Copyright (C) 2003 Adam Boggs
Dear Friends,
I hope you are doing well! I finally have a chance to get in touch and let you know how things have been going. This trip has been awesome so far! It just occurred to me the other day that it has been a month since I left Boulder. My, how time flies sometimes. I'm still trying to convince myself that I actually quit my job and am actually doing this because it doesn't seem real sometimes. Am I really still in Boulder just dreaming this, and will I wake up with a nasty hangover?
This ended up being long, so here's the executive summary if you're in a hurry: I spent some time in Florida on the beach and visiting family, flew to bermuda, got on a boat and sailed across the ocean, and now I'm in the Azores, probably heading off to europe in the next week or two. Now, if you're still with me, here are the real details!
I left May 29th to fly to Florida where I stayed at my dad's house in Cape Canaveral and visited with my family there. The house is two blocks from the beach, and I spent many hours walking up and down it. It's amazing how that boardwalk down the way a bit seems so close and you realize it's a 2 hour walk to get down there. Except for a little (more) sunburn, it was great to spend time on the ocean. It gave me some time to make peace with the sea, meet some other sailors, watch dolphins feeding, talk to people flying kites, and see if anyone caught any fish. As always, I had a great time with my family there - my two adorable sisters and my little neice and nephews. They're growing up so quickly, being 6, 8, and 10 now (roughly).
I spent a week in Florida. One of the most memorable events for me was a wild tropical thunderstorm that ripped through the area one evening. You all know how excited I get by severe weather. I could tell this was going to be a big 'un because of the green color in the clouds as it approached (which I later found out, from our resident meteorologist on the boat, was caused by hail refracting the light). The lightening was tremendous, with continuous strikes occurring on all sides nearly continuously. Justin (my nephew) and I were sitting out on my sister's enclosed back patio watching it. FLASH! KABOOM! We couldn't even count the time between them. The rain was like nothing we get in Colorado. The sky just opened up and water seemed to be flowing from a hose. The winds were howling, blowing the rain through the screen walls so we had to keep moving to avoid getting wet. We heard later that there were at least 4 funnel cloud sightings from those storms, power out everywhere, cars blown off the road, and large areas of flash flooding. It was wonderful! Then the caucophony stopped as suddenly as it had started, and we were treated to an amazing double rainbow, sunset, and residual lightening show. It amazes me how something so rough and violent can produce such elegance and grace.
Spending time with family was a lot of fun, and I was nervous about leaving the comfort of the house-by-the-beach and the people I knew to travel out into the great unknown. I flew to Bermuda on June 7th via Atlanta. The trip from Florida to Atlanta was in a tiny plane sitting next to a huge older woman who wheezed and really enjoyed talking about the new combination cane/folding chair she got for the long walks down the airport concourse. Luck was on my side for the longer Bermuda trip, where I sat next to a woman who, of all the luck, had spent many years cruising and had done several trips across the ocean in a sailboat. She gave me some great advice and her and her husband offered to let me share a taxi with them (they even paid!) to the harbour. Already I was getting to meet cool new people and realized that the people I met and talked to would be what makes this trip so rich.
I met up with Evi's sailboat "Wonderland" in St. George's Harbour and met the crew. Evi was a professor and mentor for me at CU, and I have worked with her a lot over the years, so I knew what to expect. She can be a little flakey sometimes, but I had full faith in her and her boat for being safe and getting us across the Atlantic Ocean all in once piece. John McGinley and Amanda Stevenson were to be the other crew. John is also from Boulder and is a weather guy who works for NOAA. Amanda is my age and is about to go back to school at Columbia for her MBA, and just always wanted to do a trip like this. She was a big unknown to all of us (and all of us to her), but it ended up working out well. Unlike me, she actually has some sailing experience even. Talking with John about weather stuff was a lot of fun. It's something I've considered maybe going back to school to learn, or maybe combining my computer skills with my interest in weather and aviation. Now I have some contacts in the field. Plus, being on a boat in the middle of the ocean with a weather guy is really useful. His friends back home would email us specialized forcasts on the slow packet radio email link we had.
We spent several days in Bermuda provisioning, repairing the boat, and doing a little bit of touristy stuff in between. Evi and I helped the local sail shop/internet cafe set up a wireless network hub to try to get internet access to the harbor. It didn't work great, but they were appreciative and joined us for dinner that night - Steve and Susanne - at a nice Italian restaurant in St. Georges. They had some great sailing stories and gave us some insight into what it's really like to live and work in Bermuda. Their sail shop ended up being a frequent meeting place for us, partly because we could get little bits of free email there. They had a talking parrot named Harry who was owned by an old gray beard sailmaker. What a character! (both the bird and the old sailmaker). We were waiting for some parts to show up there via FedEx for our wind vane, an ingeneous device that takes changes in the wind, amplifies them via a paddle in the water which drives two lines attached to the steering wheel. It will keep you sailing with a constant angle to the wind with no electricity (which is always scarce since we only have a wind generator, a solar panel, and two marine batteries). In a pinch we also have a diesel engine to motor with and charge the batteries, but we tried not to run it if possible.
We finally set sail Wednesday morning at 9:30am, June 11th and arrived here in the Azores Thursday June 26th in the afternoon (yesterday as I write this). We're docked in the town of Horta on the Island of Faial in the Azores, 38 degrees 32.2 minutes North latitude, 28 degrees 37.4 minutes West longitude. The trip over here was 2 pretty intense weeks on the boat. My first impressions were "wow, the ocean is so BLUE!" and "the waves are much bigger than I had imagined". I didn't get seasick at all, which was a big unknown for me since I had never been on a boat on the ocean. There was also a surprising lack of wildlife at first, and most of what we saw were portuguese men of war with their little sails that make them look like plastic bag trash floating in the water. The first few days lasted forever and it was hard to believe we had a week and a half more to go. There's really not a whole lot to do. The weather was great, we were running downwind at about 6.5 to 7 knots (7-8 mph). As John put it, crossing the ocean on a sailboat is like jogging 1700 miles. It's hard to describe the feeling of being out in the middle of nowhere. Not like Nebraska middle of nowhere where you can pull over at a gas station to read a map under a street light and make a phone call. Out on the ocean it all looks the same, so being here is often exactly the same as being there, and the only difference between the two is the numbers the GPS shows are different. The nights can be pretty amazing though, with a huge sky full of stars (they're not as clear as at altitude but there are still a lot of them!) and the phosphorescence in the water that creates little green glowy points, blobs, and streaks. The other night it looked like the boat was pooping glow balls out the back, trailing them along for at least 100 feet. Flushing the head in the dark also excites the little glowing critters while whisking away your waste. Very entertaining.
The weather roughened up after a while though, and we were seeing 16-18 foot seas and 40 knot winds for a couple of days. If I thought the little swells at the beginning were big, these were collossal! It's hard to describe what it's like to see a 20 foot wave coming at you. You feel like you're either in a hole or on the top of the world. Moving around in the cabin with rough seas is a trip! You always have to have 3 points holding on or you get thrown wildly around. This makes pulling your pants down to use the head quite interesting. We all compared bruises on our hips, arms, legs, head, feet, and anywhere else that might be used to keep yourself from falling over. We normally ate very well, with each of us taking turns to cook. If you cook, you had to do the dishes too, encouraging you to clean as you go or use fewer dishes. On the rough days though we stuck to cup-of-noodles, as even boiling water on the gimballed stove can be tricky.
There were three notable events during the two week journey. We caught a nice 26" mahi mahi (aka dolphin) the first week and had yummy sushi, fillets, and fish tacos. Unfortunately, we didn't catch any more, but that was exciting and very tasty. A couple of days after that John hit the pressure valve on the fire extinguisher with his knee and filled the entire cabin with a yellow powder. It's non-toxic, but a real mess to clean up! Finally, on the last day while approaching land (woo hoo, LAND!) my fear that humans had totally destroyed all of the wildlife in the sea was calmed somewhat as we saw huge numbers of dolphins and about 12 whales! The dolphins would swim by in packs, sometimes as many as 20 or so, swim in the bow wave for a while, and then take off. They are so much fun, and I almost think the play around the boat as much for our pleasure as their own. The whales were a wonderful sight. We saw some spouts off in the distance, and I had thought I saw one the day before (and even got a "Nessie" shot on my camera that left the others unconvinced). Then suddenly right beside the boat I hear a huge whooosh and a spray of water coming up. WHALE!! Everyone thought I was teasing since I had cried wolf previously. You mean you didn't HEAR THAT? Then it surfaced again and everyone saw it that time. See, I wasn't hallucinating after a long trip at sea. At least not that time. After that we saw several schools of different whales go by, and I got some better pictures of them. Very amazing creatures, and seeing them was a really special finish to an otherwise rather homogeneous ocean experience.
We had 24 hour watch on the boat, so each of us took a 3 hour watch at night and it was more relaxed during the day when everyone was up watching. My watch was from 6-9am and was pretty straight forward. Since we stayed on Bermuda time, the sun was coming up at 3:30am and so it wasn't a big deal. We had LOTS of time to just hang out and talk, read, write, cook and eat. My friend Mark got me a copy of Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. After two weeks of reading 6 hours a day or so, I'm 700 pages into the 1200 page book. I am such a slow reader! It's nice to have the time to dedicate to it though. Thanks for the book, Mark. The others all plowed through about 5 books each. Oh well. About halfway through I started getting tired of it and a little homesick. The sea is relentless, and if it's rough out you get no rest from it. I was sick of the food, the people, the lack of visual stimulation, and was ready to be on land. That went away as we started getting closer to land, at which point I started wishing the trip wasn't over yet. I definately got the sailing experience though, and won't leave feeling like I didn't really get anything from it. That kind of solitude is bound to bring some introspective moments, and it surely did.
My plans now are to hang out in the Azores for a bit if possible. Horta is a cool town, and I hope to climb Pico, a huge volcano right next door, 7000 feet from sea level up. Evi might have to fly to New Zealand to give a talk for a week and I'm not sure I want to hang out that long on the boat. I'm looking around to see if someone will be sailing to spain or portugal in the next week or so. It's about a week long sail, but would be cooler than flying. Worst case I can fly into Lisbon for pretty cheap I think. I'm roughly looking at visiting Spain, southern France, Northern Italy, Swizerland, Germany, Netherlands, northern France, England, and then returning home. I expect to spend at least a couple of months there since that's how long my eurail pass is valid for, but I'm keeping it open for now. I still have no return flight. I'm roughly planning on returning at the beginning of October.
I hope everyone is doing well. I will try to send out shorter and more frequent updates. Sorry for the long one, but I've been at sea with very little connectivity to the real world; no newspapers, telephones, internet, or other people to talk to except for occasional radio conversations with other boaters. I have a whole ton of pictures that I will try to upload when I can, and will try to send a pointer out to them. I miss you all and hope you'll all keep me up to date on what's going on at home.
-Adam
