Copper Canyon side trip

4/4/10 Easter. Rebirth. Spring. Long days coming back to us… At anchor, at the south end of Espiritu Santos. “Saints’ Spirit Island,” in keeping with the Esater theme, I guess. Calm water like a black mirror tonight, reflecting the stars. Capital “S,” Stars! I don’t want to take this view of them for granted, no matter how often it repeats. Piano solo music on the stereo, a glass of brandy and grand marnier in hand, this moment too beautiful to not appreciate it, to not share…so i write it to you. What is it that resonates in us when we behold beauty? Staring at this canopy of stars, i feel like i am inside a belly, lookin’ out.

As i hesitantly get ready to depart the Sea of Cortez, to start the next leg of this journey and head south, i can’t help wishing you were here, or had been here at some point. Yes, you. These notes will have to be our sharing.

There is some sort of vortex around civilization. It can offer lots of comfort and entertainment. Re-entering it intimidates me a little, but once there, it’s hard to leave. This highlights for me the state of transition that i sometimes forget i live in.
There’s so much to catch up with in a city - on the internet, shopping for food, repairs to make, maintenance to do, bills to pay, details and planning…i feel totally scattered. Get a little depressed. There was a “cocktail hour” on the dock every night this time. It’s a good time to listen to other peoples’ experiences and get some tips about what lays ahead. Hopefully i find a few social graces still intact.

Alone out there, i don’t get to witness “us” as a species. You know how you don’t notice the way someone grows up or changes when you live with them daily but if you see them only once in a long while their changes are more pronounced to you? Arriving “back” among “us,” I marvel at our potentials, despite the fact that we mostly fail them miserably. I recognize something in us that is sacred. I feel the Asian greeting of “namaste’.” Whatever this is, i don’t think we are the only inheritors of it. Something profound about presence, as a whole and individually. Some wonder about existence itself. From these sentences i delete the word “our”, for i don’t believe what i am witnessing can be owned. This presence and existence are so transient, and much bigger than us.

I met another solo sailor. It kind of scared me ‘cuz i don’t want to get that tightly wound. Almost cramped. Not that i have to do it the same way, but i recognized in this other person a potential i don’t want, perhaps a risk that is inherent in being independent too much. Almost a sales pitch on one’s self that “i’m okay alone, i’m okay alone….” This person rhetorically asked, “Isn’t it great?” and didn't wait for an answer. In my head i was replying, “Sometimes, yes. Truly a privilege. Sometimes, no, not at all.”

A breeze is coming up, the water’s reflecting is falling apart, as are my thoughts. Goodnight, may you sleep well and sail thru your day tomorrow too.

4/6/10 100 nautical miles to Topolobampo, crossing from Baja to the mainland, an overnite passage that turned surreal. Actually Akimbo and i mostly motored thru flat calm until near dusk. Then i unrolled the genoa, and catnapped a half hour at a time. I would wake up and check to see if we could close with another boat or land mass within the next half hour, and then try to sleep more.

How do i do that? I depend on the radar. Realizing that some boats out there won’t present a good radar target, it’s a fragile dependence. Let’s see, if i am going 6 knots, and another boat is dead ahead on the opposite course at 10 to 15 knots, we could close on each other as fast as 21 knots max (remember these math classes?). So in half an hour our combined distance covered would be 10.5 nautical miles. If i have the radar set at a twelve nm range and nothing is on it, i should be able to take my nap safely. If i set the range at 24 miles i could nap for an hour, but i trust the radar a little more at lower ranges.

So one time i get up and, groggy, coming out of the companionway, i see something bright behind the genoa. The moon? A shooting star? A fishing boat’s work lights? Or was that the last of a flare? I look at the radar and see nothing. I write down the time and our latitude and longitude. I listen to the radio. I head in that approximate direction, hoping i’m not heading into a trap (what a strange thought!). On the vhf radio i hear someone say “mayday,” albeit tentatively. I answer and he replies in English. He’s on shore and saw it too and is asking if anybody is in trouble out here. I tell him i’m not far away and am en route, and ask him to inform the Mexican navy, since he speaks Spanish and my radio is farther from them, i tell him the lat and lon and that i will call out if i find anyone. After an hour, finding and hearing nothing more, i go back on course. Was it a false alarm? There are many. Or someone fooling around? No one seems to know.

I spend much of the night reducing sail to slow down, so i won’t arrive at the channel in the dark. I get up from a nap and on deck i hear what i’m guessing are a lot of small fish on the surface, sort of a snapping sound all around, like raindrops falling on water. I go to the transom (that’s the back of the boat) and look but see nothing… Suddenly a bright light just under the water’s surface start’s swinging in circles, like a siren’s light. “What the…?!” Startled, confused, i look at the depth sounder: 136 feet. WHAT is down there? A ship wreck? Some sort of underwater buoy i’ve never heard of and isn’t on the charts? What?! Again i write down our lat and lon. The next day i can’t find my fancy Nu-flare flashlight. In my grogginess did i not know that i dropped it? And salt water leaking into it conducted the current from its batteries to turn it on? I still think i might find it on board, but it’s the only explanation i can come up with.

Topolobampo channel is long and bordered by shoals with breaking waves on either side, but it’s wide and well marked. Still, i’m glad we didn’t attempt it in the dark. Once in, the harbor seems like very good shelter. I’m told that there aren’t many anchorages to hide from hurricane’s in the Sea of Cortez, but i disagree. This seems like it could be one. Palmira’s marina here is cheap, but it should be because they are too new to offer much service. It’s mostly a construction site at this point.
You know how you just want to get out of the house sometimes? Go for a walk, stretch your legs, get a little fresh air and clear your head? Even tho my “house” sails and offers lots of time outdoors, this trip to the Copper Canyon feels like a timely version of “getting out of the house” for me.

4/7/10 After securing Akimbo at the docks, i caught a cab to a hotel near the train station in Las Mochis. Walked to the station, bought my ticket to visit Copper Canyon for a week and then took a long walk downtown. Next morning at 6 i caught El Chepe, as the train is named. The ride to Creel is 9 hours, probably averages 25 mph and the scenery gets progressively better. On board I met Dick and Sharon from a neighboring boat in the marina and joined them for breakfast in the dining car. They kindly loaned me their guide book and i made notes. A relaxing day, and rewarding change of scenery from sea level to over 7000 feet. Not being part of anyone’s tour, i’ve come up with a plan. Tomorrow i’ll rent a scooter and explore this part of the canyon on my own. The next day i’ll catch El Chepe on the way back, stopping at two more towns for two nights each.

My friends, Rose and Jani from the good sloop Lovely Lady happen to be in Creel at the same time, along with two yachting friends they’ve made. We meet for dinner and the pleasure again of seeing a familiar face in a new place. This boosts my energy. I am grateful. Rose tells me about snagging a fisherman’s net enroute to Mazatlan and drifting until the Mexican navy can arrive and cut it free. Something that could well have happened to me on the way to Topolobampo. I take note. Maybe I should simply heave to at night (basically stop) and slowly drift say10 miles until dawn. Would that be safer than trying to make progress?

4/10/10 I’m not sure why people compare these canyons to the Grand Canyon. They are so different. The Grand is markedly red and dry and steep, these are much more lush and spread out although still quite arid. And at the point where a road can still run thru it, isn’t it more a “valley” than a “canyon?” Everywhere i see footpaths. They seem to say that people have lived here for a long time. My bet is that no one knows how many villages and people this rugged terrain hides. Here is a home in the side of a cliff.



Almost as much as the geology, it’s the native people that catch my eye. The Tarahumara Indians are more pretty to me than the Mexican people with Spanish lineage. My guess is that some sort of caste system exists between them. The indians’ darker brown smooth skin is set off against the bright colors they wear. They wear the weather more beautifully. At every stop, some seemingly in the middle of nowhere, the women sit with their children nearby and offer their crafts, spread on a blanket for sale.

What little i can see of their way of life might seem too spare to most of us, yet it appears to be a way of life that has adapted and endured and that seems like a testimony for it. After riding thru miles of earth tones and prehistoric scenery, rounding a bend to discover bright clothes spread on fences in bright sunshine woke my eyes up, women pounding their laundry on rocks in the nearby stream.


A deepening pleasure on this side trip is meeting people. Have i been starved for this? I hope i have not imposed my company and conversation on them. My hotel in Creel includes breakfast, the waiter herds me to a table to spontaneously join a well traveled and articulate “older” couple. We all laugh, shake hands and proceed to enjoy each other, for my part, immensely. Carol and Gary, from Montana, are riding their motorcycles here as they have in many countries. We do not speak to each other superficially, but of pleasures and fears, of terrain and people, of our families and friends, books and music. The next day, in Divisadero, this continues when i join a walking tour with two other couples, Mexican and Ecuadorian. Afterwards we drink and dine together. Too slowly, my Spanish improves. This pleasure i am soaking in floods me when i meet Liza and her daughter Kazz and son Forest. As traveled as she is, it’s hard to say she’s from anywhere, but she is for now a professor and author “from” Nanaimo. So much to share and so little time. Timely conversations that feel important for me to pay close attention to. Connection. What is a life without it? Thank you all of you, back home and here, and all in between. Thank you very much.

On the train yesterday, if i follow the tracks of my tho’ts, they ran like this: i like myself better when i am confident and when that confidence flows from instinct rather than effort and thought. When i trust that i am where i belong, instead of questioning myself mercilessly. Seems like life could be much more fun with such confidence and trust. How will i teach it to myself in the face of life’s storms? This is my task.

This…and to write it in a way that helps you. I have had wondrous help, and i want to pay it forward. Tyler warns me that i help too much and unconsciously and from my ego. Helping feels real to me. Maybe i can do it consciously and without ego. Not as part of the definition of a self that, if i listen to the mystics, in the long run doesn’t exist anyway.
(This was a view from my hotel in Divisadero)
Later, hiking around Divisadero on my own, thinking about instincts, letting my feet lead me. What am i looking for off the beaten path? I find a view, feel a little vertigo, so i sit down and feel the wind. After a bit i wander in the general direction back to the hotel but am not satisfied yet. So i let myself get distracted by a footpath that leads to a wide open space atop a promontory. Here is what i was looking for, a discovery: a purposefully drawn circle of stones maybe fifty yards in diameter. There is a gap in the stones at each of the cardinal directions, each providing a gate into the circle. A tumble of stones is at the center. It's a place of ritual. I walk the circumference of the circle. At the north gate i enter. At the center i hold my arms out and close my eyes. I utter the Lakota tribute to "all my ancestors." That’s all. Nothing else happens. I leave by the south gate. And step to the edges of the promontory to admire the canyon, find the footpath and leave. Really enjoyed that.

Note to Tyler Jette: The rocks and climbing here are beyond counting. Would that i were still climbing (and younger).