BEACHED
Bahía de Caraquéz, Ecuador, Sunday, 14 December 2008

It’s Sunday afternoon. Since four o’clock this morning, Vilisar has been anchored back in roughly the same spot she left at 0315 on Friday morning last. The early hours were chosen because this past weekend had the highest tides of the year.

We were about to undertake something completely new for us: in all cold blood we were going to motor over to a nearby beach and go forward slowly on the engine until the keel touches. UNTIL THE KEEL TOUCHES? Not something boaters normally care to do except under very controlled circumstances. The plan today is to drop a 20-pound Danforth anchor into the river mud at a slightly up-current angle to prevent the swells from surging us farther up the beach than we might like, and then to tie the bow off to the hand railing along the Malecón sidewalk, which should keep the boat from backing out into the river again.

Our Chilean friend Julio (S/V Pancho) shows up in the dark in his inflatable just after 0300 and accompanies us over towards the beach. Instead of dropping the anchor ourselves and therefore having one more activity to carry out just when things are most critical – not to mention that we might drop the anchor too soon and find that we have run out of anchor rode at the wrong moment - Julio first runs the kedge Danforth out to stern after we have truly arrived at and touched the sloping, shallow-water sand. About 25 -30 metres ahead of Vilisar’s bow the high-tide waves are surging and splashing up along the sea wall. Julio also takes our light bow line towards shore, threads it through the spliced eye of the heavier rope that I have tied in advance to the Malecón railing there and motors it back to Vilisar. I secure it to a mast winch and take up most of the slack. Although she is jerking round in the swirling waters like a racehorse pulling at her halter, Vilisar is now parked.


The beach is not totally protected and there is a lot of high-tide surge. When the yacht’s bottom is constantly bumping, sometimes quite hard, on the bottom, all my instincts are in revolt. What on earth are we doing here? I try to calm myself. The tide doesn’t fall very fast at the beginning, so this phase could last for a while. And, after all, we’ve been on tidal grids plenty of times. Since Vilisar can actually stand on her own keel if the standing is solid and level, the only unruly thought that keeps plaguing me is whether the vessel might actually decide not to lean over, i.e., decide to remain vertical until the water drops and the retreating water washes the sand out from under her and then, then decide to fall over. Otherwise, I feel quite confident that the beaching part of the operation can be done.

With the engine shut down, it doesn’t seem quiet at all. There is still lots of noise from the swells slapping against the sea wall and the bumping as we bounce on the sandy bottom. I start arranging the filled water jugs along the starboard side deck and even move the heavy old satchel life-raft to that side as well. These items add another 200 pounds. Julio ties his inflatable to Vilisar while he and I sit on the cabin to lend our weight as well. Kathy crawls back into the starboard berth below us to catch a few more winks. The whole point is to give the maestros carpenteros de navale (shipwrights) a chance to inspect Vilisar’s wormshoe after daylight and to decide whether they actually handle the work and to quote us a price.

Maestro Lister Rodriquez, the man with whom three weeks ago we had arranged the inspection trip, is a short barrel of a man with merry albeit somewhat red eyes. Like the other men working around the beach shipyard in Manta (see blog “Building boats on beaches from November 2008), he looks like he might be indigena. He comes strongly recommended by another maestro at the beach-shipyard in Manta; of course, we don’t know anything about that guy either.


Wacho has been convinced that the whole idea of hiring a shipwright from Manta to repair Vilisar’s wormshoe on a beach in Bahía qualifies one a priori for the loony bin. Just the idea of laying a perfectly seaworthy sailboat over onto its side bothers him a lot, I have noticed. “What if the engine falls off its mounts? What if all the fuel leaks out? What if the battery acid leaks?” He leaves little doubt that he is sure nothing good can come of it. I persist. To his credit, once the decision has been made, he never carps or goes back over the decision and certainly never hands out any told-you-so’s. But I know he is nervous.

Maestro Lister agreed back then to come over to Bahía de Caráquez for a look-see whenever we thought we could get Vilisar up on a beach. This mid-December weekend promises excellent tides for our purposes. I just hope he can do the work this same weekend, since our visas run out on Wednesday. We can’t have him wait until January.

Our job is just to be sure that Vilisar lies down now and that she does not attempt something cheeky like trying to stand upright on the flat part of its keel. I have never careened a yacht; in fact, none of the cruisers amongst the 40 or so boats here had ever careened a boat either, although some answered my enquiry by saying, “Not voluntarily.” So, we are on our own. My unease for the past few days is perhaps not as bad as our first time on a tidal grid back in 2002 in Wrangell, Alaska, with its 23-foot tidal differences and a lot of horror stories whispered in advance into our ears about what happens when a boat tips over at the wrong moment. This is sure to be easier and we have a lot more experience now. Just the normal sort of tension.

So, here we are at last. With the combined weight of water jugs, the life-raft and three persons, the boat slowly begins to lean heavily to starboard after about two hours. Then the angle increases faster and faster until it becomes almost impossible to climb back up the bridge and let oneself down into the cabin. You can only do it by stepping on top of the galley stove. Julio and I take to our dinghies and drift around the boat in the dark on the little swells until it’s daylight, shortly before 0600. A strip of dry beach appears and grows larger. The air is warm, but there is unusually-heavy moisture in the air with a cloying tropical feel about it. So, feeling damp and short of sleep, it feels chilly on bare arms and legs. I wish I had thought to bring a jacket with me off the boat.

Around 0630, Maestro Lister shows up along with Wacho and another even more indigenous-looking man, who was introduced the evening before as Maestro Angel. The two carpenteros walk with their hands in their pockets, rolling gently from side to side like sailors themselves. The two arrived by bus last night from Manta. We met for dinner at a street café and got rooms for them at Hotel Bahía across from Puerto Amistad. The two guys are handling the project. Vilisar is leaning but not yet sufficiently for them to inspect the wormshoe, so Wacho takes them off to the mercado to get them a hearty breakfast.

An hour later they are back. They get right to work, poking and pulling at the keel-shoe, talking softly the while back and forth. The ball-peen hammer comes out and so does the measuring tape. Both Julio and Wacho seem rather too sceptical to me. They don’t seem that convinced by the two. Maybe it’s because possibly they are indigenas or partly because their clothes look rather old and beat-up. I know Wacho isn’t a true believer anyway, and Julio is a retired chief inspector detective so he’s sceptical by training. They don’t intrude, however, and I try to ignore them for the moment.

After an hour Lister and Angel, the two carpenters, tell us without any salesmanship or apparent bravado that they can definitely handle the work and can start that night if we can arrange lighting. We discuss methods and materials. There will be a problem of course about getting a single plank wide enough to fabricate a wormshoe in one piece, they say, but they will try (standard planks are 8 inches wide and they need about 14 inches at the widest). They explain how they are going to do the work, but their accents, speed of speaking and my nervousness means I don’t really understand everything. But, they know we want the project completed as quickly as possible: not only will the tides start to get less attractive, but we are also supposed to leave the country by Wednesday or Thursday.

About mid-morning, the maestros carpenteros pile into Wacho’s truck, Babushka, and head off to Manta to buy the materials. Kathy has earlier climbed awkwardly out of the cabin. Now she walks up the beach to the Malecón to work online on shore. Julio has gone back to bed. I stay with the boat so no unwelcome visitor decides to walk off with things, although I am feeling the lack of sleep. From the beach, Vilisar looks very strange indeed laid over so far. The water never actually reached above the caprail, but it was nerve-wracking all the same.

Left alone, I fret about the fact that there is water inside the boat. Where can that have come from? Has sea water leaked into the boat from somewhere and, if so, from where? This is important because we heel over enough to get water up over the caprail at times and I should hate to have to pump constantly. Kathleen woke up from her early-morning nap this morning thinking she was perspiring badly only to discover that her bed was lying in a big puddle that had gathered in the lowest part of the boat. Where the hell could that have come from?

I work my way uphill to the companionway hatch and then down into the cabin. I dip my finger in the water and taste it. It is pretty much fresh water, I think, so it is probably our drinking water. Unfortunately there is also a small amount of bilge oil and diesel as well. But how did the fresh water leak out of the tank or tanks, I wonder? The sponge mattress is sopping and Kathleen’s clothes stored behind the seat are nearly floating. I wonder if the papers in the drawers have all slid back and down are perhaps now soaking as well. Can’t pull the drawers vertically upwards to take a peek. The British Admiralty pilot books that were being stored under the mattress are soggy and heavy with water too. I wonder if they can ever be dried out. I leave everything for now and work my way back out to the beach, increasingly wishing I could find a quiet place for a siesta.

Pulling off your shoes

By 1500 on Friday the tide is back up and Vilisar is bouncing around again. The carpenteros and Wacho get back from Manta with their supplies shortly before dark. Lister and Angel have said that they will start working that very evening at about 1900 if we can provide lights. They would expect to be finished by Saturday night. Wacho is organising a power generator for electricity.


Lister and Angel have arrived with two extra helpers who weren’t with them this morning, Nixon and Eduardo. Their first job is to dig a trench to free up the keel and expose the wormshoe. In half an hour Nixon and Eduardo have dug down a couple of feet and are throwing bucketsful of water out towards the empty beach, which in the meantime has become much, much wider.

Soon the carpenters, standing in the watery trench, are prying at the old, worm-eaten zapata (i.e., shoe) and breaking it off in soggy pieces. This is perhaps the first time in nearly forty years that the wormshoe has been removed. I suppose it was put on when George Friend first laid the fir keel in that barn in Victoria around 1970. The shoe is fastened to both the wooden keel and the 7,500-pound, bolted-on weight. Square, three-inch copper or bronze boat nails were used; I rescue some for posterity’s sake. Hell, at the price of copper these days, I might be able to finance a new boat! There were also a few additional stainless-steel screws in the boards that were probably added at a later point when the wormshoe was getting loose.

The next step is to finish fashioning the actual worm-shoe. Wacho spent over three hundred dollars on materials in Manta. Right up there at the top of the list was the actual piece of wood. I have not been able to find the English for it; in Spanish they call it cuero zapo, whereby cuero translates as leather and zapo as chatty. Chatty leather? I must be missing something.
The new shoe-plank was sliced using a chain-saw off an 18-metre-long, squared-off log that is lying along with others at a timber-dealer’s sandlot at the beach in Manta. The new plank was then run through a planer, resulting in a board about 1.5 inches thick, maybe a little more. I wasn’t there at the time but Wacho said the cutting machines were giving off smoke because the wood is so hard. The plank was then shaped to fit the keel using a Stihl chain saw.

The dealer tells me on Monday when I go to look for myself (sorry, the camera battery was dead at the time, so no pictures) that an 18-metre cuero zapo log costs $2,500 or more. The logs, which come from farther north near Esmeraldas near the Colombian border, is a pale yellow and very straight-grained. The logs have lain in water for decades, which has hardened them. All keels on the wooden fishing trawlers being built in Manta start with cuero zapo. No worm can get through it and if you bump bottom, you don’t have to worry about it either.

Maestro Angel takes more measurements and then sets some dozen and a half drill holes in the plank laid out on the beach and counter-sinks them. The chain saw, a hand-held electric grinder and two handheld electric drills are the only concessions to modernity. The rest is all about hand tools. He shows me the 4- or 5-inch, stainless steel, hex-head screws they are going to use.

Wacho has borrowed an old generator, but cannot get it to work. Finally, he connects the household-type extension cords to the electrical wires at the base of the town’s lamp standard.

The bottom of the keel and all sides of the piece of lumber are soaked with some clear chemical which, Maestro Lister tells me while rolling his eyes, gusanos (shipworms) definitely do not like this stuff at all at all. I decide not to push him for details. Then the side of the lumber to the keel is liberally smeared with roofing tar (cemento asfalto) and, finally, with a grey epoxy-putty. The helpers carry the heavy board over to the two maestros, who are now sitting half in the water waiting to place it. Lister scolds his helper Eduardo for letting the water build up in the hole. Eduardo grabs a bucket and starts to bail again. All the work goes forward quietly with no hectic and no shouting at all. Like most of the indigenous people we have met here in Ecuador, they talk quietly and carefully with each other. Maestro Lister has a rough vocabulary, though, and my language skills, though unsuited to a parlour, have been expanded to a new dimension.

To press the board right up tight against the keel, small jacks are used. Pieces of wood have to be set in place at the right angle to get purchase. Once in place, Angel starts setting the stainless screws. Everybody has to work bent over to get at the keel. It takes a while, but finally the last screw is set and the board fits tightly to Vilisar’s slightly curving keel line.

While the setting of the screws is still going on, Maestro Lister takes up a small sledge hammer and a stainless steel caulking iron. Eduardo starts peeling off lengths of spun cotton that are purchase stuck to a long piece of white tape and Lister starts to work re-caulking a few planks. He has marked them as the boat was drying; any plank seam that did not dry at the same pace as the rest of the hull got attention. He also caulks around the lead keel, seams that have always worried me because shipworms could enter there. As he drives in the amazing amount of cotton, water runs out of the plank below. So he caulks that one too and then works his way up the stern.

When the new wormshoe has finally been attached, Lister starts caulking it too. As soon as he finishes each section, Nixon, who has been mixing the whole time, starts filling up the seams with masillo, i.e., two-part epoxy putty. By the time everything has been caulked and filled, the putty has hardened enough that the carpentero goes over everything with a grinder to smooth it off and one of the helpers starts applying anti-fouling paint wherever needed.

All of this has taken two tides plus the first low tide for the inspection on Friday morning. At the end of each tide, the men head off for the hotel and I usually see them sitting at some hole-in-the-wall place along the waterfront drinking beer. Maestro Lister especially likes his cervacitas. Kathleen and I have been sleeping at Hostal Coco Bongo; in my case, I catch a few hours on the sofa in the eating area. Unlike the carpenteros, we are not good at heavy physical work and broken sleep patterns and I feel pretty washed out.

We should come off the beach for the last time at about 0300 or 0400 on Sunday morning. This goes without a hitch. We simply winch our way backwards to the kedge anchor, which has meanwhile well and truly buried itself in the muck about 150 yards out, and then break it out with the mainsail winch in the cockpit.

Wacho has promised to drive the men back to Manta at 0800. They are all ready to go but Wacho sleeps through his alarm clock. He stayed at the beach, sometimes, with Julio, to make sure we don’t have trouble with malandos who wander around the town at night and might be interested to steal things. He must have been exhausted. When he finally arrives (after a cellphone call), we all go off to the Mercado to get an early-morning breakfast.

Then we talk takeles, as the Germans call it. There is not much negotiating to do because Maestro Lister quotes us $500 (which includes some supplies), price that seems very civilised indeed. Totally relieved, we hesitate and look pained. But we agree. As he climbs up into the back of the truck with the others, Lister tells them he got what they were asking for. Smiles all round. We shake hands, the men wish us a happy voyage and Lister tells us to bring Vilisar back in a year or so and he will strip all the paint off the hull and make it perfect for us. “Lindo barco”, he says.