Photos here are from the anchorage at Las Hadas – stopped and explored Manzanillo a few days there on the way here (did i mention that?), photos of Ixtapa’s version of the Space Needle, one of the crocs here (no cleaning the boat bottom!) , Zihuatanejo’s anchorage, and a local fisher…boy on Zihuat’s pier (if he hooked a big one it might pull him in! Note the catch in the bucket in the background). Somehow i imagine Jacqui and Tony on Wind Strutter taking this place by storm, fitting right in. Seems right up their alley.
I’ve been reading Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley.” In 1960 he took a trip with his dog around the U.S. in a truck with camper on its back. I am finding his amusement at his adventure great fun. One observation he made went something like this: if a person is in a situation where he/she needs no words, after a while does it lead to no thoughts? Get it? The way we think is with words, if there are no words are there no thoughts? Is it a symbiotic relationship? With no one to talk to, i can sometimes go days without speaking. Sure, i have to think about navigating and sailing Akimbo. But otherwise my tho’ts might indeed dull. Doing so seems it would lead to dulling my senses and observations as well. Which i don’t want to happen. So what can i do about this, if it is the case? I read as much as i can, but those words are not my own. Rather they are something i experience. I can write. To spur the thoughts, the words can be written instead of spoken. This makes these entries, and our e-mail correspondence, hugely more important to me. If anything, i want to sharpen, not dull, my presence.
On Jerry’s last full day here (Tuesday), I got one of the marina employees, Israel, to take us out the marina channel while i sounded it with a lead line. I now know exactly where the shallow spot in the channel is, and that my depth sounder has to read more than 16’ deep here at the slip for us to leave. Two things were reassuring about this reconnaissance: 1. The shallow spot is well inside where the waves are big, it’s in a relatively calm spot – so i wouldn’t expect to pound hard there if we did touch bottom; 2. I was doing the sounding next to the marina’s dredge – so maybe the shallow spot will be deeper by the time we leave. One not so reassuring thing: the channel has been closed for the last two days due to the size of the swell coming in. Hopefully the motion of the ocean is getting the big stuff out of its system for now. What was cute was how thrilled Jerry was to be underway on the water – even in only the beat up old marina panga, even for only the few hundred yards, and even only inside the marina. I’m sorry i wasn’t willing to risk the channel and take him for a sail as i had hoped.
While here i’ve been watching my weather sources intently, trying to learn from them what a good weather window will look like when we’re ready to go. Now that hurricane’s Celia and Darby on the Pacific have evaporated, and Alex on the Gulf of Mexico has exhausted itself on shore…this looks like it would have been a good week. With luck the storm production has calmed a little. In any case there will be another window. Until then i’ll keep “going to school” on what i see. If you want to watch too, here are two links - http://www.weather.solmatesantiago.com/hurricane.html and http://www.weather.solmatesantiago.com/convection.html . I also request grib files from query@saildocs.com - in the subject line write “gribforecast” and in the body of the e-mail write this and ONLY this – “send grib:8N,20N,80W,107W” – note there is only one space in that. On top of these three sources i listen to the radio nets i can reach for their daily forecasts (i can usually reach one, sometimes two).
Sorry if this entry is a bit boring but maybe the words keep my tho’ts and therefore my senses going and inquiring. I’ll finish by quoting Steinbeck – “In the beginning of this record i tried to explore the nature of journeys, how they are things in themselves, each one an individual and no two alike. I speculated with a kind of wonder on the strength of the individuality of journeys and stopped on the postulate that people don’t take trips – trips take people. That discussion, however, did not go into the life span of journeys. This seems to be variable and unpredictable. Who has not known a journey to be over and dead before the traveler returns? The reverse is also true: many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased…”
It gives me pause to consider this trip. And our journeys, all of us, each his or hers. May we breathe life into them to their ends. And beyond (thank you Steinbeck, Gershwin, O'Keefe, Shakespeare, Bach, Dylan, Whyte…). And when we “return” may it be to open arms and hearts.
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