The ghost in the machine

sad about grandma leaving

We all were sad to say goodbye to Grandma and Cynthia...Hunter was beside herself and cried for the whole day - but it was nice to get to share our world with them for a little while.

Hunter was cheered only slightly by the thought of  meeting up again with her new friend, Zada.  A little girl her age, who we met in Candeleros. Zada has been cruising the Sea for four years (and has  already ridden on the back of a whale shark!). Hunter and she hit it off right away. We promised the girls to do our best to catch up again, somewhere, once Daddy fixed up the pesky heat exchanger. 

We also met another boat-family with a brother and sister, in their early teens, who had been in the Sea for four years and were heading back to California and to high school. 

They were super bummed to be leaving and wishing they could stay out one more year-all were really neat, outgoing kids. 

There is definitely an "old-fashioned" aura to the kids we meet out here. Polite, well-spoken,  clean up after themselves and pitch in without being asked. They spend a lot of time talking to adults, obviously, because most of the folks out here are retired. Kai and Hunter have made friends with retired Fire fighters, Fisherman, smugglers,  Ex-marines, Ambulance drivers, Boat builders,Triage nurses, Teachers, Retired-millionaires, Writers, Merchant Marines, Doctors, F-14 pilots, Professional Spear-fisherman, Pediatricians, Industrial spies and Penguin researchers.  They have met people who have been in wars, been shipwrecked, sailed to Egypt and Antarctica, fought off pirates, one old-timer even had spears thrown at his boat in New Guinea. No one out here is watching TV or rushing off to work, there is always a pair of experienced hands to teach how to tie a lure, or catch a Dorado, or tell a story about a giant Moray that drowned someone. 

Kai and Hunter were dong their schoolwork the other day in the "club-house" in Escondido; a tiny room stuffed with free books and a DVD library that cruisers use as a swap and trade. It's about 115 degrees in the  little box and I was trying unsuccessfully to log onto the internet for the 100th time and Kai and Hunter were dutifully doing there pages when a tie-dyed flower-child in her late fifties bounded in the room. 

"There's no homeschool in June!" she yelled.

Kai and Hunter looked up at me from there workbooks with raised eyebrows.
I didn't say anything.

"I'll give ya 20 Pesos to row me back out to my boat" The lady said to Kai.

Kai turned white.

"I'll do it!" Hunter stood up.

"great!" yelled the rainbow Pixie.

"I'm on the big schooner out there and it's too damn hot for me to row myself. C'mon boy, I won't bite. I'll give ya a tour of the boat. See ya later, mom." 

She bounced back out the door. Hunter followed her without so much as a look back at me. 

"I better go with her. I'll finish this when I get back" Kai said. "Stay here. Ok?".

I returned to my private frustrations with the server, not giving a second thought as to who the lady was, or how my kids would get back, or any of it.

I knew they were in for something great.

There are people out here who may actually be the Fairy Godmother or Santa clause in semi--retirement - the long white hair, or beards, the jolly countenance, a twinkle in the eye. The only difference is the clothes-board shorts, flip-flops and tie-dyes.  Unable to resist the lure of youngsters, they spring from their boats, unannounced, surprising any children they come across with something fantastic. Freshly baked cookies and fish-lures, neat books or a special shell or feather found on a deserted island.

I had seen the Patricia Belle on the way in. She was a 66 foot schooner, built by hand, looked exactly like a pirate ship and i was pretty sure that the kids were going to have an experience of some sort while aboard her.

Sure enough, they returned an hour later, with enough pesos to buy an ice-cream and stories galore.

Jon, meanwhile, was having a grand time being trapped, head-first, in the airless engine room, scraping and goo-ing, smoothing and soothing, some sort of life-threatening Epoxy-based compound onto our heat-exchanger. 

His hope is that the alchemy of toxic chemicals and singular devotion, will turn our crumbling tube into something more like an engine part and less like swiss cheese. 

He's fixed the microscopic hole on the hot-water heater hose. It  was jetting Perkie with a nearly invisible stream of water that pooled and gathered under the main block and was for many days, a cause of much puzzlement and anxiety, because the source of the growing pond of fluid was a mystery.  Engines are fun, three dimensional sudoku puzzles. They require a zen state of non-attachment to prevent the immediate onset of madness and dementia. Ours sometimes even presents Jon with mysterious Koans he must ponder for weeks at a time. 

The path to enlightenment- one oil change at a time.

goodbye smiles

heading out again-headsail only!

Kai happy to ripstick while in Escondido

A pelican tries out our paddle board

New friends, Zada and Amy visit our boat