The Taco Traveler

I didn't plan to head to La Cruz quite yet - I was going to loiter around Tenacatita for a few days first, and pay as little as possible in marina fees at La Cruz. But I pulled up anchor today in Melaque and when I got to the entrance to Tenacatita (the next bay north) I noticed I had about 10 knots of wind on my starboard quarter, which would have meant it was blowing right into the Tenacatita anchorage. It's probably not that bad, but I decided to head to La Cruz anyway, and enjoy a few extra days to see that town and then head inland to see Guadalajara and catch the plane from there. So here I am at sunset, 7:14 PM, motoring north at 5.3 knots into a big swell and almost no wind. There was a big blow from the north the last couple days while I was in Melaque, so these swells are residuals from that, and they're occasionally up in the 12-14 ft range. But I'm making good progress anyway. I actually slowed down a while ago because I was going to reach Cabo Corrientes about 2:15 AM. That's a big cape, with occasionally foul weather if you hit it at the wrong time. So now I'm on track to reach Cabo Corrientes about 5 AM, which is better. There's a full or almost-full moon tonight, so it'll be a bright night.

Best of all (I don't think I've mentioned this), I've got OV back. I completed that rebuild while I was in Santiago, and while I wasn't sure at the time that I got him back together properly, all seems very well. I wasn't sure about the electro-magnetic clutch - it has two tiny wires that I broke taking it apart and had to solder back together. But apparently I got the connection made okay, and got the orientation right. Thanks by the way to Alan Katz (aka Dr Electron) for his help walking me through the rebuild. OV Jr (the wheel-mounted autopilot) did a great job, but OV is the greatest, and much better for these big seas. His hard-over times are much better - that's an autopilot measure of how fast he can turn. He turns fast, he corrects for swells as soon as they hit... welcome back, OV.

I'm "buddy boating" this leg with Tequila Rose - friends of Al & Yvette who I met at the wedding. They're motoring along about a mile behind me, though they're heading out a bit more now to seek some wind. There might be some out there, but it's going to be straight from the north, so I'll just keep motoring here about 4 miles offshore. I've got the mainsail up to steady me a bit, and there's just enough wind for that. The idea is, non-sailors, that a big sail up there, whether filled or not, acts like a brake or a parachute to keep the boat from flopping as much side-to-side on the swells. So though the swells are big, I'm heading almost directly into them, which is better than on the beam, and I've got just enough wind in the mainsail to keep the boat a little more steady, side-to-side.

There's not a lot of traffic out here. A lot of cruisers are getting set to head north, but the four or five other boats I saw leave Barra / Melaque / Tenacatita this morning all stopped at Chamela to wait for this swell to die down more tomorrow. I like the swell, and like I told Malavika when she was trying to get used to the motion and not get sick, "Hey, you pay extra for that at Disneyland." Yes, that's dumb, I know. But it does feel good to be out here getting lots of motion and pounding a bit - Chemistry's bottom needed a good cleaning, so hopefully this will do it and I won't have to get in the water and scrub.

Right now I'm cranking Built to Spill Live ("Cortez the Killer" ROCKS!), having just finished my dinner of steak fajitas and black beans. I seasoned the black beans by sauteing some onions and a sorrano pepper and some cumin, then adding the beans. The steak is actually "arachera," which is flank steak that's sold pre-marinated down here. It's very good, and because it's marinated so long it's very tender for flank steak. I bought a package of it in Santiago, not realizing that it was almost 2 kilos. So I've got another couple days of arachera.

Getting dark now, so I'm going to send this off via SSB and preserve my night vision (by not staring at a white screen), and instead check the horizon and motor along.

TT

My big sister was one of the most popular people in high school. This was great for me, as I was sort of a nerd until I "came into my own" somewhere around my junior year. This was, curiously, right about the same time I ditched my glasses and got contacts. But for those first two years of high school, it never hurt that I was "Lauren's little brother," what with all the older guys wanting to date her and occasionally looking out for me or just saying "hi."

One of those older guys - being an exteremely popular person himself - didn't need to gain my favor, but that didn't stop him from being nice. He was just a naturally nice person. Mark Overholt, "OV" (Oh-vee) to his friends and just about anyone else, was a natural athlete, a good student as far as I know, good looking, happy, always smiling. I'm sure I have friends who've seen him angry, but my friends were better athletes than I was and sometimes competed directly against him. I pretty much didn't grow from 7th grade until the summer after 10th and my athleticism deteriorated with my size relative to my peers. Consequently, I wasn't even in the same locker rooms.

Mark dated Lauren for a few years, at the end of high school and for a while in college, and eventually they split up but remained close.

A few years after college, Mark was engaged to a georgeous woman who was a model. I don't know her name and don't know that I ever did, but you've probably seen her. She played basketball with a bunch of other women in a commercial for some high-heeled shoes. You know: These pumps are so comfortable you can play basketball in them. So, they were returning home from a wedding shower one night in the farmlands of Eastern Washington - their wedding shower - and the car was hit by a train at an ungated crossing. She survived, but Mark was killed. And those are about the only details I know.

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Cut to me, four or five years later in my second year of grad school in Bellingham, Washington. It's 5:00 am and I'm asleep on my futon on the floor of my apartment. Around me are pieces of a cordless phone I'd been messing with. I'd taken it apart in a sort of "scientifically curious" way to see how it worked. And I'm having this dream. Lauren is in her old Dodge Colt she had during and just after high school - about the same time she dated Mark. She's driving in a rural area and our old dog "Bear" is in the car with her. At the exact same instant the train impacts her car, that old, torn-apart, not-plugged-into-the-wall cordless phone starts screeching a horrible screech like electronic mayhem ("EeeayeayEeeeAAasSCREEaWeeAyyyyy"). I wake instantly, terrified, "bolt upright" (damn, I hate that phrase, but it's accurate), and scramble to stop the noise. I finally rip the battery pack out. Heart racing. Sweating.

I call Lauren on the phone despite the time. I tell her to please be careful that day and that somehow, I think I got a "message." She says: "I think this might be the anniversary of when Mark was killed. I wonder if he's just saying hi?" In any case, she was careful that day, and she's still with us.

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A lot of people name their boat's autopilot. It's usually something like "Auto," or a traditional "cheuffer's name," or maybe a derivitive of the brand name (Raymarine/"Ray"). It just seems more comforting, especially for single-handers, I think, to be able to apply personality to the machine that controls your ship (and thus, your life) while you're belowdecks making food, on the deck working the sails, or in the cockpit and need to nod off for a bit. In fact, hardly any sailors who "cruise" as opposed to "race" ever do much hand-steering while at sea; it's all about the autopilot.

I'm not sure what happened to that phone that morning, and I can't say I necessarily felt OV's "presence" then or feel it now on the boat. But I can say that OV is much better at keeping a course than I am. With his gyros and sensors he's exceptionally agile and smart; he can feel a wave when it first affects the boat and correct for that wave with the proper amount of rudder before it has a chance to turn us off course. And with the latest in linear drive technology, he's damn strong. More than anything, though, I think if the spirit of Mark Overholt didn't have a nephew's baseball game or his namesake memorial golf tournament to watch or be remembered at, he might like to hang out with me a bit, sitting behind the wheel of Chemistry on the Pacific coast of Mexico while I reel in another yellowtail, eighty degrees and rising as we head farther south.

There's been this very ugly noise since we left San Diego that originates from a rather important piece of equipment - the autopilot. Basically, it's a hydraulic arm (Autohelm Linear Drive, Type 2) that is making a spectacular amount of noise as it whirrs and grinds to keep the boat on course. What's worse, it's mounted underneath my bed, which makes sleep difficult. Who knows how long it's been going on - it could have been since Seattle (since I got the boat, really) but I'd never noticed before because when I slept in that bed while underway before, we were motoring between Seattle and Eureka, so the engine noise overrode the autopilot drive arm noise. And of course, from Eureka to San Diego I caught my catnaps in the cockpit while underway. So today I've had enough, and have re-installed the backup autopilot to give the primary one a rest. I can't find any information in the user or installation manuals that would indicate what I can do about it, but it's fairly easy to take out, so I'll remove it tomorrow at anchor and take a good look. Basically, it sounds like someone put a handfull of small screws into the arm, so each movement is a metal-on-metal ***grind***. If anyone has any suggestions, please send them along to my sailmail address if you have it, or tt@tacotraveler.com otherwise. Thanks in advance! [Edit: all fixed!]

Oh yeah, and we changed course from Mazatlan and are now headed for Isla Isabela, which is a Mexican National Park where Jaques Cousteau once visited because of the endangered population of Frigate birds and Boobies. Have I ever mentioned I once dated (for a year, actually, so more than "dated") the daughter of a woman who once dated Jaques Cousteau's son (Jean-Jaques, I think his name is? [Edit: It's Jean-Michel]). So Kara Kaufman (who's mum has my favorite ex-girlfriend's mom's name ever, Mary Memory), here's your self-Googling hit of the day. Hi!

Anyway... where was I? So we're heading for Isla Isabela and will stop there for a rest, and then over to Chacala. We skipped the Mazatlan plan because the winds and seas last night were crazy, and they just didn't want us to go that direction. Not comfortably, anyway. So we turned to the SE and are now on a heading that will take us 20+ miles north of the prison (penal colony?) on the Islas Marias. If you get within 20 miles of those islands you risk getting boarded and detained by the Mexican Navy. No, we weren't trying to rescue Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen (see Papillon).

TT