I finally did something about the rub-rails on my little boat. It has been bothering me for months because the old metal trim had gotten badly twisted and kept popping off of the boat. I looked for replacement parts, but that sort of thing does not exist for a low-production, 40 year old boat. So I improvised.

I have been contemplating this fix for over 3 months, considering and discarding lots of options. Sometimes the solution was price-prohibitive, but usually, I just did not like the mental image I was left with.Finally, I opted to try a low-cost solution and, if that did not meet my quality bar, I would only be out a little money and time.

I bought a 50' coil of garden-soaker hose, the kind that has a rough, porous surface. The kind OSH had was the flattened type, which my original mental image did not have, but it was only $11, so what the heck. I built a cutting jig out of two pieces of scrap wood and a razor blade and slit one skinny edge along the whole length (by the way, this process sucks and will cramp the heck out of your hand, if you are a squishy desk-pilot like me). 

Then I cut it to rough length for one side, pried off  the old metal rail and scraped the surface to get rid of dollops of caulk and whatnot. It fit on with some wriggling and soon, one side was covered. It looked SO much better than I had dared hope. I thought that it would take a matter of minutes to be done.

Why do I ever think that?

The previous owner had glued the top and bottom halves of the boat together, which I understand the desire to do, but he did it badly. The port side has less room for the strip to hold on to. So short version: I did more  custom work on the breasthook and the rub rails to get them to fit. And here is the result:

I have to paint the corner pieces still, but I love the new look!

Really good sailing today! The wind was just about perfect, between 8 and 13kts. I was a little more liberal with the sail this time out, allowing a whole 50% of the surface area to be active. I'm still really hesitant to overload the repaired mast, but am gaining confidence. It was solid this whole outing, even with a couple of less than gentle jibes.

The rest of the family disappeared on the kayak and seemed to have fun exploring areas of the lake that we have not seen before.

No sailing pics this time. I was experimenting with doing everything single-handed, to see if I could go out on my own a few nights while its light so late. Looks like the only thing I will have trouble with is getting the two mast sections together and apart. A couple of solutions may answer, so I'll try them next week.

On to other things! My daughter did the Monterey Bay Aquarium SCUBA dive for kids Monday. Oh, Lord, did she look cute in the gear. They have custom made dry-suits for kids of all sizes, tiny little tanks, and miniature regulators. Just adorable. Proving once again that she is my baby, she was the first of the 8 kids to be geared up and in the water. There was no sense of her actually caring about being first, but the competitor in me saw that she was likely to be done first and for some reason I was glad it happened that way. Silly, but that's me.



My girl was incredibly good in the water. She was intent on paying attention to her instructor, quick to point out things on the floor of the little tide pool that were interesting, so the instructor could swim down and bring them up to be looked at.

The kids don't submerge, which is wise, but their drysuits are super-inflated so I could have cannon-ball dove onto one and not sunk them. The down side is that the tank rides very high above the water, resulting in frequent otter-rolls. The kids just took it as "what happens" and flipped back over (looking like adorable little techno-turtles while trying).

This little tidal pool is surrounded on 3 sides by the Monterey Bay Aquariou. The 4th side faces the ocea, but large rocks prevent all but the largest waves from coming in. A couple did and the kids all just took it in stride. I learned later that the instructors made a kind of "Ride the wave" game of it, and there were no concerns after that.

I am just completely amazed at how professional, courteous, patient and kind the instructors were. Not just ours, but every group seemed to be led by someone who possessed a love of the sea, of kids, of TEACHING kids, and of watching their eyes light up when they saw somethign cool. There was no sense of condescension that I saw or heard. They were like the best elementary school teachers you remember, but in wet suits.

After the dive, the instructors filled out the dive logs with the kids and they discussed what they all saw. They each got a free cup of hot chocolate, and then there were lots of high-fives.

We stayed and explored the Aquarium and saw lots of things, but the best part was just being there with her and watching her learn and grow... and just to be with her. Some more narcissistic part of me is glad that she is now old enough to remember this and someday, long after I am gone, she will remember her first dive outing with dad.

It will not be the last. For the next 2 days I heard repeatedly about how she cannot wait to learn to dive for real. Looks like I have to find a place that actually teaches 10 year-olds. That is the stated minimum for PADI, but none of the schools around here seem interested in actually training that young. Probably not many kids actually self-aware and focused enough to actually do it. 5 minutes with my little tadpole should prove them wrong.

This has been a good week in and on the water for my family.

Well, I kind of ran out of steam on the Belize depiction.I kept meaning to continue, but then we did other watery things and I wanted to wait to write about those until I finished Belize... then I valiantly did neither. So, starting with something a little newer. An hour ago.

Those of you who know me know that about six months ago I bought a little sailboat. Nothing fancy, a Chrysler Man-O-War that is literally a year older than I am. You also know that the man who sold it to me delivered it and we went for a sail...

and the mast broke.

In retrospect I should have demanded my money back, made a stink or at least demanded a discount... but I was too shellshocked. My new boat... dead.

A couple of weeks later I cut off the bent part and used the stump of the mast for a new poly-tarp lateen rig, which served me pretty darn well for something that cost about $30 including spars and hardware. But each time I saw it, it felt... kind of wrong. The center of effort was too far back, making steering tough. Still, it was good for letting my kids run the boat and as a learning experience for me.

But each time I launched it, I just felt off. So, this weekend I declared that for Father's Day I was going to make a new sail and asked if Heather would help me. She is not as crazy as I am when it comes to a challenge, but since sail-making was entering her territory (she is the resident Queen of Cloth) she grabbed onto the idea and we started planning.

I have a fair amount of heavy Dacron and was ready to go for it. I had built several plans in Sketch-up, so I was planning on making the simplest one as my next-thing-better-than-lateen: a gaff sail. Heather and I brought in the various spars, masts, mast-stump and other bits that I have and started laying them out in the livingroom (which is stupidly large for a rental property, but sometimes comes in handy). After an hour or so of different configurations, we started wondering if we could salvage the old sail in some way. We rapidly revised out plans, having seen that if I extended the stump of the aluminum mast with a wooden mast, we could use the original sail.

So, now I was back in my own element: woodwork. I decided that if I was going to do this, I was also going to add 7-8 inches of height so I could sit more comfortably as the boom swung back and forth. I spent the next 6 hours crafting, sawing, planing, whittling, sanding and fitting. I also sweat more than I have since leaving Texas. MAN, it was hot Saturday. By dinner time, I had attached the wooden mast into the aluminum mast stump and all I needed was to test it for functionality before epoxying, painting and otherwise finishing it.

The wind was too high for a test most of today, at least during the afternoon. (Remember, last time I took this boat out with a 22 foot mast, the mast broke on me; I am somewhat gun-shy.) However, by 7:00, the breeze had dropped to 12-15 and was supposed to keep dropping, so I decided to give it a run... closely reefed, of course.

You can see the top of the mast section I made sticking out of the deck. It goes 14 inches beneath there and is reinforced with steel plates. Hope it holds for a while!

I had a heck of a time getting started because the wind was positioned in the worst place, about 30 degrees off the non-dock-side of the bow, meaning to get turned, I had to pivot the boat manually about 75 degrees before the wind finally the sail and gave me headway.  

Heather and my daughter did some photography, while my son paddled all over on the kayak. That dot in the middle is him. He just loves that thing. Also, see how pretty the sky was while we were out? It was gorgeous.

Once I got moving, the racing nature of the boat became clear. It hauls butt with its original sail, even closely reefed. I had maybe 40% of the surface area out and was zipping back and forth across the lake. No idea of speed, because I was staring the whole time at the repaired section of the mast, dreading a crack... so I did not think to time myself. But it was fast! Best of all, everyone else had gone home, so it was just me, my boy, and the lake.

I went for about half an hour as the sun dipped, then decided to head back in. Unlike my normal boat outings, I did not have to wrangle for a position with half of Foster City, so I just put the nose into the wind and let it waft me up against the dock (like I knew how to sail!)

So, the adrenaline has started to fade and I am off to bed early. We have a new major milestone tomorrow: my girl goes SCUBA diving!

Monterey Bay Aquarium has an awesome program where kids 8 to 13 can SCUBA dive with an instructor in the tide pool. I'd love to go with her, but this is her birthday present and they don't let daddys get in that pool. She'll start her dive life with a dive in a place I have never dove and can never dive. Very cool!

Of course, she is getting the whole dive-lifestyle treatment. We leave at the crack of dawn to get to Monterey, will walk on the beach a little to talk about conditions. Then she'll do her dive. Once she's done, I'll do the rest of the dive ritual: go to lunch and talk about all the cool things she saw and did.

My water-baby is going diving!

As I finished this, Heather put the little video my daughter took of my test-run. I'll post it when I have a link.

Okay, back. It's been a heck of a week, so I kept not doing this. Quick side note about our kayak trip last weekend: We went to Lake Chabot, which was very pretty and went from pretty empty to way too crowded in the 3 hours we were there. We caught no fish, but a guy kayaking not far from us caught a *very* nice trout in the 18-20 inch range. Not my fish, so you can trust my estimate. :) The kayaking was very nice. We bought new paddles, so the taller of us was not having to flap around with a dainty little paddle. Weather was 71 degrees and as lovely as you could wish.

Now, back to Belize...

When I last wrote, Heather and I had just reached the Yoga retreat we were staying at. Those of you who know me know that I do not Yoga; I am as flexible as a glass stick. However, I do *like* Yoga people. They tend to be pretty mellow, which I attribute to being upside down for so much of the time. Kids do that. Kids are pretty mellow... my logic is flawless.

Anyway, I had stayed at Ak'Bol on my diving trip in November, and am very fond of the owners. Kirstin and Milio are fun, funny, thoughtful and radiate island calm. Having coffee or a beer (or a few shots) with them and hearing about how they built this place is great. I recommend it.

But Heather and I were hot and tired and, not to belabor the point, IN BELIZE! So we dropped our bags, donned our suits, and hopped into the 82 degree water to watch the sunset over the island. The water there is perfect. It feels cool when you are too warm and warm when you feel chilly. It even tastes subtly different from Monterey sea water, which I am more familiar with.

We swam just off of the Ak'Bol pier, which is also where they do their yoga classes. There are stairs leading to 4 foot deep water, where we saw all kinds of fish (which I'll go into later).

We dried off and walked up the beach two docks to the Palapa Bar, which is a neat two-story restaurant/bar that sits at the end of the pier. No skeeters, nice folks and fish they caught themselves earlier that day. We had fish tacos and limeades with rum. I ate there almost every night when I was there last time, but this time we wound up only doing so twice.

You can just see the Palapa Bar in the center of this pic. Also, note  how clear the water is! It was like that every day except for one when the combination of choppy water and lots of boats mucked it up just a little.

Pretty much everything shuts down at around 8:30 in the off season. That was a little bit of a let-down, because I don't really sleep that early. But when in Rome... Heather and indulged in an episode of Big Bang Theory I had downloaded on my iPad before the trip each night. I felt almost guilty, plugging in while in paradise... but... It's Big Bang Theory!

In the morning, we woke to the sounds of a bird that Heather said made a sound like a pool cue being chalked: "Skreeekyskreeky." That still beats the heck out of a blaring alarm clock. We excavated ourselves from under the tee-pee of mosquito netting and headed to the bar for breakfast. Here I must pause to describe  the best food in the world: French toast caked with a massive amount of coconut that they scrape fresh from the shell for your meal. Then they bring out cinnamon syrup. It's food so good it had to take a solid year off of my life with each helping. And I don't care; they were the bad years at the far end. Only now do I realize I did not get a pic of that breakfast on any of the days there. Understand this: I have NEVER lamented a missed food-photo-op. Never.

At 8:20 the boat to take us snorkeling in Hol-Chan Reserve and Shark-Ray Alley pulled up to the dock. It was Another Bubbles from Reef Adventures, and it was nice to see the dive master from my last trip at the wheel. He raced us back to town where we switched over to Bubbles and got the snorkeling guides for the trip. I'll post a bunch of pics now and mostly shut up. Enjoy.

Everywhere you look, schools of fish. They had no fear and would swim just out of finger's reach, then close behind you as you swam by.  There were Black Groupers under the boat along with several Horse-Eye Jacks.  

There was a cute little turtle with a missing leg. I thought of him as Stubby. If any of you are a 3-legged turtle, I apologize for my insensitivity.

Stubby and Friends.

A gorgeous barracuda cruised along with us for a while. No threat, just seeing what was what.

This is a Lion Fish, They're squeezing out the indigenous species because they eat ANYTHING and a lot of it. Apparently, they are tasty if you get past the barbs. I did not try.

Perfect.

Perfecter.

We swam out over slightly deeper water (we had been in 8-10 feet water, then swam across a stretch of 30 foot. It was lovely to see so many schools of fish below us. 

That's it for tonight. I had a long day and have a longer one tomorrow.

Hal

Back from Belize

Heather and I spent the first week of May on Ambergris Caye in Belize. For those of you who do not know (or are GoogleMaps impaired) Belize is a relatively small country about the size of New Hampshire that used to be part of Great Britain. That's about all the history I have on it. What I care about is that it has the second largest barrier reef in the world, next to Australia! THAT catches my imagination.

If you have not been there, I recommend it strongly. They are at the far southern limit of the Caribbean, and for some reason have far less traffic than the tourist-thronged islands. While they are not overrun by tourists, though that is picking up, so go soon before it becomes Club Bahama.

Why I loved it:

• Great diving!
• Even Greater Snorkeling! (That concept blew my mind, but it is true.)
• They had wonderful weather when I was there in November and when I returned in May. 
• They are sheltered from surf by that reef I mentioned, so the shores are idyllic: white sand and lazy palm trees.
• They accept US dollars because their currency is pegged 2:1 to ours. That seemed like a little thing, but it turned out to be really great. Even street vendors will gladly accept a US dollar and give Belize change. Simple math and no currency exchange fees. (Credit cards do hit you with a mild one, so watch that.)
• Most importantly to people like me: the primary language is English (hell, yes!) so I can actually talk to people!

So, back to last week, Heather and I went to stay on Ambergris Caye, at the same place I had stayed before. That single sentence makes it sound really easy. Actually, it was a bit of a pain, but turned out to be worth it. 

The Pain

Getting people to look after our kids takes some doing. My son has some issues, which make looking after him far more challenging than taking care of a "normal" child. Given that, we didn't feel confident in asking any of his friends parents for a prolonged overnight. So we bribed my father to come stay at our house with him for a week. They get along pretty well and so long as my son is not being pressured or put in tense situations, he can control his outbursts. The promise was that I would take him on a trip to Seattle to go to Penny Arcade Expo in August. That challenge was the cheap and easy one.

We did not want to leave my father to look after both kids by himself. That is a challenge for any one. So we made arrangements with Heather's folks to take in Jazzy. That's great! But they live in New Mexico... that's... sporting. So we decided to make our travel pattern begin in San Francisco, and end the first day of travel in Albuquerque. The next morning, our daughter would stay behind and we'd fly to Belize by way of Houston. 

That required some shenanigans, getting the airline to understand that one member of our party was only going part way and then rejoining us as we came back. Seems pretty simple, phrased like that. Not so simple when talking to someone from New Delhi when my half of the conversation was mainly: "Huh? What? I'm hard of hearing, please speak more slowly." And her end of the conversation was heavily accented. Still, she was a trooper and had the best of intentions, so we soldiered through and got the reservations made."

That all seemed to be handled until United and Continental merged a month later and the planners played 52-pickup with most of the flights. That problem, while stressful, was mainly handled well by the United staff, who seemed resigned to a life of forever un-scrambling eggs. 

Okay, so the girl's vacation was handled! Our turn!

On Sunday the 29th we flew to AlbQ without incident (the girl is an amazing traveler; brought her own gum and knew when to chew it for her ears; not one iota of stress). We had Waffle House (which is the greatest food ever invented and is not anywhere near the SF peninsula!) for dinner and crashed at 9:30.  Up and out the door by 6:22 (a little after the 6:15 target) so we would have plenty of time to get through security.

SIDE NOTE: Did you know that if you have a sweet little 8 year old with you, they let you cut in line at the airport? I did not, but it's true! The three of us rolled our bags toward the loooooong line in San Francisco Airport and then got waved straight into the "Family line" with 1 other person in it. We got through security in less than 12 minutes from when we picked up our tickets!

Without benefit of our security speed-pass, who had not even awakened as we walked through security, it took the normal amount of time, but no hitches. I travel a lot for work and Heather knows how to keep things moving, so it was no problem. Everything in baggies (even my electronics; I put EVERYTHING in various clear baggies and never get delayed).

Then we were off... via Houston. Which is like saying We're going to heaven!... right after we stop in Texas. Even the plane landing was rough, as though the pilot was saying NONONONONONO.... and fighting it until the last second when gravity made him land and smacked him with runway for resisting. Understand, I do not hate Texas, but the 2 years I lived there were like payment for some unknown pile of sins  in my past. I do not want to spend more time there than I must. If you love Texas, it's yours. God bless.

Okay, so really, after 8 more hours we were leaving US air-space and on our journey. For those keeping track, it is now Monday, our second day of travel. 

We landed in Belize.

The Belize Internation Airport is one building shaped like a T. We had not checked bags, so we were out the door in 10 minutes from wheels-down. From my last trip, I was confident that getting a ride would not be hard. Sure enough, 2 steps outside of the glass doors, an array of polite men, some with signs, some with hopeful expressions, waited for us. Eye-contact, a nod, and he started opening his trunk for our bags. We told him we wanted to make the 3:30 ferry and he thought we might... then he broke at least 9 traffic, um, guidelines maybe? It was a little bit white-knuckle as we navigated the streets of Belize City. He got us there with 3 minutes to spare, accepted my US currency with a smile, and handed our bags to the Ferry's luggage guy. 

Now we were in a foreign land and about to travel to a tropical island. Literally. That thought went through my mind and I felt about as cool as a 42 year old middle manager gets to feel.

We set foot on San Pedro (the inspiration for Madonna's song "La Isla Bonita") and started to get our first taste of what being on a tropical tourist town in the off season feels like. Nothing that was printed as a schedule was actually the schedule. Things that ran hourly now ran only every two hours. So, either we were  going to wait for an hour and 40 minutes for the next water taxi or we could pay for a land taxi. We opted for the latter.

Before heading to the resort, though, I wanted to arrange our snorkeling for the week, so I walked a few piers down to Reef Adventures, who had taken such good care of me on my last trip. I was recognized and we made arrangements for a Hol-Chan/Shark-Ray Alley trip on Tuesday with a Manatee trip on Thursday. 

We paid about $20 to ride in a rather beat up car to the hotel, but really neither Heather nor I go much for appearances, so it was not a problem. Just a realization that we were not in the US anymore (because this car would NOT be allowed to live). 

We arrived at Ak'Bol Yoga Retreat at about 5 and checked in. It feels really good to travel to a whole other continent and be remembered, but at this place, I think they remember everyone. It's a small operation done in traditional island style, so the cabanas are stunning, yet rustic. Not about fancy, it's about unplugging and letting yourself relax..

That's it for now. I have to make dinner. I will update this with pics and talk about the trip some more when I get time. We are fishing and kayaking tomorrow, so it may be a little bit.

Everything's Better

This is me at my hypocritical best. I have never really followed the blogs of others, and am horrible at maintaining a journal of any depth or length. My hope is that this will act as a place for me to digest my thoughts about the vast array of water-related activities that I want to explore.

If no one reads it, that's fine. I don't assert that I have any answers for anything or anyone. However, if anyone ever sees something I wrote and gets excited enough to actually try some of these activities, I am delighted.

I never really thought much about water, except as a resource. I was raised in Colorado where arguing about water rights and jealously defending of every drop is just the way things are done. Colorado has been in something like a 30 year "drought," though at some point I think we just have to reset the scale and call that "the weather."

Because it is a largely agrarian state, still, the little water that DOES fall there, is completely spoken for. It enhances the culture of haves and have-nots there by adding one more thing the Haves get to have. There is a private recreational lake east of Boulder that I used to drive by. It is barely more than a glorified mud puddle, but the right to water ski in this tiny little pond is strictly (and expensively) regulated. That notion now seems completely insane to me, now that I am in California and can walk with my kids to the lagoon and play in the water year-round for free.

Even in the "public" reservoirs, the water level is usually so low there is little chance to boat or do anything more than fish. I took a couple of sailing lessons on Boulder Reservoir and between the gusty wind caused by the mountains and the relatively tiny scale of that reservoir, there was not much to do beyond learn the basics. Certainly no exploration or racing or anything more than... um... well tack a couple times and jibe a couple times, that's about it.

I am not deliberately bagging on Colorado. That's still my birthplace and will always be where I spent my formative years. I just can't imagine ever moving back now that I have lived near Water.

Oh, Lord, I love the water. I took up SCUBA two years ago and it is what I would do if I could only have one hobby ever again. However, I don't have to be deep to be happy. I bought a tiny, broken, kinda horrible boat that I love and am working on. It's 16 feet long, BARELY fits 2 people, and the mast broke the day I bought it, so I have been re-rigging it in various configurations, trying to find one that I like. As indicated before, I fish, I snorkel, I swim... I even get recharged by just watching the ocean.

So, this blog will be my week by week exploration of water life. It might bore you silly, and that's fine. Like I said, this is supposed to be my thinkin' spot and I am sharing it with whoever cares.

Halbert