Notas del sol

1. We were “those people” the other day. Harmony and I were invited to accompany the local “everything boats” guy, Santos, and his family on a trip up the estuary to a palapa restaurant in the jungle. After a twisting tour through the sandbar-populated river (without a depth sound) Santos’s 36′ sailboat (purchased at deep discount after crashing in an 80-knot microburst in the anchorage last year) swung next to the restaurant-on-stilts and all twelve of us stepped up onto the bouncing planks of the dock to our table.

While on our third beer after a $5 fried fish and shrimp lunch, a panga comes zooming up to the restaurant to inform Santos that the little red boat has dragged on its anchor and was now in the vicinity of his mooring field, about 100 yards from where it started. We had been having trouble with our anchor wrapping around our keel earlier in the week, but on some advice from the Sailnet forums I had rigged a kellet to the anchor line and thought the problem handled. Of course the one day we leave the boat for an extended period of time would be the day I am proven wrong. (A kellet is a weight attached to a carabiner and slid down the anchor line about 15-20 feet to keep the rope at depth during tide shifts. Not having much sacrificial dead weight aboard to make the kellet out of, I had used a spare zinc and some lead fishing weights. Clearly this was not sufficient.)

I tried unsuccessfully to hail anyone on the radio to see what was going on. Had we hit anything? Had we hit any other boats? Had we hit the really expensive boat almost directly in line with us in the 3-knot current? Trip-ending fantasies were running rampant. Santos was able to get one of the other cruisers on the phone (Cell phones! What an amazing idea!) and learned that the crews of three other sailboats had gotten together in their dinghies to regain control of our boat and reset the anchor. When we got back to the anchorage that evening, one of the other cruisers came zooming up in his dinghy to shuttle us back to our boat, which we never would have found in its new resting place in the dark. We were extraordinarily embarrassed and grateful that our neighbors came to our rescue and that no harm was done to any other boats, although mysteriously our red topsides are scratched all to hell on one side. Now every time we see the gang at social hour by the pool the day after a squall blows through, we field several questions as to the health of our anchor holding. I keep telling Harmony that’s the sign that it’s time to move on, so we can start a new reputation.

2. The hammock is finally getting some use, would you believe it? I’m always looking for the best way to hang it on our boat, and in Chiapas before we left I spotted an intriguing setup on a crafty German’s boat that was blowing through on the way up north. The aft end is suspended on our spinnaker halyard and held fast to the mast with a double loop of line, but the real trick is the forward end. The wisdom of the crowd is that you’re not supposed to directly tie your hammock to your forestay because it puts lateral pull on a wire that’s meant to take vertical tension, thereby putting strain on the wire and attachment hardware. Add to that, we have a plastic headfoil for raising our jib, which would chafe through in one good afternoon of swinging with a drink in hand. The new solution is to suspend the foreward end of the hammock by two lines, a halyard to lift it up and a line running from the pigtails at the bow roller to pull it down and thereby keep the hammock stretched out. Voila! No stress on the forestay. Watch out for chafe at the masthead though if you use a halyard without a swiveling block.
3. At least three times a day on the weekends, little awning-covered tour boats laden with gawkers will buzz our boat while the tour guide points at our boat and says  something we can’t make out over the sound of his motor. It’s reminiscent of the Ducks in Seattle, those amphibious boat/buses whose tour guides are continually blaring over the loudspeaker, “There’s another Starbucks! Wooo!” Only here, we imagine it’s more like, “There’s another Gringo! Back in their home country, that little boat with garbage bags in its cockpit and clothes hanging on the line would represent an eyesore to society, but here they are plopped in our backyard wielding their greatest of superpowers: disposable income! Look! There’s one now in his underwear!”

Once again, Harmony and I feel like an exhibit on display at the zoo.

4. Harmony and I swim off the boat in the estuary daily. The water temperature is perfect. Like, definition-of. It’s even more perfect at night. The problem is that the island on one side doesn’t have sewage service. Okay then, so just swim during incoming tide. Problem solved. The other problem is that there are occasionally invisible jellyfish that drift in on the tide. I’ve had three stings so far. The first time I was taking a long swim and I felt a burning sensation up my left arm and chest that had me half-convinced I was having a heart attack at my ripe old age of 31. Boy was I relieved to discover that it was just a jelly!

The best remedy I’ve found for jellyfish stings is the following:

–Put a compress of white vinegar on the stung area for a minute or three. This dulls the sting.

–With a credit card, scrape the affected area to remove the leftover gelatinous stinging cells.

–Reapply vinegar compress for 10-30 minutes.

–After vinegar, I apply “dermaE Scar Gel” on the area and the burning goes away immediately. I don’t know where you can get this stuff because it was kicking around our cabinet for eons, but the main ingredients are water, onion bulb extract, glycerin, allantoin, Panthenol, and the list gets more unintelligible from there. So maybe it’s the onion? We’re almost out of the stuff, so I’ll have to try some science next time it happens and report back.

5. Oop! It’s almost time for the 4:00 social hour by the pool. Better cut this short (hah). At last count there are seven boats with people here, most of which were here and observing this local cruising custom all summer while the storms marched off the coast. As far as rituals go, it’s not a bad one, and aside from morning coffee it’s about the only thing to set your schedule by down here in sunny El Salvador. Wish you (yes, you) were here!
6. The cat misses the dock, but he’s all right.