SETTLING IN AGAIN
Bahía de Caraquéz, Ecuador, viernes, 26 de septiembre de 2008

As I write we have just finished a hot lunch aboard Vilisar and are listening to chamber music on our new $20 radio/cd player. What bliss!

As I look around the cabin I realise that we have actually made some progress. The decks, the main cabin and the forepeak have been cleaned, the bare wood oiled, the 6 pieces and 300 lbs of luggage have been rowed out to the boat, unpacked and largely stowed away. Kathleen has even managed to get into the dinghy to scrub the grey crud off the topside planking. Our now rather large inventory of sails has been sorted and decisions made about getting rid of the tired, old, patched ones that have been superseded by our fetching new suit of tanbark sails. At present we have eleven sails if you include the storm sails. We want to cut that number in half.

It is really nice to be able to hear good music again; in a rare fit of deck-scrubbing activity back in Panamá last year, I accidentally splashed saltwater over the old boom box. (This eventuality, by the way, is not even mentioned in the operating instructions, but, if you are contemplating it, don’t. In fact, my advice is not even to scrub the decks for quite a while in case you damage your boom-box.) While in the States, we also acquired an MP3 player; as soon as we can figure how it works we can copy our CDs before they deteriorate completely in the salt air environment. Getting rid of the CDs will also open up a bit of shelf and drawer space, always a consideration on a boat.

We have each even managed to forget that it is dangerous to be outside without a hat or a shirt, and have each become sunburned at least once. During the dry season here the skies are grey with a high marine haze. But you can still quickly get a burn here just fifty miles south of the equator.

We have been re-acquainting ourselves with old cruising friends and meeting new ones from the U.S.A., Canada and Europe. While we are still a long way up the river from Puerto Amistad, I have gotten used to the rowing and learned again to take advantage of tides and currents. An anchoring spot much closer may open up this weekend.

Since our bank accounts are empty, we shall have to wait to get started on replacing our onboard fuel tanks and boat batteries. But, we are living just fine. Wacho got our batteries charged up enough to start the engine so we can use the engine alternator on a daily basis. The solar panels don’t add much by way of input given these grey skies. Wacho also replaced the corroded ground wire, which had been giving us trouble. Otherwise, he says, the engine sounds great; rather like a Harley Davidson with its straight-pipe inboard exhaust system. The dinghy’s bottom-fibreglass and paint were rejuvenated while we were away, so that is one less job. About mid-October the tides will be right for us to go up on the makeshift grid at the Club de Yate to paint the bottom with red anti-fouling paint and to repaint the white topsides. The tropical sun has not done the white paint on the decks and coach roof any good; as usual the paint looks chalky and dry; I will touch up the cracks along the plank joins for the time being; one of the advantages of using white paint is that touch-ups are easier. One of the disadvantages of cedar decks is that the planking swells and shrinks with the elements. At some point I shall need to apply a couple of coats of Cetol to the mast and to paint the spreaders white. That will be a good opportunity to replace the masthead tri-light. In other words, the usual array of boat-maintenance jobs.

We are still not sure how to proceed with the fuel-tank issue. Several people have recommended using a phosphoric acid solution to clean out them out. There are no inspection ports to allow us to get inside to look, clean and perhaps coat them with something (West System?) to prevent rusting in the future. The alternative is to have new steel ones fabricated in Manta. We already have one tip where not to have them made: S/V “Nine of Cups”, another cruising boat, had two or three new tanks made at Galvinazado del Pacifico; apparently they were never pressure-tested and there were over thirty large leaks (i.e., big enough to cause a whistle under pressure) and small leaks (i.e., evidenced by soapy bubbles) when they were delivered. David, the skipper, repaired the holes with JB and then put two coats of West system on the insides (he recommended looking at West System’s website for how-to information). “Wacho” Moreiera says he has an excellent welder here locally. We will also be getting local prices by doing that instead of a “gringo price”. Alles mit der Ruhe!

We talked briefly yesterday to Dominique and May, a French cruising couple with two small boys. Their departure has been delayed because the engine part that had been shipped to them from Metropolitan France has been stalled in Customs in Quayaquil for over two weeks. In desperation, Dominique took the bus to Guayaquil and picked it up himself. No problems at all. But why had they delayed it so long? So now they are leaving Saturday for Isles des Marquises in French Polynesia. They are emulating our initial cruising plan of waiting out the cyclone season there, so we were a little saddened that we shall be left behind. Of course, being French, they have no visa problems: they can stay a year without a problem. But they too were of the opinion that anybody could sail there in the off-season and not have any real hassle. Anyway, we shall now stay here to get the fuel tanks taken care of.

First Presidential Debate

Tonight is the first of the Presidential ‘debates’ in the U.S.A. We are hoping that Puerto Amistad will be able to receive it by cable TV. It takes place at “Ole Miss” University in Oxford, Mississippi, where our daughter, Antonia, is a sophomore in International Relations & Political Science. She will be working with the debate’s organisators. Maybe we shall get a peek of her.

There was momentary gefluffel this week as to whether Senator John McCain would even take part. He argued that the debate should be postponed until the financial-meltdown crisis has been resolved. Since he admits he doesn’t know much about these matters, sceptics might think he simply wanted to avoid discussing economics and finance. A solution has been hatched in DC, so the debate goes on with both candidates.

McCain’s credentials as a can-do, pragmatic senator are a little in doubt at best. Although Democrats (Clinton et alia) must share a lot of the blame from the 90s; it was after all Obama’s economic advisor and likely senior Obama executive if he wins, Robert Rubin, who led one of the biggest de-regulation binges in 1999. But de-regulation and less government have been Republican planks for decades. Reagan and The Bushes assiduously preached de-regulation in all areas of economic life from stock markets to mortgage lending, from labour safety to meat/food inspections. Another banking and stock-exchange crisis (these are not at all unfamiliar) has landed the country in a mess. But it has surely just been a race to see which one of these ‘unfettered markets’ would be the first to poison the body politic. There has always been an implied government guarantee for Fannie Mae and Fanny Mac, for example, even after they were ‘privatised’, and that there has always been implied bail-outs for crony capitalists, if not by the Treasury than by the Federal Reserve, if not by the Administration than by the Congress, if not by the Feds than by the States. In this as in so many other fields, The Bush II administration, with which John McCain has been closely associated, has been about as hypocritical as they come. McCain was always part of the “too much government” gang. How can he or his party cohorts now convince voters that they are just the chaps to fix everything? Not even Caribou Barbie’s smart-arse speechifying can cover up this one.

Making the best of a bad situation however, these little people will now at least have the satisfaction of having sabotaged any future (Democratic?) government’s efforts to repair the country’s physical infra-structure (highways, bridges, etc.), improve the schools or introduce comprehensive healthcare: the land is seriously mortgaged now for decades. Was it not Bush II who, when he could get no general political support for dismantling hated elder-healthcare systems altogether, then planted a time-bomb in the form of a “comprehensive drug plan for the elderly” that allows the Republican’s pharma-clientele to charge whatever they want for drugs? Medicare and Medicaid will collapse of their own weight in about ten years, i.e., long after (it is devoutly to be hoped) Republicans have been returned skulking to their political tents, there to consider End Times, no doubt, and formulate stab-in-the-back theories aimed at a Democratic president. The $700 billion rescue package for the banks will have to be based upon borrowed money since the cupboard has been bare for years now. The rescue package is therefore just another time bomb and a financial measure of all the programmes that will have to be foregone.

The neo-conservatives’ policies seem always to have been formulated in a Texas roadhouse by the nuke ém and hang ém school of political thought. None of the policies have ever been reality based and, whether economics or foreign policy, they don’t work in practice. Because they are so simplistic, however, they are perfect for Caribboo Barbie’s speeches and Rush Limbaugh’s radio rants.