November 2013

For some days here, morale wasn't too high. Motivation was difficult to find, and the heat didn't help. We started to slack, but then, the engine started. With it's deep roar it gave us a much needed energy boost. Then the new battery was hooked up, and music started to sound. We can do it, it seems! We can get out of here!!

A month I've been now, in this limbo. Neither at sea, nor in India. Days and days we've spent on this Bolgatty Island. With it's green garden and blue pool, it's not a bad place to be. For a week maybe. But then again, we plan to spend weeks at a time sailing, even a whole month! At least here I got space to walk around. And fresh food and water. Gerd cooked one night something akin to what we'll have on the third week at sea, when all the fresh produce is gone, and we have only some staples. Flour, powdered milk, potatoes, onions, garlic, and ghee. Some canned or dried food might complete the meal. Peanut butter for some luxury.

The food commission (formed by Ali, Majed and Ryan) got the first provisions today. Four boxes of noodles, peanut butter, coffee, oil and some more things. Promptly everything disappeared into Liberty's holds. With all the junk we've thrown away, there's plenty of space for food. And water, we'll be taking a ton of that. Literally.

So what is there left to do? Some projects we have going that started the very first day. Everything feels now like it's at 90%, but it's those nasty little details that take the longest. As Marc said, it's so that the first 80% takes 20% of the effort. Yet things are starting to fall into place. We're now spending more time into sorting things out and stowing them away, than in cleaning, or making them. Yet I'm going to bed as tired as always! Don't seem to ache as much in the morning though. Maybe I'm getting stronger? Maybe workloads have just gotten smaller. Even paint jobs are getting done, we're now painting inside: the floor, the walls. Green is the best color against seasickness, says Tristan Jones, so we paint the floor dark green. But Gerd wants a parrot boat, so there's also orange, yellow, blue, and bright green going around. Try everything! He said. It's going to look great on film. There's a new bamboo project being though of. Relatively quick to put in place, and will increase Liberty's anti-yachtness. We shall see.

For now, the ship has made it's first movement. up till this moment, we had been working with it looking westwards. For years it sailed in that direction as well. But we have turned it around. We now look east. It is important not only for it's symbolical significance, but because we got to work on some details on the other side, and because the harbor opens eastwards. So, in other words, we are getting ready to leave.

And I must not forget. If you care to contribute with a beer or some fishing lures, come here!

The lines we drew on the map were based on the October and November winds. But those are almost gone now, and we are still in harbor. From the first day we got here, we had to think of an alternate plan, in case we couldn't make it to Singapore. So now Plan B has become Plan A. Now unless anything happens and we have to stop ,like someone feeling too seasick and not getting over it, or the boat getting a flat tire, we're going the long way.

This means that, for the first week we would be on the same track as planned. Sail south towards the Equator then, past Sri Lanka, East and towards Sumatra. Once nearing the equator, we should get westerly winds, and a westerly current, so that should turn out fine. But once nearing land, we'll turn south again following the coast of Sumatra and island hopping, instead of the originally planned north. No more Singapore, straight out to East Timor.

Singapore is a nice destination, for sure, but it's a big city, and all of them are the same. More or less shiny tall glass buildings, some parks, and lots of cars and people. That's not our destination. We aim for the small islands, for the remote places. In fact, we'll have no cruising permit for Indonesia, nor visas, se we can't technically make any landfalls. Maybe on small villages we will, and if there's police, we claim to be on an emergency: low on water, fuel, food, or something. Sadly, we can't claim to have an extra urgent need for seeing the komodo dragons. Still we may just pass through there. We shall see.

Our food and fuel list was calculated for the long way from the start, but only as a secondary route. Now that we are making it the first choice, there are some changes to be made. Like adding more cheese to the list, or taking more seriously the idea of drying fruit with the sun. If we don't enter the indonesian seas, were everything is over-fished, then we might get some fresh fish here and there. And, thinking of fresh, we may be wanting fresh eggs, so we're getting chickens!

Chickens! Just a couple of them, feed them food scraps- we still have to build them a nice cozy coop. Maybe even gimbalted. We don't want seasick chickens on board! Gerd already had one in another trip, and he says they're better than TV, you can just watch them for hours. So don't donate for me. Do it for the chickens!!

Soon we will have a spot messenger, so that, when we sail, you can know where we are. And for updates and pictures by all of us, check out our new Community Facebook Page!

This is the first country I've been to where asking around doesn't really get you anywhere. People just seem to repeat the last couple of words you said, but give no indication of having understood what it is you were saying. They bob their heads sideways, with no clear indication of yes or no (although a generally affirmative gesture, I've come to interpret it as an ok or "hmpf") Then, when and if they understood what you were saying, their first answer is generally no. Even if you are just asking for directions on how to get to the store next door. No. I may exaggerate a bit, but although there's many people with a great understanding of english, the above has already happened separately to all of our crew, more than once. It may be our own fault of course, assuming that in a former British Colony people would speak english...

It's a chaotic place, for sure. But I come from Mexico, so it doesn't really scare or astound me. Indian chaos is above the mexican, and over turkish chaos too, but not by that much. At least not in the south. Go to the north, they say, go all the way to Kathmandu if you want chaos. It's airy, slow and quiet here in comparison.

Yet India, in this part of the trip, has been more a setting than a player. I've spent most of my time in the ship, carrying this and sanding that; learning slowly how to fix a thing or another... It's still gorgeous place. At sunset, you see some shadows moving in the dimming light. They fly towards the sun, towards the orange pink horizon. They are not birds. Atop the mast, you can see their little snouts and big eyes. The flying foxes come quite close to the boat. Never too much. They keep their safe distance. Not like the magpies. They don't realize your presence until they're about to perch, and leave crowing displeased. Or will angrily crow at you while you climb that big, white stick, before flying away.

The actual players for this trip are:

The Liberty Sailboat.
A 30 ton sloop, ferrocement, big and sturdy. It's slow to wake, but will race away once momentum has gained hold. Her aesthetic is that of a truck. With big pipes, a new gray tarp, huge anchor and roaring engine. Born in New Zealand, registered in Vanuatu, it is a first class ocean crosser, almost ready to get back out there.

Gerd
Has been sailing for longer than I've been living. He has lots of stories to tell and techniques to share. This is his house we are living in, and his journey we are sharing . He is a security freak, and handhold fanatic. His accident record while at sea is an impressive cero, and we intend to keep it that way.

Ali
He's the oldest of the bunch, yet full of life and energy. An Iranian adventurer, he has done a couple of ocean crossings, and teaches dinghy sailing in the San Francisco Bay Area. He sings persian songs while working, and talks in a deep voice when teaching something. Strangely enough, he also likes humming La Cucaracha or Cielito lindo, not songs I thought I'd hear in India, from an Iranian! Por all you farsi readers, his thoughts are published here, on The Boum Project.

Majed
A young filmmaker, he met Ali a few weeks prior to this trip and wished he could join the adventure. His wish was granted and he is now the volunteer cook while we are in harbour. As a rule, Gerd does not take on any crewmember that does not speak English, French or German, but has made an exception for Majed. So he is now learning and improving daily. Smart and couragious, he has filmed in Afganistan during the fighting, and has been featured in film festivals. He intends to capture this journey and the life at sea. We haven't even left and he already has hours of video!

Tihomir
An Iceland based Bulgarian linguist, he loves to travel and bike the world. He has already been to New Zealand, and may very well go all the way there again. He is already learning farsi from the persian gang, and helps me explain some Spanish concepts to Ali, or English to Majed. He joined this trip not only for the adventure, but because we're going through some of the most language diverse places in the world, and he is eager to learn some more.

Ryan
The youngest of the crew (for now!) he's the nephew of one of Gerd's best friends. A proud Alaskan, tall and strong, he was the last to join, but fell straight into working. Twenty-nine hours of travel? What jet lag? He brought with him nice and shiny fishing equipment, lures and even arrowheads. It seems like it will be fun having him around! Too bad he's only here for six months though.

And Andrés
Then there's me! The only non-smoker on the boat, who will take any chance to ask for donations for the trip|!

Three more are supposed to join us in Singapore, yet they feel as part of the crew already. Milie, Kiki and Filippo, we can't wait to meet you!
For now, the full moon is here, yet we are not ready to sail. I'm getting restless but, slowly but surely, we're getting there.

There is a general idea that yachts and sailing are a life of luxury and spending, a world reserved for the rich and/or retired. The thing is, the sea is big. Bigger than any human is, and it cares not for bank statements. In this community there are all and every kind of people out there, and there may come a moment when the super-yacht calls out to the rundown family boat for assistance, an extra liter of diesel, or a friendly smile.

There are, of course, the super-rich skippers, who will throw money at their problems and let experts solve them. There's also the average Joe, trying to make a living like everyone else, solving their problems through time and creativity... Because owning a boat is problems, never doubt that! Big and small. And the bigger the boat, the bigger the problems. But if you want to sail, you have to find a way through or around them. And we want to sail. Gerd is, well, not a rich Swiss. He's a lot closer to broke than rich. And his boat is big. So we're working on a small budget and a big ship. Lots of problems, lots of tasks. "Slowly but surely" has become the slogan for this stage of the trip.

What tasks?--you may ask. Well, kind of everything! From learning to fold (flake) the sails, to making coffee and getting rid of rubbish (lots of those two)--but mainly tapping rust. That was my first task: get the anchor chain out, and start tapping the rust away. That's an euphemism for tirelessly hammering down the chain until all the flaky rust has fallen, then wirebrush it to get rid of some more. After that I had to tap the rust out of the chainplates and stanchion posts. Then the mast. And of course, I also had to clean the tools out, for we would be using them later. That was the first two days, then there was more people, and I was relieved of the chain. Mixed in-between all the maintenance tasks, there are also the projects: we are expecting to have some heavy rain on the way, so we put up a heavy tarp on the cockpit; some parts of the self-steering mechanism had rusted away, so we had to repair it. And one of the guiding principles in this boat is that when something breaks, you should aim to make it better than it was before. So the boat is a longterm project, always open for improvement.

As for the short term, we are soon ready to leave! Well, "soon". There's still several things to finish: getting the motor and electricity up and running, stitching the sails and stocking up on food, water and diesel, for example. And thinking of supplies, anyone feels like helping out for the trip? I set up a croudfunding page, for none of us has a bulky wallet, and every penny helps! So if you feel like helping an adventurer out, click here!! As for the workload, the crew's finally complete, all six of us are now in the boat! So I hope one day I can escape to nearby touristy Cochin, and see a tiny bit more of the surrounding India. But the final stretch is coming up, and it promises long working hours, well into the night. We need to make the mistakes and have the problems now, early on, when we can fix them, and not later on, when we are somewhere in the ocean! So back to work!

"How can these people aim for Mars, when they can't even make a decent stove?", we were wondering one of this days. Food has been an interesting aspect of this experience, and it promises to continue being so. Being in India we are in contact with lots of new flavors and combinations, but working on the boat we don't eat out too much, we mainly cook ourselves. And there lies the source of some of our headaches: not the food, rather the cooking devices.

First we got a kerosene stove. It was worth 800 rupees. It is worth 800 rupees, not a penny more. For starters, there are lots of shops selling this kerosene stove. They are specially designed for kerosene. So, do they sell kerosene? Nope. Nowhere around can you find it. People just use it with diesel. So it smokes. A lot. It also spits and blows out if you look at it funny, AND there's no valve to regulate the flame. You just pump air into a tank, and try not to pump it too hard, or too little. And of course, anything in a close radius will get all black with diesel soot. Not nice.

Second one was a gas stove. More "expensive", at around 1200 rupees in the market, with a 4kg gas bottle included. All seemed fine, the burner sits confortably atop the cylinder. After some fiddling around we managed to turn it on... A short time later though, we smelled gas. Our brand new cylinder was leaking. So we tried to adjust it, and realized it's sealing is almost non-existant, and even when we got it under control, the stove itself decided to go on strike indeffinitely. No luck with this indian stoves. Yet how many people are cooking with this pieces of useless scrap? Of course, better off people have no need of this outdated technology, yet in a country so big, even if just one in every hundred are using them, that's millions!

So, rumaging through the ship, we found an old emergency stovetop, and a gas bottle. But of course, it wasn't going to be that easy! First, every country has it's own different standard for gas fittings, so you can't just, you know, fill it. And second: gas tanks must be, by indian law, painted red. But even if we just painted ours red, that still wouldn't solve the fitting issue. The solution is to get a local cylinder, conect it with a hose to ours, and turn it upside down on top of the other so the gas flows down. Then pray no one dares to smoke anywhere close... So a local guy with "friends" took our cylinder, to be given back to us next monday, full. A simple thing done in the shadiest way possible.

So in the meantime, we have no fire, even though we have three stoves laying on the pontoon. Fortunatelly, you can go far with an electric kettle and a persian cook. And in this heat, who wants anything other than a fresh salad? We have tea, we can cook quinoa and noodles, and get fresh acid yogurt or some fried finger food from the stores around. We could deffinitely be worse.

We are now starting to provision ourselves for the crossing. The trip may take anywhere from three weeks to three months, if winds foce us to follow plan B. We must be ready for anything... So how to stock a boat for six people, for three months, in a way we won't finish the trip eating just rice with canned beans? And do so in the cheapest way possible? That remains to be seen. For now, there are more pressing matters at hand, like checking all wires and getting electricity working on the boat, fixing the self-steering mechanism or launching the sailing dinghy. One day at a time, slowly but surely, we are getting there.