Month: September 2010

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Repelling Air Pirates!

Our last communication ended with our loyal crew recovering from a blitzkrieg-style home invasion from the booby birds.

Tiffany, Allan and I quickly devised a counter-strike offensive.  Luckily, between Tiff’s years of nautical experience, Allan’s fighter-jock skills (no, really – F-16s!…these birds seriously picked the wrong boat to mess with…) and my supreme knowledge of the multiple uses of sailing line we routed the enemy and chased him squawking into the night.

With the main thrust of their attacked repelled, their forces routed and in shambles, the enemy made a final, desperate play for a beachhead on our extremely delicate solar panels, which our reserve forces quickly repelled.

Unfortunately they kept coming back, growing so bold as to land on the boat hook as we attempted to poke them with it!  Eventually, with both sides weary from literally hours of intense non-stop action, our side proposed a truce: One bird on the dingy, as long as no one poops.  Of course he defecated easily twice his own body weight onto our small boat and at first light his fellow bombers attempted to join him, so we rejoined the battle this time determined to offer no quarter…

Though we survived the brutal hand-to-halyard combat of that night, our boat still carries the scars of the battle …

… and, as you can see from that video,  we must remain constantly vigilant for skirmisher forces lying in wait to catch us unawares.  For we are alone, cut off from other allied units, hundreds of miles from shore and should our efforts fail, we would be overtaken before help could arrive.  There is no truce, no peace.  That is the lesson the “night of the attack of the boobies” taught us.  A lesson we pass to you, my friends, from the front lines.  Pray for us as we battle on…

– Greg

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Site update!

I finally sorted out the DNS stuff for our site (if you don’t know what DNS is, ugh, don’t worry about it!), so no more redirect. Now when you type www.CoastGuardCouple.com in the address bar, that’s what you’ll get! Sweet!

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Attack of the boobies!

Ladies and gentlemen, today I am here to talk to you about the perils of boobies.  (no, we are not about to talk about pre-marital sex here.  It’s the name of a bird dude.  As in blue-footed boobies (or orange-footed, whatever)).

Don’t let the cuteness fool you.  These little warm weather aviary ambassadors of the devil himself have been with us since our departure.   My friends, as the crewmember with the most seaborne combat experience (hey, I am a trained boarding officer) I have led our valiant efforts to repel these determined air pirates for several days now.  Though our first attempts were admittedly crude and pathetically unsuccessful.

We only suffered a minimum of self-inflicted casualties …

… and have recently upgraded our techniques.   The scales of victory slowly tipped in our direction and our safe voyage appeared assured…until the enemy, under the cover of darkness, marshaled their forces and without warning staged their own personal Tet Offensive…

The enemy struck without warning, on all fronts and we were initially clearly overwhelmed.  Pressing the advantage one of our foes grew so brave as to land in our cockpit and make a dive for the hatch below decks! Allan had to literally tackle this squawking, flapping Captain Jack Sparrow-wanna-be with a rug while Alison pelted them both with a fruit basket (more friendly fire) and cast the beast from our vessel into the murky darkness. (sorry, no video on that one, happened a little too fast.)

The battle rages on…

– Greg

(On another booby note, we ran into someone with a t-shirt that said “I love boobies” and a cartoon of 2 little blue booby feet on it 🙂 – Tiff)

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To Cross the Pacific

Ah the happy crew of the good ship FLY AWEIGH, decked out in their 2010 puddle jump regalia.  We figured we should get the pictures handled before the scurvy set in.

For those of you who don’t know, the term “puddle jump” is the name people use to describe the trip we are undertaking by sailing from Mexico to Tahiti in French Polynesia.

Our first 30 minutes underway we received an interesting omen of things to come.

At least we got our man overboard drill out of the way first thing…is it a bad sign if the mop sank to the bottom before we recovered it?

Having made our sacrifice to King Neptune’s housekeeping staff, we rapidly shifted gears into that most critical of all getting underway rituals: Calling everyone you know for the obligatory rushed goodbye call

It’s great to finally be underway and heading somewhere new.  Now, don’t get me wrong, Mexico has been a blast and La Cruz has earned a special place in my heart.   I mean between bar cats taking my sodas, swarms of butterflies covering mountaintops,  all the great people we met, and lets not forget Mexican car horns or my breakout role in the made for Sci-fi movie SHARKTOPUS (this October kids, mark your calendars!) Mexico has most assuredly been a good time.  (PS, for if you missed any of the above, check the previous posts.)  However, I would hate to come back to the states and have the following conversation:

Friend: “Where you been?”

Me: “Oh, I’ve been traveling around the world.”

Friend: “Wow cool!  Where did you go?”

Me: “Mexico.”

A drastically unfair prejudice formerly held by myself is that Mexico is “right next door.”  SOME of Mexico (read Tijuana and some desert) is in fact next door and a lot of Mexico is freaking far, far away.  Tiff and I sailed for weeks straight and I would say we got about half way down one coast.  A lot of cruisers sail Mexican waters for years and never get bored or move on…and I can see why.

I feel that Tiff and I are becoming well known here in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle.  We have friends, the owner of the local British pub doesn’t even need to ask me what I’ll be having when I come in, a Guinness and fish & chips just show up (which is awesome, by the way).  I think Tiff and I stopped being tourists here a few weeks ago and actually started living here.  This is great feeling and we either need to buy a house or move on.  Since there is a lot more world out there and the idea was to go around it, its time to move on.  I am nervous though that Allan’s prediction may be closer to the mark than any of us are willing to admit.

Besides the idea of crossing the largest expanse of nothing on the planet in what my friend Michael describes as, “a glorified bathtub with a big bedsheet on front” intrigues me.  Though I would also like to point out this “glorified bathtub” comes decked out with basically every electromechanical toy you could possible want, not to mention private guest quarters with attached bathrooms and showers!  If you don’t know boats too well, allow me to assure you, this is the lap of luxury when it comes to crewing.

Whelp, here we go…

(Imagine that video was your last sight of solid ground for a month straight…)

– Greg

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We’re Going to Tahiti

Tiffany and I got ourselves a ship for the trip to Tahiti! Our friends Allan & Alison on FLY AWEIGH have decided to change their plans from sailing to Florida to sailing instead to Australia. Those of you following the blog for a while now will remember Allan and Alison from our many adventures in Baja Mexico, in Cabo San Lucas, La Paz, Mazatlan and now Puerto Vallarta. They have asked Tiffany and I to accompany them over the first leg of the journey, basically to help them sail their boat over 3000 miles of open ocean … one of the largest expanses on the planet.

To give you an idea of what we have signed on for here, imagine driving from New York City to San Diego in a camper. Now reduce the camper’s speed to 10 miles per hour max, make it impossible to get off or stop the camper at any point during the voyage, remove all signs of life, habitation, fuel or help for your journey and put 4 people in the camper, one of whom must be driving at all times and two of which are vegetarians. Sprinkle in the potential for a few natural disasters and add a dab of motion sickness. Oh yeah, no cell phones, wifi or FM radio either. That’s not quite it, but it’s at least close to what we’re doing.

(Ok, this time Greg made a comparison to a camper van. Last time, he said we were “crossing the ocean in a bathtub powered by a bedsheet”…)

Naturally, prepping for this trip was a major project for the four of us and took us about a month to get FLY AWEIGH, an already well equipped and well maintained ship, ready for the journey.

How do I describe to you what we did to prepare our ship and ourselves for this undertaking? I mean, how many bottles of bleach does one need to cross an ocean?

And how many hours a day should you devote to the important task of de-moisturizing your mushrooms for storage?

We also got 2 new sails for the trip: a storm trysail in case of hurricanes and a spinnaker in case of light winds. Thanks go out to Mike of PV sailing who got the sails down to Mexico and took the time to do some training with us on them.

Overall it was a lot of work and the four of us all pitched in and made it a good time. This video gives you an idea of what it is like to prepare a ship to cross an ocean:

Another important factor in our preparation was mentally preparing ourselves for what I estimated would be 30 days living in a constantly moving 400 sq foot apartment with no means of leaving. Now the idea of unplugging for a month may sound rather appealing at first but, as I learned from my patrols in the Coast Guard, you have to keep busy or you’ll go bonkers after a while. To that end I had Tiffany bring back a few things for me from the states: a French review program (because in French Polynesia, that’s what they speak! – Tiff), an audio Bible and a ukulele. In our final month in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle here in Banderas Bay, I’ve managed to learn one song on this thing.

So either I’ll get better or they’ll kill me and dump my body in the ocean. Nothing like a little motivation to begin one’s musical career. Anyone know what song I was playing?

-Greg

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Still Walking on the Wild Side

Though the great indoors has its fair share of wildlife, the great out of doors in La Cruz is also not to be missed.

One of the greatest things about having your own means of water transportation (or at least the ability to hop on someone else’s) is the freedom to go whale watching! La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, the Mexican town we’ve been spending so much time in, is on the Banderas Bay (along with Puerto Vallarta). The Banderas Bay is one of the places Humpback Whales like to hang out during the late winter/early spring. It’s interesting – seeing a whale from a Coast Guard cutter elicits an entirely different response than seeing one from a sailboat. In the Coast Guard we almost hated whales, because we had to call the Captain, stop our engines and wait for them to get themselves sorted so we didn’t run them over. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want to hit a whale with a 210 foot ship, but man were they frustrating – when you’re a junior officer you never want to have to call the Captain! Being on a sailboat is way less stressful and you just get to enjoy the wonder of seeing these amazing animals.

Oh, and here’s Greg first experience fishing with a net:

(I would like to point out that I have caught several fish at this point, albeit not with this particular method. Also, did anyone else catch Tiffany’s comment about no one driving the boat!? – Greg)

And just when you thought it was safe to eat calamari, think about this:

We’re still doing swimmingly out here in the wild! How’s life in civilization?

~ Tiffany

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Walking on the Wild Side

Wandering around town, sailing on the ocean, heck, even sitting in the bar or the coffee shop – all of these are great opportunities for communing with the local wildlife (and the not-so-wild also). We’ll start this off with the town segment.

When strolling through town, which of these animals do you expect to see? A – Cats, B – Dogs, C – Iguanas? Well, if you guessed Iguana, you’re right!

(Why? Because the cats are in the bars hustling drinks, of course! –Greg)

Also expected viewing while in a Mexican town of any size are chickens, pigs, horses and…children?

(Oh and now I finally understand why they started enacting those spitting in public laws back in the US. –Greg)

There was a cool restaurant/coffee shop in La Cruz that had free internet (yay!) at a decent speed (double yay!) and as a side entertainment factor they had a fountain with turtles in it – I know, not that interesting. What made it interesting was when the dog would come by and jump in the fountain with the turtles 🙂

~ Tiffany

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Acting and Tequila Tours

I should start by describing the net and go from there.

You see, in Mexico, all the sailors in each town get on the radio every morning and have an information & stuff swap meet. These little VHF gatherings (called “nets”) are typically at about 7am, which, on a complete aside…

What the HECK is wrong with these people!? Who goes on vacation for a month or six and decides that the ideal time to wake up every morning…EVERY morning on vacation… is 7:00 in the freaking morning!?

*steps off soap box and puts it away*

Ahem, anyway, needless to say this is typically a tad early for me but since Tiffany and I are working with the local cruising community, I have made the monumental effort of attending these broadcasts. Apparently my work teaching seminars down here and helping ships get prepared for offshore sailing did not go unnoticed as one of the ships contacted me during the net and told me there was a local director who was looking for actors for a sci-fi movie.

24 hours later I was walking into an audition. It was time to see how far that high school acting elective was going to get me:

Nailed it baby! I can now add the words “paid, professional Science Fiction actor” to my list of life accomplishments! Oh, and of all the places this movie is gonna be shown…the SciFi channel! (or SyFy…whatever…the freaking nerd channel alright! I’ll be sharing airwaves with reruns of Battlestar Galactica!!!!!)

And no, before you ask, I was not just an extra. The director initially had me audition for the role of the hard as nails Navy Captain but afterwards he pulled me aside and said,

“Look Greg, you don’t really strike me as the military type. You would do much better with the role of the billionaire yachtsman with the trophy wife.”

…I am not making this up…

So not only do I get dialogue, not only do I get my own ship, not only do I get a trophy wife, I get to get killed off in a Science Fiction movie!!! Oh this is so cool!

Unfortunately, I did not make the trailer. However, to give you a feel for what I’ve gotten myself into this time,

I have been told to expect it airing around October. Please, PLEASE someone check on this and tell me when it comes out! Can I get someone to please record this!? I don’t exactly have cable out here!

Oh, and what did everyone else, including Tiffany, decide to do on the only 2 days I was actually busy filming and not able to hang out? Well, go zip lining of course!

Gosh, doesn’t that sound like fun. Well, I couldn’t tell you because I was busy being eaten by a giant sharktopus at the time.

Oh, and as an extra special treat they also decided to go tequila tasting.

At least Tiffany brought back 2 bottles for me. Anyone interested in tasting some amaretto or chocolate tequila with us?

– Greg

http://www.youtube.com/v/fK2bBfuepKk?fs=1&hl=en_US

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More Life on the Docks

La Cruz de Huanacaxtle wasn’t all dodging sniper fire while weaving boats through water spouts and random floating construction equipment though. I, as always, managed to find a few quiet moments to relax an enjoy myself. The particular method of relaxation will have my old high school friends cringing and begging that I not name them here as the people I originally learned this game from.

All I have to say is, it was like riding a bike man. You never really forget.

Also, hanging out with cruisers means cruiser parties! This is when sailors get together to hang out eat, exchange information, tell sea stories and basically have fun. Sometimes events are held to prove ones prowess over one’s fellow sailors. Here is what a typical event looks like

It bears mentioning that both of these ladies were stone cold sober and not under any form of duress when they signed up for this contest. I believe the prize under contention was a free t-shirt. There is an important marketing lesson in here somewhere I’m sure…

I also found a new contender for “best language ever” in Mexico. No, not Spanish…Gaelic!

Finally, and probably most importantly, I found a Mexican car horn! As you long term followers of the blog know, Tiffany and I have been searching for a musical car horn since we entered Mexico months ago. I had come to suspect that the lyrical car horn had, much like the Mexican chicken bus, faded from existence and only lived on in popular myth. Not so! Though obviously endangered, specimens of the Mexican car horn still roam the land and can be observed by those determined enough to remain persistent in the quest.

– Greg

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