24 Feb 2010 Puerto Ballandra, Isla Carmen 26.0200N 111.1652W
Partida to Isla Carmen Picassa Pictures

We’ve had some strange winds keeping us on our toes. On our toes, in this case means getting less sleep, taking fewer shore trips, zig-zag sailing, changing destinations mid passage, and generally keeping a close eye on the weather reports, and a closer eye on the weather at hand. All of this seems to sap motivation for writing. So for the past week our daily task of safe-sailing has taken a chunk of life’s focus; and yet it’s subtasks are made up of lots of little decisions based on vague and impermanent facts making that very focus difficult. Mix in a little fatigue and it leaves me without the extra bandwidth for creative pursuits. Bandwidth! Now there’s a word I have not used in a couple months; that and multitasking. All these computer terms that have slipped into our language, to draw parallels between human behavior and computer behavior. If personification is applying human traits to the nonhuman; what would this new trend be? technoification or computification? Life on a boat, does not usually bring to mind parallels in computing (nor parallelization). The notion of multitasking does not exist here; unless, you call reading while on watch multitasking – but even there, you actually have to stop reading to watch, and stop watching to read. All other activities are singletask in nature. If I’m making bread and there’s a fish-on or a wind shift requiring assistance on deck, all bread-making stops, and deck activity starts – ideally with a brief interval to stow any open containers that may spill in the maneuver and to make my way to the cockpit (with any required tools and without any head or shin bumps). It is possible to bump my head and shin simultaneously while on my way to the cockpit causing me to drop the fishnet, that’s probably the closest I come to multitasking these days, but I think that qualifies more as a multitasking error.

I think I read somewhere that true multitasking like computers do (performing multiple calculations simultaneously), is not actually possible for humans, unless you count breathing and typing as multitasking. Our brains don’t seem to be able to think two things at once, and what many call multitasking in humans, is actually just rapidly switching between tasks, which according to the report I read, is not an efficient use of human brains, although our children are getting better at it than we are, and so human brains may eventually adapt. On Silver Lining, switching rapidly between tasks is risky. We try to perform tasks methodically and without injury. There is no delete button for an accidental jibe, and no retrieve function for an overboard winch-handle (although with luck there may be a backup).

All this is a long excuse for the long silence. I’ll attempt a shortish version of what we’ve been doing since La Partida (2/19/10). This is more of a log version of the past few days, not the blog version. But I’m hoping you’ll find it somewhat interesting with the map right there for you to try to piece together our trajectories (I’m still trying to figure out if I can get multiple points on one map for you).

After harnessing the south winds to bring us North, we sailed straight to the east side of Isla Carmen(2/20/10), passing a number of islands that we hope to visit on our way back. We were unsure how long the winds would last, and debated going further north; but the winds appeared to be shifting counterclockwise around to the southwest, with northwinds in the 24-48 hour forecast. So we chose a good night’s sleep over northward progress. We had picked an ideal protected anchorage on the west side as our destination but by the time we rounded Point Lobos on the northeast end of Carmen, the winds were coming full west, dead on the nose, so we turned 180 degrees, sailed back around into Bahia Salinas, a wide white sandy beach bay with no protection from southwinds, but good protection from winds coming from SW all the way to winds from the NE (but given it’s low terrain, it could still be very windy in northwinds). We stayed there for 2 nights (2/20/10 – 2/21/10), keeping an eye on the weather, which was supposed to be light north winds, but for us felt more like a steady west wind. West is unusual her. Prevailing winds usually running parallel to the sea itself funneled N or S by big hot desert land masses, but the tall mountains and cliffs of the islands do some odd things to the wind around them. “Your results may differ,” should be an assumption added to every weather report. We caught up on sleep and school, and a quick beach trip kept us sane. On 2/21 in very calm weather we headed around the west side of Isla Carmen, thought about stopping in an old favorite anchorage on Danzante, but winds were predicted to increase, and we still thought Puerto Ballandra seemed like a good place to hole up for some windy days.

And so we come to our current position. Ballandra, a quintessential C-shaped cove, protected us nicely in the gale force winds we had yesterday. We started out at the wrong side of the cove, wanting to leave some breathing room for another boat already here. Early yesterday morning, after a rocky sleepless night with increasing refraction waves in the southern half of the bay, we moved to the north side. Here the wave action was a little calmer. But it was still a 24 hour wild ride. At some gusts the water next to the boat produced spindrifts (nice word for the smoking long snakey trails of windwhipped sea that occur around 40 knots). And the view of the waves outside the cove galloping by was impressive. The ham operator weather guy calls the big white caps here buffaloes; these looked more like mammoths to me, but Frank would probably say I should save that term for the South Pacific.

With the rough night and the rocky ride at anchor I called a wind-day on school activities (no school, but no computers), so the free day had Kennan and I lost in a Hilari Bell fantasy trilogy that takes place in a desert (true escapism). Logan was desperately trying to finish Henry Dana so he could move on to funner stuff, but after 3 chapters he shifted to listening to reruns of his favorite radio show, NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell.”*

Our new-to-us anchor seems to be landing and sticking every time, despite some infamy the CQR earned in an anchor test comparison done a few years back. We had a 35# CQR on Bille en Tete, without a dragging incident in it’s 15 years aboard. This 75# version seems to be as promising, holding well through a couple of rounds with a windy La Paz Walz, and now a good solid gale (gale = 34-40 knots or Force 8 on the beaufort). Frank’s theory on anchors is that weight matters more than shape, and having ridden many blows and a few tropical storms out at anchor, his opinion is based on much more than anecdote (if not quite a full survey). But until I’ve amassed a similar critical mass of anecdote, I’ll continue to sleep lighter than he at anchor (or maybe he just sleeps better knowing that I’m sleeping lightly). Thank you Kay for Frank’s sound sleep at anchor since we wed, and thanks Gary for keeping Frank busy now, by letting go of all that you built, so we could tinker, trade, adjust and abuse to suit our own harebrained ideas (if they’d had a 75# Delta at Minnies for trade, we would have gone for it, and those new hi-tech hi-performance German anchors are not showing up yet on Minnie’s used anchor shelf).

xoxomo

*A digression I decided to move out of the body of this message: I would say podcasts, ebooks and iTunes are transformative to the cruising experience. But without internet, any digital rights management limitations are a nightmare! It can be a major pain to move between the variety of devices a family of 4 may have on hand to listen, read or watch. And any requirements to login to a central server with a code or key are impossible, to all the software and media companies who target only a connected market: No, the whole world is not wired (or wireless)! And, offline has it’s advantages (great virus protection, no distraction through websurfing possible, books you bought can’t be confiscated by the company that sold them to you). I’ll work on a longer list of advantages to offline living.

Feb. 24 winds have died down to 15-20 knots, and we slept better last night.