THE “CHRISTMAS LETTER”: LOOKING BACK ON 2006
Casa Venamor, La Guardia, Isla de Margarita, Venezuela, New Years Day 2006

Although perhaps frustrating at times, when I look back over 2006 from the quiet of Isla de Margarita in Venezuela, it now looks to have been a rather satisfying, interesting and sometimes adventurous year for the permanent crew of the Vilisar. It included a major coastal cruise and our longest offshore voyage to date (as well as crossing the equator for the first time). It also included two new countries, a new continent, a famous archipelago, rare species of flora and fauna, volcanic eruptions and trips to the high Andes. At this time last year we were still near Puerta Vallarta, Mexico, some 2,000 Nm north of where Vilisar now lies to her anchor in the estuary of the Rio Chone as that river cascades out of the Andes, down to the coast of mainland Ecuador and, silt-laden but swift, out into the Pacific.

There in Bahia de Caráquez it is only about 50 miles south of the equator. But the weather is cool in the northern summers thanks to the Humboldt Current running north along the coast from Antarctica. There are never any tropical storms there either, and Ecuador is also very inexpensive. From all aspects therefore, the country is much more attractive for shoestring sailors like ourselves than, say, Mexico, Costa Rica or Panama. Parts of the first and all of the latter two countries are out of the hurricane belt. But we already know how hot Mexico can get! By all reports, Costa Rica and Panama are also intolerably hot and humid to boot during the summer and they are not at all cheap compared to Ecuador. Moreover, leaving aside all other considerations, Ecuador is also a fascinating country and well worth a visit at any time.

So, by the end of last year, we had already more or less made up our minds to sail the 1,500 Nm southeast to The Galapagos Islands. After that the mere 600 Nm add-on to Bahia de Caráquez on continental Ecuador would seem like nothing. Other yachties we met who were considering heading south from Mexico were planning to harbour hop through Central America at least as far as Costa Rica and then put their boats in storage for the summer while they flew back to the States or Canada. Our plan, on the other hand, was to take the unusual step of sailing directly to Ecuador from Mexico.

Our eldest son Andrew, recently turned 19 and a first-year psychology and philosophy student at William Carrie College in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, agreed to take a tri-semester off to crew with us. Although Vilisar has sailed altogether perhaps 8,000 or 10,000 Nm since we moved aboard her at Port Townsend, Washington, five and one-half years ago, Andrew has never actually sailed alone with us and has never done a longer bluewater voyage either. In fact, since he has always had summer jobs since turning 16, he has not even been aboard Vilisar since 2002. We were still in British Columbia then. Of the three children, Andrew so far has always been the most “sail-struck”. Needless to say, he was eager to go to sea. He asked his tutor whether taking a semester off would endanger his scholarship. “Let me put it this way,” the tutor apparently said, “If you don’t go, then I’m going.” For our part, we were really pleased to have him to ourselves for a few weeks and, of course, to have an extra watch-keeper on board.

Kathleen flew to Germany for about six weeks just after Christmas to gig for a musical in Frankfurt. I stayed aboard the boat, did some painting and puttering and generally led the Life of Riley in Mexico’s delightful coastal communities of Barre de Navidad, San Patricio Malakey and Tenacatita. With Kathleen’s return, we set off for Acapulco in a very leisurely trip down the somewhat windless Pacific coast leaving behind our various new-found boating acquaintances and friends from Canada and the U.S.A. Most cruisers to Mexico are in fact not heading for Central or South America: they start meandering northwards again sometime after Christmas.

By Easter we had reached Acapulco. After happily entertaining Kathleen’s mother and sister aboard for a few days in Acapulco, we eventually set sail for Wreck Bay on Isla San Cristóbal in The Galapagos. This was no more than timely since all our cruising permits, visas, fishing licences, etc. for Mexico had already expired, leaving me in the interesting position of being a wetback in Mexico by a couple of weeks. We left without a “Zarpe”, the international clearance certificate that a vessel needs to convince the next port-of-entry that all bills and outstandings have been dealt with before leaving. We needed to wait for Andrew to join the vessel. But I was apprehensive about having to pay fines and get new paperwork done just because we were overdue by a couple of weeks. An experienced Belgian yachty told us that Canada does not issue such Zarpes and we should simply tell them in Ecuador that we had sailed direct from Vancouver.

Just after clearing Acapulco’s harbour entrance we hooked and landed a nice bonita: a good omen for the voyage, surely. The next fish, a máhi máhi or Dorado, was a couple of weeks later and it jumped the hook! We sailed meatless and nearly fishless.

This was to be our longest non-stop voyage to date. Leaving at the beginning of April, it took us 17 days to sail the 1,500 Nm to Wreck Bay on San Cristóbal Island. Our perception was that we did the voyage at jogging speed. The daily averages picked up when we later had to motorsail. Certainly for the first couple of weeks, however, we recall that we sailed under the big red drifter only, and even it tended to flap around while we played cards under the cockpit (y)awning. After the tension and activity of preparations for putting to sea, the actual trip tended to be somewhat uneventful and anti-climactic even.

The first few days are very slow indeed: our skills at three-handed cut-throat canasta improve. We do a lot of reading. We scan the five miles of water in each direction by day, contemplate the infinite blue-black firmament and bright stars after dark. One night we are surprised to see a parade of freighters and reefers (refrigerated ships) following each other northwest towards the U.S.A. on a rhomb-line from Panama or Ecuador. We pray for a little wind. At night we “sit” our watches and after a couple of days at sea we are no longer feeling quite so sleep-deprived. Late afternoon usually finds all three of us under the awning in a stupor from the heat. Somebody rustles up something interesting to eat before sunset (the days are now neatly divided into 12 hours of light and dark) or does the washing up in sea water. We watch the sun plop into the ocean to the west. Another day; another 65 nautical miles!

We are in no hurry. But at our present speed, Kathleen calculates we shall run out of drinking water before we make landfall in The Galapagos. She monitors fresh-water usage like a desert hermit! In the interest of water conservation I stick to beer and have calculated my daily ration. The three of us use about a gallon of water a day each even though we wash the dishes and take our showers in sea water.

So reluctantly, about halfway there (in nautical miles), we start our noisy but trusty air-cooled Lister engine, and motorsail. For the information of all those people who worry about storms at sea, for only about four days in the middle part do we get any real sailing wind at all. Then of course we make in excess of 80 Nm daily and one day we actually fly along so fast that we exceed 130 Nm noon to noon. This is some sort of record for Vilisar. Once into the Doldrums, however, the winds die out again except for the line-squalls that we dodge. At times it gets a little bouncy, and once while steering at night a largish wave rears up to port and slops right over into the cockpit to give me a good soaking! Fortunately, our cockpit scuppers deal with the water rapidly and the air is tropically warm. At another point, our decrepit old mainsail is shredded by a gust of wind. We wind up using our storm tri-sail for the remainder of the trip. As it is, the winds stay steadily on the nose and, south of the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ or Doldrums), we are pushing straight into light winds. In the afternoon, when the wind and the waves are the strongest and our 19½ -horsepower diesel can hardly make any headway through the chop, we simply practise heaving to. We snooze, read or play cards until the wind dies down again around sunset and the sea flattens. Then it it’s off again, off again jiggedy jig!

Safely arrived, we have a month in The Galapagos and visit the three main islands. I suppose I have seen enough giant tortoises now to last me a lifetime. The archipelago is perhaps not the most beautiful place you will ever visit as a sailor. But, provided you prepare yourself with a little reading about Darwin, the various species to be found there, and what it all means in terms of evolutionary development, the islands can be fascinating. Even fundamentalist “creationists” can still admire the blue-footed boobies, the mini-penguins, the giant tortoises, the playful local sea lions (you can even swim with them), the marine iguanas (they are probably harmless but I should not like to meet one underwater) and the smoking volcanoes. We also meet many cruisers on the outward leg of their circumnavigation that started perhaps in Norway or Denmark, Russia or England; other sailors are also on their homeward leg to Australia and New Zealand after years of travelling around the world. That will be us in a few more years. Compared to Mexico, the anchorages here are very cosmopolitan and full of “world cruisers”. Talk over “sundowners” is about hilarious mishaps in the Red Sea, how serious is the threat of ‘piracy’ off Yemen, how beautiful Papua New Guinea or The Marshall Islands are or how difficult officials can be in this, that or the other port-of-call. Just the term “port-of-call” gets our blood going. We are constantly digging out our Admiralty Sailing Directions or Jimmy Cornell’s “World Sailing Routes”.

Andrew eventually flies home from the islands via Guayaquil and Kathleen and I set out for Bahia de Caráquez on our own. This is to be our first long bluewater voyage without extra crew. It takes five days and is not totally without some “challenges”. Once away from the very strong contrary currents close to the islands, we set all canvas and have a wonderful sail close-hauled in light southerly winds with relatively long swells for days on end. Our Cap Horn windvane steering does the work. We “stand” watch whilst sitting in the cabin or the cockpit, reading and writing and checking the horizon at ten-minute intervals for that special freighter or tanker that has our number on it. More than storms or pirates the risk of being run down represents the real danger of cruising in a small sailboat.

One night we hear a “clack” on the deck but do not see anything in the dark. At dawn we discover that a lower shroud has parted and fallen to the deck. Upon examination of the whole rig, we also find that the windvane-steering’s tab has somehow quietly gone AWOL over the past few days, and, to add to the interest, the bobstay has also parted and is hanging vertically into the water from the end of the bowsprit (I had noted that the chain was getting corroded near the waterline and had planned to replace them as part of our maintenance programme in Ecuador). I think it is a tribute to the strength of the boat and perhaps to the fact that we had balanced the helm so well in order to use the windvane steering that nothing serious happened. We might very well have sailed all the way to the mainland like this if the shroud had not come down. And, in fact, the mast and its supports are still very, very strong, we now realise. Everything could probably have survived even the absence of one lower shroud in these light winds. “Real sailors” would have jury rigged and kept sailing. But we are uncertain and cautious and therefore decide to motorsail the remaining couple of days.

Arriving off the mouth of the Rio Chone, we are met by a pilot and guided in over the dangerous sandbar at high tide to find anchorage in a five-knot current at “Puerto Amistad”, a “virtual marina” where eventually some forty boats arrive to “summer”. Most of them are American but there were also some other Canadians and Europeans. Some are real veterans and have actually come round the Horn. Like The Galapagos, these are more cosmopolitan “world cruisers” than the yachties we met north of, say, Acapulco.

Since it costs US$ 30 for the pilot each time, Vilisar does not do much day-sailing from Bahia de Caráquez. But we do at one point put her up on a makeshift-tidal grid in the estuary to paint her bottom and topsides. And then we make use of the local carpentero to manufacture new 8-foot dinghy oars, and to make new wooden spreaders and a tab for the windvane steering out of tropical hardwoods. The local metalworking shop is called upon to fabricate new spreader plates (they are sent all the way to Guayaquil to be galvanised), and the bosun at the local Club de Yate is hired to dress all the galvanised stays and shrouds as well as to paint our “Chameleon” dinghy and add fenders.

Vilisar is now approaching her mid-thirties and although the basic boat is still very sound, some of the “systems” are getting on in years. I sympathise. Constant sailing to windward is a stress test of a sailboat’s systems. We accept the small rigging failures as a warning to start replacing things. When we come to undertake our next long voyage we shall have strengthened our rig by replacing the spreaders, the spreader plates as well as the metal corona atop the mast. Some bronze fittings will also be replaced and all the galvanised shackles in the rig. The bobstay and boomkin shrouds are new as well. The windvane steering will have been set up anew and we shall have some spares. Finally, we intend to procure a new suit of cruising sails before setting out for our long Pacific crossing.

All of this means that we shall not be heading for French Polynesia and New Zealand in Spring 2007: we shall wait one more year to have everything shipshape and Bristol fashion. Of course we can use the time to carry on with our internet-based work activities so we can actually pay for these things. Kathleen is putting aside money each month to pay for the tanbark sails she visualises Vilisar to be wearing when we pull into Fiji, Samoa, Tonga or Whangerei.

In addition to our efforts to keep Vilisar shipshape, we are both actively engaged in work that we get via the internet. I am hardly a techno-fan, but thank goodness for laptops and the worldwide web! It not only allows us to keep in touch with family and friends, it also permits us to keep earning while we travel (I won’t even mention that virtual work allows us to skip the grind of mortgages, commuting, and the frustration of high-maintenance lifestyles back home).

Kathleen has developed a regular income from proofreading for verbatim-court reporters in the U.S.A. while I still get the occasional German business or legal texts to translate into English. Since I now get a small retirement pension from Germany what we earn by working goes to paying off the boat, buying new sails and equipment and topping up the cruising kitty. We are not overwhelmed by work and have the freedom to turn it down if we are otherwise engaged. Certainly we do not allow work to spoil our lives. We can actually now enjoy the change of pace of some paid work if the pressure does not get excessive. “Work”, as some cruisers say, “is a four-letter word.” And anyway, I’ve paid my dues and I am more than happy for somebody else to run the world. Certainly, the working world does not miss me: if you take your finger out of a glass of water, after all, it doesn’t leave a hole.

During 2006 I was asked to submit articles for a small progressive monthly in Canada and have so far had three articles published. These have focussed mainly on topics like Ecuador’s recent presidential elections and an analysis of why the country has lost 20 percent of its population in recent years. Another article dealt with free trade and trade liberalisation and the next article will focus on longer-term trends in Latin America. Venezuela is a good vantage point for this. You can read the articles at www.independentvoice.ca or at www.vilisar.com.

As much as we loved Mexico we realised that we had not really “met” the country at all and our Spanish had hardly improved. This comes from the yachties’ nomadic lifestyle: simply dropping into coastal towns from time to time is interesting but you are still only a tourist. As we headed for Ecuador we decided to do things differently. To this end Kathleen contacted Cesar Santos again, the head of the Association of Ecuadorian Choirs, to see if he was still in need of a workshop leader for choral conductors. As a result we spent quite a few weeks of our six months in Ecuador in the Central Sierras. Kathleen led workshops for both experienced and starting conductors as well as working up choirs and motivating potential childrens and adult-choir conductors and organisers.

The best part of all this for us was meeting musicians and enthusiastic music-makers in cities like Quito, Riobamba (central Sierras) and Cotacachi (near Otavalo in the northern Sierras). In addition to the people we met, our meetings with Ecuadorians made us realise what a rich musical tradition that country has and how many really good musicians there are there. The workshops gave us contacts to both professional musicians and normal music-oriented Ecuadorians. None of this took place in a touristy setting. At times we were of course terribly frustrated that our Spanish was so “modesto”. But the people were wonderful. And how much we learned about them, their country and their music by spending a week or two with a group, or living in someone’s house with them!

In addition to the workshops, we also travelled with Antonia (then 16) and William (14) to various places of interest in Ecuador. We even witnessed the eruption of the Tungurahua Volcano near Riobamba and cheered for Ecuador’s team televised games at the World Soccer Championships in Germany last summer: David amongst the Goliaths. “Si, se puede!” and “Ecu, Ecuador!” we shouted along with everybody else before and during the games and then again, after a victory, when the streets filled with cheering and dancing fans.

William and Antonia never actually made it down to Vilisar this summer at all. Bahia de Caráquez is nine hours by bus from Quito, and we had just too many other interesting things to do in the sierras. Normally we stopped at backpacker hostals and kept our costs down by making our own breakfasts. William’s stay with us was a little shorter since he returned to Mississippi to attend drum and band camps. He is a high-school freshman now. He talks bass but plays drums and is really into his high-school music programme in Picayune, Mississippi. He has a real social life now too as he travels with the band to “away games” and even to Disneyland in Florida. He seems to do very well in his studies too. In January of 2007 they moved house into the town centre so his social life ought to improve even more.

Antonia, always a top student, stayed on for a few weeks more with us, took individual Spanish lessons at a school in Quito and attended the choir workshops too. This latter has paid off since she now has a role in her senior-year musical. She is an honour-society student, works on the school newspaper, is active in student government and has generally become very politically aware. Her international upbringing and strong sense of justice makes her want to do something to help people. Meanwhile, before starting to college later in 2007, she is planning a trip back to Europe to visit in Germany and Spain.

I guess we are not the only ones to be proud of our children though of course ours are pretty outstanding.

As our six-month Ecuadorian tourist visas were about to expire, we began to look for alternatives. As we had had such an interesting experience living and working on a remote cattle ranch in the Mexican sierras in the autumn of 2004, we decided to look for something interesting on the internet again. There were lots of opportunities in the U.S.A. But, I have decided to express my total opposition to the illegal and cynical militaristic adventures in the Middle East by not setting foot in the U.S.A. or the U.K. until those countries have cleared out of Iraq. Of course, this resolve is a bit difficult given my family ties to the U.S.A. and my friends in England. But at least there has to be a serious emergency for me to break my rule. Thank goodness my Mother, Velma, is doing so well. She is over 91 now and still bright as a new penny. Wheelchair bound and her eyesight now nearly totally gone, she tells us that, “Getting old is not for wimps”. Her own children are now beginning to understand what she means. She lives in a seniors residence in Richardson, Texas, After breaking up with her husband, Mike, my sister Lois lives in her own place nearby.

To fill in the six months until we can return to Ecuador, we were very fortunate to find a house-sitting occasion on Isla de Margarita, which is situated off the Venezuela coast. The island is perhaps not totally typical for the country: we don’t really know since we are tied to the house as caretakers for the moment. But the house is in a small fishing town quite a bit away from the tourist beaches. We are only a few yards from a local beach and fishermen actually land their catch there in the mornings. We have settled into village life and are trying to improve our Spanish. We have made acquaintances and I have even been helping to run a small posada or inn serving Europeans.

Unfortunately for me, Kathleen has gone to Germany to gig in a musical again. She will be gone for two months. Meanwhile, my younger brother Kenneth and his wife Maryanne and my cousin John and his wife Margie have come down from Ontario to keep me company for a while. That’s one of the nice things about being “retired’: you have a bit more time and you can pick up on the friends and relatives you have seen only sporadically since your childhood. I think we shall have more visitors here before we leave in May.

Except for the occasional creak in the bones when I stand up suddenly and the necessity for extensions to one’s arms in order to read without glasses, we are both in good health. We have enough work – boat maintenance and projects and internet jobs - to keep us from going brain dead. As usual we don’t have much money but, since you don’t really need much for our lifestyle, we are content.

We hope this Christmas Letter finds all our friends and family also in good health. And we send our fondest wishes for health and contentment in 2007.

Kathleen and Ronald Bird