Welcome Benson!

Join us in welcoming a new ‘crew’ to the family, “Benson”. Benson comes to us from Germany. Born of Mercedes Benz in 1994, he’s got quite a few miles on him (325,000 km!) but he shows signs of being up for doing a few more. On the outside, he’s got a few bangs and bondo on him, and on the inside he’s a bit frayed and worn, but we are so pleased to have him as wheels, we think he is the most beautiful thing in the world. I mean to have a car again, how good is that?!

This weekend we are off in Benson to wine country for our second trip. The photos are from our first foray when Breanna, Mark and Eitann were still with us. Gosh that was fun. Sunday we are visiting our new friends, Mashupa and Khabiso out there too. They are South Africans from Lesotho. We met Mashupa, when he picked us up hitchhiking in Richards Bay in November and have stayed in touch since then.

If it sounds like it’s all play and games, it’s not. Irena and I have spent the last two weeks digging for work. Just this week, I have thrown my lot in with a coaching firm in Cape Town, developing the corporate side of the business. Now I am working every day, partly from the boat and partly at the office! Irena is busy networking with various prospective clients and other consultants, and we expect she too will be finding something to do besides make me lunch. (Just kidding Honey!) Soon Coaching Works Pte. Ltd. of Singapore will have two contributing consultants.

We can see the end of our time in beautiful Simon’s Town is coming. It’s an hour’s drive to my office in Cape Town and Irena will be busy probably soon in the city too.  I expect we will choose to move the boat to Royal Cape Marina, right in the centre of the City. Not very pretty, but very practical. My immediate goal is to make enough money to allow me to do some ‘no guilt’ soaring at the Cape Soaring Club, Irene’s goal is to make enough money to go see her grandchildren!

Reflections

It seems fitting we should be so close to a place called the Cape of Good Hope. This is the way I am feeling these days. Amidst the busy-ness that is my life, I feel a returning glimmer of calm satisfaction. I am meditating again more regularly, reconciling myself to dealing with the boat waving back and forth while I sit cross legged early mornings in our berth. I am also tapping the inevitable fears and insecurities (EFT, definitely my favourite tool for releasing emotional energy) that arise in the course of this transition. And, Irena and I are exercising pretty regularly, very gradually, working our way back into some resemblance of fitness.

These are all modest efforts, but remarkably helpful, nevertheless, in their cumulative effect. At sea, and during the tumult of transition from harbour to harbour over the last six months, I have failed to maintain this regime, and lost touch with this other ocean of calm as a result. Today, I am reminded again of the deep value to the quality of mind, and hence quality of life, these activities engender. Today, my sense of calm satisfaction is the immediate reward for my ablutions of self-care. Tomorrow, the longer term reward will be the quality of life past experience has demonstrated I create out of this state of being. It is amazing and humbling to see how much arises out of so little.

This is the ‘C’ for Capacity of which I speak in the 7Cs. Capacity is about the practices of care and strengthening of body, mind, emotion and spirit. The practices are so basic, so simple, yet so hard to discipline. They are so rewarding, yet so easily sloughed off. Join me in a newfound commitment to stay with the program, and compassion for ourselves when we do not!

Open Letter to Mr. Ritchie

It is the cruiser’s lot to be in a constant struggle with the elements to keep our gear working. Fair enough, it’s a tough environment. But sadly, like everywhere else in the modern world, we see the gradual deterioration in quality of virtually all marine products, more and more built as cheaply as possible, hoping to snare the unwary with cheap, fall-apart stuff. Raymarine sold me a heavy duty, offshore drive for my self steering arm made of plastic gears. West Marine recently shipped me two Ronstan snap shackles (the volkswagon of marine hardware manufactures) in Harken (the BMW) bags at Harken prices. And on it goes with line (rope) without UV protection, galvanized shackles that rust within days, Stainless steel fittings that aren’t “stainless” because they are made of such low grade steel they rust happily, blocks that blow up… and now a compass that failed within months.

I am a little embarrassed by my invective in the open letter to Ritchie Compass below, but I want to vent. I don’t know if I’ll ever send this to them directly, mostly because I doubt anybody at Ritchie would care one way or another, or that it would make one small bit of difference. But, at least, sailors contemplating a new compass need to hear this. And I’m mad as heck and not going to take it anymore!

Open Letter to Ritchie Compasses

Dear Mr. Ritchie,

Your Compass sucks.

Can you imagine my disappointment, after spending $800 on a brand new Ritchie “GlobeMaster SP 5c, to find, just months after it came aboard, a pool of oil on the teak cockpit sole and an air bubble the size of a tennis ball in the liquid filled compass? 

But the whole product had a cheap feel to it, from the moment I first saw it. When I unwrapped our mail order, to my vast disappointment I found the compass light is ‘engineered’ from two LED lights, mounted on an unprotected circuit board, just waiting to soaked by the next wave to come aboard. (Getting that replaced will mean a lot more than finding a light bulb!)  And everything else is made of plastic of doubtful dimension and the modest materials. Just days into our first passage, I was not impressed to see splotches of rust showing up all over the “stainless steel” mount.  But the last straw was the bubble!

Now you and I are faced with the hassle and expense of a warrantee repair. I lose time. You lose money. I mean really, what are you guys doing? You know this product is used in a marine environment of salt water spray and constant motion on ocean passages of thousands of miles. You know we will expect it to last more than a few months, one boating season, or even, heaven forbid, a few years. Why then are you using 304 stainless on the mount? Why would you design a compass light around an unprotected circuit board? Why would you build it so poorly that it leaks in the first three months?

Yup, your compass sucks. Shame on you!

I am telling my cruising friends about my experience with Ritchie compasses, because as your website says, "navigation really does begin with the right compass", and its sure not a Ritchie!

Reflection

There is more at play here than consumer rage. There is a much more serious issue. It is not just about “fucknowlogy”, fumbling high tech stuff released into the market place, nor is it about businesses maximizing profit by squeezing quality, or our mute acceptance of ever more false advertising claims, though all of these are issues too rankle and highlight civilization’s failing social consciousness and values. 

Rather, the more serious issue is the question of our very survival – we are wasting our planet’s resources. And I mean ‘wasting’ as in depleting, diminishing, exhausting, stripping, denuding, wrecking, etc.. because almost everything we produce is designed to fall apart quickly. And we are doing so exactly when we need so desperately to be doing the opposite. When we should be doing our modern best to build stuff that lasts a long, long time (repairable) – things that make the most prudent use of the planet’s resources -- we are, instead, building C.R.A.P.(Carelessly Resource Assailing Products).

And so we all ask, "What can ‘I’ do?"

This is the important question. I hope you will join me in a personal quest to stop buying CRAP. Join me in rewarding manufactures who produce quality repairable products and punish manufactures who build cheap fall apart stuff.  Save the planet - DON'T BUY C.R.A.P.

Hurray, after 40 sea days from Jakarta, we are safe in Cape Town! Well, actually we are in Simon's Town, one of Cape Town's suburbs. Our last passage down the coast from Nnysna to arrive the day before New Years Eve was perhaps the most pleasant of all our short passages around the cape. Sunshine and light and moderate following winds.
There is much to reflect upon, and it sounds silly, but it was important to us to sail the South Indian Ocean in bare feet. We wanted so much not to stretch out at least the illusion of warm water sailing even as we sailed all the way south to 35 South Latitude. Yes, there were nights in the cockpit in toques, foul weather gear, and safety harness, but never did we succumb to putting on our sea booties!
Now we are in transition as we seek now to discover where we can make a contribution here in South Africa. Our crew Eitan and Mark are leaving us one by one, and Breanna is set to fly home tomorrow. We are scouting out the most suitable place to moor Conversations as we plan to continue living  aboard.
In the meantime, we are enjoying quaint Simon's Town and  doing lots of hiking and sightseeing, including a trek to the Top of Table mountains, alas, in cloud.