This was quite spectacular because I have never seen office workers actually getting “hands-on” learning how to use a fire extinguisher to put out propane and liquid fuel fires.
They also watched how to deploy and connect the firefighting hose that are everywhere, as well as outside my apartment door.
So, I thought you would you find this interesting and it is certainly applicable to boaters like us.
Opposite my Apt Door by the Exit Stairwell
The Videos below, show the following:
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Putting out Propane Fires
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Propane
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Putting out Propane Fires
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Getting Fire Hose (which is then used to fill tub for the liquid portion of the training
This was quite spectacular because I have never seen office workers actually getting “hands-on” learning how to use a fire extinguisher to put out propane and liquid fuel fires.
They also watched how to deploy and connect the firefighting hose that are everywhere, as well as outside my apartment door.
So, I thought you would you find this interesting and it is certainly applicable to boaters like us.
Opposite my Apt Door by the Exit Stairwell
The Videos below, show the following:
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Putting out Propane Fires
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Propane
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Putting out Propane Fires
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Getting Fire Hose (which is then used to fill tub for the liquid portion of the training
People really don’t drive any worse than most places, in fact, driving, riding two wheelers make you drive much better, otherwise you don’t last very long.
There is no road rage. None. People will stop in the weirdest places, everyone just goes around, with nary a glance.
I’m getting accustomed to the “45° left turn”. We are taught to stop in the intersection and make a sharp 90° turn. 4 wheeled vehicles do that here, but not two wheeled conveyances, no they make a turn which puts them into opposing traffic for a while. It looks much scarier than it is to actually do. Doing it, it seems more natural since it’s easier to visualize the clear line.
Speeds are slow and the heavier the traffic, the slower the traffic, so the contacts that happen between motorbikes are usually less than 10 mph, more often only 5.
Anticipation (Defensive Driving) is the key. Everyone seems to assume that no one will stop if making a right turn or opposing traffic is just that.
Larger vehicles, trucks, buses and cars are very timid and not very aggressive.
With my new USCG Document clutched in my sweaty hand, Dauntless and I will get underway in July.
It will be three months of moving north to winter in northern Mexico. So, the trip that started in Ireland a year ago will come to a close this fall.
But I also find myself alone for the first time in a long time. Being on the ocean, cruising alone is not so bad, boring more than anything.
Coastal cruising, what we’ll be doing for the next couple years, is much more stressful. People, rocks and fishing nets are all close to shore and give you the opportunity to get into trouble.
Therefore, another set of eyes or a couple of sets becomes very helpful.
I have people coming in September and probably late August, so for now, I am looking for a couple or single(s) who would like to spend some time on Dauntless as we cruise north in Costa Rica and then the three-day passage to Mexico.
This will be a good opportunity to experience some coastal and an off-shore cruising. Email me if you think you may be interested and we can talk about more specifics.
Having some time on my hands for another couple of weeks, I thought I would share with everyone what the Cruising Costs have been for Dauntless, a 42 foot Kadey Krogen Motor yacht over the last two years.
I’ve broken out the numbers, so for instance, if you only go to a marina 10% of the time, you can adjust the numbers accordingly.
If you have any specific questions, I will be glad to answer them, but please email me vice PM.
May Thru October 2016 My approximate route. Most of the little black dots are stops
The number don’t add up to 100% because there are some personal travel expenses, which I track but are not pertinent to the story.
Also, the significant difference is that in 2016 I was able to buy 900 gallons of fuel in Ireland for very reasonable prices (far less than UK “red” diesel).
In 2015 because Dauntless range under such conditions, I had to refuel with very expensive fuel in Finland, Sweden and Norway, arriving back in Ireland with almost empty tanks.
Marina costs were significantly higher in 2016 because Portugal, southern Spain, Atlantic France are significantly more expensive than many Baltic and North Sea marinas.
2015 Baltic and North Sea Cruise
Food costs are pretty much for a couple.
In the next weeks, I will update the latter half of 2016, the trip from Rota Spain to Gibraltar, Morocco, the Canaries and Martinique.
2017 update will be from Martinique to Panama Canal, Costa Rica and up to Mexico for the winter.
I’m having a wonderful time in Vietnam. The longer I am here, the more comfortable I’ve become. Having a motorbike and not having killed myself yet, is a bigger accomplishment than crossing the Atlantic, twice.
But I am missing D so much too. I want to be back on the water. I promise to never complain how hot it is anymore. Even if my eyeballs are baking, I’ll repeat the desert southwest mantra, It’s a dry heat.
So, when I get back in early July, with my new Coast Guard Document clutched in my sweaty little hand, it will be all hands-on deck to get moving north.
All two, hands that is.
Having Micah on board for so many months, clearly spoiled me. I don’t even remember that person who crossed a third of the Atlantic alone. I haven’t been alone since the Stockholm to Waterford run of September 2015. That was eons ago.
The table below is my tentative cruising program. So, for example, it shows I’ll spend about three weeks in Costa Rica, with the last stop around Santa Elena before heading to Mexico.
I’ve made the difficult decision to bypass Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras. El Salvador ends up being a casualty, in that it’s too hard to stop there and avoid the other places. Some of my friends say I’m being ridiculous and too much of a gringo frady cat, but, I am a gringo frady cat.
I know and understand the ocean; people are harder.
I use sites like No onsite and Active Captain, to point out problem areas and then I avoid them. No matter how beautiful a place is, it’s simply not worth it for me, if I have to worry about the safety of my friends & crew, me for the boat.
Here is what the trip looks like so far. The stops listed are the primary overnight or multiple day stops, with there being no overnights except for those with the “P” in the second column. Other than the initial Santa Elena to Mexico, all the others are open to stopping:
Summer 2017
Because of my delay in getting back, I am a bit more pressed for time than I would have liked, but it’s still a third less than I’ve done in the past.
I have friends joining me from mid-August until the end of September (I think J).
My July people are not answering my calls. Ummm, I think I need to find replacements.
It made me envious; I know, that’s ridiculous, but still.
Dauntless has come so far
Dauntless spent two and a half years in Northern Europe because I knew we would like it. The weather, the people, the cultures all, the food, fit my number one criteria of staying off the beaten track and living well as I did so.
I Loved the Baltic, Sweden, Norway, Scotland & Ireland
That was expected. All the lands of coastal Northern Europe have a real seafaring culture. Every boat waves at you, especially fisherman. From Galicia in northwest Spain to the far eastern Baltic, it was a wonderful experience with minimal bureaucracy.
In those 2+ years, 20+ countries, 100+ stops, mostly in towns and cities, I probably spent less than 120 minutes on the formalities of checking in (Passports, boats documents, crew lists) and checking out.
No wait, there was no checking out.
The peoples, the lands, met and greatly exceeded my expectations.
Then, we headed south. 90% of all boats are south, mostly in the Mediterranean, you know, Italy, Greece, Turkey and southern France and Spain. Everyone wants to go there, so that’s a big Do Not Enter sign for me.
So, we headed south with low expectations. Little did I realize they were not low enough.
Prices trebled, temperatures doubled and bureaucracy was like a pig is slop. The first two stops in Portugal took the same amount of time as the last 100 stops of the previous two years.
And then it got worse.
In virtually every stop, 5 to 10 pieces of paper to sign to check-in; make sure you return tomorrow to fill out and sign the same papers to check-out. Don’t even mention the expense.
But you have read all of this before. Turns out Martinique was the high point of the entire Caribbean. It’s almost weird to say that they were the least bureaucratic. In fact, they were just like northern France. But that was certainly the exception.
So now, having endured all of that and more to get Dauntless a quarter of the way back around the world, I sit here with envy of Dirona.
But I realize it’s not Dirona I’m envious of, it’s being in the middle of the ocean.
I’m a traveler, so when I’m not, I’ll always be envious of those who are.
Should I have stayed in northern Europe for another year?
The route I ended up taking between Galicia in the Northwest corner of Spain and the Canaries.
First the additional year. I love Ireland, the people, even the weather (you never got bored). But Ireland itself is not really cruising country. Getting up and down the coasts can be a bitch, at best. I did love A Coruna though. Why not there? That was Plan B after all.
Then Schengen reared its ugly head. For those of you who still don’t know what “Schengen” is, it was the city in Luxembourg in which almost all the countries of Europe (nothing to do with E.U.) decided to have open borders in 1989. Open borders meant just that. Prior to 1991 or whenever it went into effect, one had to stop at each and every frontier and show passport. On my many drives from the Netherlands to Italy, that meant 3 border crossings. But they were pretty quick (nothing like the USA-Canada boondoggle). They never even stamped your passport. While the rule was, you were allowed in 90 days in each country, no one cared and as I said, no one stamped passports other than at airports and not even then many times.
But with Schengen and the open borders, they decided they still had to control immigration. Therefore non E.U. people could only stay 90 days out of every 180 days. So, before you could move from country to country every 90 days a stay within the rules, now, you had to leave the continent or go to the U.K. or Ireland. That’s why Dauntless was in Waterford.
Ultimately, I realized that to keep Dauntless in A Coruna for the winter would not be feasible, since I could no longer go to NYC for 3 months and then return.
By the way. So, Schengen was written to keep people from overstaying, yet today the E.U. gets about 200,000 people a month from Africa and the Middle East.
But they got Dauntless out so all is OOOKKK.
And another aside. While those morons in Washington debate who to let in. NO ONE, Dems or Republicans, talks about we have no system to track who leaves. Wouldn’t you think if we really cared, the first thing would be using one of the billion computers the government has to track people as they leave and compare that list to who came in. What a clown show!
Now, sorry for the diatribe. My route which took me down the coast of Portugal and around the corner to Gibraltar. I didn’t even see the Gibraltar Apes.
I suppose the real issue here is that we were really beaten up almost the entire trip from Porto, Portugal all the way to the Canaries. By stopping in Gibraltar, I added about another 360 miles to our trip.
I actually had a sailor in France tell me that I should go direct to the Canaries from Vigo in NW Spain. But I wanted to see Portugal and I am glad I did.
The route I should have taken
But southern Spain and Morocco, ended up being exactly what I expected, hot, dry and dry and hot.
I could have spent those weeks in the Canaries. The Canaries reminded me of everything I liked about Galicia. Great people, food and a boating culture.
Looking for something else, I came across my 2015 Post Mortem of my First Atlantic Passage. It’s fascinating. Makes me feel I should write another one for this passage. I will, but also think I would like to do a compare & contrast, a great teacher’s tool.
But this is not that. This is more about the how and why I went the way we went. In thinking about this post, I’ve been thinking a lot about this in the past couple weeks. But even now, I go back and forth, would I or would I? That is the question.
Rainbow of Ho Chi Minh City
Not my usual rainbow and sunset picture, but appropriate none the less. Being in Saigon gives me the opportunity to think, reflect and plan for the future.
Being away from Dauntless, longer than originally planned, but in fact, it’s worked out for the best. When I am on Dauntless, short term takes precedence.
As I have reflected on the events of 2016. I found myself racing through some places I really loved, like Galicia; while staying months in places I really didn’t, like Southern Spain, Morocco.
It was a tumultuous year, in every aspect. The year started with Dauntless was in the capable hands of the Kehoe Boys in New Ross, Ireland, another place I miss very much. I, in the meantime, was in NY and then Julie and I took a trip to Galicia in mid-February to see if we could keep Dauntless in A Coruna or Vigo, for the winter 2016-17. We both loved Galicia as much as we thought we would. Thus, Plan A to return to North America became Plan B.
Plan B: Ireland, Scotland for the summer, then France in August and Galicia by mid-September for the winter. Now, the Schengen three-month rule really puts a crimp on spending time (and money) in Europe for non-E.U. cruisers, but I’d spend the off times in NY and USA.
Then Life Happened and the Plan Changed, again.
Even before leaving NYC at the end of March I found myself going back to Plan A, getting Dauntless back to the New World.
So far, so good. Plan A would get me to Asia sooner rather than later. But I did not think about how much I liked the cruising in Ireland, Scotland, Atlantic France (Brittany) and Spain (Galicia).
The route from Ireland to Panama is dictated by climate and currents. Not a lot of options, but I’m not sure I really thought about the choices I did have well enough.
Which is why I being currently in Vietnam, Sai Gon or Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), to be exact.
Why here? Why now? Why not:
I have a friend here.
I needed a vacation from Dauntless.
She needed a rest from me.
I needed to be in New York for a bit, so it’s almost on the way.
It’s incredibly cheap, with wonderful food.
The people are so very friendly, nice and welcoming
And I do like women in uniform.
After this post, my writings about my other, non-Dauntless related, travels will be underDispatches From the Orient
I can write gobs and gobs about HCMC so far. Let me suffice to say in this little introduction that it is a true working city full of really nice, friendly people, with incredibly good food at even more incredibly inexpensive prices.
Today I did a little exploration of a new section of town, took four buses that cost me a total of $1.00, that’s 25 cents each.
My DInner that Cost $0.90The image on her fight is some kind of missile sitting on a stand on a table. This show was about various weapons systems, as I saw some US and Russian made stuff.
Here is a little video I took on my first days.
I found it best to just close my eyes often.
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And if you think the motobikes are numerous, think of the alternative like Bejing, where cars sit in endless traffic jams and the pollution is so bad it’s hard to go out!
If I’ve learned nothing in the last 60 years, it’s that I need 6 to 7 hours sleep on a routine basis to not get into a sleep deficit. The watches on this passage were set up to facilitate that.
In spite of the drama I like instilling in my life, for every one day of “crisis” we spend about 5 to 6 days of peaceful boredom. It’s even possible that the weekly crisis is not totally random.
Why, you wonder?
Not so much on this trip, but in the past, most of my problems were caused my me. Complacency, boredom, who knows, I decide everything is going so well, so I may aa well see what happens if I do this. This last crisis was a case in point. I was “experimenting”.
My only point here is that in spite of the appearance of the narrative, very little time is spent dealing with anything. The hardest part of a long passage is not getting bored, even more so in these conditions that virtually never changed.
So, December 23rd dawned to bright skies and easterly winds; we were feeling good.
The one lingering issue was the amount of air still in the Hydraulic steering system (which is controlled by the helm wheel or the ComNav autopilot), which caused a hellacious banging every few seconds as the auto-pilot moved fluid thru the lines. This was exacerbated by the location of my cabin directly under the pilot house.
Normally our brains filter out routine noises. I once lived next to a church steeple in a small town in Germany. Every 15 min, some combination of bells would ring: 15’ after the hour 1 gong, 30’ after 2 gongs, 45’ after 3 gongs, then 4 gongs on the hour, followed by the number of gongs based on the hour, 1 = 1, until 12.
Within a few days, I didn’t even hear it any more. But I did find it nice to be able to know the time in the middle of the night, without turning on a light. I do love Germany.
Even years later, when I would visit and sleep in the same house, after the first gong, I’d “hear” no more.
This wasn’t like that. Since the noises had no pattern, with a variable duration and frequency, my brain did not do what to make of it, so it made sure I heard everything. As the days wore on, while the noises were decreasing, they were still significant and I found myself getting less and less sleep. Three hours overnight, then an hour here, maybe a couple there.
Did that contribute to our travails on the last night? Probably a bit, maybe more, but Micah and I had the worst night of the entire trip on our last night before pulling into Martinique.
The days since our big repair had been good. In fact, Christmas, December 25th, was one of our best weather days, with winds not going over 25 knots, thus our ride was great with light rolling to 10°, worst 15°. I made our last big steak and candied sweet potatoes. We even opened a bottle of Bordeaux that my French friend PJ had given me.
Micah meticulously pours our wine
That was also our second whale sighting. There were two whales, about 30’ long cruised with us for about 15 minutes. Very nice.
The Whale Video
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Dauntless rolling along, watching this makes me miss the ocean
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I do love our Weber Q-280 grill
Our ETA to Martinique was noon on the 28th. Therefore, the night of the 27th, was our 20th night at sea since leaving the Canaries.
I started the last 24 hours by putting the last of our oil, 1.1L into the engine. I estimated that at worst, we would arrive about 1 liter low, which is normal. (and we did). But there was no point in shutting down the engine to check at this point, as I had no more oil anyway.
Just as I go to bed at 22:00, ETA in 14 hours, the starboard paravane pole bounces vertical. This necessitates stopping the boat and letting the pole fall back into position, once the rearward pressure is taken off the line to the bir
The starboard pole has never done this before in the previous 15K+ miles!
25 minutes later, it does it again. Something is not right, but I am tired and even in hindsight, it’s not totally clear to me under the circumstances what I should have done.
All evening the winds had been increasing. They were now easterly at 25 steady gusting to 40. Clearly the seas had grown, again with the annoying swells from both NE and SE and the wind driven waves from the east. Our rolls were getting substantially more, routinely to 20° and the worst, a few times an hour to 30°.
Even on a rally boat like Dauntless, a 30° roll is significant. Or I should say, it feels significant in the pilot house. If I am in the engine room, I hardly notice, even the salon is much better, but I digress.
I attributed the increased rolling to the winds and seas. It was dark out, so it’s hard to estimate seas. Also, since we were approaching the island of Martinique, the waves would start to change.
But at 02:40, all of a sudden, the boat rolled over at 15° (normal) to port, but was really slow in rolling back. This meant the opposite stabilizing bird was not working for some reason.
Sure enough, I had gotten up to see why the boat motion was different and saw right away the starboard bird being pulling along the surface.
We stopped to retrieve it. It was broken and later that morning as I looked at it, I realized the bolts that held the vane in place had come loose. That was probably the reason the pole went vertical earlier in the evening, as the bird was no longer running straight. That added a tension that eventually broke the plywood wing of the bird in half.
Now, in a strange occurrence, maybe due to lack of sleep, after we pulled the bird, we continued on with just the one port side bird deployed. I’ve run many times with only one bird. It is quite effective on a beam sea with winds that are not too strong.
But with a following sea, only one bird, is only half effective, so we rolled our way into Martinique that way.
I say strange because all that morning, I had been tripping over the extra bird that was no longer in the lazerrett. We had gotten the bird that was jammed in the lazerrett out and even cleaned up the lazerrett. So, it was sitting, inconveniently, on the port side deck. It would have taken all of 30 seconds to attach it to the starboard pole and throw it in the water.
Oh well, All’s Well that End’s Well.
And of course, as we approach the harbor of Le Marin, the only sailboat we’ve seen in 19 days decided to tack right in front of us. Much like the last idiot on our first night out of the Canaries.
Warning. Harsh language is involvedand I don’t hate all sailboats. But for the life of my with an entire ocean in front of him, why he cut across our bow is beyond me. I had been watching him for quite a while, had he delayed his tack 10 seconds or changed his course by a few degrees he would not have ended up directly in front of our bow. I had to virtually stop as to not hit him… umm, maybe that is the answer, could he have needed a new paint job?
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And my feeling were certainly exacerbated by the fact that this was only the second SV we had seen and the previous encounter, our first night out, was eerily similar.
I have a lot of pictures that things to of Vietnam so far. I’d like to keep my writings more focused than usual on a particular theme for any given post.
And while many of these writings will be about places new to me and many of you, I will also use this blog to write about all of my travels that are distinctly of a non-nautical nature, whether they be in North America, Asia or Europe.
I find Vietnam incredibly fascinating.
First Impressions:
I really admire the people, I have never been in a place where everyone seems to work all the time and still be pleasant doing it. My days are full of smiles and pleasant interactions.
The Vietnamese people I’ve run across have been the friendliest I’ve ever met. Much like Ireland, but maybe a better comparison is Latvia. Another place with incredibly friendly people and speaking an incomprehensible language. Oh, I’ve learned a few words, just a few, but with my non-musical brain, the words I think I am saying and what others hear are pretty much mutually exclusive.
My hotel is just 20 minutes south of the airport and about 30 minutes west of “downtown”. A great location. HCMC aka Sai Gon, is much like NYC, a city of neighborhoods. Pretty much everything I need or want can be had within a 15-minute walk. The only disagreeable moment occurred when I was “downtown”, in District 1. The place where Trip Advisor and that ilk tell everyone they must go and as expected my experience is just the opposite. The one place I will not return.
They actually make things here. In fact, they seem to rebuild everything. There is remarkedly little trash. And everyone seems to be working literally from dawn to dusk (and later).
Nothing is thrown away. The little sacks of garbage that are picked up periodically seem full of inedible things and a little plastic. These people would probably build a whole new civilization with all the crap Americans throw away in a week.
IF there are no free seats on the bus, a young person always insists I take their seat.
Air Conditioning on the buses works better than in New York City buses and I am sure the buses cost 1/100th
Costs are even better than anticipated. Bus costs 20 cents. The three of us has a 6-course dinner for $19 the other day, yesterday it was $15. This is very typical. My lunch today was $0.90. Yes, less than a US dollar.
Foods are as tasty as one would expect.
There are a million coffee places and the iced coffee is like the old days in NYC, strong and good. (Not like today where Starbucks gets people to pay $7 for a glass of water with coffee color)
HCMC is full of trees and motorcycles.
Upcoming:
A city of motos and scooters and I am the only pedestrian.
How to cross the street and live to tell about it.
I have a lot of pictures that things to of Vietnam so far. I’d like to keep my writings more focused than usual on a particular theme for any given post.
Dauntless at Sea 