“Amidships” – condition of being surrounded by boats.
Hello Everyone,
We just spent a week holed up in Puerto Don Juan with 17 other boats while Hurricane Norbert raged to the south of us. We hear 95% of the homes in Magdalena Bay were destroyed. Randy says you don’t have to be crazy to be a cruiser, but it sure helps. Of course, news from the United States is pretty crazy too. It was interesting that we were far enough north of Norbert to escape his fury, yet close enough to the United States to get blasted by strong Santa Ana winds. Our first day in Puerto Don Juan was calm and beautiful. Cruisers dinghied around the quarter-mile-wide protected bay, fishing and swapping DVDs and books. Our dinghy was folded up on deck, so we swam to our nearest neighbor to chat and catch up on the local news. After a gorgeous pink sunset, we sat in the cockpit and watched everyone’s anchor lights twinkle on beneath a starry sky. The next morning Randy used his hookah gear to dive down 30 feet to our anchor and walk it to a better location. He said our big 45 pound storm anchor, attached to 200 feet of chain, was too heavy to haul up and reset in the usual way. Actually, he makes up any excuse to play with his new hookah setup! We finished just as the northerly winds came up with a vengeance. For the next four days, all dinghy traffic ceased. It was too rough to go out, so most people secured their dinghies on deck and battened down the hatches. We could see big waves breaking on the reefs forming the narrow mouth of the bay and “buffalos” romping down the Sea of Cortez beyond.
So what do people do while confined to the space of a small kitchen for four days, besides going outside to check the anchor every few hours? Sleep. Read. Watch movies. I painted, sewed and played Sudoku. Randy played video games and fiddled with his HF radio, using tiny plastic “fairy wands” to tune in the lower single sideband frequencies. Thanks to the various ham bands, we got an amateur weather report two or three times a day. Randy even reached his friend Bob Whitters in Frazier Park one night. Which brings up another favorite cruiser pastime – eavesdropping on the local VHF chit-chat. In Puerto Don Juan, people hail each other by boat name on channel 68, then transfer to another channel to talk. Of course, there’s nothing to keep half the fleet from following along too. It’s like having a giant party line. We all heard about Jake’s troubles installing his new raw water pump. Several men offered suggestions and good natured ribbing. I learned all about growing sprouts aboard by listening in on another conversation.
For Joan aboard Panchita, these diversions were not enough to allay her cabin fever. She invented a cruiser-friendly version of Jeopardy and got us all to play along via marine radio. I can’t remember all the categories now. One was “Hamming it up” and another “Como se dice?” Shannon aboard Sweetie aced the game because she spoke Spanish so well. Joan also inspired the crew of HipNautical to modify Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” song and broadcast it over the radio, complete with guitar accompaniment. All the lyrics were clever, the only line I remember concerned the cruiser’s perennial problem of an overflowing holding tank: “How many times can a man flush his head, before he pees in the sea? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind.”
As soon as the winds subsided, boats shot out of Don Juan in every direction of the compass. Randy and I set sail to explore the Midriff Islands. Where shall we go next? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
With love,
The Vagabundos