The previous post was supposed to have more pictures than it ended up with. Some bug in WordPress or my ability to use WordPress. Anyway, if you didn’t see some of the pictures, you’re not imagining it.

I sort of doubt you really wanted to see those x-rated sailing pictures anyway.

Generally when I do a blog entry, I find a unifying theme that ties all the elements I want to talk about together. Occasionally those theme are a bit stretched, but still, there’s a common element. This time, I’ve accumulated a bunch of completely disjoint items that need posting. So it’s the “stuff and such” edition.

Bashing up from San Diego

We sailed the boat north from San Diego to San Francisco, stopping briefly in Santa Barbara and Monterey, familiar marinas from our trip south last year. It says something about our level of experience as cruisers (or our level of hubris) that a journey usually referred to as a bash, wasn’t even worth a blog entry of its own. We waited for good weather windows as usual, but still saw a few days of high wind and seas. Not always pleasant, but no longer so scary.

The @%#$ed diesel hydronic heater

We had a diesel hydronic heater installed on the boat a couple years ago. A diesel heater heats up water (they call it coolant, like in an engine, even if the point is for it to be hot, not cool), which circulates through the boat to radiators with fans that blow heated air into the cabins. The @%#$ thing has never really worked.

It has a high or “power” mode that it uses to quickly get things up to temperature to start with. During that phase, it would flame out and spew out billows of smoke — we always expect people to run over thinking the boat was on fire. The original installer couldn’t figure it out, basically throwing his hands up. (Ask us if you want to know what diesel hydronic installer in the Bay Area to avoid. I won’t name names here because I’d get carried away and may be sued for defamation…)

This has been a source of dissatisfaction and existential angst for years. It wasn’t so important in Mexico, but up here it gets colder and a good heater can make the difference between a warm, cozy home and an ordeal.

I finally decided to take things into my own hands and debug the @%#$er. After some pretty hairy testing and jury-rigging, I found four things that were not installed according to the specs in the manual (wrong size fuel line, wrong mounting angle for the fuel pump, wrong exhaust length, no exhaust water drainage), and one thing that was actually the problem (too many 90 degree bends in the exhaust).

So it’s now finally working! Well, there are still a couple small things, but I’ll get those done RSN (real soon now). It’s absolutely toasty on the boat, even with sub-50 temperatures and 20 knot winds.

Radiation therapy

As of this writing, I’ve just finished the seven weeks of radiation treatments, getting zapped five times a week. So far, it been going extremely smoothly, with very few side effects. I’m tireder, more tense, and perhaps a bit harder to live with. But it’s going far better than I had worried that it might.

The side effects are cumulative, so the two weeks after the end of the radiation (now) are the worst, but, hey, it’s only two weeks — like a Summer vacation. Well, a vacation where you spent way too much time in the sun, didn’t drink enough water, and ate something, or several things that didn’t at all agree with you…

For a variety of complex medical reasons, we won’t know anything definite about the results for six months to a year.

We moved the boat to Oyster Point Marina for the duration, which is only a mile from Kaiser’s Radiation Oncology department. Very convenient.

New life lines

Life lines run along the sides of the boat, helping to keep you from falling overboard. Ours were original equipment, made of plastic-coated wire. These days, they recommend against plastic coated ones, since you can’t inspect the wires to see if they’re about to rust through. And eighteen years is about as long as you want to let them go without replacement. So we decided to get new ones.

But even more fun, there’s a new technology that’s being used a lot for lines on boats, including life lines: Dyneema. Dyneema is “ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene”, which is made of plastic fibers like before, but is stronger (for the same size) than steel. Best of all, it’s fairly easy to do your own life lines using Dyneema. You don’t need to cut or crimp wire, just do some splicing.

Freezer insulation

The insulation of our refrigerator is not great. Even worse, there’s one lid that opens both the refrigerator and freezer, letting cold out and moisture in every time you get something out of the refrigerator. Which leads to frequent defrosting.

So we decided to try building an insulated, zippered cover for the freezer section. It’s been a partial success. It’s not nearly as easy to get in and out of as the old scheme was, but the MTBD (mean time between defrosting) has been cut in half, and it’s hopefully more efficient as well.

The future

We’ve made the decision to stay in the Bay Area for the Winter and Spring, and then head south again in the Summer. We haven’t decided which marina(s) to stay in, or just when to leave. But this means there’s still time to see us if you’re a Bay Area local and haven’t already — or even if you have, we’ll let you have a second round at no extra charge.

(Warning: The following post includes personal health content that may be too much information for some readers. And it includes the “p” word — the one that starts with “pro”, ends with “ate”, and includes “st” in the middle.)

In our cruising adventures, we have now successfully circumnavigated the Sun — it’s been one year since we started. And we find we enjoy it. Gardyloo is cosy and comfortable. We don’t (usually) drive each other crazy being in such continual close proximity. The view from the back porch is always pretty, and changes periodically. We’ve seen parts of the world we had never seen before. And the future holds open-ended possibilities.

Our plan had been to return to Mexico in November, spend the Winter there, and then continue onward to the South Pacific in the Spring. However, life is change and cruising is life, so our plans are changing.

As some of you know, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer a couple years ago. I had surgery that removed the prostate entirely. Since then, we have monitored the PSA level, which indicates if prostate cells are growing anywhere in my body — even if prostate cancer spreads to other parts of the body, it’s still prostate cells, and thus still affects the PSA level.

Recently, the PSA level has risen, which means they didn’t get all of the cancer cells. The big question is whether they simply missed some in the prostate area, or if the cancer has metastasized and spread elsewhere. At this stage, it’s impossible to tell.

In the hope that it’s still local, I will be having radiation therapy, that will kill everything in the local area where the prostate was. It may remove the remainder of the cancer cells, and I’ll be “cured” (like a ham). If it has spread, there’s no cure, just ways to slow the growth down.

Note that for the time being, there are no symptoms from the cancer. No pain, no loss of function. Just a rising PSA score, a number on a test result. The treatments do have side effects, but they’re more annoying than debilitating.

The radiation therapy requires a couple months of treatment, plus another month of recovery time. Given this big time commitment, and given that the boat is already back in the US in San Diego, we’ve decided to bring the boat up to San Francisco, where there’s a marina within walking distance of the treatment center.

So we’ll continue cruising, just closer to home.

We hope to continue our longer distance cruising next year and to get back on track to the South Pacific in the Spring. However, it’s equally possible that we may decide to put back the Pacific crossing a year, and take our time going back South and spend more time in Mexico before crossing.

Stay tuned for future updates.

(Note: If you’re getting this by blog email, you can’t just reply to it (sorry, out of my control). So instead email to me and/or Suzana.)

Some of you have seen me refer to the “dreaded Baja Bash,” and wondered what I meant. Some of you have done the Bash and don’t dread it at all. Time to explain.

Sailing down the outside coast of the Baja peninsula is fairly easy, as it goes with the wind. It’s so easy that the annual rally of 150 or so boats doing it is called the Baja Ha-ha. We did that one last Fall.

Sailing up the coast generally goes against the wind, often against the ocean waves, and is usually much, much harder. Hence, people call it the Baja Bash. That’s what we’re about to do.

We’re doing the Bash for two main reasons: 1) We want to stay on the boat this Summer, but don’t want to cope with the 90+ degree heat here in Mexico — no air conditioning on the boat… 2) It’s a great shakedown trip for us and the boat — after all, we may be going across the Pacific next year, and may run into much worse.

The Bash is one of those sailing things that everyone has opinions about, whether they’ve done it, plan to do it, or wouldn’t ever want to do it. Those opinions cover a wide range of options: “Wait for a weather window.” “Wait until July.” “Don’t go if the wind is orange.” (Makes more sense if you’re looking at a weather app that color codes the wind speeds.) “Hug the coast.” “Get well away from the coast.” “Go 400-500 miles out from the coast.” “Eat ginger.” “Just do it!”

We’re heading out tomorrow in a weather window best described as “not terrible.” But later in the week, things get genuinely terrible (26 knots wind, 10′ waves at 6 seconds, for those of you who know what terrible means). So if we don’t go now, we may not go this month. We expect things to be difficult, we expect the boat to go slower than usual (fighting the wind and waves), but we expect to get to the next anchorage (Bahia Santa Maria) within a couple days.

Why are we willing to do this crazy thing? 1) We trust the boat. She’s proved herself before in rough conditions, and we believe in her. 2) We trust ourselves. We’ve done enough passages to know that we always get there in the end. 3) We’ve done our homework, reading about the Bash and preparing for contingencies*. And 4) We’ve arranged with two other boats to head up at the same time (roughly), so we’ll have others to call for help, or at least for commiseration.

The tentative plan is to stop in Bahia Santa Maria and Turtle Bay, just as we did on the way down. But weather and sea conditions (and more) will dictate what we actually do, and whether we make additional stops along the way. The final destination, though, is Ensenada, getting there in something between ten days and three weeks. If you’d like to follow us on the journey in detail, click here.

So, this blog entry is the “before the Bash” post. I’ll do another one after we’re safely in Ensenada. It will be interesting to see if my perspective changes.

(*) Re contingencies: Yesterday, we discovered that our emergency manual bilge pump was not working. This is something you really, really want if you’re doing something like the Bash. We had visions of trying to find parts for it locally, where there are few chandleries, and poor availability of parts. This morning, we took it apart, expecting an unrepairable mess within. Instead, we found just gunk that was wedging an important internal mechanism open. We cleared the gunk, reassembled the pump, and now everything is working 100%. We were very proud of ourselves.

We’ve switched to a different boat tracking system. If you go to the top of the blog (https://gardyloo.blog), you’ll see the new, improved system. We think it’s clearer and easier to use. If you click on the boat icon, you’ll also get a mini-blog of short posts that come out more frequently than the main blog posts. As with the old one, you can zoom in to see more details. And it has a full-screen mode if you want to get even more.

Also, we’re getting ready to head out across the Sea of Cortez, from Mazatlan to Bahia Los Frailes and then to San Jose del Cabo. We plan to leave in the next couple days. Frailes has iffy network connections, so we’ll likely be out of touch for a day or two or three. Follow us on the new tracker.

It’s taken quite a toll on Suzana and me to keep all of you in the dark about what we’ve really been doing these past six months. We’ve hated lying to everyone, but we had good reasons to do so. Now it can all be revealed.

First, the big lie: We have not been cruising. We have not been living on a sailboat. We are not in Mexico.

We have actually been living in a small studio apartment in Fremont. We’ve been spending a good part of our time photoshopping ourselves into pictures of Mexico that we’ve found on the Internet.

As a couple of you have been told in confidence, Suzana has long been a semi-covert agent working for Mossad. It’s been a bit of a balancing act, but we’ve been careful to avoid “projects” that would be in conflict with the United States’ interests. But the news coverage of the latest venture has blown her cover, so that’s all over now.

It started out as an investigation of a questionable tallit importer. A bit of undercover work led to the discovery that not only were the tallits of poor quality, but sewn into them was a WiFi surveillance device capable of compromising any computer network they were in contact with. This was part of a larger scheme to compromise US Jewish community computer systems.

Suzana’s “in” to the organization was to pose as the owner of a computer repair facility in downtown Oakland, who had created software to cause the compromised computers to explode. But that required a full time commitment on her part, which required a reason for her to be absent from her regular home life. Hence the cruising fiction.

While it’s true that this was a form of entrapment, you have to remember that it was a Mossad operation, not US law enforcement. So different rules apply.

The operation came to an abrupt halt when the tallit warehouse spontaneously exploded (we suspect, but can’t prove, interference from the CIA, as the same warehouse contained compromised MAGA hats). The resulting news coverage — which I’m sure you all saw — blew the lid off the whole operation.

So we’re back home again. See you around the neighborhood.

Happy April 1st.

Neither Suzana nor I spoke any Spanish beyond “hola” and “gracias” when we started our adventure. Shortly after arriving in La Paz, we discovered that a cruising family neighbor in our marina were all taking private Spanish lessons. Their teacher, Sergio, came to them for the lessons. That sounded great, so we decided to give it a try, and hired Sergio to teach us. We’d meet a few times a week in the marina, often on our boat.

A month or so later, we’re up to “me llamo Harry,” “desculpe,” and “aqui esta bien” (said mostly to Uber drivers). Limited but measurable progress. (Actually, as usual, Suzana is way ahead of me, having conversations with locals and making friends with everyone.)

As we’re getting ready to leave La Paz, we decided to take Sergio and his wife out to dinner, both as a thank you, and to get to know them better and discover more about Mexico and their life, etc. We already knew that he’d had a varied and interesting life, doing accounting, music, teaching, and more.

During dinner, as often happens around here, a small band of musicians approached the table to ask if we’d like them to play music (for a price). To our amazement, Sergio greeted them warmly — it turned out that he had sung with them during his musical career. And he offered to do a song with them there and then.

And the food was great too!

This serendipitous bit of art/music reminded me of our experience a couple weeks earlier: Suzana had been walking around town, going to the farmer’s market and such, and came across an announcement for an art opening, with three artists presenting sculptures of whales.

We appeared on the appointed night in the appointed place to find a group of people milling about in a very charming courtyard, drinking (free) beverages. No sculptures, but giving the impression of a pre-opening soiree (what’s Spanish for “soiree”?). So we drank and milled and waited.

After a while, some people made speeches. In Spanish, of course. Our new Sergio-powered Spanish understanding let us catch about a tenth of the meaning. But everyone applauded, so we did as well.

Then everyone went up the stairs to view the exhibit.

This strange man was recently sighted in the vicinity of the good ship Gardyloo. We know he was aboard because of the picture above, which includes the new shipboard artwork over his right shoulder, a holiday gift from Michelle.

At approximately the same time, Harry’s blog posts suddenly stopped. We suspect foul play.

So, if you know who this person is, please contact us immediately. However, do not approach him on your own. He may be armed. He may be dangerous. Contact should be left to professionals.

P.S. This just in: The photo above has been positively identified as Harry himself. There is still some question concerning his mental health, as he seems to have compulsively shaved off all of his facial hair. “Snorkeling masks don’t seat properly over a mustache. I get water up my nose.” he says, rather unconvincingly.

No, the boat’s on fire! No, the boat next door is dumping water! What is that noise?

Shortly after arriving is La Paz, we became aware of a noise, only heard when the boat is fairly quiet, a kind of crackling. At first, we thought it was raining, but with nary a cloud in the sky, that seemed unlikely. The noise was a kind of crackling or snap-crackle-pop sound. So, maybe splashing water from another boat, but we didn’t hear it outside as loud as it was inside. It sounded a bit like fire too. Or maybe water spraying through a hole in the boat belowdecks.

It sounded louder forward. We stuck our heads into the anchor locker in the bow, and it was louder still, but coming from below. We stuck our heads into the bilge (yuck), and it was also louder, but coming from forward.

When you’re on a boat, there’s no end to the imagined possibilities of an unidentified sound, most of them ultimately leading to the boat sinking. We finally gave up and went to sleep.

The next day, with a little help from our friends on C.A.T., plus a little googling, we figured it out: pistol shrimp!

Before I get into the details, I’ll warn you: when we told another boat about this, they were absolutely certain we were pulling their legs. But it’s true. Really it is. I couldn’t make this up.

Pistol shrimp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpheidae), an inch long snapping shrimp, have two claws. One is larger than the other, and can be cocked back and then released very, very quickly. When released, it creates a bubble, which then rapidly collapses, releasing a huge, but very local force (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC6I8iPiHT8). The temperature in a very small area actually gets hotter than the sun. And makes a crack sound. It’s used to stun prey that the shrimp then eats.

What’s as amazing as the hotter-than-the-sun bit, is that to create the constant crackling sound that we hear, there must be hundreds or thousands of pistol shrimp near our boat doing this all the time.

Nature is so weird.

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