We left on a “Bucket List dream trip” since my last EOY letter.
In mid summer last year, we were talking about a trip to Alaska with a travel agent, but by then the extremely small window for non-snowing in Alaska was almost closed. While talking to the AAA travel agent, I casually mentioned that the Panama Canal would be OK. So it was with great expectations that we signed on.
On 22 November 2015, we boarded Ruby Princess in POLA for a dream trip through the Panama Canal and what a dream it was.
So off we went with two days at sea to Cabo San Lucas. We both had been to Cabo many times so it was almost like going back to Cleveland only with mariachis and cervesa Pacifico. Well not really. We had to make the obligatory trek to The Giggling Marlin and Squid Roe and like all good sailors, walk around town. I bought a cigar and could smoke it anywhere. Life was good. Next, another two days to Nicaragua . Along the way, we had our Thanksgiving celebration while under way. Not a bad way, I must say, to spend the traditional eat until you drop off into slumber day on a cruise ship.
We pulled into San Juan del Sur a somewhat small, for a hundred thousand plus ton cruise ship, bay and anchored. After anchoring, the captain got on the 1MC and announced that the weather was too rough to lighter folks to the town pier, so off we went to Costa Rica which we really liked. We took a tour bus high in the mountains to a rain forest. As an aside, I have now reached the age where I no longer scoff at the codgers who take a tour bus instead of hitch hiking to parts unknown. I am actually very comfortable with it. After the rain forest, we lunched at a waterfront bistro in Punta Arenas . Fresh fish and Costa Rican beer made the day complete.
Next we transited “the Canal”. This has been a bucket list item for me even before the term bucket list was invented. Back in Ft Lauderdale we went to the Everglades to ride an airboat and shoot some alligators, with a camera that is.
In 2016, Jamie had her cataracts removed in February. The good news is that she has excellent vision. The bad news is that she has excellent vision. She can spot me walking around with my fly open and see me stuffing a bottle of rum under my shirt at Trader Joes.
Also in February of 2016 we drove to Houma Louisiana Louisiana you better go hungry because those folks eat up a storm and it’s all good. We stayed at a La Quinta and visited the Gulf of Mexico and other nice places on the weekends.
In March, we flew down to Loreto BCS to go to Bahia San Ignacio to view and pet the baby Gray Whales. We first stayed at the La Mision Hotel on our birthday. Third floor room overlooking the beach. It was like heaven and you didn’t have to die to get there. After two days there, we took a van to the Bahia stopping on the way at Santa Rosilita for lunch. More about Santa Rosalia later. We spent three days there in semi-caveman style. The “cottages” had no electricity and the outhouse was far enough away to severely think about getting up at 0200, two AM. The food was fairly simple Mexican fare, but good. There was a no-host bar with plenty of tequila and cerveza so the stay was most tolerable. After two and a half days at the whale camp, we went to the town of San Ignacio to sleep in warm beds and eat warm food and drink cold beer. All of which we had at the whale camp but it is a very nice little town. Next we took the van back to Loreto and stopped at Mulege for lunch and more cerveza. Upon returning to Loreto, we stayed a few days in the Oasis Hotel on the beach on the south side of town.
For the last twenty five years, or so, after making a trip down to La Paz to bring a 70 foot power boat back to Long Beach I started talking about retiring in La Paz. It was a smallish town with paved streets, running water, telephone service and electricity. All of which were on my must have list. But that was in 1987 after a few more trips down to La Paz to bring other boats back “up the hill” I started to notice changes in the place. In about 2011, Andy May and I drove his Dodge pickup truck down to la Paz with a Boston Whaler in tow on a trailer. By then, La Paz was no longer that cute little town in Baja. It had a Home Depot, a Walmart and a Burger King Etc. Etc. all of the things that I want to get away from.
In Loreto, we were walking down the street right on the Sea of Cortez Long Beach and there wasn’t two seats on an airplane available for quite awhile.
So what did we do, you may ask. Simple, we took a bus. If you have never taken a 600 mile bus ride on a Mexican bus through Baja, you really haven’t tried some of the finer thrills in life. The trip took about sixteen hours through the night and made stops every mile, or so. There are about a dozen federal checkpoints between Loreto and Tijuana and everyone has to get off of the bus no matter what time it is. My personal highlight was the bus station tacos at 2 AM. Emm good. From TJ to LB is a walk in the park, figuratively speaking. Van to the border. The red Tijuana trolley to downtown san Diego and then an Amtrak to Fullerton station. A nice Uber ride to the marina and we were finally home.
Three weeks later we flew back down to Loreto for a week to take care of details like mail, telephone service, water and a dozen other mundane issues. We, now as old Mexico hands, got along like natives. We stayed at the Oasis Hotel while there and this time flew back.
In May, after thirty four years in the same slip on Gangway 33, we moved into a new slip on Dock 10. When I say new slip, I literally mean new slip. The marina has been undergoing a renovation project for the last five years and we were forced to move because as of right now there is no more gangway 33. The dock is gone and the pilings are being pulled out after sixty one years of being stuck in the bottom. The new slips are made of concrete, no more splinters, this is very good because we can now scurry around barefooted. We are also away from that filthy shipyard which also raises the quality of our lives.
If it’s May this must be Alaska . We flew up to my old hometown of Seattle . I say hometown because Waddell was built in Seattle by Todd Shipyard and I was transferred off of the aircraft carrier Constellation in February of 1964 and moved to Seattle as part of the precom crew. In fifty years, the old town has changed. We boarded Coral Princess at Pier 91 the old Navy Supply Center Ketchikan . In Ketchikan , we took a tour of the town by land and water in an oversized duck truck.
We got underway that evening and early in the next morning we were in a fjord. The ship got amazingly close to a glacier and small icebergs were floating all around us. These cruise boats have triple bowthrusters and three more thrusters aft and can go sideways if needed. The fjord provided quite a show. Next was Juneau . Juneau is the capitol of Alaska and the second largest city in the USA by area. Sitka is the largest and the largest outside of Alaska is Jacksonville FL Juneau we took a tram up another mountain and enjoyed one hell of a view. After Juneau came Skagway where we took a train up through some of the most harrowing in North America . The distance that we traveled in an hour on the train took prospective gold miners months to travel by foot with pack animals. As we rounded a bend and I looked up a cliff there was another train in front of us precariously on a cut in the side of the mountain. I said to myself dear God please tell me that isn’t that way we are going. But it was and ten minutes later we were right there clinging to the side of that mountain. Just past the summit, the train stopped and decoupled the locomotives that were shunted around us and recoupled on what now was the front of the train for our ride home down that same damned mountain
By now, I was starting to overload on Alaska . The real reason that I went is that I had been in all of the 48 contiguous states and Hawaii with Alaska as the only holdout. I had to visit Alaska to make it a clean sweep. By now, I was starting to long for some California sunshine but we had one more, albeit a brief one, stop which was Victoria BC. We stopped in Victoria on Waddell back in 1964 on our way to our new home port of Long Beach
In early May, Cassy who is Ed’s wife came down from Berkeley where she is enrolled in the UCB law school. She was here to be a summer associate which I still think of as an internship. Cassy stayed with us on Phase II for a week, or two. I think that the daily commute to downtown LA was too grueling for her so she ended up staying at various Air B&Bs in LA.
In July, we finally got a chance to stir up the coffee grounds and leave the slip. I won’t bore you any more with the mundane trials and tribulations of converting from having a schooner for over thirty five years to going over to the dark side. We finally made it to the Isthmus at Catalina. After four days of lying about with a chilled drink in one’s hand we had to get back to that sucky of all things reality. On the darkside, in a power boat all one needs to do to go from point A to point B is twist a key and point to the desired destination. After turning the key and pressing the START button, I was startled with the deafening sound of silence. OK, we’ll try the other engine. After all, we do have two of them. More silence. As you may, or may not, know my life’s motto is I don’t believe in luck. But I do rely on it. Having said that, the very next thing that I did was stare out the door and on the very next mooring was another power boat getting a jump start from Relief Valve the Avalon based Vessel Assist boat. I asked the guy on RV for a jump start so he came over to us when he was done next door. We got the two engines fired up and hightailed it for Long Beach at eight knots. An hour and a half out of Two Harbors, the starboard engine shut down so we pressed on at six and a half knots which added maybe an extra half hour to our trip. As we approached the marina, I wondered how well I could put this big boat into the slip with only one engine. Maneuvering a twin engine boat is a chinch, once you get the hang of it. You can turn the boat in it’s own length. If you want to turn to the left, you put the starboard engine forward and the port engine in reverse. I thought about how I’d been putting sailboats with one engine into slips for fifty years and nothing has really changed. The Whaler was tied in the front of the slip and I stuck Phase II into the slip without even touching Sadie Maru, the Whaler. FYI, it was so rough out on the way back that whatever water that was in the bottom of the tanks got stirred up and was spun out in the Raycors. The starboard had more water and once it’s filter is 100% water, no more engine. All is well once again. Filters replaced and fuel systems purged all systems are Go. Later in July Cassy was made an offer by the downtown LA law firm where she had her summer job. She then started talking about getting a sailboat. Jamie had an old high school friend who is a somewhat shellshocked Vietnam vet who wanted to emigrate to Oregon . He was selling his Airstream trailer and had a thirty foot Newport sloop the he wanted to unload fast. He shot Cassy a very good price and wham bam, she bought it. Subject to the usual sea trial(s) etc. She is an aspiring lawyer after all. Everything looked good so off we went to the yard for a haulout and survey. While on the hard, she had the bottom painted and the hull and transom painted. On the transom, she wanted white and the hull seafoam green. Many years ago, a very old salt told me that the only proper colors for a boat’s hull was white and dark blue and only a damned fool would paint it blue. She also had the name changed to Coeur de pirate. So much for tradition on the sea. The boat is berthed in Wilmington and she is delighted with it.
Maybe soon we can go to the Isthmus where I can drink my Green Label each day.
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