing was even possible. It’s a tour de force of bird shit…like enough to fertilize a square acre.
It took me three hours just to clean the cockpit and side deck so I could pass from shoreboat, through the cockpit, and into the boat without tracking it everywhere. It’s like half an inch thick, reinforced with thousands of feathers, and requires a chisel, rather than a scrub brush, to get it off. I went to get my bucket off the aft deck to start cleaning operations, and look what was inside:
Ha! One point for our side! Of course I was trying to keep the birds off while I was cleaning, yelling at them and banging the lifelines with a stick, as if keeping a couple more birds off will make any difference at this point. It’s really serious. This stuff is like cement. It won’t clean off, even after letting it soak for an hour. I’ll be surfing the Internet for the magic bullet…vinegar maybe?
A sorry state for Condesa’s 40th birthday: She was launched from Essex, England forty years ago this month. As you can imagine, it doesn’t smell too hot either…and the flies.

« Prev – Next »