Conversation stopper

This morning, like every morning I wake up to silence. We usually have a hug and then Jackie will make a “T” sign with her fingers and goes to put the kettle on. We sit in silence on our balcony drinking our first reviving cup of English breakfast tea and perhaps exchange a smile for the new day. Jackie no longer tries to make conversation or even a chance remark as it will be lost on me, and by the time I hook up my headphones and iphone the moment will have passed, so we sit contemplating, together, but apart.

A few months ago the first thing I would do when we sat drinking our morning cup of tea would be to fire up the iphone, don my headphones and say “Buenos dios”. That would be the signal to Jackie to know I was able to hear her and we could chit chat, small talk to start of the day.

As time has gone on my “hearing aid” has become less and less effective as my hearing diminishes and the distortion and tinnitus conspire to mask even the thin audio that my iphone pumps into my ears. So I’m apprehensive and reluctant to discover what new depths of isolation I may face today. Sometimes I’m surprised when I turn on the world to find that there has been a slight improvement. There’s clarity, and the distortion has disappeared, even the tinnitus has subsided and we can almost have a conversation.

Conversation is such an enriching part of a relationship, of friendships, although like John Lennon once wrote in his lyric to the song Julia, half of what I say is meaningless. But perhaps a lot of what passes for meaningless is part of the rich tapestry of life. We’re social beings by nature and gossip is one of those inconsequential bits of life that I yearn for, the quip, the witty aside, a passing remark that these days I miss. It’s delivered too fast, from out of nowhere, and often out of context. It throws me as I’m having to concentrate on the flow of an indistinct thin and tinny sound that constitutes a voice.

The days are empty of these moments between us, and so we involve ourselves in the day to day things to do in a wordless world, with a smile and a gesture but without words to plug the space between us.

Because I don’t yet have a proper hearing aid and have to rely on my iphone there are times when the battery has run out and it needs to be charged. A while back I could still cup my ears, if Jackie wanted to tell me something, and I would understand her, as long as she spoke into the ear that was working that day. These days even that strategy seems to be failing as the words break up, distort, and lead to a frustration for both of us.

It's impossible to predict whether or not I’ll be able to hear and understand especially when I could make out the words yesterday, why not today. But that seem to be the nature of Meniere’s, it’s an unpredictable lurch from comprehension to utter garble. Even an hour can make all the difference so the frustration that we both have to deal with is to say the least, trying, sometimes it can bring us close to tears.

Losing my religion

As a musician and singer for over 50 years playing bass in rock and blues bands as well as strumming an acoustic guitar to write songs and sometimes even going out and doing solo gigs it never occurred to me that I might go deaf. Over the years my hearing did deteriorate, but it didn’t stop me being able to function as a player and as a listener but that all changed as my Meniere’s progressed.

I had had the odd bouts of vertigo over a few years, and I had also had days when my hearing wasn’t functioning as it should but I put it down to blocked Eustation tubes, like when you have a bad cold and things go a bit dull and fuzzy. I suppose looking back I can recognize that I have had this condition for perhaps 10 years.

Up until a couple of years ago I was still doing gigs as a solo artist and although at times these were on bad hearing days I was still able to hold a tune and jam around with friends. My wife Jackie and I had bought a boat and were living the dream sailing in the Caribbean. I was teaching Jackie to play ukulele and we used to have fun practicing a few sea shanties to perform for our new found cruising friends.

Then one day on board our boat I picked up the ukulele to practice a couple of tunes and had found I was having difficulty tuning the thing up. I hadn’t noticed this before, in fact I seldom used an electronic tuner and did my tuning the old fashioned way, by ear. I resorted to the tuner which told me that it was now in tune and I began to strum a couple of basic chords, C, Am, F, and G.

Something very strange was occurring as the Chord of C and the chord of Am sounded exactly the same. Even F sounded a bit like C and G was no different. Oh there was a sort of subtle variation but it was a long way from this familiar sequence that I had played 10,000 times before. I tried fingering a simple scale which my ears recognized starting at low C and climbing to high C. I tried that chord change again from C to Am, then I tried an A major to Am. It all sounded the same, I could not tell the difference from one chord to another. And this was on a day when I thought my ears had cleared momentarily.

The bummer with Meniere’s is that you have good days and bad days, or sometimes good weeks and bad weeks, it seems to have no pattern to it. I could go to bed with good ears and wake up the next feeling like I was living with ear defenders on, it was that dramatic. The days when it was bad I just wouldn’t play at all, but when the fog lifted I would revel in the amnesty, but this particular day it seemed I had crossed a threshold with the condition that I was totally unprepared for.

Prior to this point I had noticed that listening to any sort of music was becoming difficult as there was something wrong with the bottom end, which had become a sort of blur that caused me to hear it as over ripe distortion, or a sort of blooming that masked out the rest of the tune. But now my ears were failing to recognize the subtle changes that make up melody. Music had become a no go area, nothing sounded right anymore  in fact it was just becoming a very uncomfortable noise.

This was how my life was going to be from now on, a life without music, it was unthinkable, Meniere’s had robbed me of a huge part of my life. I would try from time to time, when I thought I was having a slight respite from the fog but C Am, F & G just came out as discordant blur. That was perhaps 18 months ago and I was losing my religion..

I’ve done a good deal of investigation via the wonders of the internet looking for information about ears and how the work and how they fail but have found very little that describes this loss of harmonic decoding that our ears do without us even thinking about it. I found a Scotish professor who played piano that described exactly the same symptoms that I went through, and probably described it better than I have. It makes you aware of how amazingly complicated the process of hearing is and makes you wonder how on earth it works, when everything is normal, of course.

 There’s an eardrum that wobbles backwards and forwards that moves some miniscule bones that tap on an inner window, as they call it, that then moves some 30,000 hair cells that float in a fluid inside a shell like organ called the Choclea. This movement is then converted into electrical signals that race along an auditory nerve fibre which is connected to a particular part of the brain than makes sense of it and manifests itself as a particular sound. We can hear frequencies from very low, I’m not sure how low, to about 20,000 hertz which is a very high pitched squeak.

Now the thing is that when we listen to music it may contain all of these harmonics happening at the same moment, as in a symphony concert, say, and our ears capture all of this at the same instant, feed it to our brain which interprets it as music. It also turns this information into an emotionable response, happy, sad, elated, calming, it passeth beyond all understanding that’s all I can say.

Until you lose the ability to hear, to listen, then the sense of hearing is something we all take for granted, but just stop for a moment and contemplate the wonder of how that sense works, and then put on a set of ear defenders and walk through a week with them on.

Our hearing is dependent on us having a full set of those hair cells, and as we grow older we start to lose them. Loud noises will kill a few of them off at a time, and they are not renewable, they do not regenerate, and even without contracting Meniere’s most people will have trouble in later life. But Meniere’s seems to ransack the remaining ones we have and with a vengeance will lead you to a curious world where music and the whole auditory experience just doesn’t make sense anymore. 

Intro

I should have started this blog a few years ago, because I have had this condition now, I believe for perhaps 10 years. But 10 years ago I had no idea what Meniere’s was, in fact I wasn’t even aware that it existed, let alone that I had it. I first discovered that perhaps It was Menieres’ by googling the symptoms I was suffering from about three years ago. I had been having bouts of vertigo and also a fluctuation in my hearing for quite some time but had never linked the two things together.

Now almost three years after I stumbled across my possible affliction I am virtually deaf.

The three years has seen a steady decline, and I should have been under the care of ENT specialists who may have been able to stall its progress but due to my circumstances I wasn’t able to do that. The reason being that my wife, Jackie and I had bought a liveaboard sailboat, in 2013, and were about to take off on a big adventure exploring the Caribbean islands, a dream we had conjured up back in the cold and damp UK some ten years ago.

This adventure lasted for over three years during which I gradually lost my hearing, and became an armchair expert on Meniere’s.

I now know quite a lot about how the ears work, or don’t work. The outer ear, the middle ear, the inner ear, the choclea, and hair cells. The sack of fluid that the hair cells are bathed in composed of vital fluids that become messed up in Meniere’s and this leads to the death of these haircells.

You can’t grow new hair cells, once they’re gone they’re gone for good which I find Is strange because I don’t seem to have that problem with other hair cells in my body. In fact I seem to grow new ones by the week where they never were before. I’ve got hairs on my shoulder that I haven’t had in 69 years. My nose seems to think it should have a beard and my eyebrows seem to be trying to make up for my receding hairline. So what is it with haircells in my ears, and why do fish and chickens haircells renew themselves when humans don’t. It’s one of natures mysteries that the boffins have yet to unravel.

Picaroon versus the JCB

We made an early start yesterday, and arrived at the boatyard at 8.30am for the expected launch of Picaroon at 9.30am, which was the time of the high tide. Although it’s only a 2ft tide it’s enough to ensure a safe launch, ie.,  no scraping our newly painted bottom. Picaroon had spent the night on the boat lifting trailer, so all was ready for a smooth operation that morning. I scrambled aboard to put out the fenders and sorted out the lines that we would need to secure her once she was afloat again.

Because this is the Dominican Republic where punctuality is perhaps frowned on we’re not surprised that the haul in doesn’t begin till about a quarter to ten. The tides dropped about six inches but there’s still plenty of water to ensure our safe launch. Very slowly, tractor and the hulk, bearing our precious Picaroon creep across the concourse towards the ramp. I’m on board, to throw out the lines once we’re in the water, Jackie is watching nervously on the dockside, as we inch backwards and stop about six feet short of the water.

A few yards away a couple of the boat yard crew are trying to start the auxiliary digger that they use in tandem with the tractor to haul in and out for that extra horse power. It’s not the newest of diggers, in fact it’s perhaps one of the first JCBs ever made, and they’re having a problem getting the engine to fire into action. The stand pipe exhaust is belching black smoke and occasionally great globules of black liquid, which to my limited mechanical knowledge looks wrong. Never the less, the battery seems to be in good order so they keep on cranking. More boatyard crew arrive to will the machine into life, and appear to tinker, but still it refuses to start. Someone arrives with the magic fluid that you spray down the air intake which often will coax a reluctant diesel into action. Half an hour later, with Picaroon and I watching the tide ebb slowly down the dock walls they give up on the old digger, and tell us that they have sent someone into town to hire another JCB, which maybe a little while. They need the extra security of the second JCB to stop the tractor and trailer slipping as we enter the water, so we have to wait, although the tide doesn’t wait of course.

I’m of course stuck up in the air on board Picaroon unable to get down, so I decide that there’s nothing to do but find a good book to while away the time. I decide on re-reading the Columbus log. It’s a copy of the ships log that Christopher Columbus wrote on his voyage to discover America. It’s sort of apt reading, and I ponder on whether he would have had the same problems before setting sail in 1492 with recalcitrant machinery that delayed his fleets departure. But the prologue just sets the scene, telling us a few facts about the man, and how he came to make this momentous voyage, there’s no mention of JCBs breaking down.

About an hour and a half later, there’s no sign of another JCB but a small truck has appeared and is being chained to the tractor. The tide has dropped a good 18 inches but they seem to optimistic that we can still launch Picaroon, so I put down the book and Picaroon begins to inch backwards on the hulk. As the tractor hits the slope close to the waters edge there’s a shudder and a jolt as the chain on the truck snaps tight, then goes loose again. Picaroon is now half in the water, well her aft end is and I go below to check the all important stuffing box, that I fixed last week when we were doing the cutlass bearing. As it was the first time I had stuffed a stuffing box I was nervous that perhaps I hadn’t done the job right. If it wasn’t right water would now be pouring into Picaroons bilge. I took the torch, and bent down to peer into the abyss of Picaroons bilge. Not even a drip, well that’s excellent, I thought, well done me. Back on deck and Picaroon slips unceremoniously into the water, no grounding, and I throw the ropes to secure her to the dock.

Jackie asks for permission to come aboard, it’s the first time she’s been aboard since we hauled out just before Christmas.. She can’t do ladders, which has been the only way to get aboard, and the ladders at Marina Tropical were a little Dominican, shall we say. Picaroon suddenly looks much smaller again now all that keel is hidden beneath the water. It was touch and go as to whether we would splash down today but in the end all went quite smoothly for the Dominican Republic, well except for the JCB.

A couple more weeks in Luperon and then we head for Haiti and Cuba.

A Brits first ever Super Bowl musings

In England there’s a programme on BBC radio four called ‘I’ve never seen Star Wars’. It’s a comedy show where celebrity guests are invited to partake in some cultural experience that so far in their lives they’ve avoided, like karaoke, watching a premier league football match, or going to see Harry Potter.

We’ve had to move out of our apartment on Gringo Hill, as Sue has other guests booked. Picaroon is still not quite ready to go back in the water, so we’re staying in the hotel that Rudolf is staying in, for a few days. (Remember Rudolf; cruiser with broken leg, can’t get on or off his boat.) It’s Sunday, and we’ve arranged another Jam session round at his hotel balcony. It’s at this gathering that we discover that today is a big important day in the American sporting calendar, today is the day of the Super bowl final, and Wendy’s bar will be airing it on their big screen. Well actually it’s a white bed sheet strung up at the end of the room, but for Luperon it’s THE place to be tonight. So this afternoon session wraps up at six so our American friends can all get down to watch the match.  Apparently it’s a football game, Rudolf tells me, but it’s not the game that they’re all keen to see, no, the highlight of this big occasion is the commercials that punctuate the proceedings. I assume this is American ironic humour, coming from Rudolf, but the others confirm that the ads, which seemingly will have cost millions to make, are not too be missed, and I have to remind myself that irony is not a natural American trait.

So with nothing better to do this evening we decide that we need to see what all the hullabaloo is about, and trip off down to Wendy’s, for our very own “ I’ve never seen Star wars” moment.

Wendy’s is already full, an hour before kick-off, well, all five tables are occupied by ex-pat Americans engaged in loud animated conversation, and there’s a sense of celebration in the air. We take the last two unoccupied seats by the glassless window, perched on high chairs with a perfect voyeur’s view of the bar, and the screen, showing the pundits pre-game analysis. The volume is loud, and ESPN is in Spanish, which no-ones paying any attention to; the room awash with conflicting electronic and human babble. A couple of our American cruiser friends try to explain the rules of how this football game works so we’ll be able to understand what’s going on when the game starts.

One team, Alisha tells us, will have the ball and they’ll get four goes at taking the ball ten yards forward, if they get ten yards then they get another four goes. The other team, of course will try to stop them, using fair means or foul, to do so. The quarterback is the massive guy at the back who controls where the ball goes, by throwing it to somebody (or was it, catching it). “Hang on, if this is foot-ball, why are they using their hands”, I ask, only to be met with a bemused stare. So now we know the rules.

The match build up continues, the screen now showing about a thousand marching band players doing a choreographed parade, spelling out NFL, in the giant stadium, and footage of the teams trouping out into this massive area, along with cheer leaders and cameo celebrity shots, then the screen goes dead.

We’ve had a power cut, just ten minutes before the start. A temporary supply is rigged up and the screen flashes back to life showing a close up of some woman starting to sing. At this point something very curious happens as the bar falls to a hush and the majority of these wayward independent cruisers stand to attention facing the screen. The singer is belting out the American national anthem and over half the crew in Wendy’s are mouthing the words and welling up.

They’re a curious bunch, Americans, the patriotic streak runs very deep, much deeper than us Brits sat on the sidelines. They are often astounded that we don’t know the ins-and-outs of our Royal Family, that we don’t even know the name of the princesses’ new baby.

The big screen is showing commercials for Coca Cola, MacDonalds, Ford, Doritos, there’s even an elaborate ad for Always, the preferred American sanitary towel, and then the game begins, and everybody goes back to heated conversations.

American “football” players are big lads, huge, and they are all clad in plastic armour and helmets with visor protectors making them appear twice the size they actually are and look more like robots. They line up facing each other in a half crouched position in the middle of the field, and a whistle blows. At this point they appear to run off in all and every direction at high speed with no sign of a ball anywhere until the camera is focusing on some poor soul being buried beneath a mountain of players in the opposing teams’ colours. The blue team, are the Seattle Seahawks, last years’ champions, and in white, the New England Patriots, who are the favourites, so we’re told. Although I try to follow what is going on in the match, I’m at a loss. No sooner have they started with all this running about and bumping into each other, they stop, regroup in the crouched line up and start again. The ball seems to be illusive, I don’t know if they’re allowed to stuff it up their tunic tops, but I hardly ever catch sight of it. Not so the audience in Wendy’s who hoot and howl and holler now as the Patriots gets close to a big blue part of the field, at the far end of the pitch. Here it’s a bit like English rugby, this is the touch down area but, whereas in rugby you have to touch the ball to the ground, in this game it seems that if you’re standing in that area and catch it, that constitutes a score of six points. Then like rugby they get a go at kicking the ball over the goal posts for an extra one point, so it’s now 7-0 to the Patriots.

And now it’s swiftly back to the commercials, in fact, so far we’ve had about ten minutes of play and about twenty minutes of adverts. This one is showing us how the breadwinner of the family is struck down with a dreaded disease, or killed in a tragic accident leaving the family impoverished forever, unless your covered by esurance.com, and another here with a host of little kids with no legs running about on those prosthetic legs that, what’s-his-face, the South African athlete made famous. I think it was supposed to be about never giving up whatever your handicap, or maybe it was an advert for soup. Another is about a mechanical device that you strap on if you’ve got bad knees, all very inspiring stuff, I’m sure you agree. Despite what Rudolf said about people watching it for the commercials, although I am, the rest of the room is just becoming a cacophony of noise competing with the commercials, and then suddenly the game is back on.

As I said it’s no easy task following what’s going on, for instance, why do they keep showing pictures of blokes on the sidelines with headphones and mics on. They’re not commentators, they look like coaches or managers, shouting into their mics, but to who, or should that be whom. Maybe the quarterback, who seemingly is numero uno hombre, and has a similar hidden headset, or maybe he’s just calling his wife to say that he may be a little late for supper. It’s most confusing. The rising tide of noise explodes as some robot in blue catches the ball in the whites blue area before being crashed to the ground by the incredible hulk.  Patriots 14-Seahawks 14, and thank God it’s half time, I for one am exhausted, and not just a little deaf, with my tinnitus having been kick-started into action. I retire across the street to sit with an old Dominican couple sitting on the pavement outside their house opposite Wendy’s for cinco minutos of tranquillo.

When I get back to the game, half time has turned into the closing ceremony at the Olympic Games. Some girl singer is riding the back of an enormous tiger robot, singing eye of the tiger, I think. Another singer, again a girl is suspended high above the stadium on a flying wire; tough cookies these American female vocalists. I notice that the mic has a safety strap clipped to her wrist although there’s no sign of a safety strap on the flying vocalist. A massive firework display brings the half time show to a finale, coupled with another ad for Coke and MacDonalds, and the second half begins.

All now is unadulterated noise and general pandemonium as the big screen audio competes with the small stadium which Wendy’s Bar has become. High fives are being exchanged as the Sea Hawks surge ahead 27-21, and still I haven’t been able to spot the ball except when someone gets up from underneath a small hillock of robots, and then it’s gone again, among much random running about.

By three quarters time I’ve run out of steam, we’ve failed to win in the sweepstake and my ears can’t tolerate much more of the din. Also I don’t have any idea what’s going on, and truthfully don’t care, I sort of enjoyed the commercials. They weren’t that special and, to my mind, there were too many of them and they got in the way of the game. Had there been fewer ads I may have got the hang of the rules, but just when you thought you were getting close, the commercials would break in and when we got back to the game I had to start over again, trying to figure what the fuss was all about.

We said our farewells, before it finished, came back to our hotel, poured a couple of glasses of rum and switched on the TV to catch the end of the game without the backdrop of Wendy’s Bar. I promptly fell asleep, so I missed the end of the match, I’ve no idea how it concluded, but it was an experience; big screen Super bowl in Luperon. So now we’ve done Super bowl maybe we need to subject ourselves to some other meaningless entertainment, I’ve never been to a karaoke night in my life, the idea sounds positively alien to my musician ethos but, Friday night is karaoke night at Wendy’s Bar and everyone says how it’s a cracking night and we must come down.

As for doing another Super bowl, I think just the one time will be enough, thank you.      

Check out my new album Turquoise Blues distributed by TuneCore and live on iTunes!

Check out my new album Turquoise Blues distributed by TuneCore and live on iTunes!

I've recently contracted Meniere's disease which has robbed me of my hearing, and so doing live gigs to earn a living has been impossible. they say it will eventually cure itself, but as there's no  known cause and no sure fire cure I just have to live with it, and wait for it to clear of it's own accord. From day to day it fluctuates, some days I can barely hear anything, next day, I may hear at about 50%, but with bad tinnitus. On very occasional days my hearing will return to almost normal and I think it's gone away and cured itself only to wake the next morning to find myself plunged back into the world of almost silence.



As a working musician this makes playing live gigs impossible so that's my lively hood on hold unless of course I could sell the music I have recorded online. I've have albums on apple itunes, and also on a site called bandcamp. The big problem is of course marketing, when there's millions of other artists and bands trying to do the same thing, how on earth do you cut through all this and reach fans that may buy my music. I'm with tunecore which posts my songs to spotify and other streaming stations but the earnings here are pitiful, 0.03 cents for one play is not going to pay the bills. On another site called bandcamp fans can download my album for nothing or pay what they like. Someone once paid me almost $15 for my album, One life to live, which was recorded with some friends and we called ourselves The Beat Combo, in fact that little team made an album back in 2008 that is also available on both sites but I'm afraid both albums have sold less than 20 songs from both albums. It's not they're duff albums, both are joyfull and well recorded with some class songs on both.



So in the world of instant access, it's still all about marketing. Sell your songs to millions of fans world wide says the tunecore ads and keep 100% of the royalties, all for a one off payment of $29-95. Sounds too good to be true, and in the end it is. Some are probably doing great business with this new model music industry, but I'm not and I wonder how many more of us have signed up, payed the fee and have made less in a year than the fee to join in this new internet game.



I'm not saying that it isn't possible, but wading through all the marketing stratagies that are bound to make it all happen is overwhelming, and so I've been happy to continue in the old fashioned way of going out there and playing live, and selling a few albums at the end of the gig. But since contracting Meniere's this has been impossible so I'm going to have another push at online sales until this dreadful affliction, especially for a working musician goes into remission and I can get back on the road.

Def Jammin' on Durate day

Yesterday, the 26^th of January, was Duarte Day in the Dominican Republic, and that means it’s a holiday. The Dominicans have a lot, and I mean a lot, of holidays. It’s quite often a saint, as they’ve got religion, and there’s quite a few saints to go at, and they try not to miss one. Then there’s all sorts of big political stuff like Independence Day and other memorable big dates that mark the history of the island, and then comes the important people days, and I would suppose some of the less important people persons too. When you’ve got a beautiful island like the Dominican Republic, with its vibrant street life, its lush countryside, and its stunning beaches, why work when it could be a holiday. It seems to me that one thing each new government does is to find a reason to add to the number of holidays they have here, that way they stay popular, and get re-elected.

So yesterday it was Duarte Day, and he must be pretty important because the highest mountain in the whole of the Caribbean is named after him, Pico Duarte, and at 6000 meters quite a hike, and quite a statement. Seemingly when the dictator Trujillio was in charge the mountain was renamed Mount Trujillio, as dictators do I suppose, but after his passing/assassination it reverted to Pico Duarte. Anyway there are lots of Dominican flags flying everywhere today, out of houses, on car pendants, big ones and little ones.  Even in this backwater town the local Luperonese take it seriously, get drunk, and play the music loud. Ouch! My Rock n roll tinnitus rings out a little more than usual.

Duarte Day or not, it was a Monday morning so we go down to the boatyard, Marina Tropical, to carry out a little replacement surgery on Picaroon. We’ve received the cutlass bearing we ordered from the states and have had it in the freezer all night. This seemingly, and I can see the science, will shrink the bearing a few miggies of a millimetre, making insertion a little easier. The first problem we encounter is that overnight the bearing has welded itself to the freezer wall. We attack it with a wooden spoon and then a serious knife till eventually she popped free, and we transferred it to our portable cool box. It felt a bit like Christian Barnnard doing his first heart transplant as the ambulance, our Nissan pathfinder, slithered down the muddy track to Marina Tropical.

Now the moment of truth, had we ordered the right size, would it slip in easily or be a pig. I tested it against the shaft and it seemed to be right. So with a bit of wood and a hammer, I sunk the new cutlass bearing into the void that is Picaroons back end, and with the minimum of fuss she was all the way home and we had a new cutlass bearing in place.  

I call Hillbilly Bob on VHF 68. Bob has done quite a few transmission flanges in his time and offered to help out when we do ours. What about now I said, Be over there in fifteen minutes, he says. After a few tries at getting the flange started, Bob reckons we need some of his tools, a sledge hammer and chisels that are on his boat. On the way back to the boatyard Bob’s outboard gives up and we paddle our way over to Rebel Rouser to enlist Robert to tow us into Marina Tropical.  .

This cruising community in Luperon, like the cruising community back in Salinas, is without doubt a joy to be a part of. Selfless, always ready to help, if they know how.. And today, as I have lost my hearing, (the Menieres disease is back with a vengeance, leaving me almost deaf) Robert  is my ears as we brae the shaft onto the flange from the rear of the  boat with hillbilly Bob doing the lining up inside. Within an hour or so, it’s all back together, and I hardly lifted a finger. We’ll buy them a beer or three next time we meet up in JRs.

That afternoon we arranged to go and visit Rudolf, who was the guy that advised us to change the bearing. He’s hold up in the Aparta-Hotel due to having his leg in a splint after falling off of his motor bike last week. He can’t get on or off his boat due to his injury so is staying temporarily in this hotel. We decided to make this Monday afternoon a little jam session at Rudolf’s hotel to cheer him up. Dave, moored next to us came over with his friend Chris, newly arrived, who both have guitars, and Alisha, Rudolf’s wife has a new uke she just bought in Santa Domingo, me and Jackie tagged along with ukes and guitars. My hearing decided to close down to about 30% so the session was tricky for me, but we jam about for a few hours, drink a few beers and have a good time, lots of laughs and a few tunes and to my surprise, the first doobie I’ve seen since leaving the UK over a year ago. After all it was Duarte Day and needed to be celebrated properly.

We’ve been here in Luperon now for almost six months and I suppose we’ve become part of the community, well the community of boaters. We do trivia quiz on Wednesdays at JRs, we lunch with the cruisers at Petulas bar where Cat, formally from Liverpool, has opened a bar with her Dominican fiancé Johnny, and sip a cerveza in Wendys bar with Norm who we met when we were back in Salinas, PR. He owns Wendys, and the Happy Cows Farm just outside of Luperon. About 50% of the cruisers are sort of residents, and the rest are slowly passing through, it’s a tricky place to leave, but we are determined not to be sucked into the “comforts” of Luperon.

The bottom Primer is going on today, Tuesday, we sat around watching paint dry, praying for the rain to stay away, and hopefully by Friday we’ll be back in the water. I jammed the stuffing box with flax wadding and just hope that my tutorial from Steve in Salinas DR taught me how to do it right otherwise the boat could be taking on water when she gets re-launched. The two new coats of anti- foul go on in the next couple of days and then we’re back in the water. We’ll need to do some motoring about in the bay to prove that the prop is lined up OK and that my stuffing box doesn’t leak, which being my first stuffing box solo flight repair, is going to be a tense moment, when we launch on Friday, if we launch on Friday, that’s still in the lap of the weather gods because rain could stop play on our hull painting and delay the proceedings.

Once we get back in the water, and all being well with our fix on the cutlass bearing, stuffing box and flange we’re going to pick one of Jackie’s preferred routes and set sail, maybe for Cuba, and the rhythms of Salsa. 

Samana to Luperon

Luperon, my kind of town

Yesterday, I'm standing at the counter of a small grocery come off licence type of Colmado (shop) in the centre of the town of Luperon, waiting to buy a packet of cigarettes, along with few other locals also waiting. There's a local police officer being served who turns and smiles at me, he says, "Como esta", I say, Bien, gracias, e tu, "bueno gracias" he says, and we shake hands like old friends. Next to him, another local asks, in English, "where are you from" England I say, "Oh, Eng-a-land hey, lubbly jubbly" he says, and we laugh. A little kid pushes in front of me, oblivious of the queue, and pushes a crumpled note towards the shopkeeper, who takes it, serves him some sweets and he's gone. It's a slow queue of about six of us standing patiently at the counter, engaged in animated and good hearted conversations, that I don't get, but I can feel it, my Spanish isn't quite that up to speed.  The shopkeeper weighs out small portions of this and that for the police officer that takes time. People pass by the open-to-the-road counter and exchange friendly  banter loudly, with either the shopkeeper or the queue. It's a lively ten minutes whilst I wait to be served, it's a popular little shop, almost a meeting place, more than a shop.
We've just been round the corner to a mini supermacado to buy some eggs and bread, and a couple of bottles of wine, guided there by some guy who wants to help, he speaks good English, wants to be friendly, but I'm a bit suspicious of his motive. Turns out he just wants something to eat in payment for his trouble. We give him four rolls and fifty pesos so he can buy some salami to put in them, that was enough, and as we pass him after buying the cigarettes he gives us a big smile and a wave from across the street.
The streets are alive, awash with people, it's Saturday, noisy people, noisy little motor bikes, weave in and out of the street gatherings, kids laughing, playing, speakers pump out Dominican pop music to a small bunch of teenagers that have taken up residence in the middle of the road, some sit in chairs in the road, parents with babes in arms getting down with the kids, sway to the rhythm of the day.  Each doorway seems to have at least one person, sometimes two, elderly ladies or gents,  sat on an old chair taking in the view, with a cheerful smile and a ready "hola"(hello) as we pass, it would be impolite of us and them not to exchange this simple greeting.
Luperon is alive, life plays out on the street, a ramshackle street, a mish-mash of dwellings, and workshops and the tiniest of stores. We pass one of these no bigger than a garden shed where two young trumpet players are having a music lesson that spills out into the street, everywhere is life in chaotic abundance. And litter, and lazy dogs, missing pavements, holes in the road, watch your step, is the order of the day, and don't trip over those motor bike parts strewn around the guy who's fixing his bike on the pavement.

Then there's the gringos, the cruisers, the live-aboards that have adopted, and been adopted by Luperon, who spend time gossiping, in JRs, or Wendys, (coldest beer in town says the sign) or having breakfast in the upper deck under a corrugated roof on the first floor completely open to the breeze where they serve only breakfast, all day.

 It takes about half a minute after walking in to any of these watering holes to strike up a conversation. "what boat you on, I'm Liz, anything you need to know, want, just ask". Hi, my names Less, need a haircut, a massage, just call me on 68" What did you say your name was, sorry, "Less" oh like more or less I says, " gee that's funny,but  no, more like Lester, but call me Less".

Then we run into hillbilly Bob Mathews, in JRs bar, in a garden courtyard, still on the street. Bob plays fiddle, well, is revisiting the fiddle after a 13 year break, we fall into an easy conversation about music, mostly, and then Cabarete falls into the dialogue.

"I was in Cabarete, in January" drawls Bob, "looking after a small apartment block" That wouldn't be an apartment block just behind Janets' supermacado I butt in. "Yep, looked after it for a friend of mine called", called Jerry I says, "Hell yeh, you know him". Well not exactly but I do know his wife, although I haven't seen her for over 30 years. She used to be married to my best friend Smoke who lives in London. We ran into the brother of the owner that died, down in Salinas, Tony and Rose, they're on a boat called English Rose.
It was one massive coincidence that we had run into them, especially as I had only just remade contact with Jerrys wife, Judy, Smokes' ex of more than thirty years ago now about to live just down the road from us in the Dominican republic, and now we find another link in hillbilly Bob, here in Luperon. Sometimes life throws up the strangest of circumstances, or is it the smallest of worlds.

Luperon; I think I'm going to enjoy our stay here, it's full of cruising characters, and a pageant of humanity that is the real Dominican republic, all colour and chaos, and open hearts.  There'll be the rouges and ruffians lurking, as in any poor and impoverished country, or even in the grand cities of the world, you can't avoid stumbling into a bad experience where ever you lay your hat, park your yacht, choose to be, but hey give me Luperon over Salinas, give me Republica Dominicana any day over Americanised Puerto Rico with its faceless malls, everybody locked inside the bubble of their air-conned all terrain 4x4s.

Luperon hasn't got a good reputation amongst cruisers, especially the cruisers from the USA, the air-con cruisers Roger called them, I think maybe it's just too real, no Disney style façade, no KFC, Burger King, Walgreens, etc., etc., no gloss. They pass remarks like oh no Luperon, an open sewer, a place to avoid at all cost. But they are so missing the point, the point of travel, the shedding of your preconceived notion of how the world should be just like home, and horrified when they find it's not, so they by-pass Luperon, or get out fast to nestle in the comfort of Salinas Bay, with easy access to a mall. We sort of warmed to Puerto Rico, did a lot of shopping, got comfortable I suppose, but we're so glad we finally made it to Luperon, and our beloved island of Hispanola.

We heard all about the corruption of the customs comandante, the shear unhelpfulness of officials, the hassle of checking in. We climbed the steps to the Aduantes' office, after crossing the makeshift bridge spanning a finger of mangrove swamp, to be greeted by a guy surfing facebook, earphones in,"COMANDANTE" he called, and a casual figure in T-shirt and flip-flops appeared from round the corner with a beaming smile. "Hola, como esta ustedes" Bien, gracias, we chime "e tu?" Bien, bien says he, shuffles some scraps of paper on an old clip board and asks for our despacio. "Si ests Bueno, muchos gracias, and in English, Welcome to Luperon. We shake hands and climb back down the stone steps, across the crab infested swamp and make for the nearest cold cerveza (beer). No hassle, no bribes, no problem, absolutely chalk and cheese to our dealings with Homeland Security and Puerto Rican USof A.  
Tomorrow we'll be heading back to Cabarete to luxuriate in our apartment for a few days; long showers with running water, toilet that flushes without being manually pumped, huge bed, swimming pool and dramatic Robinson Crusoe beach.  Come next weekend though, we'll be back in Luperon, play a gig at JRs, and board Picaroon to start on our list of jobs and take up the life of Seadogs in old Luperon......check out Cols song at.......................... https://thebeatcombo.bandcamp.com/track/luperon 

Wild night in The Mona Passage

Desecheo, is a seven hundred feet high island of desolated rock at the northern tip of the Puerto Rican trench and is where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Caribbean Sea. It's about twenty-five miles off the north western tip of Puerto Rico and where we would make a left turn to start our crossing of the Mona Passage. This far the seas and weather were as predicted, light winds and slight seas, so we were sailing under genoa and mizzen, but with the engine running. The sails were up to just steady Picaroon and maybe give the engine a bit of help. Just west of Desecheo we could see white tops on the seas which meant that perhaps conditions would freshen and we'd be able to cut the engine and enjoy a nice sail for a bit.
As we struck out into the Mona Passage leaving Desecheo in our wake, the seas turned decidedly boisterous, and Picaroon began to roll with the waves that were marching in just off our beam. The seas climbed aboard within the first five minutes and sloshed across the cockpit and half-filled the well where Jackie was standing, wrestling with the wheel. This well is where any stray rubbish tends to migrate to; old cigarette boxes, wrappers, the dross of living aboard, it's also where the two drain holes are, should the sea decide to come aboard. We roll uncomfortably to the opposite side and another great gush of sea makes its way on board, rushing down the decks and out of the scuppers, but the cockpit is still awash with the dregs of the Atlantic. The dross has been washed to the outlet drains and blocked them, so I scrabble about under Jackies feet to clear them, and the water leaves and goes back to where it should be, in the sea. Time to find the safety harnesses and get clipped on we think, this could be a bumpy ride.
The waves start to increase in size, perhaps twenty, sometimes thirty feet high or that's what it looked like from Piccars' cockpit. Most roll under Picaroons keel, bearing us into the air where we're able to catch a glimpse of the next candidate for Picaroons sea-washed decks. The genoa has been furled away, the wind has risen too much for comfort, but we leave up the mizzen to keep her steady, and Mr engine Sir still purrs away, below pushing us out of sight of land as Desecheo disappears into a gathering thunder storm a few miles behind us, we just hope that's not going our way too.
The day was fading and keeping the sea from mounting Picaroons decks was impossible, "Oh shit" Jackie would exclaim, hanging on to the wheel, me gripping the rail with a dead mans' grasp, as another wave rocked and rolled us, and then the rain started.  Above us a great lump of charcoal cloud had caught us up and was starting to unleash a torrent of rain, buckets of rain, waterfalls of rain began to penetrate our un-waterproofed  bimini, our only shelter. The sea attacked from both sides, the heavens above us drenched us and the soft furnishings of Picaroons cozy cockpit.
By now it had grown dark, the noise of the sea crashing around Picaroon and the winds of the storm wailing in the rigging, the rain relentless, it was becoming decidedly unpleasant. The one advantage of the onset of night was that we could no longer see the waves about to devour us, and although still making for a very scary ride, they had settled down to just horrible, as opposed to life threatening. The gizmo that tells us where we are also has a radar, so we turned that on to see where the storm above us was going, and if we may escape it soon, it had been raining a deluge for more than three hours, and although we had our English foulies on we were thoroughly and absolutely ringing wet, and still hanging on, clipped on, to one of those big dipper rides that you wished you'd said no to, but this is no Blackpool pleasure beach ride, no siree, there's no way out.
The Radar shows just one weather system in the Mona Passage, they said there would be isolated thunder storms, and we're slap bang in the middle of it. It's tracking our course, as though we have some magnetic attraction, there's  no escape, as it gathers itself for another assault, reeling around in a fiendish orange overlay on our chart plotter. The night thickens, we're getting weary, no we're worn out with being this wet and this bounced about. This was never our idea of what sailing the Caribbean would be, and we both thought silently that all this dream of buying a yacht had been a huge mistake, but neither of us voiced that thought. Standing under the waterfall that was cascading over the helmsman, yours truly, I broke into a rendition of "singing in the rain" at the top of my voice, and Ewans song, "Sailing close to the wind" that was on our last album, it seemed to help, but it didn't stop the rain, it didn't stop the seas paying us the occasional visit. It rained and rained all night and into the dawn. Just before dawn the lights of a distant Dominican Republic, dipped in and out of view as we rode up and down, the roller coaster ride of the Mona Passage swell.
The night seemed never-ending but after ten hours, the rain eased, and dawn broke majestically, in pink, orange and purple robes of the dying storm we had finally escaped. Everything was a mess aboard Picaroon, below stuff had spilled from what we thought were locked cupboards. A fire extinguisher had released itself from its clip and disgorged its contents around the galley floor, coating all the charts, books and minutia that had joined it on the floor. Wet clothes, shed in the storm littered the floor, all was chaos, and above deck too, stuff had been washed this way and that, in the dark we didn't notice, but as dawn broke it became apparent that it had been somewhat of a rough passage.
At long last, and it was a long last, we turned into the entrance of Samana Bay, Mr Engine Sir still beating in the heart of Picaroon, the mizzen raised, sometime in the middle of the night, to keep the rolling to a minimum, fluttering limply in a lifeless morning air. Samana Bay is big, much bigger than it looks on the chart, and it takes us the best part of the morning, Picaroon wallowing in an uncomfortable swell, until we get within hailing distance of Bahia Marina, where we'll find sanctuary from our ordeal. Our calls on the VHF bring no response, and we contemplate anchoring, but too tired to make any sensible decisions, we continue to try. At last we make contact, were only half a mile away from the entrance, and a voice says come in to slip 51.
We land in heaven, well it appears like that after thirty hours of hell. This is a five star Marina with infinity pools, Spa, restaurants, and staff that are ever so polite and correct, dressed in white, all marble and coral stone, incidental soothing music that you can barely hear, jazz, Frank Sinatra, and that transcendental stuff that just washes over you in the background. It's uncannily quiet too, hardly a soul about to cause a ripple in the tranquillity of the place. It's a dream, it must be a dream I am having in between those half hour watches we took in the middle of the storm, in the middle of that black as coal night, sailing the Mona Passage.
But no, we didn't sink, we didn't die, there wouldn't be two middle aged women in scant bikinis, dancing, inappropriately to muzac around an infinity pool in heaven, we must be in Bahia Marina in the Dominican Republic.

Nano tech surveillance, La Paguera to Boqueron

Boqueron bay is flat calm in a pale sunrise, the bay is huge, perhaps two miles across and protected from the ocean by a sunken reef that stretches across the entrance, about a mile from the shore. We came in through a cut in the southern end, called Canal Sur, (South) which was marked by a big green buoy, at about three in the afternoon and anchored about 200 yards  from the palm fringed beach that stretches a good mile from end to end.

The passage from our last port of call, La Parguera, took us round a particularly nasty bit of Puerto Rico called Cabo Rojo, pronounced Roho, which means cape red in Spanish, named seemingly by Christopher Columbus, who must have been colour blind. I thought it looked more mucky brown than red, but Jackie was a little more gracious and reckoned it was perhaps more tan. So Cape Tan it is then; the entrance to the dreaded Mona Passage. The seas around us turned from deep blue to turquoise and far from being tempestuous, were slight to moderate, as we nautical fellows categorise these things, this indicates that we're in shallower waters, and even though we were at least two miles off shore the depth thingy was showing about 30 feet. The wind was on our tail, which always makes for awkward sailing, trying to keep the sails full of wind is difficult. We want to head north east-ish, but so does the wind so we fall away from our course and put the wind more on our beam, or side if you like, but this takes us off our course and away from the coast. Jackie, who has an intuitive feel for this sailing business now, says that it'll be ok, we'll head out for about an hour, then turn and run in the opposite direction on a beam reach, the best point of sail, which will take us slap bang into Boqueron. There's not a lot of wind, about 12-15 mph,  we've only got the genoa and mizzen up, I suggest we hoist the mainsail, but Jackie who has an intuition for this sailing  lark decides we don't need it, and an hour later she's proved right.

About this point we're visited by a big brown seagull type bird that dips and swirls around picaroon as though it's some kind of scout for Homeland Security, and I scrabble to find the camera, but by the time I've got it we look around and there's no sight of it at all, like a will-o-the wisp it's gone. Earlier we had a butterfly that fluttered about the rigging, we're three miles off shore, what an earth is a butterfly doing three miles off shore, another eye in the sky no doubt working for Homeland Security with some fancy nano hi-tech camera system.

 You may think I'm a bit OTT about these US Homeland security folks but in La Parguera they had this huge air balloon thing tethered at least a mile high that the conductor of the Lake Taho symphony orchestra says can spot drug runners coming out of Columbia, which is a long long way from here so I wouldn't put it passed them to be tagging birds and butterflies with mini cameras. Oh, that conductor, just a part time resident of La Parguera out for a morning punt on his paddle board who stopped by to say hello, and had we been staying until Thursday, don't ask me why Thursday, he would have invited us across for cocktails. He mentioned being a bit of a tri-athlete,  maybe he was on a strict training schedule, that ruled out cocktails till Thursday, I don't know, you work it out.

But I digress, having turned Picaroons' bow to face the western shores of Puerto Rico, and with the wind now on our starboard beam, she picks up speed and the winds freshens. Looking at the projected track on our chart plotter we're bang on course and trying to catch sight of the buoy that marks the cut through the reef. There's a strong current running up this coast, and although it feels like we're flying along we're only doing about five knots, and heeled over the wind picking up to a healthy twenty-five knots now.  By the time we're passing the buoy, with the reefs safely avoided the wind has increased somewhat and although we've only the mizzen and genoa up Picaroon is heeled more than is comfortable. "A good job we didn't put up that main sail" I said. Jackie gives me one of those looks, that says, "listen to your wife"; time to reduce sail and haul in the genoa. With Jackie at the helm, able seaman Col wrestles with the sails as we turn into the wind, trying to manipulate three ropes. One winds the sail in, the other two are the sheets that need taming to avoid a bad wrap, or furl as we say.  Now like most people I've only got two hands and with the wind now blowing at thirty knots this operation proves a trifle messy, as the genoa crashes and flaps madly, sheets get stuck on bits of the boat they shouldn't, or should have been uncleated before we began to furl. Finally I get the job done, now time to drop the mizzen, and sail into the anchorage safely on Mr Engine Sir, now purring away below. "I'm afraid I can't drop the mizzen" I say, "looks like the halyard has got itself jammed around the winch". No amount of tugging and heaving will free it so we resign ourselves to keeping the mizzen up, and just spill the wind from it. Anyway it always looks good from the shore when you see a yacht coming in under sail, and it impresses other cruisers that may be, no, will be watching.

Greta May, with the Welsh couple Dave and Jane aboard who we met in Salinas and La Parguera, have just weighed anchor, off to clear out in Mayaguez,  as we glide by and we give her a wave. Jane calls out from the helm, there's plenty of water, bye. That was sort of stating the obvious, I thought, I suppose she meant you can get quite close to the shore before dropping the anchor. After our experience with La Parguera we're a bit more cautious, and still sporting a mizzen full of wind we decide to drop the hook about two hundred yards from shore. Picaroon swings to face the wind, the chain tightens and we stop, take transits, engine off.  An early G&T rounds off a successful days sailing, we can tackle the mizzen later when the wind drops, for now it's just steadying Piccars as she lies at anchor in Boqueron Bay.


(Jackie to John Parlane, (RYA Instructor); maybe we shouldn't have missed out on the 'Competent Crew' course!)

Continued by Jackie:  The G&T slipped down easily but no time for another; we had to go ashore to clear in with Homeland Security at Mayaguez. With the sail covers on and the dingy back in the water we headed for the shore, not knowing where to tie up, how we would get to Mayaguez and just hoping that we were late enough for them to tell us to come tomorrow morning.

 We found a rickety dock close to a small sandy beach and hopped ashore. Walking into a small square we headed for a bar and ordered a couple of cold beers. Col asked if there were any public phones around and immediately two locals offered us their phones, a fellow cruiser who had settled in Boqueron for over thirty years was the first and I phoned HS to announce our arrival. For most cruisers this would be enough but as we had been naughty by not clearing in at Culebra from St. Thomas, HS in Ponce had told us very clearly that we would have to appear at Mayaguez in person, after phoning of course. The officer on the other end of the phone was about ready to go home and I suppose thought we were calling from the boat, he said, "Yes, just come tomorrow after 8am; do not leave your boat; do not bring anything ashore with you apart from your papers" etc., etc. Phew! Well that was a relief and we ordered another beer. OK, now how do we get to Mayaguez tomorrow we pondered and no sooner had this thought crossed our minds when another phone was thrust at us with Raul on the other end. "I'm out of town just now but I can give you another number to call". We call Elvin who agrees to pick us up at 8am for the thirty minute drive to Mayaguez.

 Elvin is a very friendly and chatty local chap who had lived and worked in the US for many years so his English is perfect and Col chats with him all the way about the history of Puerto Rico, America, Dominican Republic. Soon we pull up at an impressive Georgian building and approach the first HS Officer who waves me towards a glass-fronted counter which looks remarkably like a Bank at home. Behind the glass another Officer indicates we should sit down and wait.

 A couple of minutes later, he beckons me to the counter and a strange exchange begins.

Me; "We have arrived in Boqueron from Ponce and I have come to clear in"
HS; "When are you leaving"
Me; "Well I am not sure, it depends on the weather"
HS; "Why are you here"
Me; "To clear in"
HS; "You don't need to clear in if you have paid in Ponce, you only have to come to clear out"
Me; "But the Officer in Ponce said we had to come because we had been naughty and they want to teach us a lesson"
HS; "Who was the Officer, ah yes Rxxxxxxz, just a minute".
HS goes off to phone his colleague in Ponce and ten minutes later comes back to the counter;
"Officer Rxxxxxxz says you have misunderstood him and you don't need to be here, just come when you're ready to clear out".

Both Col and I know this is not how it was explained to us but I am not arguing and a little light comes on; maybe we can clear out now and save another trip so I ask "How long after we clear out do we have to leave?"  (We've heard its only 24 hours but worth asking.)

HS; "You give me the date you're leaving and I can fill in the form" he advises rather confusingly.
Me;  "I can't give you a date because I am not sure when we'll be leaving".

Now I can see that I am beginning to try the mans' patience, so I decide to give him a big smile, thank him for his kind assistance, collect Col and Elvin and get the hell out of there, only dashing back for my hat which I left on the seat. On the way back we call into a supermarket for supplies and I muse on whether the quick dash back for the hat was a little risky and, with my back-pack on, I could have been mistaken for a terrorist and got shot.

Oh well I live to fight another day and it may have cost us $35 for an unnecessary trip but at least we are legal, have restocked the wine cellar, and are not 'invisible' as Officer Rxxxxz had warned us against.

Once that weather window opens we'll be back in Mayaguez where we may have a more sensible exchange, who knows.

You wouldn't credit it | Sailors to seadogs

You wouldn't credit it | Sailors to seadogs

Close to the wind

Fred and the tank

Fred has a lived in face, like a Christmas walnut, a knowing half smile and a quiet and measured American drawl. He’s a thick set man who moves slowly through the world in old T shirts and well-worn shorts with the residue of an engineers’ work that seldom sees a washing machine. He’s a convivial character, a quiet man, but engage him on any mechanical or seafaring issue and you could be there all day. He may have an appointment but now he’s in conversation it’s going to have to wait, there’s a story to tell, and it just may take a while.

Although Fred looks like he hasn’t got two pennies to rub together he flies a small plane, has a forty foot yacht, and houses here in Puerto Rico and another in the nearby island of St Thomas. He tells stories about being at sea on rescue tug boats, and of trouble shooting large oil installations all over the world, Fred is an uber engineer, who has a way to fix anything that’s mechanical. If Fred gives you some pearl of wisdom regarding anything mechanical, you need to listen, and listen good, his advice is probably spot on. We paid a visit to his boat yesterday which was strewn with tools as he  tackled some job or other. On the stereo an aria from some obscure opera played in the background, Fred is cultured.

Before we set off on our adventure to St Thomas Fred had warned us about our fuel tank, and how we needed to make sure it was clean. “You need to cut a hole in it” he had said, which seemed a bit drastic at the time, but after all the problems we had on that trip to St Thomas we’re now taking his advice.

There’s about thirty odd gallons of diesel in our tank, it’s about three quarters full, and lies under the floor in the middle of the boat. The plan is to empty the tank, cut a new access hole in the top of the tank, which is aluminium, and make a new hatch cover to cover the hole. This will enable us to get to the rear of the tank which at the moment is inaccessible as there’s a baffle running across the middle,  it’s there to stop the fuel sloshing about too much when the boats sailing.

Fred has given us a small sheet of aluminium and I borrowed a jig saw, from Freds’ friend Bob, to cut a new hatch cover. I spent yesterday cutting and drilling the new hatch cover, now I have to set about cutting the hole in the tank. So the next task will be to empty the tank and to do this I’ve borrowed, from Fred, a pump. It’s not a fancy pump, just an electric motor with a switch taped onto the side of it, and some plastic hose. Fred reckons it can pump about twenty gallons a minute, but here’s where it could get messy as we are going to use five gallon jerry cans to collect the diesel. It could all go horribly wrong as our jerry cans could be full in seconds spilling fuel all over the boat. But if it all goes to plan we’ll have an empty tank that we’ll be able to scrub out, and a new access hole.

Well it turned out to be more than messy, we hooked up the plastic tubes, poked one in a jerry can, and the other I held under the surface of the diesel and flicked the switch. There was a gurgling sound and a bit of foaming in the pipes but no diesel came out of the end Jackie was holding in the jerry can. Fred had said “you’ll need to prime the pump, it’s centrafugal” as if I would understand. I sort of knew what he meant so prior to starting we had poured some diesel into the pipes and filled the pump, but I obviously had missed something. We tried filling the pipes a bit more which entailed decanting, very messily, via a small funnel, a bit more diesel. Jackie holding one end up in the air, me with my finger over the other end. We plunge my end into the tank, losing some on the way and switch on, but still only a gurgle, not twenty gallons a minute, not even a trickle.

After a few repeated attempts we finally got it going, the trick was to have my end of the tube completely full of liquid and held under the surface of the smelly stuff in the tank. At last the jerry cans started to fill up and after about an hour we had sucked all the diesel out, except for a half inch that we had to use a hand pump, before mopping out the last of it with one of those towel mats you find on pub bars. Safe to say it hadn’t been the best start to a day, and we both reeked of eau de diesel, now it was time to cut the hatch, but first a fag-break out on deck where the fresh morning breeze cooled our sweaty selves.

Cutting through the aluminium tank was easy and we soon had a 9 X 7 inch hole which revealed a mess of black congealed gunge on the bottom of the rear of the tank. We set too with scrapers and metal scrubbing pads, Jackie took the rear of the tank, brave girl, I did the front half. We scrabbled about, getting into weird positions to reach all four corners, like playing some demented game of twister. It took all day but finally we had two, if not shiny, but almost pristine halves, which we decide to let air till tomorrow when we’ll put the fuel back. We go ashore for a cold beer where we meet Fred at the bar, who’s impressed that we’ve managed to get the job done, we’re just pleased it’s all over.

“You put the diesel back in the tanks yet?” says Fred, “because you know what I would do. Whilst it’s empty you should check the bottom of the tank. You just need to disconnect those four hoses and lift it out and take a look.” Well what could we say, we knew he was right, but we also knew that the tank was sitting on a rubber mat in a rank bilge that was going to mean another horrible job, but if Fred was advising us to do it, do it we must. So the next day out came the tank, which was fairly easy but it revealed a gunge ridden mess beneath it. I paddled about bare foot scooping up sludge into a bucket, mopping with rolls of kitchen towel, whilst Jackie hauled the disgusting heavy rubber mat on deck where she scrubbed it with sea water and Dr Mechanico. “This is a much worse job than yesterday” she said, and she was right.

The bottom of the tank turned out to be still in good nick, just a bit of old flaking paint, and some pitting but not badly. So with a nice clean bed for it to sit on we put the mat back down, reconnected the tank, fitted the new hatch cover, along with the old one and filled it up using the Baja filter. We went ashore for a well deserved cold beer, and bumped into Fred.

 “Shame you put it back, I could have ultra-sounded it for you” but I show him some photos and he reckons it’ll be OK. “Show Richie those pictures” Richie is sat on the bar stool he seems to occupy most of the day, another quiet man, who always says Hi, but little else. If Fred defers an opinion to Richie, I’m impressed, must be another master engineer, maybe, or just a tank expert, I don’t know. “Hell, I’ve seen worse pits on my face” says Richie. They agree that the tank should be good for a few more years. “Just make sure you keep that bilge dry” says Fred and he ambles off into the night.

So that’s the tank job, done and dusted, a major headache out of the way, and one less thing to worry about, now we just need to sort out that broken bolt on the stuffing box, replace the morse cable and we’ll be good to go, that is unless we uncover something else. As Freds’ boating friend Bob says though, “If it ain’t broke, take it apart and find out why”.

Shakedown sail, testing the mizzen

Rocket science

Picaroon has thrown up quite a few challenges in the five weeks that we've been living aboard, in Salinas bay. We arrived with a plan, which very soon went out of the porthole, whilst we solved one problem after another. First it was dead batteries, then fresh water pumps, then fan belts, the list went on, as we entered the world of being boat owners. Now we know why boats spend 90% of their time in harbour, there's always something vital that needs fixing.
On the up side, as we keep being reminded, it's better that we discover these problems in port rather than out on the open ocean, or some far flung atoll, chance would be a fine thing, and it means we've also had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with the inner workings of the good ship Picaroon. Pipes and wires snake beneath the floor hatches, disappearing through holes to some seemingly inaccessible space only reachable by midgets who were also contortionists. Tracing pipes and wires seem to have become a daily quest, to pin down how this or that system works as I slowly unravel the mysteries of Picaroon. Luckily it's only just basic plumbing and electrics, it's not rocket science.
Mind you there's stuff on here that I've got no idea what it does. Take for instance a small blue box that has the title of "Lifeline" printed on it, and a strapline beneath that reads, "the heart of you system". Shielded beneath a Perspex cover, it has a green LED that glows, and lots of wires going to it. There's a couple of holes in the Perspex lid where I'm invited insert a screwdriver and adjust the absorption voltage, and another similar hole that says, adjustment times,  along with a time test point and an error indictor lamp that fortunately is not lit. I've not got a clue what this does, but as it calls itself "Lifeline" I think I should.

There's stuff like this lurking in every nook and cranny, that may, or not be working. Even the workings of the fridge, which isn't working, baffles me, even after reading the workshop manual, I'm at a loss to see why it all looks so complicated, and that's before we get to figure the Garmin chart-plotter that's hooked up to a radar, I think, and depth transducers, all handily displayed on the friendly looking screen in the cockpit, as long as we've got the supplementary, Blue chart g2 Vision data card installed. Sonar, of course is only available with an "S" series unit.

 The thing is we did all our training with old fashioned paper charts, dividers and compasses, but the world moves on.
We've been in touch with the previous owner, via email recently, with questions about Picaroon that we thought she may be able to help us with. Yesterday, we had a reply to one or two of our queries which threw new light on the myriad of esoteric systems aboard. Apparently she was also overwhelmed by so much of the gubbins on Picaroon that used to be owned by her father.

 It turns out that her father was actually a rocket scientist, so that explains it.   

Playing the money markets

So that's it, BVI yacht sales have received our money for the final settlement of our purchase of Picaroon.
One to four days was what the banks website said and we expected it to take at least four, but no, we hit the send button on Wednesday and on Thursday we had an email saying that they had received our payment in full.

Have you ever sent a shed load of cash across currency zones, it's not without its heart stopping moments. Our money is held in a UK bank account and of course is in sterling, good old fashioned pounds to us and we had to pay the sellers in Dollars.

Now all this finance stuff is way beyond my brain but luckily Mrs W is a bit of a whiz at numbers. She somehow seems to understand stuff like spreadsheets, for instance, which baffle me beyond words, so I leave all this to her, which is how we ended up with an account with World First Bank. Now as far as I can understand they are in the business of moving money around the globe in unimaginable amounts everyday. At the top of their website it tots up the money it has moved about that day. The day we were transferring our money the ticker at the head of the page read something like £15,769,566,201,578,330.164. or some ridiculous  figure that was a bit like how far it is in light years to get to the edge of the known universe.

Somewhere lost in this enormous number is our meager contribution, which is a might disappointing as it's our life savings, which will hardly cause a ripple on the global transactions of the day which I read somewhere amounts to about three trillion dollars a day. Luckily this doesn't have to be counted or carried about by men with big sacks and vans with those blacked out slits for windows, no it's all done by computers talking to other computers, linked to other computers across the globe by fibre optic cables. Satellites whizzing above the planet about a couple of hundred miles up travelling at upwards of 20,000 miles an hour, spewing out data in a mind bogglingly endless race towards the end of the days trading on the money markets.

So here we are after Mrs W has cracked the esoteric codes, checked and rechecked the SWIFT code settings, rechecked and rechecked the three accounts that our funds have to be passed to. First our money will fly off to Wells fargo in New York where it is put on a stage coach, pulled by six white horses and at breakneck speed they get it to a bloke somewhere in a bank called First Caribbean, which I suppose is an ex cruise liner floating somewhere off the Cayman Islands, I suppose they catch a ferry from Miami to do that. Then he gets on a helecopter and takes our sack to Tortola in the BVI. Once they've counted it in the BVI bank the manager will telegraph our broker to say that our payment for that boat Picaroon has finally arrived

Maybe not, not in the 21st century.

The World First website shows us in Real Time what the going rate is for the exchange of one pound for the equivalent in Dollars. This particular day we'll get 1.6075 dollars for a pound, no wait, less than a second has gone by and we can now get 1.6077. A second later and it's 1.5987, and then 1.5998. Wizz wizz wizz go the numbers, up, up, down down all happening at the speed of light, or in this case electricity, I suppose to be wholly accurate. Then its had a sudden slide and it looks as the British  economy is pants but then you realise that the graph is split into 1000ths and that that big slide represents just less than half a cent.

Now all this matters because our funds are locked into the starting stalls of the money market race day. Our mouse hovers over the continue button. Once we click that button we get the exchange rate at that particular nanosecond. It could be the difference of £200 if we click at the wrong moment, so this is serious! After about a half hour of this mesmerising dance of numbers we give up on the idea that the rate will make so little difference in the end and we quit the game and press continue.

Thank you for choosing world First, is the next page displayed. Your money has now been sent to our Russian Mafia boss in Monte Carlo who will try to double it before sending off what remains to the recipient named below.

HAVE A NICE DAY.

Somehow miraculously Karen at BVI emails the next day to say they've received our final payment and they are preparing the final paperwork which will be shipped next week by Fed Ex. A man in a van will call at our apartment in the Dominican Republic with the ownership papers for our yacht.

Funny old world. 

The Search is over | Sailors to seadogs

The Search is over | Sailors to seadogs

Offer accepted on Picaroon

Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!
This was our reaction to the email from Brian at BVI yacht sales at 8-30 yesterday morning which simply read, I think we have a deal.
 Sure enough, there was the signature of the owner right next to ours at the bottom of the PDF of the contract.

We're about to become the owners of a Hardin Sea Wolf, all being well with the survey, and to say that we're excited would be an understatement. Our bid went in just before the weekend, and so we had to endure the whole weekend of anticipation, not really expecting our new bid to succeed, even thinking someone else had made a higher bid, but then we opened our email first thing Monday morning and BAM!!!!. There it was the words, Dear Jackie, "I think we have a deal"

I don't know what's going on here, maybe it's the heat, maybe we've both lost our presence of mind. You see we needed to buy a car for living in the DR and we had decided to look for something small and economical. What did we end up buying, a big six cylinder, 4 wheel drive Nissan Pathfinder which is huge and built like a tank. A good car to be in if your in an accident, said the salesman.

When it came to buying a boat, our first boat we were going to buy something not too big, maybe 34-36ft easy to handle for a couple of small and aging sailors. What did we end up buying, a 41ft ketch with an extra six foot log sticking out the front. The bowsprit.

So this is it, we're just a stones throw now from owning this beautiful old girl, who goes by the name of "Picaroon" which according to wikipedia means pirate boat, we've got ourselves a pirate ship, we've gone and bought Captain Ron's boat, albeit in rather better shape than the one in Captain Ron.

Next week we'll go back to Puerto Rico where she will be hauled out and surveyed in Fajardo. The broker, Brian, in the BVI will arrange all this as it's a two day sail to bring her round from Salinas and a two day sail back to Salinas. Were rather hoping that we can do the return sail to Salinas which would serve as the sea trial that we need to do. It would also help us to get familiar with the workings of a ketch rig which we have never yet sailed. Of course we will have an experienced crew for this which we can learn from, so that would be the best plan. Then we berth her back in Salinas Bay, complete the paperwork, pay the money and she will be ours.

We've come along way from my very first entry in sailblogs, "So we've bought the wellies" from novices to navigators, from our start yachting course to our dayskipper practical in force nine gales in Scotland. The dream we dared to dream all those years ago has finally come to a pass.

Once she's ours, we'll need to bring her back to the Dominican Republic, and probably to Luperon, but before doing this we're going to have to sail her somewhere that is not too challanging. Somewhere close by where we can figure out all the sheets, sailplans, instrumentation, how to anchor safely and how to get in and out of marinas without spiking a million dollar yacht on the end of the bowsprit.

Where might that be you may ask, well just a couple of days sail from Salinas is, yes you guessed it, The BVI - got there in the end.

Head, Heart & Intuition

There's a saying, don't let your heart rule your head, and another that says, trust your intuition. Both of these we have applied to great extent when deciding which boat we will eventually buy. As you know, if you've been following this blog, we've been researching, viewing and sailing lots of different boats over the last five or six years. All this ground work has of course been worthwhile so that we don't jump in and make the wrong choice. After all this is probably the first and last boat we ever buy so we don't want to make rash or wrong decisions.
When we were newcomers and a bit green behind the gills with all things boaty, we were attracted to boats built in the far east, the Cheoy Lee, Formosa, Tayana, Hans Christian and a few other makes I can't quite recall. These boats looked, to our naïve eyes, all that a boat should be; a romantic vision, a symphony of craftsmanship, with carvings, bowsprits and figureheads that would plough the oceans in search of adventures. These were the boats that we dreamed of owning one day, but the more we researched we began to understand that, as pretty as these vessels were, they were more than likely to be costly to maintain, and wouldn't sail as well as more modern designs.  So we stopped looking at these romantic visions of sailboats, and started to listen to our heads rather than our hearts.
The search for our perfect boat, one that didn't have all that bright work,  a nice looking plastic, easy to maintain yacht eventually led us last year to the C&C landfall. With its spacious galley, big heads and sleek lines, she  looked the ideal boat. We found her languishing, unloved in Luperon,  and promptly put in an offer. Suffice to say we didn't buy "Seagulls", you'll know why if you've been following this blog, or scroll back, if you've a mind too.
So after heeding all the advice, taking into account all of our five years of painstaking research we have fallen head over heels,..... not a good idea on a sailboat,..... in love with a bloody Formosa, and a little less so with a Tayana 37 and we've put offers in on both boats. We have stopped listening to our heads, employed our intuition and soon, we hope, will be the owners of one of either of these boats.
However, the excitement of last week, when were went aboard these two boats in Salinas has turned to frustration, no not frustration, perhaps suspended anticipation as we wait for a response from the agents/owners. You see,  it's not just a question of emailing them an offer price, we have had to download official forms/contracts, print out, fill in the blanks, scan and email back. They then send these same forms to the owners who then have to fill in their response, mail back before we can know if our offer has been successful, or not .
Every morning we open our mail in anticipation, only to be disappointed, and so we're still waiting. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, it's like being a kid waiting for Christmas, it seems like it's been forever, although it's only been a few days.
We posted a question on a website called cruisers forum where yachties give each other advice. Should we buy the Tayana or the Hardin sea wolf? As to be expected we've had plusses and minuses from sailors who have responded, it hasn't made things any clearer, just muddied the waters. Our  Intuition says, Tayana 37, heart says Sea Wolf, and head says neither, but I'm in no mood to listen to my head, I just want Christmas day to come so I can open my presents.