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Oh, The Humanity!

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I just logged into this site for the first time in weeks and suddenly the website insisted I prove my humanity. I mean, Okay.  Make me do math to prove I have a brain and not a bunch of circuits. It’s not that there’s any harm in doing a simple arithmetic problem, it’s the whole ‘prove you are a human’ thing that gets me. I guess that’s what I get for not logging in for weeks. But hey, I’ve been mildly busy lately. We humans. We’re known for ‘doing things’ and for not reporting them on the internet.

Back in Mexico. For the uninitiated, this is what the streets look like outside of town. That gate hides our car.

But we’re back in Mexico as of today. After a stint in Mike’s home town in Tennessee, then a visit to my family up in Washington, we finally decided we were simply putting off the inevitable and bought a ticket home. And by ‘home’ I mean back to Galapagos and the sweltering heat of Mexico. Do I look forward to being back aboard? Sure I do. We have missed having our own place where we can spread out and have our privacy. And we have missed the water.

Do I look forward to being hot and sweaty again? Not so much. So I’m enjoying our last few days of air conditioning sitting here in our cheap AirBnb in the barrio outside of Puerto Peñasco. Drive a little, save a lot and get a really sweet little place for about half what a room down on the malecon would be. I tell you land living makes you soft.

Behind the gate: this!

And then open the door to this! Two bedrooms, one with a nice king sized bed. Be still my heart! I wish we could stay longer. Alas, this place is booked. 37$/night. WHATT?

Is our boat here? It is not. Galapagos sits sweetly in her slip down in San Carlos at Marina Real, awaiting the day we arrive with our van full of supplies, load her up, and sail her into the sea again. But first, we wanted to be on the ground in Puerto Peñasco to check out the boatyard here and the marinas. I mean, we’ve paid for moorage through the end of August. What else do we need to do with our time?  Nothing being straight forward in the world of cruising, we are getting the lay of the land so we can return with the car after we unload in San Carlos. We hope to leave the car somewhere safe here and bring the boat up,  and find a place to park it for a few days. Why? Kids coming to visit! Hurrah!

The next adventure on our agenda is having our Andrew and his wife, Jill, aboard Galapagos for a three week tour of the northern Sea of Cortez. They arrive in September and we have been waiting PATIENTLY. FOR. OUR. TURN. to see them. We are the last stop on their year long travel adventure, which has been such an epic trip!  Currently at a lovely Workaway in Spain, they have completely rocked this whole travel thing. If you know young people who want to travel and do Workaway stays, they should check out Andrew and Jill’s blog. Lots of great travel, Airbnb, and Workaway stories (the good and the ugly), excellent photos, and some advice from seasoned travelers.  I’m sure the Sea of Cortez, while not exactly Europe, will not disappoint.

We stayed in a casita at this property in Tucson. What a beautiful place. We loved it.

Wherever we go we take notes about what we love in the places we stay. We love this architecture, the use of line, the curved walls and spaces. And the pool. I loved this pool so much. Damn, I already miss that pool.

This season will be the deciding one in terms of what’s next for the Little Cunning Plan crew. We are hoping to do a Pacific Crossing next year, hoping Andrew and Jill will be able to crew with us for that, but there are issues playing in the background of our lives that may make us have to put that off for a year or so. And if we put it off, will we ever get to go? We are the generation that gets squeezed in the middle between our own aging process and that of our parents. Both oldest kids in our families, we are keenly aware of the vulnerabilities of our surviving parents as well as our own mortality that has crept upon us with the greatest of stealth. If we cannot do the crossing, will we continue to travel by boat? Will we be finished and ready to sell beloved Galapagos? How does anyone ever know how to make that kind of decision? We feel stuck right now, unable to move forward until things out of our control get resolved. That won’t be until at least October. So for now, we are focusing on the here, the now, the enjoyment of getting back to the boat and getting back on the water for as long as it lasts.

This is just to say we have a lot of balls up in the air right now, many of which will not appear on this blog or on our Facebook page. Like all people, our lives are very human, very complex, very much in-motion at all times. Blogs make things look so straightforward, even when they are not.  I wonder if  all this will cause me to have to do another math problem to prove my own humanity the next time I log into this site. Ah well. I can just about manage that.

I leave you with some photos from Tucson, a city worth visiting even in the heat of summer.

At the Tucson Botanical Garden on a day we played ‘tourist in the heat’.

In Marshall Gulch, on a hiking day. The mountains are a cool respite from the heat of the valley.

Is it a fly? A bee? We don’t know.

On the way to Marshall Gulch. Up where the air is cool. The next day was thunderstorms all day.

That to-die-for pool at the Airbnb. Did I mention I had a close encounter of the respectful kind with a beautiful wild Bobcat Lynx? Such a fantastic cat! I saw him up close and personal. I probably should have been afraid, but I was not.

A tile at the Tucson Botanical Garden. True words.

Until next time, S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 22a. Damn, it feels good to say that.

 

 

My Home Town

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Here’s a fun fact: it gets hot in Mexico during the summer.  We have planned on staying aboard Galapagos the last two summers but when push comes to shove, we head north.

So to escape the hot Mexican sun for a few weeks, Melissa and I put Galapagos into a slip at Marina Real in San Carlos, Sonora  and have jumped into the proverbial frying pan that is beautiful Martin Tennessee.

I grew up in Martin and almost all of my family still lives here or in nearby Dyer. It has been eight years since I last came in for a visit.  Unfortunately Mexico has nothing on Tennessee for hot summer weather.  As an added bonus, the humidity is generally higher than the temperature.  Melissa and I were excited to be in a small town where we could walk everywhere and get some exercise.  But unless you get up at five in the morning, it’s too blessed hot and muggy to do much outside.

Our Bed and Breakfast in Martin. Fran and Dale are great hosts.

We found a beautiful home on AirBnB to stay while we are in town. Our hosts, Fran, Dale and their dog Gigi are making us feel right to home. Since Fran is a local girl, she knows everybody and is a great resource for reconnecting with the community. Although I grew up in Martin, I haven’t lived here in over forty years. It is fun talking with Fran about people and families that we both know.

My mother’s house. Like a boat, there are always projects and repairs that must be tended to. We put in some time each day to take care of the place.

Our AirBnb is just a short walk to my mother’s house. Melissa and I spend a fair bit of time making repairs and small improvements to the house and garden. Of course we spend even more time visiting with family and eating. We are enjoying all the artery clogging delights that west Tennessee has to offer; fried catfish, hushpuppies, and great barbecue pork.  I managed to sneak in some vegetables one day when I visited the farmers market and brought back garden grown green beans, tomatoes and fresh corn.

Although there is a state university here, Martin is still a  farming community.  Agriculture dominates the economy and the fields were lush this time of year.  While corn seems to be the biggest crop these days,  soybeans and cotton are still seen in many fields. The agricultural corporations are changing the area, buying up the land and storage facilities.

Soybeans are a dominant crop in this part of Tennessee and by all accounts the Soybean festival is a big deal in Martin.

When we aren’t busy with Honey Do’s, visiting or eating barbecue, I like to drive around the area and check out my old haunts.

My grandparent’s old farm. I spent a lot of time here. All the fields I used to roam in have been covered with houses.

A street name is the only reminder of my grandparent’s farm.

Downtown Martin. This photo was taken on a Sunday. During the week there is a little more traffic.

The Martin Library. My favorite building in town.

This is the old downtown that runs along the railroad.

Martin’s scenic grain silos and feed mill. Still an important part of this farming community.

We are enjoying our time here despite the heat. As Melissa and I enter our third year of cruising we have learned to be flexible in our plans.  Visiting exotic locales like west Tennessee is part of what keeps our sailing adventures interesting.

The Bees Rule

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We were at anchor at Playa Bonanza on the back side of Isla Espiritu Santo having just come off a three night passage from Isla Isabella.  We were both ready for a rest.  Alas. Life can be unfair.

A sweet little Redside Blenny

I was below in the salon using the first cell service we’d had in a week; catching up on Facebook and the news, when, from on deck, Mike scared the pants just about off of me by bellowing out a loud, anguished “ARRGGHHUGG!”. I’m sure you are familiar with these kinds of screams. They are the kind that indicate the most foul mortal wounding. In the history of the Boyte-White family, there have been many occasions where I’ve been minding my own business, busy with a task,  only to be brutally interrupted by a loud, guttural cry from one or the other male members of the family. Honestly, I can think of 5 separate occasions without even trying. God only knows how many I’ve repressed so I don’t have to remember them. I accept this as my fate, a balancing of the scales of justice, my due for having put my own parents through this special kind of hell when I was growing up.

The men in my family have been, as they are referred to in medical circles, “frequent fliers”. These cries of terror are generally followed by a fast and expensive visit to the emergency room. When I am on the receiving end of a bellow of anguish, I am, to use a political word, triggered.

“MIKE!!” I screamed as I took the companionway ladder in one leap. “Oh my god what has he done? Has he cut himself? Is he currently missing a limb? Where is the nearest emergency facility? Is there anyone within radio distance?” These thoughts jockeyed for position as I levitated up the ladder. I met him coming around the front of the cockpit, pulling down his pants, all limbs and parts apparently in place and accounted for. No blood spattered anywhere. No arms held at a strange angle. Wait. What?

That’s right. He was pulling down his pants. My husband got a bee in his pants and it stung him on his hind end. That is all. Yes, the sting hurt. But it was the fact the insect was in his pants that did most of the damage. He bears no blame for his outcry. Mine would have been much worse had our positions been reversed. His look was a bit sheepish as I reached for the ice to put on his mortal injury. This was our third sting of the day, so I had it handy.

This was not the peaceful, restful anchorage we had longed for. No. It was not. This was the land of the bees, and it was a harbinger of the weeks to come, weeks we’d planned to enjoy going from anchorage to anchorage, snorkeling and making way north.

Abandoned hotel at Punta Chivato

The bees had shown up only a few hours after we set our anchor. They sent their scouts to report back to their friends: “YES! WE HAVE FOUND WATER, AMIGOS! COME IN FORCE TO THE BIG BLUE FLOATING ISLAND AND DRINK YOUR FILL TO COOL THE HIVE. PLEASE YOUR ALMIGHTY QUEEN!” I remember thinking to myself that maybe they would not go get their friends. Maybe these were not actually scouts sent to communicate with the hoards from the hive. Maybe we would truly be able to rest today. Maybe bees would not invade our cabin and make the boat hum with their tiny beating wings. Maybe they would not crawl over every surface and explore every crevice on the boat. Maybe they would not die by the hundreds in the soapy water in the sink, falling on their bubbly swords in service to their matriarch. Perhaps they would even stay out of the cockpit.

In a soothing moment of denial we called our daughter to have a nice talk and as we visited our hopes and dreams dissolved as the swarm descended on our boat. First a handful of bees, then a bowlful of bees, and finally we had literally thousands of bees flying around and crawling on every little thing they could land on. We had to hang up the phone. There was no way to concentrate on a conversation. We were too busy brushing the bees off of our person. Sighing greatly, we raised anchor to make good our escape.

Thanks for the water, sailors. Now give us your boat.

The struggle with bees is real here on the islands in Mexico. We are bee lovers, not bee haters. Still, our groove has been seriously impacted by our buzzing friends because there is great snorkeling at many of the islands and that’s what we love to do. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried to shower salt water off on the back deck with a million bees buzzing around you. One with nature, that’s us.

At our last anchorage, Isla San Marcos, the bees were not the docile almost domesticated insects we had encountered other places. These bees landed on us and crawled on us with impunity, seemingly marking us as their territory. All I can say to that is NO. At every single island anchorage we went to, we had about 1 day to enjoy ourselves before the bees found us. This is the literal truth. One day. After that we either had to become part of the hive, or we had to move along to another place. In order to survive the islands, we’d need wings. And possibly a stinger. At the very least we’d need to keep moving.

In case you were wondering, we did try to divert their attention; to deter them from taking over our space. We tried bowls of water on the deck. That encouraged more to come. We tried peppermint oil, tried by many other cruisers to some effect. Our boat smelled great. But the bees thought so, too. They landed all over it. We even tried putting sugar water on a part of the deck we didn’t need to access. They sure appreciated it, but they still came into the boat looking for more. Greedy bees. Many people close up their boats to keep bees out. But that doesn’t really work as they will find any way to get inside. And really, it’s just too hot for that. A closed up boat, even one with screens, is like a tomb. You need air circulation to survive inside.

Thus it is that I’m not all that sad that we’ve put Galapagos in Marina Real in San Carlos, Sonora for a few weeks and we’re flying back to the states to do some visiting with family. I remember last year when we put her on the hard for the summer and it felt like it was too soon, like there was so much more we wanted to do.

This year it’s different. It’s blessed hot here now. The sweat drips down our bodies constantly and this is no longer a novel experience. We have given up wearing clothing (which can be a serious problem if you forget to put clothes on when other boats are nearby).  You just cannot be in the water enough to stay cool, but I admit that showering in the altogether on the back of the boat is 10 minutes of pure bliss, as long as the bees haven’t joined you.

This fishing boat passed WAY too close to us on our brisk passage across to San Carlos. I was about to turn off, under full sail, when he finally adjusted course, paralleled us for a few minutes and waved, then passed in front of us at speed.

So we are currently in the marina, getting her ready to leave for awhile as planned, and not feeling particularly sorry about it at the moment, although I will miss the snorkeling.  I guess we need a break. We’re visiting our friends Curt and Lynn Brownlow in their air conditioned condo for a few days and it’s utter bliss. We’ll be back in the heat of August, we think, to take her further north into the boiling sea for the brunt of hurricane season. Maybe the bees are better on this side of the sea? There’s more moisture over here, so we’ll hold out hope. Our destination is Puerto Peñasco, above the historic hurricane zone. We’ll find a condo to rent with air conditioning and hunker down for a sweaty season in the boatyard. My birthday is in August. I’m thinking an air conditioner would be a welcome gift.