Uber… new balance store buenos aires in the sense of covering a remarkably long time frame for a supposedly active blog…while covering the staples of wondrous sights seen, health and welfare, boat rassling, darling grandchildren, and fishing…and throwing in some bits of non-cruising terroir to boot. We left off having arrived in Martinique after our double-handed passage from the Canaries. adidas superstar The eastern Caribbean, from Martinique north to Antigua, met and exceeded our expectations.
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Anchoring in Le Marin, we could have used the parking app that has made parking in the city of San Francisco “easy, fun, and fast”. We spent hours tootling up and down the rows of hundreds and hundreds of boats at anchor, looking for a wedge of space for RC Louise, one not too close to moorings, derelict boats, boats with no chain, boats surrounded with tires covered with T shirts, or just plain boats. We would have considered the dock, but it was full for the duration. When we didn’t have business in town, we would tootle out to the outer harbor, where there was a Club Med and also hundreds of boats, but not as many hundreds. new balance buty Club Med graciously allowed us to walk on their beach. We walked around the town which sold bikinis in the plazas, hunched over our laptops in bars surrounded by people having so much fun, and had the “click” go off in our minds when we saw this sign, say “Prohibited to photograph the children” at a school.
Not supposed to be there on a Disney theme set. nike air max The slavery history was close and palpable. air max new balance 1500 bordeaux femme
Oh yeah, Max. Maglie Chicago Bulls borsello adidas uomo prezzo 20 years old, German, just spent a year working with a local NGO in India, determined to travel west from Germany without airplane. We met him in Lisbon, where he wanted to jump ship on another boat and join us as crew. He kept coming over and offering to help so as to learn about boat stuff, which was all pretty new to him. He just volunteered to do anything to learn. Reggie Jackson Jersey As we at that time had an excellent crew plan, so we declined, but encouraged Max to keep in touch with us. While Tracy was back in Oregon, he showed up in Martinique and started cooking superbly explorative meals and was living aboard within days. nike air max 95 donna Womens Air Jordan 13 nike air max 90 homme pas cher Canotta Phoenix Suns Suddenly sharing boat space for a prolonged period of time with a total stranger is either a fine art or an incredibly foolish toss of the dice. Goedkoop Adidas Schoenen Our take on the relationship is that we pay most all expenses and teach (we have had two novices in the last 5 years), and in return they take orders and work. It is not a vacation cruise. air max 2017 rosa donna
That said, after meeting about expectations and having daily “check ins” about how things are going, we pretty quickly started having a rollicking great time together. cheap air jordans uk
Bread bake offs on the premise of most unusual available ingredients aboard, entree into the sailing community of the very young and tough Europeans on slender budgets, allowing the meat hook to be big enough to catch (and release) marlin, cards, open season on politics and philosophy.
All of which is to say, despite our sour grapes in general about the area, we are easily amused and had fine times. asics gel lyte 3 bianco uomo
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Steve and Max sailed from Martinique to Dominica to the Saints to Guadalupe to Antigua, where Tracy met up with them in English Harbor. They had spent some days with Colin Speedie aboard, who had been our consultant via Skype for the building of our boat, but whom neither of us had ever met in person. Adidas Nmd Pk Runner Other good news was news was meeting up with Anne and Barry aboard Cat’s Paw IV, whom we knew from the South Pacific and who had continued circumnavigating; we sailed and played together for about ten days.
All the Antigua anchorages were a new scene for us. When boats have mast(s) over 100 feet tall, they have to have a red light at the top(s) of them; although we were not even near the mega Carib races in time or space, it still looked like a floating city of skyscrapers. ‘Tis said that we do not really appreciate the extremes of wealth in our world because it is the top 0.01%, not the top 1%, and they are invisible.
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baskets ASICS Maybe we got a glimpse. Later we tried Barbuda, a small island with 400 wrecks on its reefs which is reputed to be the less visited (Princess Di can’t go there anymore, but did), more remote place. Always attractive hashtags in our yachtie lexicon. The island was picked up by the Codrington family in 1865 and held until independence. Womens Air Jordan 7 new balance store buenos aires So dry and infertile that sugarcane cultivation was difficult, the slaves brought from West Africa who were owned by the family fished, logged, hunted wild pigs and cattle, and scavenged shipwrecks on the shore (some say the Codringtons set out lights to confuse captains). Air Max 2015 Homme
All the guidebooks and one encyclopedia and early history report that the tall, muscular people from Barbuda were used as a sort of breeding farm for slaves to be sold to other islands. For sure, far more slaves survived life in Barbuda than in the other West Indies. Fjällräven Kånken Barn Newer research suggests that Codrington hyped the idea, but never made it working reality (as it was in places in the US south). Yet the awful idea perhaps has been transmuted into a bit of Barbudan pride of self-reliance and even pride of physical lineage. The place had an eeriness to it, despite the miles of beaches where Max spotted nesting turtles and the sweetest swimming. Air Flight 89 We anchored not far from Spanish Point, where four British cruisers were murdered in 1994. We left, ultimately relieved to be out of it all, and had a sultry nine day sail across the Caribbean Sea. The winds were squirrelly until 75W: a tropical soup bowl not like any ocean or coastal sailing we have known. ADIDAS ULTRA BOOST


The Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal snuck up on us on “little cat’s feet…and…on silent haunches”, not at all like the geographic choke point and manmade wonder of the world which it truly is.
We spotted land first some miles west of the entrance, and inched our way down the coast as the ships waiting to transit appeared out of the grey rain, first small and hazy and then becoming a fleet of behomeths. We picked our way through the field of anchored vessels running their engines, hailed the Canal Authority, and passed through the breakwater of concrete jacks. adidas ultra boost donna We pulled into Shelter Bay Marina, tucked in the center of Fort Sherman, the former US military base which developed as the Jungle Operations Training Center in 1951. Howler monkeys sounded off.
Parrots and toucans and oropendola flew around in the nearby jungle.
There was a dead anteater on the former runway. Nike Premier homme We met some darn salty folks, working on their circumnavigations or mucking around Central America for years. These circumnavigators, in response to a mum who said “What will the people think when you are in a nursing home?” quickly retorted that in New Zealand much of the staff was likely to be Pacific Islander and that they might do better than fine.
We quickly met up with the agent we had hired while still in the Eastern Caribbean to help manage our transit through to the Pacific and arranged to have the RC Louise be assigned her permanent number for the Canal and be measured officially by the admeasurer (great new word: a person who “determines the dimensions, capacity, weight, and other details of a vessel, as for an official registration, documentation, or yacht handicap rating”). The South Pacific was calling. cheap adidas uk And then we stopped. And looked around. Panama felt like a familiar pair of jeans, a home we had known before, pieces of other central American countries…a complicated down and dirty lineage from Balboa to the Canal politics to Noriega, Tres Americaine…graced with independent indigenous groups, a feisty growing economy, extraordinary beautiful islands and jungles and volcanoes…persistent poverty….and the magnetic and majestic presence of the Canal.



At the same time, we knew that our family back in Hood River could use some family around right now. Goedkoop Nike Air Max 2016 We had been moving very fast since launching in 2013, but still were on a new boat with lots of little things that needed to be put right (and could most easily be bought by the push of a button in the US of A). Scarpe Air Force 180 Mid Someone pulled out the words “commuter cruiser”. Under Armour Curry 3.0 So we asked our agent to hold off and we punted a bit. I have always been irritated by the phrase “the bucket list”, perhaps I guess because “kick the bucket” is unkindly and crude for description of a core life event. Nike Air Max 2016 Dames Rood But in spite of my humorless on this language issue, let is be said, without using the phrase, that before cruising, when the internet was just cranking up, I watched the web cams on the Canal and had even thought of taking a thankless job as cruise line physician just to go through. So when the Australian skipper Mike from the catamaran Moxie came ambling around the marina looking for line handlers for his transit, Steve and I said yes…especially with the promise of being plied with Anzac biscuits cooked by the first mate for the trip. adidas pas cher femme
Pleasure yachts typically meet up with their first official adviser in the later afternoon, floating around off downtown Colon, which is such a no go zone except by taxi due to violence that many of us have never been to the core of the city.
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The advisor hopped aboard from a pilot boat, ran down what would happen, and remained in charge of directing positioning and rafting up. Air Force Falcons He was authoritative, specific, and yelled when appropriate which was reassuring to those of us who had no idea how we would be getting wedged in with the big guys. Air Jordan 13 Uomo
Nike Air Jordan 12 Womens Los Angeles Angels Jerseys We all knew of someone who had been rammed, turned 180 degrees in the lock, squeezed against the wall, etc. The skipper stays at the helm, full focus ahead, and the required four line handlers spread out, port and starboard, fore and aft. Alan Branch
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We headed for the three-stage Gatun Locks and while still outside rafted up with a monohull on each side. We were about to be lifted 87 feet, cross a 15 mile freshwater lake, slice through the continental divide in the Culebra Cut, drop 85 feet in single-stage Pedro Miguel and two-stage Miraflores locks to reach the Panama City and the Pacific.


There were 53 million gallons of fresh water involved in getting us from the Colon to Panama City. fjällräven kånken Laptop 13 Everything was big, unfathomably big. The walls, the ships, the length of the lines thrown to you, the gates for the canal expansion (the allowed dimensions of ships will increase by 25% in length, 51% in beam, and 26% in draft, as defined by New Panamax metrics). The idea that Daniel Ortega and Wang Jing have teamed up for building a 173 mile, 50 billion dollar interoceanic waterway through Lake Nicaragua to consummate the Nicaraguan route entertained for 150 years may be real or may be a another drug/laundering/enviromental violence/what happened to those revolutionaries we respected disaster, but it too echoes the unimaginable dimensions of moving boats across Central America. But along we went, keeping our eyes on the men with the monkey fists, wrapping the rented lines carefully so as not to squish a finger, and arriving at the Pacific terminus. Nike Air Max Femme nike air max pas cher At the Balboa Yacht Club, a boat came out and we pitched the fenders and lines in and jumped down ourselves, off to grab some beers and a cab back across the country to Shelter Bay. We then sailed east along the coast, stopping at Portobelo, once a major Spanish port for bringing gold out from the Andes and repeatedly pillaged by various Brits and then on to the San Blas Islands, an autonomous province of hundreds of islands which is the home of the Kuna Indians. Asics Hombre asics gel noosa mujer Nike Air Max 2016 Dames A few weeks of visiting left us with the desire to return. Air Jordan 3 Retro 




Back to decision-making, it became clear that we were going to put RC Louise on the hard and get ourselves back to Hood River for the northern summer and fall. While we had both put boats away for a cold winter, we were shocked as the saga unfolded of how to put a boat away for a tempestuous tropical summer of lightening, 60 knot squalls, rain without end…and the accompanying pestilence of mildew, water, mildew, water, wind, lightening, mildew, rats, mildew and more. nike air max chaussures vente Everybody had their schemes, some old hands even had three page Excel spread sheets. Maglie Detroit Pistons So we plunged in, formed opinions on what seemed best for us on about 500 issues, and picked up clever ideas.
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It took about two and a half weeks, allowing time for hair pulling as there were no sturdy grey tarps to be had quickly in Panama and allowing time for happy hour. The floor of the dog house became an excellent storage place for all the stuff, from vinegar to swimming pools chlorine tabs, that we used. nike air max 2017 femme rouge In the end, most of the stuff that had been on deck, from sails to lines to solar panels was below, and most of the stuff below was put in a new place with the idea of minimizing mildew. asics gel nimbus 15 prezzo We crawled around things, hauling them back and forth in the cabin. We sweated so hard that no amount of Gatorade or homemade rehydration solutions or plain old water was enough: both of us had intense bodily sensations that it was physically impossible to drink enough. Canotte Basket adidas femme dentelle Eventually we said good by and crossed the country again and slept it off in a low budget hotel in Panama City. We get reports from the yard that the dehumidifier is running and that things are looking good.


We have been back in Hood River since mid-May.
Right off, even before moving back in our house, we planted a garden which has fed us well for our time here as well as having plenty to freeze, can, and dry for the future. Our son, Nolan, and his wife Felicia and their four children had moved here in our absence, and it has been an unexpected time to have them close. Air Jordan 12 

Nolan worked in the valley orchards from spring through harvest, and we got to know more about the workings of the place we live through him. We spend a lot of time with our grandchildren who bring the delight of the moment into our lives. Air Jordan 5 Steve coached middle school cross country, enjoying just about every kid on the team, while remaining on track with his goal to help develop an Oregon running powerhouse in a very small town.
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We both worked just a wee bit, so there was time for fly fishing our way to Wyoming to see our other three grandkids and their parents, floating the Deschutes River, hiking familiar haunts as well as Mt St. Helens and Mt Adams, pursuing plays in Portland, experimenting with food stuff like juicing grapes, playing music, and a painting workshop. And lots of baths…that being on my list of what I miss living aboard. Nike Air Max 2017 Heren grijs Steve finally got his 40 inch steelhead on a fly at the surface on the Snake River in November (no photo but a witness), as well as regular old fish on the Hood to eat for dinner. 

As I write, the tendrils of winter are floating into the Gorge, so we have hurried to finish trimming the raspberries, get everything out of the garden that won’t take the snow this week, hang heat lamps for the chickens, and do house maintenance (houses can take a lot of abuse and remain quite respectably fine, unlike boats). I play the mbira, a traditional instrument from Zimbabwe that has been played for over 1000 years at spiritual ceremonies, social events, and royal courts. It consists of 22 – 28 metal keys mounted on a hardwood soundboard and placed inside a gourd resonator. Like many musical traditions of sub-Saharan Africa, Shona mbira uses cross-rhythms, a “rhythm in which the regular pattern of accents of the prevailing meter is contradicted by a conflicting pattern and not merely a momentary displacement that leaves the prevailing meter fundamentally unchallenged”—New Harvard Dictionary of Music (1986: 216). Green Bay Packers Jerseys There is no main beat, there is no secondary beat, there is not even a contradiction between groundedness and fluidity: house/boat, ideal purpose/painful challenges, old friends/friends for a week, joint-aching cold/blood-boiling heat, peace/slaughter. I have been playing a lot this last week, honing in on this. Seriousness aside, does John Boehner really think he is going to repeal Obamacare? It makes my ears hurt. We gotta’ go.