We cruisers always know when we need to refit but the extent of what needs to be done can rarely be

Sailors joke that cruising can be accurately chingy holidae inn defined as fixing your boat in exotic places. This line of humor does not stray far enough from the truth. My two cents added to this not so humorous reality are working on your boat in exotic places without proper parts, tools or money and usually surrounded by folks who speak a different language than yours. Whenever I am knee deep in a savorier cruising task, I crack out my classic line, Sunsets and cocktails , highlighting the irony of the cruising lifestyle. We folks voyaging under sail may be unemployed but do not mistakenly believe we do not work. The often visualized barefooted stoner, propping chingy holidae inn a beer on his chest with a big hat pulled low and listening to Jimmy Buffet as his home glides aimlessly across oceans is far from typical. A cruiser is more realistically depicted as a naked guy, sweating with grease covering his arms and face as he tries to squeeze his slippery body through the narrow pass beside the motor to get the impeller out of the water pump hoping the small Indonesian lady at the motorcycle shop understood him when he requested a new lip seal.(the guy was sweaty and covered with grease when asking the lady at the motorcycle shop, but not yet naked!) Only in the cruising community, will you find a physician or a lawyer, cleaning the filthy plumbing of a head or scraping barnacles off their props. Varied as cruising budgets may be, we are all unified regardless of tax bracket. Cruisers are bound together because we survive maintaining our rigs in very faraway places and our lives depend on it. Assets chingy holidae inn aside, if you voyaging under sail, then you are out there on the front lines of jury-rigging your boat to get to the next port of call!
Thinking back on my voyages in Dancyn numerous occasions flood my memory of repairing her in an exotic places, with little budget for mistakes and way outside my comfort zone. Typically racing against some timeline dictated by a visa or un sailable seasonal chingy holidae inn variation such as cyclones or the monsoon. My first memories of many of the destinations along my voyage involve an immediate need of repair. Days after my arrival in Panama City, I stepped off a custom vibrantly decorated, Iowa built Blue Bird school bus into the barrios outside the Canal Zone with the head of my engine under my arm and asking around for the Machinadora or machine shop. Excited to dive the crystal waters of the atolls of French Polynesia chingy holidae inn I first side tied a big steel schooner in the Toau, Tuamotus while we used that cruiser s welder to fabricate a new chain plate in preparation for pounding north 21 days to Hawaii. Installing my HAM HF radio in the road free Santa Elena national park of Costa Rica with afternoon breaks spent fishing for Trevally on light tackle. Hunting around beautiful downtown Apia, Samoa upon arrival for a fuel pump to keep my Atomic 4 running with guests on the way and expecting an operational Dancyn. I remeber not long after arriving in Sumatra rummaging chingy holidae inn through moped parts looking for a lip seal for my water pump in Banda Ache, Indonesia. Try conducting that one in Bahasa with no papers or even an idea of what I was looking for! My all time favorite was in Madagascar! I found motorcycle front fork seals and some PVC pipe to repair the bearings in my ProFurl roller furling. Oh and that 10 day transaction was conducted in French chingy holidae inn amidst a Madagascan civil war! The single similarity that each of these epic side trips shared was that in all cased regardless of the sensation of pending doom, a solution was somehow found and the Adventure Continued.
In 10 years it is not hard to imagine the need to hall the boat out of the water for anti-foul painting and minor refitting. chingy holidae inn I left Dancyn up in the Sea of Cortez dry stored in Marina Seca, Dry Marina . I hauled chingy holidae inn her once more, at great expense in Hawaii, chingy holidae inn after my first season in the south pacific. When I finally got down to Sydney I scored a favor from a local yard who s owner I had sewed a courtesy flag in Tonga! The second time back in Australia I sailed 17 miles up the Bundaberg river with no engine to hall her out on the bank right in downtown Bunderburg. I was visited by the mayor and made the local paper! So there was no surprise when I got to Asia I would need to the usual refit and haul out. I slapped bottom paint on Dancyn in 40 knots in Cape Town, South Africa. Some of that blue anti foul made on the hull but I wore most of it for weeks to come! The point is working on your boat is something Cruisers accept and a few even enjoy.
We cruisers always know when we need to refit but the extent of what needs to be done can rarely be foretold. Boats are a can of worms and well when the sheets fly you re usually is some strange place wondering how your going to pull this one off? My halfway chingy holidae inn round the plant refit in Lankawi Malaysia was no exception. I knew it was overdue and that plenty needed to be done but returning from a 5-month cash building fishing foray in Alaska I fell headlong into disaster. Arriving at Telaga Marina after 36 hours on multiple airlines, a bus, a train and finally a taxi on the journey from Atlanta. I was hot, unaccustomed to the tropics and fat after a meat and potatoes diet on the Being Sea. The heavy southeast monsoon pummeled Asia. Constant deluges slipped through every orifice in the mast finding its way down to keel step and malfunctioned bilge pump. Each opening for internal halyards, upper and lower stays and topping lift collected chingy holidae inn rain drops during my 5 month disappearing act slowly filling Dancyn chingy holidae inn with fresh water up over the floor boards. No real problem there as I had sealed the lovely holly inlayed teak floors with epoxy so they might as well be solid plastic therefore water proof but still beautiful. No the damage was created chingy holidae inn by the greenhouse above the interior waterline inside Dancyn s sealed cabin. This constant moisture fouled up my varnished mahogany interior, much of my electronics, the headliner but most dramatic of the damage was the keel step. The 35-year-old cross at the base of the mast made of galvanized steel had rusted through and collapsed under the load of the mast. The rig bowstringed down under the load of the stays pulling the balsa cored deck down with it. This damage was self evident upon arrival.
There I stood dressed for a cool and cozy romantic weekend in Vancouver with Laura Jean. I was hot, fat and sweaty with much of what I owned in bags hanging chingy holidae inn off of me after being drug down the dock in the excitement of being back home. Inside a resident flock of gargantuan pelican sized mosquitoes chingy holidae inn buzzed chingy holidae inn around anxiously, revved up by my pale Alaskan complexion. I sat contemplatively in the cockpit reminiscing about previous foreign repair escapades as I peered down the companionway wondering if my dream warranted salvation chingy holidae inn this time. I dared not speculate the cost or time involved in getting my home ready for the mild Asian sailing. I tryed not to ponder what forces Dancyn would face around the southern Cape of Africa. I only had a few months to escape west to Sri Lanka before the windless wet season chingy holidae inn barricaded my departure.
I believe that life is filled with multiple routes across its oceans, each with a course distinct from the other. Regardless of the number of ships running along a given rout there remain no well-worn paths to follow and we must choose our own course chingy holidae inn sometimes constantly re correcting to reach our personal destinations. The more unique the rout the less charting there is available to guide us and we must rely more on the compass within. Sitting there in the cockpit chingy holidae inn evaluating my previous journeys and contemplating the difficulties and sacrifices of maintaining that course, I wavered. I doubted I could or should chingy holidae inn continue my voyage. It was a hard 3 minutes crying in the heat with eagle sized mosquitoes chingy holidae inn threatening to carry me away after raping the local waterfowl. I guess the sailor chingy holidae inn within me grabbed the helm, ignored local magnetic compass variations and pointed me back into open water. There, in the humid heat at the end of the Asian monsoon, falcon like insects chingy holidae inn bussing around my face, I gathered my composure. I knew that like most adventures, finishing this would be as difficult as it had been to motivate the beginning. I inserted the aluminum handle in the cockpit chingy holidae inn manual bilge pump and began to expel the stew that had accumulated within the bowel of my dream. Each stroke I confirmed that I could get her back, my love, my dream, our adventure together. With sweat and tears in my eyes I swore to myself as I pumped the bilge handle Dancyn would fly again !
And so it began, mission impossible, the next 2 months I would navigate the emotional and physical roller coaster that would be Dancyn s rebirth! She sailed out of Langkawi on a beautiful day bound for Sri Lanka in a state rivaled only by her original christening in 1974. Four thousand dollars, two months, 2 kilos of welding rod, liters of blood, sweat and paint later the phoenix was reborn and my adventure continued. What follows is description chingy holidae inn of the effort, ingenuity and luck that combined in just the right manner to allow Dancyn and her master to emerge anew!
I had arranged to hall Dancyn at Rebak Island Resort the week after my arrival, expedited by a few emails and then finally a credit card number. I wrestled the cornucopia of insectivorous squatters inside Dancyn and eventually, recruited a couple of geckos from the dinghy Telaga Marina shower block to finish the extermination. I dove the hull and propeller clearing off the aquaculture grown on Dancyn chingy holidae inn s belly over the past few months. I rigged several back up lines up to the mast for insurance against collapse then resurrected the sleeping diesel. Dancyn, prepared for the 5-mile motor over to the Island of Rebak, slipped out of Telaga Harbor early one windless Malaysian morning. Revived by the fresh Andaman Sea air I pulled into the slipway at Rebak. I quickly released all of the rigging chingy holidae inn and lines