Blog Archives

February Winds Down

2/26/2014

I can't believe we are coming to the end of February already. But what the heck, it's a short month.

The end of February means Carnaval in La Paz. We’re kind of excited. The spirit is building in the city. All of our boater friends are getting anxious. The workers are erecting hundreds of tents for vendors and building the stage along the Malecon. There are three parades and bands every night along with all sorts of entertainment. It’s gonna be a big party.

The end of February also means the clock is ticking. I launched my KickStarter project last week.

KickStarter is kind of like PBS’s pledge drive. We have 30 days to raise enough money to complete my project.

The purpose of the project is to raise funds to publish a printed version of The Inside Passage for those who prefer paper books. It will allow me to hire an editor and cover and interior designers. I think that the Ted Higuera Series deserves to be published in a professional manner. Without your help, the book will only be available as an eBook.

So far, I only have about 10% of the pledges needed. For those of you who would like to help, please act soon. There are only 24 days left.

If the project doesn’t reach its goal, then you will not be billed. If I do reach the goal, then you get rewards based on the level of your pledge and I will have enough money to publish the book.

If you haven’t visited my KickStarter page yet, click here . Please go there today. I need all the help I can get. Also, please tell your friends. I need lots of individual supporters to get this book off the ground.

The Victory sailing in La Paz Bay

Now we return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

We took the Victory out sailing this week. You heard right. We left the dock.

I have only had the boat out once since I hurt my shoulder last May. And that was when I hurt my knee.

We had a group of “friends of friends” who were in La Paz and wanted to go sailing. Of course, Dawn had to outdo herself in catering to their every need.

There wasn’t much wind, but we motored out of the bay and set sails anyway. We ghosted along down towards the Mogote, the long sand spit that protects La Paz Harbor.

At the Mogote, we dropped the anchor and I loaded our guests into the dinghy. We took off in search of the elusive whale shark.

A gentle giant

The whale shark is a shark, not a whale. It gets its name from its size and its feeding habits.

Adults average about 32 feet and 40,000 pounds, about the same size as a California grey whale. There have been sightings of whale sharks as large as sixty feet and 100,000 pounds reported.

The whale shark cruises along near the surface of the sea, sucking in plankton, small fish and tourist wearing Bermuda shorts, black socks and wingtips. (Just kidding, it spits outs the tourists.) It uses pads in its mouth to filter out the food and exhales the water through its gills. This is very similar to the way baleen whales feed.

As far as I know, La Paz in the only place on the Pacific Coast where you have a good chance of seeing whale sharks. While these large fish inhabit all of the tropical waters of the world and have known feeding and birthing grounds off of Austrailia's Great Barrier Reef, Belize and St. Helena Island, the warm, shallow waters off of El Mogote here in La Paz attracts the great beasts every year.

We often see juvenile whale sharks here, so there is some speculation that this is a birthing ground. Like most fish, whale sharks lay eggs. However, the mother keeps the eggs in her belly until they hatch, then releases the baby sharks live into the ocean. The hatchlings are about two feet long when born.

A hardworking crew member

We searched for about an hour in the dinghy before we found one.

He was a big bruiser. He had to be at least thirty feet long. Well over twice the length of our inflatable dinghy. He was brown with white dots on top and covered in barnacles. His huge mouth acted as a giant vacuum cleaner as he swum slowly along just under the surface. Occasionally his dorsal fin and tail broke the water. We pulled alongside of him and just quietly followed him for a couple of miles. It was an amazing sight.

Despite its size and being a member of the shark family, it is a very gentle creature. Swimmers get in the water and swim alongside these amazing animals every day. As a matter of fact, towards the end of our encounter, the tourist pangas spotted our shark. They filled the water with so many swimmers that I finally broke off contact and returned to the Victory because I feared that they would swim into our propeller.

Our guest had nine and sixteen year old daughters. Needless to say, the girls were impressed. Heck, I was impressed. If you are coming to Baja from December to February, be sure to get in touch with us. We’d love to take you shark watching. There is nothing like a close encounter with a whale shark.

Tom and Carl enjoy the cruise

Back on board the boat Dawn served us carne asada tacos for lunch, then we pulled the hook and set the sails.

A nice wind kicked up for the sail home. Carl. the grandpa, is a lifelong sailor. I can’t tell you how happy he was to sit at the helm and steer the Victory back to La Paz.

But all good things come at a price. Dawn and I were exhausted after our day of sailing and playing hosts. It took us a couple of days to put the boat back in order after our cruise.

The good news is that I was able to handle the boat with a bum knee. Dawn says that getting me back at sea was the biggest mental boost that I could have.

Today I went back to the physical therapist to work on my knee. It hurts much less than before, but I still don’t have any strength in it and it is very swollen. The doctor says I can’t start therapy until I can get the swelling down.

All in all, we had a pretty good week. Stay tuned for our Carnaval highlights next week. (By the way, Carnaval is spelled correctly. That’s how they do it down here in Mexico.)

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February 14th, 2014

2/14/2014

18 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day everybody.

Marti and Garry with us on our wedding day.

It was on this day in 1981 that Connie and I got married. It’s hard to believe that thirty-three years have passed since that date. It seems like only days or weeks ago. It remains one of the happiest days of my life.

A lot has happened since then. We were blessed with two wonderful daughters. They made our house a home and brought a depth to life that I never could have anticipated. To this day, I believe that the best thing we ever did was to bring those girls home with us.

The years passed, the girls grew and life went on.

When we first met, we developed a deep friendship that slowly turned to love. We worked together for two years before either of us realized that our relationship was deeper than co-workers. Connie figured this out before I did. I’ve always been a little slow on the uptake when it comes to affairs of the heart.

Like every couple we had our ups and downs. I don’t think we had more than four or five fights during the course of our marriage. Always, they revolved around work. I was spending too much time at work and not enough time with the family.

When we first met, we both worked in the restaurant industry. Restaurants suck the life out of you. You are on call around the clock.

After I quit restaurants and went to work in the IT industry, I don’t think we ever had another fight. I was able to provide for the family and be at home on evenings and weekends.

Connie and I hiking in the Cascades with Katie

We always pulled together well in double harness. There were plenty of nights when I would get home from work and Connie would hand me a child and say “Save your daughter’s life.”

Each of us was always looking out for the best interest of the other. If you put your mate’s interest ahead of your own and she does likewise, there is always someone who has your back.

Then came the cancer. On December 23rd, 1999 Connie was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer. (I still have a hard time spelling cancer without a capital “C.”) It was awful.

We taped our Christmas celebrations that year, not knowing if she would ever see another Christmas. For the New Year, we went to a Millennium party. Connie was so sick that she spent the evening in the hostess’ bed while the girls played with sparklers and the adults toasted the New Year.

Life was good to us. Connie went into remission after several rounds of chemo in May of 2000. By the fall, the cancer was back.

Does this woman look like she has cancer?

For ten years she fought the disease. It was a whole new chapter in our life stories. Our lives revolved around doctor appointments, chemo, hospital stays and surgery. We marked the days on the calendar by what kinds of doctor’s appointments she had.

The cancer ravaged her body. She went from a healthy, beautiful woman to a shriveled up little old lady in ten short years.

Cancer brought us gifts as well. Our Cancer Support Group which meets every Tuesday at Group Health in Seattle was a wonderful find. We met many new, dear friends that we wouldn’t have known if not for the disease.

We learned to live for the day and to enjoy life’s little pleasures.

Ultimately, cancer won. On April 17th, 2010 I was awakened when Connie knocked over her bedside lamp. It had been a long night.

All night long, I had been up tending to her. Her pain was unimaginable. I called the Group Health consulting nurse several times and each time was told to administer more morphine. I began to worry if I was going to over dose her.

After she knocked over the lamp, she was still. I checked her breathing and pulse. There was nothing there. She was finally at peace and out of pain.

My heart skips a beat, then runs wildly when I type these words. Our anniversary always makes me look back on our years together.

However, I look back with joy, not dread. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson, “She made me a better person.” I would not be who I am today if I had not met Connie.

Dawn, the best first mate ever

I consider myself to be an incredibly lucky person. I do believe that most people don’t ever experience the kind of relationship I had with Connie. It will never happen again.

Lightning doesn’t strike twice.

But wait a minute . . . maybe it does.

I was terribly lonely without Connie. I bought an old boat and was working on rebuilding it. My goal was to sail the boat to Mexico to re-explore the places I fished with my father fifty years ago.

While I was working on the boat, I put an ad in OK Cupid. I never intended to meet anybody permanent. After all, I would be sailing out of Seattle within the year.

But somehow, I stumbled upon Dawn’s page. I don’t know why I answered her ad. She wasn’t my type and she had two dogs. Did I mention that they were really big dogs? Great Danes.

The boat monkey

If you know me, you know that I am afraid of dogs. What in the world was I doing dating someone with not one, but two Great Danes?

So we got to know each other. Dawn grew up in a sailing family. Her parents owned a Newport 30. She was on the water from the time she was a tyke.

She had an adventurous spirit. At age twenty-three she moved away from Seattle and went to live in the US Virgin Islands for a decade. Then she spent a decade in Florida. She was ready to head off on a new adventure.

She had no kids, nothing holding her to Seattle.

The only negative I could see was her taste in men. What sane woman would want to hook up with an aging widower nearly two decades her senior with a beat up old boat who was planning on sailing off into the wild blue yonder?

She earned her way into my heart. The day after our first date, we were stepping the masts on the Victory. On a whim, I called her and asked her if she would like to come down and watch.

From that day on, she was a constant presence on the Victory. She cleaned, scraped, sanded and painted. She went up the mast. She did any of the dirty work necessary. The boat could not have been completed without her.

Somehow, during the two years we worked on the boat, it just became understood that she was part of the great adventure.

When I set sail from Seattle in August of 2012, Dawn was on board. She was a valuable part of the crew and saved our lives and the boat in our shipwreck at Abreojos. Without her, the adventure would have ended right there. (Click here to read about it.)

The crew of the Victory

Then, through the three months of sorrow and pain in Ensenada, she stuck with me and worked her ass off helping to rebuild the boat.

There were days when my body just wouldn’t answer the bell. I couldn’t get up and face another day of work. So I stayed home and slept and watched TV all day. Dawn still went to work. While I lazed in our apartment, rebuilding my strength, she was on the boat cleaning, sanding and painting.

There is not a surface on the boat that Dawn hasn’t painted or varnished. While I’m typing this, she is re-finishing the brightwork.

How can you not love that kind of woman?

As I said earlier, I do believe that most people don’t experience the kind of love I’ve found in their lives. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have found it twice.

Dawn is always there for me. Twice I’ve hurt myself on this trip and twice Dawn has stepped in, taken care of me and taken control of managing the boat. If I have an off day, she is there to pick me up.

She is always ready to step in and do whatever is necessary to keep the boat running and our lives in order. I do believe that there is nothing she wouldn’t do for me. And through it all, she tells me, she is happier than she's ever been in her life.

How come I have been so fortunate?

This Valentine’s Day I have not one, but two great loves to be thankful for. I can’t express how grateful I am.

18 Comments

I Move Forward, but my Knee Stays Behind

2/9/2014

4 Comments

I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since my last blog. As you know, rebuilding my Web site consumed all of my waking hours. Changing from one platform to another cost me all of my previous blog entries.

I saved the most popular blogs (our cruise down the coast from Seattle to Mexico, including the shipwreck, and the “Great Dane on Board” series). You can find them on my new Web site. Look under “Penn’s Adventures” for our trip down the coast and under “More” you will find the “Great Dane on Board” series. If you haven’t seen Dawn’s video “Odin’s Adventures” you need to go there right now.

At any rate, we’re back in business, so here’s my latest update.

I’ve been working my tail off on The Inside Passage. The Inside Passage is a thriller starring Latino computer security analyst Ted Higuera in his first adventure. In this novel, he and best friend Chris Hardwick stumble upon a terrorist plot to blow up a cruise ship.

I’ve had the cover designed, I shared that with you before but here it is again because I lost all of my previous blog posts.

Here’s the big news: I am setting up a KickStarter project for publishing The Inside Passage.

“Huh?” You say. “What’s a Kick whajamajiggy?”

www.kickstarter.com is a crowd-sourcing web site.

Crowd-sourcing?

Yep. It’s a way for artist to get the general public to fund their projects. There’s everything from art to music to fashion to new inventions to, most importantly for me, publishing.

The artist posts a KickStarter page describing his/her project and the amount of funding needed. Then people come to KickStarter and pledge money to help the artist. There are over 56 million users on KickStarter. The pledges range from $1 to thousands of dollars depending on the project. The artist gives the pledgers some kind of reward for their support.

Recently the Veronica Mars movie was funded this way. The production company raised over $5.7 million to help make the movie, which is now in production.

It is my hope to raise $5000 to help me pay for the production costs for a really professional hard copy of The Inside Passage. I’m hoping that supporters will come through with enough $10, $20 and $50 pledges to get me over the hump.

The wild card here is that KickStarter is an all or nothing proposition. If you get enough pledges, you get the money. If you don’t make your goal, you get nothing. I guess this lets the market place decide which projects are funded and which aren’t.

Anyway, it will take me a few more days to get my KickStarter project going. But when I do, I will be asking for your help. I need all the help I can get to make this dream a reality.

On January 10th I took Tlaloc and some of his friends sailing. It was the first time I had the boat out since I hurt my shoulder. You can’t believe how good it felt to have a rolling deck beneath my feet again. The sheer majesty of looking up and seeing the clouds of sails overhead against a blue sky is unbelievable.

When we got back to La Paz, my knee hurt. It continued to hurt until I finally decided to make an appointment to see the doctor. I made the appointment for Dawn’s birthday, January 16th. We would go to the doctor, then I would take her out for a fancy birthday dinner.

We were over on dock 3 seeing some people and I limped back to the boat on dock 2 to get ready for my appointment. As I tried to step up our boarding ladder, something exploded in my knee. I was in awful pain and I couldn’t walk.

I managed to get below and wedge myself into the galley dinette until Dawn came back.

Dawn helped me climb up on deck, then off the boat and, putting my weight on her shoulder, I limped down the dock.

It didn’t work too well. I am just too big and heavy for Dawn to support. One of the guys from another boat came over and offered to help. Dawn ran up the dock to bring the car close to the dock head.

The security guys on Arrecho saw my plight and ran up the dock to get the marina staff. The marina people came running down the dock with a dock cart. They stuffed me in the dock cart and wheeled me up the dock.

I wish someone had a camera or a video recorder. It was a funny trip. Maybe I’ll restage the event so we can film it.

We got to the doctor’s office (right across the parking lot from Fidepaz Hospital) and he sent me to the hospital for an ultrasound (ultrasonido in español). After the ultrasound, they called in the orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Sanchez. Dr. Sanchez did the surgery on my shoulder.

With both Dr. Diaz and Dr. Sanchez examining me, they decided that I needed arthroscopic knee surgery to remove the torn meniscus (cartlidge).

“We will schedule surgery for tomorrow morning,” Dr. Sanchez said in Spanish, he doesn’t speak English.

So much for Dawn’s birthday dinner.

I spent the night in the hospital and on Friday afternoon they took me into the operating room. Thank God for drugs. The next as I knew, I was back in my room with Dawn at my side.

After a three-day stay, they let me go home.

For the last three weeks I have been mostly sitting at the galley table working on my new book, The Inside Passage.

My knee is improving, but it’s a slow process. I’m not sure how long it will be until I am back on my feet. Right now I’m walking with a cane and wearing a knee brace. I can kinda-sorta get around, but after going to the Club Cruceros and a doctor visit yesterday, I was totally worn out.

We have company coming! My brother Jim and his girlfriend, Susan, will be riding their motorcycles down Baja to spend some time with us in March. In April my daughters, Katie and Libby, will be flying down to Cabo for 4 days to see me. I couldn’t be more excited.

Maybe the best part of the visits is that I can get good coffee. In Mexico it’s almost impossible to find decaf coffee and what they do have is a weak, watery brew. I always ask visitors and friends to bring me some hearty decaf Sumatra coffee when they come. What can I say? I’m a real coffee snob.

That’s it for today. Keep checking in, there’s a lot of fun and interesting stuff happening down here in the Land of the Sun. I'll keep you up to date on my new books, visits from friends and our move ashore in May to spend the summer in a lovely Mexican villa.

Buenas suerte for now.

4 Comments

Hello World

2/3/2014

0 Comments

Hello everybody. This is just a test post to see if my blog is working.

Now that I have the new website on-line and the blog is up and running (I hope) I will get back to my weekly posts.

Come back on Sunday to see what I've been up to.