May 2018 - La possibilità di un'isola

Turtle Cay Marina and the beginning of rainy season

By fabio@lapossibilitadiunisola.com | May 26, 2018 | Comments 12 comments

<<We are not made of sugar.>> Kate assures me as we are walking on the beach under a heavy downpur. It makes me smile. I should revisit my own attitude towards the rain. Sometimes I just can get soaked, enjoying it for one time, instead of retreating into a dry spot or wearing rain gear.

We are heading back from a walk on the deserted beach between Turtle Cay Marina and the little town of Viento Frio. While rain is coming down I focus on the edge of the dark shelf cloud moving above and past us carrying the shower West. Beautiful black tentacles of vapor hang from it, the new smells coming from the jungle signal that the vegetation reacts to the atmospherical change. Howler monkeys from afar sound their call. Everybody knows it’s raining, even the silver surface of the waves that continue its motion shows a new skin pierced by the raindrops.

I am just getting wet. Water drips from my hair onto my face, my t-shirt gets wet and heavy on my shoulder. I’ll be dry when I get back. It’s no big deal.

Rainy season is on us, and even if it is not yet at its peak we are frequently visited by moisturizing drops falling from the sky. We arrived in Turtle Cay Marina at the beginning of May for a yard period in which we focus on painting jobs. Not the best time of the year to do it, but not the worst either.

Kate overlooks the beach in Turtle Cay Marina, just by the Restaurant

Turtle Cay Marina is a waterfront development few miles off the pueblo of Nombre De Dios. As far as places to haul out our boat it is as remote as it gets on the Atlantic Coast of Panama, ideal for a small boat and her expert crew.

The downside is that if we forgot to get a part in our job list supply we need a taxi and two buses to get to a shopping area probably having to stay overnight in Panama City. The advantage is that we easily put our attention on the work, as there are not many forms of distraction around here, other than wonderful wildlife and landscape.

It is also affordable, which is another good reason to be here.

Tranquility took a ride on the travel lift before being dropped on stands. Gravity pushing her on a hard ground is not the best situation for a boat, but hopefully it won’t last long. We quickly adapted to the tall ladder we have to climb to go in and out of the boat, to the retrofit of the grey water system draining into a bucket and to the fact that as dusk is approaching we have to close down the boat and hide inside, or bugs will eat us.

We also got used very quickly to nice, clean and functioning bathrooms with shower, laundromat, wi-fi, and the view of the beach from the cockpit, and the nice restaurant on the beach. It may sounds weird, but it is exceptional in this area.

It is complicated to rate a boatyard, but so far this has the best views.

Painting the topsides of Tranquility had been a long discussed project. The one part paint we applied prior to the first launch in New Bedford dated 2013 and it was constantly peeling off. Something bogus happened during that first application that messed up the adhesion of the paint. Busy as we were assembling Tranquility like a model boat from a box kit, we slapped that one part grey paint on her and moved to the very next project, anxious to get out of New England before the worst of winter.

Scraping the old paint off Traqnuility. It was a long messy job.

For five years we have seen layers of paint coming off at the slightest friction with a solid object, like the dinghy, anchor chain, the occasional leaning to a hard surface like a dock. That drove Kate crazy as she kept touching up the scratches with the same one part Kingston Grey paint we used originally and Tranquility soon looked like some advanced stealth vessel, with grey camo. It was perfect for Georgia, maybe, but when we decided it was time to pull Tranquility out of the drink, Kate soon lobbied for a brand new paint job.

I resisted at first. Aestethics sits quite down in my list of priority, and I also knew that it was a lot of work, physical, dirty, finicky work. It took days to remove the previous coating, and to prepare the surface for primer, then dry days for application, more sanding, taping. And so on. But eventually I recognized the urgency that Kate was feeling. Most of the times she is right anyway, I am learning as time passes.

Only two coats of Jotun HardTop paint on (and 2to go) for Tranquility

Maria from the vessel Joana recommended Jotun, a brand of paints from Norway which she described as “high quality industrial paint” that was available in Panama. I liked the focus on industrial because back in the States I spent too much time dealing with “spiffy yacht coatings” that eventually did not stand the harsh environment of the ocean and are targeted to people who constantly redo their paint jobs, as if boat owners were damned in one ring of Inferno, forced to constantly repaint their boats, with the diabolic marketers laughing at them. This time we are hoping for a less shiny but definitely more tenacious paint job, hopefully tug boat grade.

Industrial also means cheaper. Jotun serves the Shipping Industry so they sell by the bulk. For tiny Tranquility that translated in the purchase of a 20 liter (more than 5 gallons) drum of self polishing antifouling paint for 650$. It is a lot of money but it is also a lot of paint, and we had no way to purchase less from the warehouse in Zona Libre just outside Colon. 130$ per gallon is not a bad price at all for antifouling, even though now we have at least two gallons more than necessary.

Most cruisers we spoke to suggested that we apply it all, the more the better they say. Following the calculation from our last haul out in St.Marys, GA that quantity should translate in five or more coats of bottom paint. If putting more paint on will grant us more time between haul outs it could save us a lot of cash, so we are going to try the heavy application.

Of course painting outdoor in the rainy season is not the easiest task. It is down right frustrating. But as we cannot control weather we move past frustration and make the best possible with it. I would not have written this post if it wasn’t raining outside, I would be dealing with the next stage of this apparently interminable task.

Writing is a good activity for rainy days. I am working on two publication deadlines for June. One, already delivered, is for Small Boat Monthly, and it’s about a traditional sailing race in Guna Yala, that should appear on June’s edition. Then I also have a long piece about the last two years of sailing for Wand’rly Magazine that I am completing, really hoping to deliver it in time for the June issue too.

If it rains a lot, I have a prompt reason to console me for the delay in painting.

Visiting the Island of Self

By fabio@lapossibilitadiunisola.com | May 1, 2018 | Comments 10 comments

I just finish reading Silence by Thich Nhat Hanh. Kate introduced me to the author through the book True Love that she brought with her onboard. We sometimes read the book together and we got into the habit of using some of its formulas during every day difficulties, or when we want to acknowledge something good. We learned to call each other “Dear One” and few of the passages were also read as vows during our marriage in front of family and friends.

I enjoyed Silence, Thich Nhat Hanh writes in a very simple and direct way and provides precious stories from which he draws lessons, little examples and suggestions that help in every day life. It also contains a powerful message.

Despite what society tells us, solitude and silence are good for us.

Even on our boat, anchored in a peaceful lagoon and isolated by most of the noise and banter of society, we are constantly seeking distraction or entertainment. When we are not working or doing chores we read, listen to podcasts, watch movies and TV series or stare at our phones. We pretend we are learning, or that we are keeping up to date with cultural novelties and world news. In reality we are filling up our minds with other people’s words, and we have no space left to listen to ourselves.

We lost the ability to be in silence and just witness the moment in front of us. We feel boredom, that nothing special or nothing interesting is happening, and that instead every moment has to be exciting, riveting, full of awe. A ray might leap in the air few yards from our boat and we don’t see it because we are reading about the White House Correspondents Dinner.

It’s very difficult to pick what’s most important when we have an infinite menu of options and the result is that we rarely just stop and appreciate the moment because there is something new to try. Doing nothing is still labeled to be uneconomical or a luxury, but being distracted by entertainment is instead advertised to us from many outlets.

Even for us who voluntarily remove ourselves from most of the stimuli and obligations of everyday life, it is hard to accept that sitting and do nothing but breathe is part of human nature.

We can make yourself busy only to a certain point on a boat, then we run out of options. We can’t easily go to the movies, meet people in bars, join a yoga class, but we can still avoid the present moment thanks to technology like smartphones, computers and bluetooth speakers.

The book explains how to accept and embrace the moments of silence, to look for them during the day, to come back to yourself many times a day, so you don’t forget the steps that leads to your inner space. This concept of sacred inner space particularly strikes my chord. Thich Nhat Hanh writes about what the Buddha calls “the island of self”: A space within ourselves that is nourishing and calming, where we seek refuge and comfort.

If when things go well we take care of this island within ourselves, then when problems arise, it will be a well suited harbor to deal with our struggles or to simply rest and recover. It is important to regularly visit this inner space and deal with the things that live there, or else, in the time of need we will find it is an unfamiliar place and we will not feel at ease. We would have nowhere to go and will direct our attention outward, eager for a distraction from our problems

I visited many islands in the physical world we call Earth. Living on a boat and knowing how to sail help to visit these far away places. Most of them, despite the difference in size and landscape are characterized by what visitors call with irony “island time”, the perception that thing happens at a different pace, sometimes with different mindset.

The more a community is remote and isolated, the more it creates and transmits a unique culture and character. People coming from the mainland are attracted and repulsed by this atmosphere, they like to bathe in it for holiday time, but then they run back to the comforts and strict schedules of their lives.

Isolation has an important role in the scientific theory of evolution. Divergent evolution and speciation happen when a reproductive barrier like a geographical division separates a small group from the main population. Change and mutations happen at a faster pace in isolated communities, and this creates the emergence of diversity or even bring to the creation of a new species. Isolation favors evolution and enhance individual characteristic that are diluted in larger population. Individuals and their unique expression matter a lot more and can drastically change the World.

If we learn to sit and be still and enjoy being here, we can listen to the change that we want to see in ourselves and in the world. We can become authentic, find our own words, inhabit our psyche.

I am already trying out some of the suggestions from the book in my everyday life, and try to share them with Kate too. We soon instituted the silence moment, when podcasts or music are not allowed and phones are put away.

We already noticed that we engage in more meaningful conversations that have nothing to do with immediate concerns or schedules when we are embraced by silence. Also we accept and encourage moments of solitude, silence, practicing the most important skill needed to live together on board: staying out of the way.

Kate and I both need personal space and that can only be achieved by paying attention to each other. Knowing that the consequences of our actions will influence the other is the first thing to reduce our negative impact on the peace of mind of the people who surround us.

When we visit the Island of Self we are making space inside and around us, and every little extra space is gold on our tiny sailboat.

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