Tsunami?

In our pursuit for happiness we always need the basics, food, a place to rest and love I guess. I think it is that way in all the animal kingdoms. In returning from our trip to the US for Christmas we found our boat as we left it except for a little mold. That is always expected with the humility here in Belize and it raining most days. Pam went at that the first day and every thing was back to normal. Then a couple a of weeks ago we had a Tsunami warning and people here stared to panic. The earthquake was down south in Honduras. All the stores closed early, people with transportation went as they were advising to friend houses with second stories or went inland. Pam and I listen to the radio a lot as we travel mainly because we came here to experience the countries we are visiting. A lot or most people that come here are just interested in the beach bar seen and were not. Listening they stared broadcasting the alert on the radio as if it was very serious. Pam and I got dressed and I went off our boat to maybe worn the guards here, it was after dark, about what we were hearing. We also turned on the depth-sounder to see is if the water was quickly dropping. The manager of the boat yard here came out and we all discussed what maybe we needed to do. In our long boating life we have been in earthquakes and hurricanes. Tropical storms and Nor-Easters, even a blizzard in Canada once but how do you ride out a Tsunami. Our plan was to leave the Pamela Ann tied looses in her slip and head to high ground in a building near by if the water stared dropping fast. Finely the time pasted where they, the officials, were worried the most and they called the warning off. Everything was back to normal we thought. We went to bed and the next morning Pam came walking back into our cabin after day light saying. “We have a rat.” I went to see and said, If that is a rat it’s the size of a small pig. A fruit basket was setting there and every thing in it chewed up. Tomatoes, peaches, potatoes, even a green pepper was half eaten. We have had rat trouble here before so we always keep the hatch doors shut day and night and the screens in but on the night of the tunomy warning we left the hatch door open as we came and went getting lights for people here working retying up their boats. Now the fun stared watching Pam set a flap trap with out getting caught herself, telling me it was my job and me telling her to be brave. In the next few days we caught 4 inside and 2 outside in the cockpit maybe looking for a way in. Now we seem to be rat free again. Pam is still keeping a trap set for weeks now to make sure.

As I said in the animal world it’s food, rest and love. The worst thing ever aboard our boat was a snake our cat brought on board one time. Try going to the head at night in dim light and find a snake slivering across your feet. The cat caught it again and Pam threw them both out. They said it was a glass snake and harmless but Pam didn’t see it that way. One good thing I guess, the rats were living well for a short time before Pam excused them and me telling her I could skin out the rat fur and make her something didn’t come off too well but that too was entertaining. I wonder what can you make out of rat fur?

Brighter Days

If you read our blog and keep up with us you know last week we were sad. The realities of life was catching up with us some but this week has been better. In the Caribbean you can always find flowers, they grow every where and you can find them year round. Some how flowers make me feel better. The other thing that is always here is bananas and coconuts. I’m not crazy about coconuts but they look so good when you see some one walking around drinking the coconut milk out of the top of the coconut through a straw. Bananas are cheap in the Caribbean but people don’t eat them the way we do. Pam makes banana ice cream and we some times cut then up with strawberries. I like banana fried like plantains. The best of course is the “Elvis banana sandwiches.” Toasted white bread, toasted in butter with crunchy peanut butter and banana slices. We eat this a lot. Maybe the reason they don’t eat banana sandwiches down here is they don’t eat that much white bread. You will find white bread where there is a lot of gringos but not so much among the locals. Corn tortillas don’t make good sandwiches when your main ingredients is a banana. I have ask the locals why they don’t eat banana in other ways and they say, “You just eat a banana man.” Shopping always make Pam happy but it’s very different as you travel. Down here the more they cater to gringos the more you can find something you take for granted in the US. The more locals it gets the more you will find more just staples. Always eggs, black beans and always rice. In Guatemala you can always find dry corn every where. We use the raw corn to make our own grits but this too can be tricky. If you see a little hold in the end of the corn kernel, weevils are getting to the corn and it taste different. When Pam is shopping I most of the time walk around and just look. Here is some juice they drink here I found doing that. They drink a lot of juice in the Caribbean. If it can be squeezed they drink it.

Another thing that makes us happy here is the weather this time of year. 80F in the afternoon and 70F at night. In the early morning everyone here is in heavy coats complaining about it being so cold. Remember I said near 70 in the mornings and remember we are just back from our Christmas trip to our son’s house in Kansas where it struggled to get above zero. A white Christmas there. Life is good and I hope we are taking time to live it well. We have always said when we get old we hoped we could look back and say we enjoyed our life some and now “we are old” . I never thought that we would still be stopping sometimes to smell the flowers in a place like this, a place where there is always flowers. Maybe looking back is good as we get, really,really old but for now our next trip is looking good to us.

Sad News

If you read our blog you know I sometimes say that it’s real out here. Traveling on our boat we have to go to sea most of the time to get where we want to go. Again if you read our blog you know some time back we hit a sand bar trying to get out of the waves the wind was creating in the ocean by going behind an island as we were coming up the coast from Guatemala going back to Belize. In the process of going for help, we were robbed. They took what they wanted off our boat setting there with us gone before we got back. Local fishermen maybe? Years ago we were coming down the coast of Belize, the first time we were here, and answered a Mayday call of a women in a panic saying she was drifting out to sea in her dink, the motor had quit and she had her kids with her. She had no paddle or anchor. Her only direction of where she was, was they had anchored behind an island and she didn’t know how to tell us where she was. Some fishermen, just by chance because there was no one we could see out there anywhere saw them and helped them get back to their boat. Near dark and drifting out to sea in a dink with kids and no equipment, it can get Real, Real Quick. A man we knew from the river in Guatemala was in Caye Caulker on his boat not long ago and going from his boat to shore in his dink when he was run over by a launcher and never regained consciousness even with them using Med-a-vac to get him all the way back to Canada where he was from. Years ago Pam an I along with our son and his wife were crewing on a sailboat in the Gulf Stream near Cape Hatteras delivering a boat to New York, were caught in a Nor-Easter with gust against the Gulf Stream at hurricane force. It was touch and go for a day there and there were boats and their crew lost to that storm. In Mexico we made good friends with a Mexican captain on a commercial fishing boat named “Anastasia” he went to sea fishing one morning and then just disappeared, no sign of him, the crew or the boat ever found. On our trip down from the US we hit bad weather off of Cuba and broke out main boom. As we tried to go on to Mexico in the darkest of nights a ship came too close to us and we were trying to get away from it flashing a light on the ship and our sails. He finely said on the radio, “I see sail boat on port.” that is all he ever said. He was maybe 200 feet away and rolled us good. 200 feet in the dark of night is too close to be to a rusty old ship in big seas. We were monitoring 8 more ships we could see at the time. As I say, it can get Real, Real Quick out there. Sadly today we got news that a sailboat we traveled with and the people on board we went out to restaurants with, and did lots of BBQs, traveled inland with and hung out with had sent out a Mayday on there way up the west coast of Mexico going to San Diego, CA, days ago. Their bodies just washed ashore. What had happen is not known. To all that read our blog if you ask people that dream, act on that dream and go for it, if it is worth it. I can only say Pam and I are getting old now and the money is never enough but I’m not ready to stop. I know our friends were doing what they wanted and we will miss them. We had cards printed up to give to people that want them as we travel with our name and our boat name on it about as long as we have been sailing. I know the captain of the “Anastasia” and our friends on there sail boat “Yacht Cruz” had one. This has always been on the back of our cards. Pam found this in and very old book years ago.

Home?

We are back in Belize and thawing out after a great “White Christmas” trip to Kansas to see our son. Traveling as we have for years it’s still good to get home. We hear people say home is where the heart is. I guess it’s safe to say our heart is on our little home built schooner named after my wife Pamela Ann and when I have both the Pamela Ann’s near I feel like I’m home. People sometimes ask, where is your home and when I tell them they say, so you live in the Caribbean then and I say, no the boat is just there now. Maybe we will go some where up north next year. This concept is strange to them but people that live and travel on their boats understand what it’s like to take your home with you. In Kansas it was cold and snowy but this was just fine for me it mint I could eat lots of gringo food. Being there you can go to a store and buy good food. bring it back and cook anything you want. No more black beans and rice served with ever thing, not every thing served with corn tortillas. No more beef that’s black and cut very thin before you even cook it and so tough you can chew on it for a while. No more dishes served in restaurant with cucumber juice for your drink. We were eating good thick tender pink steak and drinking ice tea out there but as they say, all good things must come to an end and now it’s up to Pam as we are back in the Caribbean to search for and find some thing that is good here for her to cook. With out Pam cooking on the Pamela Ann I’m not sure I would not weight what I do. I’m glad we are back but as you may know by now I will miss the good food there that I cant find here. There was more going on back in Kansas than just eating. One thing we did that was inserting to me was scraping out a very old, very large oil barrel. It was put there early last century and is not used any more. I’m not sure just what they do. There is a water separator in the middle and I know they held oil pumped fresh out of the ground many years ago. Here is a picture of one still standing.

Oil Barrel

The are big and made of clear knot free red wood boards. Maybe the best of the best at that time. We cleaned the old oil and mess off of a board and ran it through a planer. When the weathered out side was planed off the inside of the boards has a great color. Now what to do with the old clear red wood boards. Maybe build something special some day. In this picture you can see the water separator and we have removed most of the good board and there is not much left. This is a lonely place where this barrel once stood, out there on the prairie and we ran a rabbit out from under the boards.

Gathering boards

Pam’s granddaddy all most made a hundred and I ask him what it was like to see the first car that came to town. He said, “It was just a car and not that remarkable.” I was going to school before I saw a TV and it was great but not really remarkable. So much has changed in just our life time and here we are back in the Caribbean where change comes slow. The world is still full of wonders and I’m glade we are still seeing what we can. In the past few years we have road a horse up on a active volcano, road out another hurricane on our boat, been in an earthquake, made land fall where we were really glad to be back on land and out of the ocean. I think we have helped some people along the way and I know some people have helped us. I know this is a little late but I hope this is an even better year and all that read this have a great New Year. I know one thing when that air plane touched the ground here, it was 85 and where we left, Kansas it had been 15 below just days before. It’s been good and I’m sure it’s just going to get better from now own.

Pam Happy to be back aboard “Pamela Ann”

White Christmas

Have you ever dreamed of having a white Christmas? My Grandmother always said “Be careful what you wish for.”

Ever dream of living the simple life down on the farm gathering eggs fresh laid and froze in the nest. Cows that need water and you have to break the ice for them and will stand at the feed trough and Moo if they see you outside wanting more feed.

Where going outside means getting dressed in layers of clothes. Where undressing, Pam and I need to help each other.

Where there is fresh cured ham, cured in the basement, cut up for breakfast.

Where the midday sun only brings the temperature up to zero. To all our friends back in the Caribbean we know you are all now dreaming of being with us. We will be back in a little over a week back on our boat sailing in the warm seas back from our white Christmas in Kansas but for now we wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.