It was very difficult to post anything this summer, as we were at the cottage and had no internet. So here is an installment of "What I did for my summer holidays", which was essentially spending three months at the cottage, eating, drinking and swimming. It was, well, simply wonderful.

IdleWilde Cottage
Thurs. 29 July 2010

Well it's been three weeks since we fled the desert, and we are enjoying our life here in the bush. The weather has been hot and humid over Southern and Central Ontario, but here in the North it has been lovely. Even when it is hot the breeze from the lake keeps us comfortable and evenings are mild and calm. The sandflies were pretty annoying when we first arrived but they are gone now. Just a few deerflies during the day and the mosquitoes on the beach at night.

We have been swimming every day just to keep clean, as we have no hot water unless we heat it on the stove. The lake isn't either warm or cold: a bit bracing when you get in, but lovely to swim in after the intial shock has passed. And it is such a treat to swim in fresh water! No salty taste, no need to rinse or even to dry off when you come ashore.


Just to give you a better picture of the place the cottage is a long wooden structure among the white and red pines, nestled among blueberry and lilac bushes, and perched over a wide sandy beach. Sitting in a small cove, we look out over Rice Bay, about 3/4mile across. The rest of Talon Lake is out of sight behind high, rolling hills. The entire lake is a few miles long, divided into various bays and inlets. The shoreline has a scattering of cottages, clustered in small groups, but 80% of the shoreline and all the surrounding hills are covered in a mixed forest of pine, spruce, fir, birch, maple and aspen. All undeveloped land belongs to the Crown and is part of a Provincial park, and is to remain wild and natural. Even logging is banned within view of the lake. We are very lucky to have such a spot, and only 40 minutes from downtown North Bay.

The wildlife here keeps us entertained, with the loons calling on the lake at night, and a small flock of Canada geese and a family of merganser ducks skirting the shore by day. A pair of phoebes had a nest on the windowledge in the sunroom, but have abandoned it since the chicks have learned to fly. So now we have one adult phoebe and three chicks flying among the pines in the front yard. A mink comes by every few days, hunting among the rocks along the shore, and there is a large beaver lodge across the cove, with frequent evening traffic as they patrol the shore looking for another tree to chew down. A recent trip through the Dead River gave us the chance to watch a young moose feeding on brush by the water's edge.

This is a typical Canadian breakfast: potatoes, eggs and peameal bacon. It also came with Lorena's fresh-baked multigrain bread. Yumm!!!

Our days are filled fixing up the cottage and accumulating boats. Our friends Brian and Tanya down the lake have loaned us an old Mercury outboard for our little skiff, but we haven't been able to get it running. We also borrowed a small sailboat from them, and my nephew Ted has been learning to sail. Some other friends on the lake, the Guys, have also loaned us their aluminum skiff with a 25 hp Johnson, which they haven't used in a couple of years. We had some fuel-line problems with it, but we have it licked now. The boat will be very handy for visiting our friends down the lake, and for getting our drinking water at the spring across the lake. We also have a canoe to paddle around. Ted, my sister's son, has been doing some fishing from the canoe, and so we have had the occasional lunch of pan-fried pike. And of course we have been socialising with neighbours and friends from town.

My brother Alex's youngest two boys, Max and Sam, proudly hold up a pike. We ate it for lunch the next day.

Katie is working this summer in North Bay, but has been coming out for her days off. She usually gets a friend to bring her out. Kate has been busy doing some commissioned paintings as well.


My oldest friend Bill loaned us his car for a few days which was a huge help, but most of the time we are stranded out here. So whenever anyone calls to say they are coming to visit we give them a shopping list.




The sunroom off the kitchen has excellent lighting for painting. Kate's cousin Elysia is volunteering to help drink the beer and keep her company.








We have had a couple of cool nights, so we have to think about getting in some firewood. We cut down a big dead elm tree, so it should keep us warm for a while. The chain saw ran out of chain oil before I finished, and my brother Alex sent out the diesel motor oil for his tractor instead of the chain oil. When I called to let him know, his wife, Page, asked him diplomatically if he happened to change the oil on the tractor lately. Fortunately the answer was negative.

Went to bed last night to the gentle tapping of rain on the roof. This morning it is still raining softly. The birds are chirping and squawking in the pines outside the window. Lorena is mixing flour to bake bread. She bakes most days, so we always have fresh bread. Every day it is something different, from buns to foccaccia to cinnamon buns to regular bread, in whole wheat, rye and other mixed grains.

It feels good to be living here. It is so peaceful and lovely, one of the wonders of the world. When you consider how crowded the planet is, and how so many live in squalor or at least in conditions that never let them be away from people, machines, buildings etc. Here there is not even the sight of power lines. The occasional boat on the water or plane high overhead, a scattering of cottages along the shore are the only signs of human intrusion. The rest is wild and beautiful and free. We eat fresh food, swim when we are hot or need a bath, drink water from a spring. We have the company of each other, and of friends and family members. What more could we want or need? More soon......

How rough is too rough?

You can practice wet exit and re-entry in kayaks in calm conditions every week for years, but a single capsize in big seas is a lesson you never forget.

The first day we take our people kayaking, we teach them how to exit and re-enter their kayaks in the event of a capsize. After they do this for themselves, we usually do a paddle around the island to finish up the activity. Since this island sits on the edge of the reef, part of our route takes us outside of its protection, into the open Caribbean Sea. As we emerge into open water, we start to ride the swells, and if we have had sustained Easterly winds, (which we usually do) then the swells can be impressively large. For many people, this is the biggest water they have ever paddled.

The height of a wave is an impressive feature, but it is its steepness that determines if it is dangerous. Long, slow swells of mountainous height are no threat to a kayak, as they merely lift us up then let us down again. We usually get these waves when the winds calm down after a period of strong breeze, or when there is a strong breeze somewhere to the east of us and it is calm or light winds here. But if it is blowing hard here, the waves can be mountainous and steep, even breaking at their crests. If a wave is tall enough to “feel” the bottom, it will spill or even dump its top as the leading edge of the wave is slowed by reflection from bottom structure. A tall, steep, dumping wave will be impossible for all but the most skilled kayaker to handle without a capsize. But the capsize itself isn't a danger to a paddler here. It's what happens after.

Once in the water, a paddler has to make sure his boat, paddle, and, in the case of double kayaks, his partner are all connected to prevent them from separating. The waves will continue to push them downwind, often towards shallower water. As long as one person stays in the water the drift will be slow, and he may even have to swim his kayak out of danger before considering re-entering. Once you re-enter your boat, it drifts very quickly, abeam to the wind, making the paddler susceptible to the next wave and another capsize. This is why it is crucial to bail the boat thoroughly before re-entering. Once in you may not have much time to get your nose into the wind and your ass out of danger.

One such situation occurred recently.

James and I had just finished taking a group of students through the wet exit/re-entry exercise, and we were paddling around the island. The students were all in double kayaks, but James, Tory (the prof’s assistant) and I were in singles. James was leading the pack and the double kayaks were all sticking close to him. I was in the sweep position, with Tory, trying to keep an eye on the whole group.

I had been blowing moderately hard in the morning, but now the wind had really kicked up. From the dock on the sheltered side of the island the waves seemed big, but they were quite a distance away, so it was hard to be sure.

As we emerged through the reef-cut into the open sea, the magnitude of the waves suddenly became obvious. An eight-foot wave broke over Tory and tossed her out of her single kayak. I came alongside and helped steady her boat as she bailed. She had to work quickly as we were drifting onto the reef, where the waves, slowed by the sloping bottom, would rise to what seemed like mountainous height, and the tops curled over, crashing onto the shallow sharp-edged coral.

Tory stayed cool and quickly bailed her boat. As soon as she climbed aboard her body stopped acting as a sea anchor, and our rate of drift increased dramatically. With little time to lose, we separated and, before we could turn into the oncoming wave, it broke over us both. Tory was knocked over, and hit me square in the chest with one outstretched arm. We went over like dominoes. Now we were both in the water and much closer to the reef.

It was too late to bail now, so we swam, hard, pulling our boats with us. I began to prepare Tory for the possibility that we would have to abandon the boats to the reef and swim on without them. But we were making some headway, crossing the wind and currents instead of fighting against them. The farther we got from shore, the deeper the water was and the farther we would be from the deadly shallows.

Eventually we passed the last of the coral heads, and there was nothing immediately downwind of us. Out of danger, rolling in long swells, we relaxed and took our time. Soon the boats were bailed out and we were in them again. This time we stayed rafted together until we got turned downwind, parallel to the direction of the waves. The sea conditions here were so different from the gauntlet we had just run, that it seemed as if we had imagined the whole exercise. The rest was an easy paddle, surfing the swells for fun rather than for our lives.

By the time we got to the beach, the rest of the group had finished their paddle and had decided to come looking for us in the motorboat. They had had one boat capsize, but they were farther out to sea and not in any immediate danger, despite an unwarranted fear of sharks. The boys who tipped over had gotten back in alright and were none the worse for wear.

The question “How rough is too rough?” remains unanswered. It depends largely on the surrounding environment (ie water temperature, proximity to shore and reef), and on the experience and discipline of the paddlers. If Tory had not been so rock-solid calm, I might have had a much more challenging situation to deal with. As it was even with eight-foot breaking seas, we got out of it ok, but we really should not have been between such waves and the reef in the first place.

San Carlos Sonora, 19 May 2010

Back again after a busy season. How do I summarise four months in a few paragraphs? Let me try.

First the challenges. I wanted time to work on Manadi, so I asked for a few free days before I started work. I got two: not enough time even to get the boat out of storage. “Oh don’t worry,” they would say, ”right after this trip you will have some time off.” And when I got back? “We had to change your schedule a bit. You are going out to Lighthouse Reef for a month, but don’t worry, we have you scheduled for some time off right after.“ And then they would change my schedule again. Six times they changed my schedule. Finally, three quarters of the way through the season, they gave me two weeks off. I worked frantically and got the boat much closer to completion. And I solved the biggest challenge: finding a way to securely connect the main hull to the amas. So now it is so close I can almost taste it. But I have to wait until next winter.

The next big challenge came in the form of illness. There is a class of viruses referred to as noroviruses, which spread rapidly, and cause a short-term illness often referred to as “stomach flu”. Nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal cramps are the common symptoms, and it lasts a few hours to two days. The worst of this group is called the Norwalk Virus, and it was rampant in schools in parts of the US. A cruise ship arrived at Belize City with 400 passengers down with the virus. Although the ship was quarantined, the virus still spread to the mainland, and eventually arrived at Half Moon Caye.

In the worst incident, we had eighteen out of thirty people (including your humble scribbler) hit overnight. We had to modify our procedures a bit to keep it from spreading, did a major disinfection of the camp, and we got it under control quickly, never to appear again. While this was going on, we continued to take those healthy enough out snorkelling and fishing. Then my nightmare happened. Two of the guests came to me and asked if they could do a little paddling, and maybe a snorkel, unescorted. I was still ill but getting better, so I told them they could paddle only as far as the end of the island – I did not want them going beyond that, as it would take them into open unsheltered waters. At the end of the island is a small beach. I told them to paddle to this beach –and no further- and wait for me there. I would head down on foot and watch them from shore f they wanted to do a little snorkelling.

I was delayed getting down to the beach, dealing with the office by sat phone, and when I got to the beach, there was no sign of either of them. I waded out and looked around the corner of the island and saw one person paddling out toward the waves, which were breaking on the coral rubble. I whistled and she came back to me. “Where is your partner?” I asked. “She went ahead.” She replied. There was no sign of her between the shore and the big waves crashing on the rocks. “Why didn’t you wait?” I asked, annoyed and concerned. “I told her to wait, but she went ahead.”

I took her kayak and went looking for my wandering guest. I paddled around the reef, avoiding the surf zone and began to scan the water and shore for any sign. The kayak was not in sight on the water beyond the reef, so I looked along the shore. My worst nightmare revealed itself. There was the missing kayak, upside down, washed against the shore. No one was nearby. My first thought was that she has paddled straight into the surf – even though she could see the waves as she approached them – got flipped over, and has hit her head and drowned. I scanned the shore for a body washed up. I saw her sitting at the water’s edge, conscious and alert, waving to me. I waved back, she waved again as if she hadn’t seen me wave. I waved again but it was no good; she couldn’t see well enough to tell that I had seen her. I was relieved that she was alive and not in immediate danger, but she still could have been injured. She was sitting right at the shore.

I paddled quickly, as I had quite a distance to go before I could land my kayak. I wasn’t going to go through the surf that tossed her out of her boat. When I got a shore, I rushed through camp, and got the cooks, Bol and Phillip to help me. Phillip came with me, and Bol went around the other side of the island. We made our way along the shore. We found the paddle, then the boat, but no sign of our wayward guest. Bol showed up, having walked the whole shoreline. The nightmare just got worse again. She has wandered somewhere into the middle of the island. This island isn’t big, but the forested section is dense and trackless. I wondered 'Why she would wander off?" And why wouldn’t she stick to the shore where she would be easy to find? She was only 150m or so from our camp, if she had followed the rocky beach. After about 45 minutes of searching I stumbled into camp, there she was, with a couple of the guys who had found her. She gave me a hug and told me she forgave me. I was ready to strangle her!

This incident taught me to be very wary of letting people go off on their own, especially little old ladies, whom you would think would have more sense. We were very lucky too, as nobody was hurt and even the boat and paddle were undamaged. She lost her sunglasses, hat and sandals though, but that is a plus, as otherwise I don’t think she would have learned a thing from this incident.
Another lesson well-learned this year was one of sunburn. The day the guests arrive I inform them of the hazards to their health and safety, and the greatest threat is from the sun. I tell them that they need to stay hydrated as they need to sweat to cool down, and if they stop sweating, their brain will overheat and they will collapse from heat exhaustion or even heat stroke. By comparison, I say, sunburn is a painful annoyance. I strongly recommend sunscreen, but I let them know that if they are determined to burn themselves I don’t care. I was wrong.

We had a group of students from Prince Edward Island, on Canada’s Atlantic shore, out to Glover’s Reef for three days. What can happen in three days? Right? Wrong. These students had already spent five days on the coast, and many of them had burned and peeled. A hot day in P.E.I. is not a lot less hot than a day on a breezy cay in Belize but the difference in intensity of sunlight is huge. These young adults didn’t realise this. One young chap got a massive second-degree burn over his entire upper back and shoulders. It was horrifying. They were headed to a jungle lodge for two days after leaving our little island. These islands are a pretty clean environment, for the tropics, with clean white sand and a salty sea. By comparison, the jungle is a seething mass of infection waiting for a break in the skin to take hold, and to take over. If the blisters on this young lad’s skin were to break, he would be seriously exposed to possible infection. I made an example of him to the crowd, and told him, he needs to avoid any further exposure to the sun, and should not even consider going for a swim in the pool at the lodge. I hope he made it home alright.

So much for the challenges. Otherwise it was an incredible season. Every year we see more turtles than the previous one. As usual I got to meet interesting people from many walks of life. The crew I worked with were great. And as the season progressed the water got more enjoyable. We also had some great school groups. Tony Rino’s kids from St. Peter’s Catholic School, just outside Ottawa, were a great bunch and I turned 50 on the last day with them. They treated me like a king, as did the arriving group of guests, with most of whom I suddenly found myself sharing a decade. You only turn 50 once.

The last two weeks were very special for me. We had an unique situation, in that we were hosting a group of students who were taking a field course, through the University of Western Ontario. The professor, his two assistants, and a couple of the students were from Western, but the rest of the students were from various universities all over southern Ontario. The biggest block was from my alma mater, the University of Guelph, which has a massive biology program, and is very field-oriented. These young adults worked hard recording their observations, and devising little experiments, and they stayed up late like children, not wanting to miss a thing.

At the same time, the Wildlife Conservation Society had a team of biologists on the island. They were tagging and tracking sharks, turtles and stingrays. This was a great opportunity for the students to see field research being carried out, and even to participate in the some of the data collection. And it was handy for the WCS researchers, who used the help of the students. I had a great time, watching all of this unfold, and meeting the researchers and their assistants. I also met a photo-journalist and his assistant, who work with the National Geographic Society, and were chronicling some of the research work.

It was a great season and a smashing finale. I feel lucky to be a small part of it.
Cheers
Jack

Evenings at the clubhouse we like to sit out on the front porch, in the afternoon breeze and have a drink while the sun goes down. There is a surprising amount of wildlife in this part of town. Across the street is a six-story Araucaria (Norfolk Island Pine) tree, with whorls of bushy branches every few feet up the trunk, and a bald top. Lately the grackles (blackbirds) have taken to roosting in the dense bushy branches. So they were understandably upset this week when a bat falcon took to standing on the top of this tree, waiting for the abundant population of bats to emerge from the eaves of the house directly below.

Occasionally a bold blackbird will fly up to the top of the tree, always coming behind the falcon, and if the falcon dives, the formerly bold blackbird and his colleagues will scatter like thieves as he dashes among them. Sometimes he gets pretty close, and the blackbird in his sights will scurry sideways at the last instant cackling wildly, and the falcon will zoom by in a streak of black and white and rusty orange. I don't think he really wants to catch one, as they are almost as big as he, but it is a good warm-up until the bats emerge.

Bats emerge in groups, flying helter-skelter, as the falcon dashes among them. It is impressive enough to see a stooping and diving falcon high over open ground, but when one flashes by between trees and buildings and pops up a block away in a heartbeat, it is breathtaking. We watch for a single bat to emerge, and one obliges, heading swiftly for the cover of nearby trees. The raptor leans off his perch and falls forward, surging ahead with a rapid beating of his wings. Before the bat can cross the street the falcon is on him but the bat pulls one of those mid-air reversals that bats are famous for and the hawk sweeps by. We cheer like fans at the arena. What a show.

Besides lounging in the evenings I have been working on the manatee. Before I install the aft and centre decks, I have to make sure I have done everything else. It will be much harder to work on interior areas of the boat once the decks are in place. I have learned to slow down, to spend a lot of time simply staring at the boat, letting the solutions to problems come to me. One such problem was how to install the rudder. I thought I would have to penetrate the hull with screws, so I cut a hole in the aft flotation chamber and installed a hatch. This way I could get at the inside at the very back, and install a wooden block to receive the screws, and also so that I didn't have a chamber in the boat that could fill with water without my kknowledge or ability to drain it.




It turns out I didn't need the hatch, because I found a way to mount the bracket by bolting on wooden side pieces that meet at the stern. The side pieces are bolted to the gunwhales, so they don't penetrate the hull, and where they meet, a third piece of wood is screwed on as a tiny transom, to receive the rudder mounting bracket. No holes in the hull. You can see in this picture the wooden brackets bolted into the side of the gunwales. The rudder is from one of my Seaward Southwinds expedition double kayaks, and should be big enough for the job.




I managed to complete a few other little jobs too, like installing the latch on the aft bulkhead hatch, and mounting wooden dogs to secure the hatches more tightly.

My biggest challenge so far has been the forward compartment. The hatch is on the bulkhead, under a long section of the midships deck and in front of the centreboard trunk. In other words, I can't get at the hatch to open or close it, not to mention manging to stow anything in there or retrieve it later. The only alternative I could think of was to install an hatch on the foredeck. But the foredeck is arched, making it difficult to install a pre-made, flat hatch, and if it were to leak, the water would get into the forward compartment, where I could never see it nor drain it.

So after staring at the boat I came up with a solution. I would install a hatch on the midships deck, above the forward bulkhead hatch so that by reaching through the deck hatch I can open and close the bulkhead hatch, and even reach into the compartment a short distance to stuff things in or take them out. Such a deck hatch needs only be big enough for my arm to reach through, so even if it is flat, it will fit the curved deck well enough not to leak. And if it does leak at all, it will leak into the cockpit where I can bail it out easily. Another problem solved.

I have gone nearly an entire season without posting. Part of the reason for this is that I have had virtually no time off. One day, or even two, is barely enough break to catch my breath, regain my strength and do my laundry. And if I knew I was going out again so quickly I would husband my strength better. But this has been a season of sudden schedule changes.

So here I am, finally with two weeks off (!) to rest up and work on the Manatee. I don't have any pictures of recent progress yet, but I do have other pix.

One of the great things about my job is that I get to see and try out all kinds of cool gear that guests bring. Let's face it: they have a lot more money than I do. And so I have decided what my next camera purchase will be: a Canon Powershot D-10. Any old point-and-shoot will do for your run-of-the-mill photography needs, but it takes a good camera to shott well underwater. And I don't want to deal with housings. This camera takes great shots above the surface, is shallow-water proof, and take dynamite underwater pix. I'll give you a few examples from Mike (last name temporarily lost) who let me download his data card to this computer. Here are a few of Mike's better shots...



This is from the inner chamber of the "Cave of the Stone Sepulchre" Actun Tunichil Mucnal

More tomorrow...

Back in the tropics

It’s 4:00 am, still dark. The temperature is barely above freezing and there is a heavy, drizzly rain falling. An icy wind blows the rain in gusts against me and my fellow bus passengers as we stand exposed under a high roof at the Nogales border crossing. I am on my way north, to Tucson, to catch a series of flights that will bring me to Belize City tomorrow afternoon.

Arriving in Tucson, I am the first one off the bus, but by the time I find my damn luggage ticket the only taxi is full. The desk clerk tells me he has called a guy to take me where I want to go, or he can order me a real taxi. I accept the bogus cab ride because I don’t know how long my cash will take me. So we bump and grind our way across Tucson in an old beater with a broken side view mirror (a previous near-miss, I gather), pocked windshield, broken seatbelt, and scraps of fabric hanging from the ceiling. It saves me ten bucks and I arrive safely so all is well.

My good friend Sonnie and her daughter Liz collect my international mail, and feed and house me when I come to town. Liz loaned me her car so I could make a few last-minute purchases. Thanks, Liz. I leave at 5:25, so I don’t get to say goodbye. Thanks, Sonnie.

It is still dark and pouring rain in Tucson as I ride to the airport. Earlier tonight the winds were so bad they closed the Phoenix airport (there were tornado warnings all over the state) but this morning the air is calm and by the time we take off, the sky is starting to clear. Check-in and security go smoothly and I have time to spare before my first of three flights. My only concern about timing will happen when I get to Belize City. If they search my bags, I will probably miss my flight to Dangriga. As it turns out they only ask me a few questions and let me go. I get to the departure lounge with plenty of time to spare: five whole minutes.

I love flying in these Cessna Caravans. You never see a fifteen-passenger single-prop plane anymore. The view of the coast is spectacular: out the port window you see the sea below and the islands that huddle behind the barrier reef. Out the starboard window is the swampy coastal plain, a broad, flat expanse of savannah, dotted with lakes and marshes. The coast itself is a long line of sand, with the submerged sandbars visible through the clear water. I watch for manatees along the line of seagrass that parallels the shore just beyond the last sandbar, but all I see are the remaining hulks of a couple of wrecked ships.

At the airport in Dangriga, I meet Sue and Aaron, a Philly couple who are going to Glover’s Reef. We all pile into the Island Expeditions Toyota Hi-Lux, and in no time I am back in the “Clubhouse” exhausted and sweating.

To all my friends in San Carlos, take care, have a good rest of the winter, and I’ll see you in May. More to come soon.

I found a great quote recently, about the effects of natural selection on cultural evolution, using the Polynesian canoe as a model. Translated from the original French, is this quote, from the French philosopher Alain (Émile-Auguste Chartier) in 1908.

Every boat is copied from another boat...it is the sea herself who fashions the boats choosing those which function and destroying the rest.

As a selective force, the sea can indeed be very powerful. This, needless to say, is the source of much worry for seafarers, but it is also the driving force behind us, more so than the wind itself. For of what use is a voyage if it does not test us? It must test our seaworthiness, in every sense, from the craft itself to the skills and strengths of those who sail her. It tests the seaworthiness of our judgement, our knowledge, our alertness, our stamina. If we are found seaworthy, in the conditions nature throws at us, we will reach our intended shore and it will mean something to us, that we have passed a rigorous test indeed and were not destroyed.

As this is my voyage, from top to bottom, and all the building, planning, outfitting, navigating etc. are my project, then it is I alone who am being tested. Am I seaworthy? Time will tell. The first Manatee ran into a few flaws, and they were fixed with no real harm done, until the last one. But by then I had already deemed the boat unfit for such a voyage as I had planned, so the loss was small. And more was learned by that simple shipwrecking, than was lost to me in the event. The second Manatee will be all the better-built for it, and I will be better prepared for the next failure, whatever it may be.

Still, whatever events I may plan for, I am sure the sea will be throwing up new ones at me, even unto the day I arrive at my destination, after months of sailing. And more complicated than one finds aboard any ordinary sailboat, is the fact that this boat and I must be able to land on the beach, time after time. The deep blue sea has dangers enough, but any sailor will tell you the most dangerous place in the whole ocean of the world, is the place where it collides with the land: an unstoppable force meeting an immoveable object.

So will the Manatee II and I be seaworthy and shoreworthy? Time and tide will tell.

There have been many stories written about a future without mankind. What will cities look like after the last humans have left? The stories usually portray a gradual erosion of buildings and roads. I have seen how it will really happen. Long periods without change will be punctuated by the abrupt collapse of buildings, utility poles, the sudden washing away of roads, and breakage of pipes and conduits. Time will gradually weaken structures, but it will be storms that knock it all down.

Imagine 36 hours of one-inch-per-hour rains, flowing over hard desert soils. A river of mud and debris will take out strings of power poles, float boats out of storage yards and pile them up on roads, wash cars into the sea. Drainage courses in the desert are dry so much of the time, that people build their houses, put up walls and fences right in or across them, as if they were a mere dip in the landscape and nothing to be concerned about. But walls become dams, and when they are knocked over, the resulting flood can be devastating. And when water and mud flow in under doors it can be terrifying.

Hurricane Jimena never officially touched the mainland in the Guaymas area, but it parked itself in the middle of the Gulf of California for a day and a half, and the sustained heavy rains cut roads in half and washed whole houses away, especially in poor areas. Two weeks later we have electricity and water again, but thousands are homeless, there is still debris on the roads and detours around the washed out sections. Everything will eventually be restored, but the breakdown from a single, if rare, storm is immense. This is how it will all happen when we finally leave this planet, or when, like the Mayans, we abandon our cities and our civilisation and return to a stone age culture. Hopefully that time is a long way off.

Meanwhile, life goes on in San Carlos. I for one am still acclimating to the humid heat after a wonderful five weeks in Ontario. If there is anyone who doubts the effect of humidity on the sensation of heat, or cold for that matter, think of it in terms of conductivity. Moisture in the air is like metal in the hand, versus something less conductive, like wood or plastic. And humid heat is unrelieved by sweat, which clings to clothing and skin, instead of evaporating and cooling the body. As much as I love my life here, I long for the cool fresh air of a Canadian summer and fall.

Lorena and I are considering spending more time in Canada. Since we migrate north every summer, we might as well stay longer, and make some money. This way we can avoid the extremes of temperature in both countries, and enjoy the best of what they have to offer. The tricky part is to find seasonal work so that we can come back to it every summer, and always have the job waiting for us.

Wish us luck.

Cheers
Jack

Lake Talon, 31 August, night
A pregnant moon lays a silver path across the still, black water. A thin layer of mist dances and swirls slowly over the surface . Outside the temperature is already just a few degrees above freezing, but in the bathroom, a small electric heater has kept it the toastiest room in the cottage.

I am reluctant to emerge from this sanctuary of warmth, to cross the chilly, uninsulated main lodge to the insulated, if unheated bedroom. Quickly I shiver under a down blanket and am snuggled again against my warm other half. This is life at the cottage in late summer, or at least a glimpse.

Soon we are up, getting the fire going and starting breakfast. The morning sun has lifted the night mist off the lake, and it is a bright, cheery day.

This cottage is the anchor for the Wilde family. We try to all get here when we can, to share our old stories, and make up new ones, with family and friends new and old. The building itself expresses the history of the various families that owned it, with all the various additions , the rearranged rooms, and the mismatched dishes and cutlery. Legally it belongs to my brother, Alex. This was Dad’s idea: he has seen too many family conflicts when various siblings co-own a cottage, and can’t agree on modifications and repairs, who will pay for what, and who uses it when. Management of the family cottage needs to be a dictatorship. And Alex has been a benevolent dictator, making sure it remains the Wilde family cottage.

Alex has a young family and a new farm, so the cottage has become a necessarily low priority. So when we arrived in early August, we found that this petty fiefdom had been conquered by ravaging hordes of tiny Visigoths resembling nothing more than mice and chipmunks. Also, an ill-timed family accident led the cottage to be temporarily abandoned one fall, resulting in frozen water pipes. So our first priorities were to clean out the mouse-befouled cupboards and counters, remove debris and scattered clothing and toys, and to restore the water supply to kitchen and bathroom.

Under the cottage, the copper tubing had blown out at several elbows. Just a few joints to resolder, no pipes to replace. A borrowed torch from next door, and a bit of cursing and a few burned fingers, and the job of reconnecting the pipes is done without burning down the building. I broke a plastic connector attached to the pressure tank, and managed to free it by melting it with the torch without damaging the bladder inside the tank. So everything is good from the pump to the kitchen sink and toilet.

Next is the water supply from the lake. When the ice came in it pushed the waterline right up onto the beach and broke it off at the edge of shore. It also pushed it up underground putting a kink in the line. So the kids dug up the line and found the blockage, and when we were done, the waterline was good from the pump to the lake.
Prepared for the triumphant sound of water flowing in the pipes, I filled the pipe to the lake, connected it to the pump, and then began to fill the pump. And, of course, triumph turns to defeat as water pours out through a gaping crack in the side of the pump. Shit. So now it is a trip to town to buy a used pump.

Hooking up the pump to 220V, I turned off the switch so the wires would be safe to handle. It wasn’t until I tried to turn it on that I discovered the switch was somehow bypassed and useless, and if it weren’t for the fact that the power was turned off at the main panel upstairs, I wouldn’t be typing this.

Anyway, the new pump worked once we had adjusted the pressure so that it didn’t blow the hose off every time it turned off. So we have a flushing toilet and water in the kitchen. The place is clean and orderly. Life is good. We still have to heat water on the stove, but we use the electric one for that, and a shower is a simple matter of standing in the tub and pouring hot water over your body with a dipper.

The reason we come up to Ontario in August is to split our summer into manageable halves. The summer monsoon in Sonora runs from July to early October, and is both hot and humid. So by coming to North Bay in August, although we miss the best of summer weather here, we also miss the worst of the summer down south. And we can appreciate the cool and even the cold, wet weather, as a pleasant change to extreme moist heat.

Today, however, is perfect. Sunny and clear, the day promises to be warm and dry. The lake is a bit chilly, but we can swim until late October in Sonora, so we don’t miss it as much as we might if we lived here year-round. That said, there is nothing like swimming in a warm freshwater lake. No chlorinated pool and no salty sea can compare with the joy of freshwater. I like the sea, especially snorkelling in it, for all there is to see. But it is nice to not have to rinse the salt off of you. And of you swallow a bit of lake water, you are less thirsty for it, not more.

Today we might take the SS Entropy for a stroll down the lake, maybe see if our neighbours are around. The Entropy has seen better days. A pontoon boat is like a floating dock you can drive around the lake. It has a big flat deck, and lots of comfy chairs and couches to sit on. The problem is that the sun and the rain eat away at the upholstery, the carpeted deck stays wet long after a rain, and traps mildew and sand, and eventually the boat looks like an abandoned convertible on some redneck’s front lawn. So next year we are going to replace the carpeted deck with cedar decking, and the upholstered chairs can be replaced with cedar lawn furniture. Then it will still look like a floating dock but will be much easier to maintain and will look good for years.

Lake Talon is a lovely lake. Most of the shore and surrounding terrain is Crown land, with a scattering of cottages and a few permanent homes. It is all surrounded by a mixed forest, dominated by pines near shore, and a mixture of spruce, fir, poplar, birch and maple on the slopes. High hills surround the lake and except for the cottages and a few boats, it looks like the middle of wilderness. And it will stay that way because the crown has no intention of releasing any more land. Much longer than it is wide, it is a crooked series of bays and inlets, giving it a long shoreline but no really big open water. So it is ideal for exploring by canoe or motorboat. Most of the shore is bouldery, but there are plenty of rocky outcrops and some nice sandy beaches for picnicking. There is very little boat traffic on the lake, even in summer, and at this time of the year you practically feel like you have the lake to yourself.

The lake is part of the Mattawa River, and is part of an ancient canoe route stretching across the country. At one time the portages were marked with a signpost, and each had a large brass plaque outlining the history of the river and of that particular portage. Now the portages are hard to find, though they are all still used all summer by adventurous paddlers, and during the annual North Bay to Mattawa canoe race.

Being surrounded by so much Crown land has really spoiled me. The idea that you can just push off shore in a canoe and go for days or weeks, camping anywhere suitable, catch fish for dinner, and just wander at will without having to ask anyone for permission or pay a fee seemed the most natural thing in the world to me growing up here. Now I see how rare a thing this is I feel especially lucky to have grown up here. And to have a cottage surrounded in Crown land is a rare and lucky thing. I hope it always remains like this.

A postscript: While we were away in beautiful Northern Ontario, our lovely San Carlos got hit by Hurricane Jimena. Strong winds and heavy rain battered the poor town for 36 hours, dumping nearly a half a metre of rain. As far as we know our friends in San Carlos and neighbouring Guaymas are still trapped there with no water, no electricity and the highways washed out in both directions. We wish them all the best. Please eat the food in our fridge!

This is Monsoon Season: SE winds bring moisture-laden Tropical air and the rains, when they come, fall violently,with lightning crashing all around us, knocking out power, flooding the streets and making a big mess. As I was about to go to bed last night, I noticed the trees outside were rocking violently. The wind began blowing so strong that things started crashing to the ground outside, and I had to go onto the roof to close the hatch over the bathroom. I was a bit late: I still had to sweep the floor in the morning for all the sand and grit that had blown in, and that was from the roof.
I checked the internet weather and discovered a huge mass of cloud to the south and coming this way. I was hoping for a monsoon rain: heavy rain, lots of lightning. But so far all we got was wind, shaking the windows, blowing grit in through the gaps and under the doors. The dogs were pretty nervous about the whole event, but I couldn’t sit with them because my eyes would get all full of grit. So I had to content myself with watching from inside. The flashes of light in the sky told of an advancing thunderstorm, and when I started to hear the rumble, I knew it was within about 15 miles. Alas the rain, the lightning spectacle that is so much fun to watch from the safety of home, never arrived. It was another teaser.
Meanwhile, the desert is still dry and leafless, and we stay in to avoid the extreme heat and humidity, awaiting the glory that the summer rains bring.

My daughter, Kate, returned from a high school field trip to Europe. I asked her “How was your trip?”. And instead of the expected “good” or “it was awesome!” she replied, “There were a lot of stairs, and don’t ever call anything in Canada ‘old’.”
There is a lesson here for all of us. When we travel, it is not enough to think of our experiences as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. We should think about how our experiences have changed our relationship with the world at large. Every new experience moulds and shapes us, however little, or it wasn’t truly experienced. Travel is rich in new experiences, and since travelling is costly, economically and environmentally, we owe it to ourselves and others to make the best of it.
Keeping a journal is an effective way to enhance the experience. Not only does having a record allow you to relive your memories, but the mere act of writing down what you saw and did and felt, involves the whole mind in the experience.
Photography is a useful tool as well, for reliving your trip, especially when you share the photos with others. But I find the act of taking pictures removes you from the act of experience. Take a beautiful sunset for example. To sit and watch the colours of the sky gradually shift down the spectrum and fade to that deep indigo, and to see the night stars emerge in order of brightness, can be a deeply spiritual experience. Sunsets can be beautiful, but if you are fussing about setting up the tripod, and waiting for just the right moment when the lighting is perfect, you get a great picture, but no sense of having experienced the sunset. What you experienced was the act of photographing the sunset, not the act of observing it.
I remember a trip I took with Kate when she was eight. We drove around southern Vancouver Island in an old camper van I had. My camera broke(drowned, actually) the week before when we were on a sailing trip, so I was relieved of the distraction of photography and was free to fully experience the act of observing the joys of discovery that only an eight-year-old can truly do well. Without the camera to chronicle the trip, I deliberately took mental pictures. One picture is of an eight-year-old girl dressed in fleece jacket and pants, with new hiking boots. She was standing on a tree stump, which had washed up on the beach. The stump was not very tall but wide enough she could have lain down on it with neither head nor foot hanging over the edge. She was leaning into a pair of miniature binoculars and gazing intently out to sea. Her expression was of serious curiosity, and she was a perfect miniature version of an adult, all the cuter for being a kid.
Now picture a huge conifer, its massive buttress roots anchoring it to the earth. Each root emerges from the tree as a triangular slab of wood, a few inches thick but three feet tall at the base, tapering to a more rounded shape a few feet from the trunk. Now picture this noble tree, long dead, washed ashore with the buttresses radiating from the base, facing the sea that delivered it to some lonely beach. Now picture the same eight-year-old curled up, lying asleep on an horizontal buttress in the root system of this great tree, shaded by the root above. My feeling at this image is one of great joy, at spending this brief moment of time with my precious daughter. The memories of that time together will remain with me all my life, and has shaped our relationship.
So, by all means take a few snaps. But more importantly, write down your experiences. And most of all, live them.

Well it's time I did some justice to the places I visit, especially Lighthouse Reef. My thanks to Victor and Dawn Meekhof for all the photos in this post. You did a great job, much better than I could have done. By the way, all these images are the property of Victor and Dawn Meekhof.

Let's start with Half Moon Caye. as the Belize Audubon Society says, "It all started with the boobies." In this case it was the red-footed boobies, which have a large nesting colony here. To see the boobies, you follow a trail along the north shore of the island, which then turns inland. You hear them before you see them; strange croaking noises, bill-clapping and other noises beyond description fill the air. As does the smell of guano, also known as birdshit. Peering up into the trees, you can see boobies peering back down at you, sitting on nests that are no more than a few meagre twigs jammed into the crotch of a tree.. They are so tame that they are not the least stressed by the presence of people who are walking quietly beneath them. Presently you come to an observation tower, and a few steps takes you to eye level.



There you see the boobies, and frigatebirds all nesting together. People wonder why boobies would tolerate their arch-enemy, the frigatebird to nest so closely. It is easy to imagine that having the same bully that stole your breakfast from you sitting in the next nest over would be intolerable. But the birds don't take it personally. The frigates are no threat on the nest, and there is safety in numbers, from real nest predators. so they live and let live.







The first two shots are of mature red-footed boobies in the white colour phase. This phase is less common globally than the brown-with-a-white-tail colour phase, but here on Half Moon Caye, the white birds are by far the more common.



The second shot, you have figured out by now. It is all a confusing mess. Newborns are all-white and fluffy. When they lose the baby down, they are brown. Only at maturity do they reach their final colour pattern.




Sometimes a bird falls from the flimsy nest and is rejected by the parents. The Park Rangers may try to replace the bird, but if the parents won't have it then they raise it themselves. Sometimes these orphans eventually take off and go off to feed themselves, but not Gilly. She liked people too much. When placed with her kin, she would immediately fly back to the park office. She would often be seen landing on the outboard motor of an approaching dinghy, begging for fish scraps. She even landed on my kayak a couple of times, then finally landed on my hat. She stayed on my hat all the way back to the beach until I set her on the fish-cleaning table.




She would even make a nuisance of herself when James and Adolfo were trying to clean the day's catch.





We also get in the water to do some snorkelling. Here is Dawn consulting the Oracle, a huge brain coral. Also shown is a hawksbill turtle. Hawksbills are the most common turtle found in the shallow water, but are often too shy to watch for long. They graze on algae and eat a variety of marine mollusks. This is the turtle that was once prized for "tortoiseshell" jewellery, and was saved from extinction by the development of cheap plastic substitutes. Ironic, considering floating plastics are arguably the greatest threat to the survival of several sea turtle species.







Can you see the stonefish in this picture? If you can you may even notice a small sharp-nosed puffer picking at the stonefish as if it were indeed a rock covered in marine growth.




I couldn't resist including this shot of a reef squid checking out a school of snorkellers. Reef squid are real characters; they swim in formation, changing colour and even flashing white and dark. They have amazing control over their skin pigment, opening and closing pigment cells called chromatophores with astonishing speed.




The weather isn't always as it appears in the literature. Sometimes a squall hits us
and dumps a heavy rain for a couple of minutes before it passes. This is Victor smiling because he was smart or lucky enough to still be in the water when it hit. Pity those who sat through the rain on the boat, but not too much. And if you look closely between the engines you will see the head of yours truly, avoiding the rain altogether.






It isn't always raining either, Much more often we have a flawless sky and sometimes the wind is just right for a sail.....





More to come soon. Cheers
Jack

Just in from Glover's Reef and want to post some photos from some of my guests.

The first is an iguana in a tree. During the winter months the males climb up into prominent spots where they can display their size and orange mating colours. Preferred sites are in the tops of trees directly over water, for a quick getaway if needed. This magnificent specimen was in his prime and probably had several females hanging around in nearby branches to get a piece of him when laying time comes around.





Next is a Morelet's crocodile. This species is smaller and less aggressive than the American crocodile, and unlike the American, is found only in freshwater rivers and lagoons. This fellow was hanging out in the branches of a downed tree along the banks of the New River.



Half Moon Caye hosts a nesting colony of the rare and beautiful white-phase red-footed booby. Trails wander under the booby nests, leading to a three-metre tall observation tower. Standing on the tower, visitors are surrounded by nesting boobies and frigatebirds, almost within reach. This pair of boobies was sharing the duties of feeding each other and sitting on the nest.


Thanks to Birgit Kuhle, for the booby pic, which I have posted with her permission.


More coming next week. Cheers
Jack

I have some catching up to do. Sorry I am so late. Ok, so last summer and fall, I did a little research on outriggers (amas). I decided to go to two amas after the disastrous consequences of having a single ama fail on me one dark and windy night. I found out that in the Hawaiian chain there is a tradition of making sailing canoes with two amas. Because of the surfy conditions and huge swells these boats have to content with, the amas are swept high in the front, so if the boat broaches (turns sideways) while coming in through surf, or sliding down a big wave at sea, the lower ama won't dig into the next wave and trip the boat.

The first three photos show the basic shape of an ama. It is made of polyisocyanurate foam (which is expensive but doesnt dissolve on contact with polyester resin like styrofoam would), cut with a saw and shaped with planing tools and coarse sandpaper. The foam is two sheets glued together and glued to a plywood backbone which was precut to the right shape, and gives a consistent form and stiffness to the mould. Without the plywood spine it never would have come out symmetrical.





The next photo shows the fibreglass ( a single layer of matte) as it is cut and laid on before adding the resin. The fibreglass and resin are bonded to the foam and this forms the outer layer of the mould (middle picture). Then the foam is carefully cut away from the plywood spine.




After the foam is separated from the spine, it is mounted on a couple of posts, and wrapped with plastic film, of the type you wrap leftovers in. Now is it ready for the thick fibreglass layer: two layers of matte sandwiching a layer of woven roving. The fibreglass will not stick to the mould because of the layers of plastic film. You could use mould release wax, but I didn't have any.



Once I made the first fibreglass cast, I had to grind it off at the ends so it would open enough to remove it. Then I put it back in place and shipped it to Chetumal, near the border with Belize. There it would wait for me to carry it across the border.

Once I was in Belize, I took the bus up to the border and dropped in on my friends Rolando and Mercedes. They were storing it for me, and kindly took me in overnight. The next morning Rolando drove me to the border. I walked across the Rio Hondo bridge into Belize and went to Customs and Immigration. The Customs officers didnt know how much to rob me in duty for this strange-looking object. They base their "duty" on the market value, plus the cost of shipping and insuring the object. The shipping cost was typed on the waybill. It said $845. So they assumed that was in US dollars. I told them that was pesos (it was), and they finally believed me when I explained that the sign for pesos is not found on a keyboard, so they use the $ sign. So when they finally tallied up their estimate they charge 20%, then taxes on their fee (!). It all came to almost $100us. For a chunk of foam and fibreglass that I made myself. So I left the Customs office and started walking to Corozal, a distance of about 20 miles. Of course the second pickup truck that passed by stopped for me and I rode in the back until I saw the bus station. I was concerned about the awkwardness of taking the ama on the bus but it fit right under the seats – the buses here are all old Bluebird school buses, totally unmodified. The rest is uneventful.
When I got to Dangriga I moved into the new guides house. Every year it is a different place, because they only rent it for a few months and have to take what they can get. This year it is the top floor of a two-storey concrete house at the south edge of town, right up against the mangroves (and sandflies).



This isnt it. But it is our immediate neighbour to the west. This picture was taken from the roof, which is accessible and has a rail all around, as you will see.



The first picture is the Manatee on the roof before I got the sawhorses built. After the sawhorses were built, I began work on the daggerboard trunk. On the right you can see the opening in the hull for the daggerboard (a hinged keel: more like a jackknife than a dagger). In the centre picture the dagger board is barely visible sticking up through the opening. I like this picture because it shows how sleek this boat is.


On the left is a better view of the daggerboard, which is an old rudder salvaged off a wrecked Hobiecat, found out at Half Moon Caye. Above the boat is the framework for a shade. I only set the tarp up when I am going to work on the boat. Otherwise the wind beats it up and pulls the poles all apart.




The photo on the right shows the trunk: the box in which the dagger board is housed. Also evident in this picture are the two bulkheads with large hatches cut into them.
Just working on this section made me realise I am not getting this boat done this year; especially since I spent the bulk of my time off vacationing with Lorena, which I don’t regret in the least.
So thats my progress so far, folks. Next posting will come in a week or two. I have to rustle up some photos from some of my guests first. Cheers, Jack

How can one describe silence? How can one share solitude? How can a desire for aloneness cure a loneliness of the soul? That is the rub, isn’t it? The paradox of wilderness. We want it , indeed need wilderness to exist, even if we never set foot in it. Many insist that there be places on this earth where no human treads, even lightly. I am one such person. But I am selfish. I also need places where no permanent trace of man exists, and yet I want to be there. To live, even briefly, as man lived before civilisation, before industrialisation, before globalisation. To breathe the silence, to drink in the emptiness, to swell inside with the fullness of a lonely planet, empty of my own kind.

I can only speak for myself. When I leave behind humanity and enter the wild world, it takes about three days before the voice in my head quiets. Suddenly I am truly present in my surroundings, no longer buffered and shielded by the continuous chatter that substitutes for my own thoughts. Thinking, feeling and being, are revealed to be three different processes of mind. It takes continuous silence, not from sound, but from noise,the kind you are trained since birth to notice, to interpret. Voices, street traffic, music, commercials. And noise, which comes in a visual form as well, especially if written in billboards ten feet high, demands your attention even if you don’t realise it. And by grabbing and holding your attention, noise, in all its forms, robs you of your presence of mind; that is, it takes you out of yourself, and prevents your self from being present, in the moment, and connected to all things.

In the bush, in the desert, on the sea, your attention is also needed, but the volume of traffic on your brain is much slower, more manageable, and devoid of any social context. The word peaceful springs to mind. There is a peace in solitude that cannot exist in the presence of another human being. But how can one describe this kind of peace, with the words that shatter it, deny its existence? How can one hope to communicate the feeling of that moment, when all internal communication stops, ceases to exist, and all that is is a state of peaceful emptiness of mind, of a fullness of spirit, a moment of mere, bare , pure existence? Alone, but not lonely, indeed the opposite of lonely, in which the connectedness of all the universe is known without thought, felt without sensation, but just is.

The longest stage of any journey begins when you start to see signs you are almost home.

It is said that “Life is a journey”. We focus too much on the little destinations, the goals that have been set before us, so that we do not live in the moment but are always striving for a distant future. But the destinations are but instants in time: they occupy none of the space of our lives. It is the striving, the journey itself that fills the space between the destinations: this is where we live.
It’s hard to feel that way when you are travelling home. Heading away from home is a form of exploration. Every moment has meaning because travel is the purpose of your life at that moment. But when you set your sights on home you cease to travel, as an activity, as a form of exploration. From then on all the experiences of your travel are an annoyance, something that stands between you and your goal. The goal isn’t to go home: it is to be home.

That was how I felt at the end of my season in Belize this year. Don’t get me wrong: it was a good season for me. I met some very interesting people, and had a great time swimming with the fishies. But once the season was over, I was in a hurry to get home, to be there on my birthday, with Lorena. And a cancelled flight meant I had to get from Dangriga to Cancun overland in a single day. Now I am home, in San Carlos, in late April. The days are warm, the nights are cool and the air is dry. And the sea is chilly. Oh well, I can go a while without snorkelling with no ill effects.

This blog is supposed to be about the Manatee. Well the first one is gone, and the second one is under construction. It has been a great experience working on the new boat this past winter. I had done a little fibreglass work before, but never actually built anything out of fibreglass. This year, with the help of Kerry (aka Bobo), Island Expeditions’ resident fibreglass expert, I have built the decking, the cockpit, bulkheads, hatches and the centreboard trunk, all out of fibreglass. When she is done, she will be all fibreglass except the floor and a folding table attached to the centreboard trunk.

I was planning to photodocument each stage of the process, but I left my camera in San Carlos and took only one photo of the boat with the camera of another guide. So the pictures will have to wait. Now I am home I plan to build the amas (outriggers) and akas (crossbeams between the amas and the main hull) here in San Carlos, and ship them to Belize for the beginning of next season. This gives me plenty of time to work on them. Next season I should be able to assemble the whole boat before I start work and then take her out with me. I will sail her around and find her weaknesses before I set out on my voyage home. This next one will have two amas, so if one fails, I have a backup until I can get it fixed. It will also be very fast as it is longer - 20 ft - and lighter - about 1/3 the weight of the first one. The further I progress, the more excited I become about the voyage home. Sometimes it is an obsession and I have to remind myself to enjoy the anticipation but live my life now. That said, it doesn’t mean I can’t reminisce. So I would like to share some of the moments I experienced this past field season in Belize.

We don’t often snorkel the Western Wall at Glover’s Reef, as it is too far to paddle for most groups, and the groups are usually too big to take the skiff. But this year the number of people travelling to Belize was way down, so we had some small groups. One such trip we decided to skiff over to the Western Wall and snorkel along the outside edge of the atoll where the bottom drops vertically to great depths. The wall is actually a series of walls, separated by ledges. We were snorkelling over one such ledge, with about 20 feet between us and the corals below. We saw the usual assortment of reef fishes, and in small sandy clearing lay a dead squirrelfish. We noted the fish and carried on when someone spotted a large green moray eel, swimming along the bottom in broad daylight. This is unusual, so we followed it as it poked its head in and out of various holes in the reef, until it came upon the dead squirrelfish. It must have caught scent of the fish and come looking for it. We watched as the huge eel writhed and struggled to swallow this spiny fish. The whole effort looked painful.

After the show was over, we spread out and continued to drift southward with the current. I was off to the right of the main group, right near the dropoff, when a large shape directly below caught my eye. My breath caught in my throat as a 12 ft. hammerhead shark swam steadily beneath me. This was the first time I had seen a shark that could easily eat me, while I was in the water with it. The long, lithe body and powerful tail contrasted sharply with the more commonly seen nurse shark. I had a feeling, looking at this fellow, that he could easily turn and take a monstrous bite out of me should he decide to. Rationally I knew I had nothing to fear, as shark attacks are almost always on people who are spearfishing, and the shark really just wants the fish. I also quickly surmised that he wasn’t interested in us because he was already past us and swimming determinedly southward. I tried to follow, but even though he wasn’t in a hurry, he was still far too fast to keep up with. But just for the briefest of moments, he was Jaws, and I was one of his hapless victims.

My second shark encounter was much closer and much, much scarier. I was snorkelling a new patch reef, near the edge of the atoll at Lighthouse Reef, with two guests in tow. We had anchored in about 15 ft. of water, and were working our way around this big patch reef. As we got nearer to the edge of the reef, the patch reef broke up into a series of large dead coral mounds. I got an eerie feeling there. There was no live coral, no fish even. As I rounded one mound, I suddenly saw a big, heavy-bodied shark, swimming away from me, scanning back and forth. Usually when you see a shark during the day, they are milling around, killing time. This one looked like it was looking for something. I turned and looked for my friends. Then I stuck my head back in the water. The shark emerged again, a few feet away. This time he had a school of jacks with him. They knew he was hunting. Again he swam away.

I pressed myself against the coral head and looked for my guests again. I called them over and said “Snorkel’s over. I just saw a really big shark.” Read the italics as a kind of breathy speech. “Ok,” I continued, “Let’s swim over to the boats together, like one big fish.” No one argued or questioned me and we more or less did just that. It seemed to take forever for the two of them to get into the boats, as I stayed under, scanning the water. Then we were all in and on our way back. When the fear is over, you are left with a rush of adrenaline, the kind of high that makes you feel truly and sharply alive. You feel like you are charged with electricity, covered in Saint Elmo's fire. There is nothing like it.

It occurred to me that if one of the Belizian guides was with us, I wouldn’t have felt so spooked. These guys know the sea, they live in these waters, and I rely on them for their knowledge and experience. But when it is all up to me, I don’t quite have the same confidence, not when other peoples’ lives are at stake. Later conversations with Alex, the most experienced of the Belizian guides, convinced me it was probably a bull shark, and that it was wise to get out of the water when we did.

I guess that’s a part of life, isn’t it? Knowing when to get out of the water. That’s my cue.

Cheers
Island Jack

Back in Belize, with high hopes and empty pockets. Came early intending to work on the new Manadi, but can't do any work until I gt some money, so I am enjoying playing tourist. Went camping for ten with a friend from Tucson. Here are some highlights...

Sailing a double kayak in a lovely NE breeze, we spy a dolphin clearing the water about 100m ahead. So I scratch the hull of the kayak to get his attention. and soon he appears below us in the clear green water. He swims alongside, underneath us for a few seconds, then crosses under us and disappears. We take this as an auspicious start to our trip.

Day 3 Tobacco Range. A cold front has come in and strong NW winds are keeping us on the beach. A fishing boat from the north coast is using our island as shelter from the wind, so the crew come ashore. The Skipper teaches me how to weave a net. We use his net needle and I make a net bag. This is a great skill to have. Later we get some bamboo and carve net needles. Several of us are at work carving these needles, and one suggests a contest to see who can make the nicest one. I have the sharpest knife and so win the contest, not by any skill of my own.

Day 6: We are entering Sittee River after crossing several miles from Billyhawk Cay. Right at the mouth are three manatees, which we watch only briefly before they spot us and disappear. We enter the river, and about a mile in there is a narrow side channel which connects to a lagoon. We pass into the channel and are swallowed up by the forest. The scene about us is magical. We are surrounding by tall tangles of mangrove roots, and enclosed by the forest. Tiny birds flit by so swiftly we can't identify them, and all is still and silent. The silence rings in our ears after so many days of constant wind and waves. We drift with the current and marvel at our surroundings before we burst forth into a large round lagoon and the spell is broken.

Day 7: We are camped on a beautiful sandy beach, with our own dock and picnic area. Through the sparse woods behind us is a lagoon, and a new-built road. In the bush we find a pair of narrow-gauge locomotive wheels, and there is evidence of dredging in the lagoon. We later discover that there is a big marina and housing devlopment planned for this area, but for now we have it to ourselves. Ourselves and millions of nasty biting sandflies. For now the breeze is blowing and we are content to hang our hammocks and make our dinner in peace. But in the morning, after a rain followed by a windless day, we are driven away as fast as we can flee.

Day 9: We are on the Sittee River, at the Riverview Lodge, which for now is just a restaurant and dock, but we are very pleased with the people and the location. We have slung our hammocks under a big thatch, and we have a place to cook our meals and hang our clothes, along with a shower and toilets. This place is perfect for us. The owners are friendly and helpful and plan to build some cabins on the grounds. And camping is only $10 BZE ($5US) per night.

From the dock we watch tiger herons and little blue herons stalk the shoreline. A small black opossum steals by in the night. He is headed to a small channel to drink where he is reasonably safe from crocodiles. Later we see one glide by, about a 10-footer.

In the trees around our campsite we see and hear oropendulas, melodious blackbirds, red-lored parrots, a huge, orange and black iguana, and two keel-billed toucans. The toucans are a real highlight, being such an unusual bird and are a big attraction to the Sittee River area.

We get a couple of bikes and ride up the road, looking for the old sugar mill. A Salvadorian citrus worker helps us find it, and we discover huge wheels and gears buried in the jungle vegetation. By the size of the trees that have grown up in this site, it has been abandoned for a long time. We later learn it was the first sugar mill in Belize, built in the 1830's. We also learn that from here was built a railway to take the sugar to the sea, where it was loaded on schooners. The point of loading was that very beach where we had camped among the locomotive wheels and sandflies. Another mystery solved and a trip worth the effort.

A word about campsites. Much of the coast of this tiny country is privately owned, but we found welcoming people and affordable sites. One such place is Billyhawk Cay, which has a small fledgling resort. For $10bze a night you can camp there and live among Garifuna fishermen. If you don't catch any fish, they will sell you some, and there are nice coral reefs nearby to explore. They also have small rooms available and a bar.

Another spot we found was Castillo's Beach, on the north end of Hopkins. Mr. Castillo let us stay on his beach for $10 bze for the both of us. The beach is very nice for swimming, there is a picnic table and flat ground for a tent or some nice tres to sling a jungle hammock. He also let us use his shower and toilet, in an outbuilding near his house. Right beside his house is Sew Much Hemp, where you can buy natural insect repellent and a variety of hemp-based clothing and other products (not weed). I didn't try the insect repellent, but it sure smells better than DEET.

The last day was a 14 mile paddle from Sittee River to Dangriga against the wind. It was a long day but we enjoyed the challenge and certainly felt we had earned a cold Belikin beer at the end of that day.

See you soon. Cheers
Jack

I'm back in San Carlos, just after a grazing by Tropical Storm Henriette. we got some wind, much rain, and very little damage.

I recently got a request for more desert photos, so i am dedicating this post to the beautiful Sonoran Desert. Those among you who are more interested in the marine stuff, skip this one but don't give up on me. Soon I will begin construction on the new amas (outriggers)for the Manatee.

San Carlos is in the southern Sonoran desert, in a region of the desert known as the Central Gulf Coast region. Rains here come mostly in the summer. The winter rains which are fairly reliable in the north, particularly around Tucson, Arizona, may not fall here for several years. Despite this, the desert is surprisingly shrubby.

Surprising too, is how dry it can be a few feet from the sea. All that moisture, and it hardly falls on land. This is typical of deserts found in the "Horse Latitudes". The horse latitudes (roughly 30 degrees, north and south of the equator)are a region of descending air, which as it falls, warms and dries. The result is very stable air, with few clouds, little wind, and very little precipitation. And the ability to tie your boat to a cactus.

Much of the Sonoran Desert is in the Basin and Range Province of southwestern North America. Small ranges of moderate to low volcanic mountains rise through a flat basin of volcanic dust and ash. San Carlos is on the seaward edge of the Sierra el Aguaje, a mountain range split with canyons and pushed right up to the sea. The canyons are shady and often have water seeping in from the surrounding porous rock. As a result these canyons often harbour a variety of tropical deciduous forest species, normally found hundreds of kilometres to the south. On the slopes are more typical desert species, such as cacti and agave plants.

Even talk. The pictures were chosen to show the variety of landforms and vegetation. I hope you enjoy them.

Cheers,
Jack