Salt | Errantries

Author: Pete

Left the open, desolate anchorage off the south tip of Acklins island in the late afternoon and headed southeast after passing the tall, white, empty lighthouse on Castle Island. Hugged the island to keep us out of shipping lanes in the Mira Por Vos passage. Our first overnight sail up ahead of us, we talked through our game plans should things go awry, and trimmed our sails as tight as possible to make it to Great Inagua without tacking or motoring.

The sun sank, fired a brilliant orange, and then all too quickly left us in darkness. My mom’s fancy solar lights lit up to keep us company. Those things are awesome! With no moon to speak of I was amazed at how much natural light was in the air even with no cloud cover and no other ambient light. You could still see clouds, the horizon, and wavelets. And let’s face it. When you’re offshore, that’s about all there is to see anyway!

Also saw lights of a few ships passing in the night. Reminded me of a melodic song by Brazilian Girls. The close ones popped up on our AIS display, though I couldn’t get a copy from them when I hailed them on the SSB and VHF. Maybe they were ignoring me like a big brother ignores a dorky little sibling. Story of my life.

With fifteen knots of wind we scooted right along at six knots, the motion a touch uncomfortable since we were heading into the wind and waves, but not altogether unpleasant. We had some dinner in the dark, trying to keep our eyes on the darkened horizon for the sake of our stomachs. Then it was time to start our watches. We kept three-hour stints, which sometimes turned into four. One went below and tried to sleep while the other read or looked out into the black, and studies the horizon every ten minutes to look for big, fast, scary freighters. The motion and noise of slapping waves below made falling asleep annoying, but not impossible. After a few shifts, some annoyingly erratic wind just before dawn, and lots of midnight snacks, the east horizon glowed orange, and the sun shot beams out of the cloud bank. We’d made our first overnight! And we were bushed. Pulled into the anchorage off the rocky shore of Mathew Town, Great Inagua, and slept until the afternoon.

The next few days we explored the town, picked up Liza from the airport, and made some Dutch friends along the way!

Martjin and Seeneka were in town to survey the construction of the new port, as the old one left something to be desired. Bahamas Air lost their GPS antennas, so they had a little time to do some depth measurement of the waters surrounding the island. Thus, we happily decided to postpone the boat projects we had in mind in favor of a sailing day up to the Man of War Bay with our new friends! They showed up with snacks, drinks, and a heavy bruce anchor Martjin found on the bottom of the quay! They were both experience sailors (more so than us!) and it was fabulous to have a full crew to work the sails. Made eight knots heading north and were shadowed for some time by a pod of dolphins playing in our bow wake. The island’s main revenue is from Morton Salt, which makes it’s sea salt here. Huge mounds of the precious stuff loomed tall on shore and a freighter loaded maneuvered in to load up.

Pulled into the bay and all jumped in the water to do some spearfishing! Only got one fish, but made a tasty fried snack for us. Sailed back in the dark under blazing stars and made dinner in our old anchorage. Really fun, impromptu day with some really interesting, storied, and fun people. That’s what we live for.

This morning, Chris Parker’s forecast sounded promising for the Windward Passage and the crossing to Colombia. We made haste, and got to work readying the boat for an afternoon departure tomorrow. I worked engines, Liza did decks and rigging, and Miranda worked galley. In six hours we had engine fluids and filters changed, running rigging checked, foreword lockers battened down, and lunches made for the days on passage. A little provisioning tomorrow and we’ll be off like and reaching south! Colombia here we come!

ps- Check out Liza’s take on Great Inagua here and here!

pps- Credit to Sanneke Reiche for the top-most image.

Author: Pete
Location: Black Rock Desert, Nevada

Drove from Charlevoix down to Detroit to fly out to Nevada for the epic festival Burning Man. Went downstate a few days early to see my buddy Mike and Jessie. Mikey is in the planning stages of opening a brewery, so we went sampling at a local taproom with fifty beers on tap.

We ordered food and ran flights of beers to test out the competition. Only made it through twenty-four of them, much to our everlasting dismay.

Spent some time at Mikey’s. We harvested hops from his garden for a few hours, and then Miranda harvested hair from both sides of my head. We were on our way to Burning Man (the big BM…. ha!) and needed to put on a little more flair than normal, so we decided that a mohawk would be in order.

In the wee hours of the morning we drove to the Detroit airport and caught our plane to Reno. Stopped in Dallas and at our gate, we could immediately see which travelers were bound not just for Reno, but for The Burn. Made us pretty excited to get there, which was good. After a full summer, our tails were a little draggy. We were really ready to just get started on our sailing adventure, and hadn’t had time to get fully stoked about the BM trip, so it was nice to get fired up.

Flew parallel to the rolling foothills. Looked a lot like Chile!

Upon landing in beautiful, sunny Reno, an obvious fellow burner causally said, “Well that was a quick flight, too bad Burning Man is closed.” We thought he was just being a jerk, but there really had been a heavy rainfall that turned the roads to muck. All transport in was closed for the day. So we found ourselves a nice casino hotel in town and set about being productive. We got a few final gear touches and dyed Miranda’s hair to match the demeanor of the event, sassy.

Waited in line the next day and then boarded a bus bound for the desert with revelers already in full party swing. Drove out and out and out. The foothills faded to humps in the sand, then to flat, dry, ancient lakebed. We bypassed the line with the Burner Express bus, highly recommended, and soon drove into one of the ‘plazas’ in Black Rock City. We rang the bell, rolled in the dust, and yelled some tribal citation and we were at Burning Man.

There’s enough literature on Burning Man, but here’s the basics. It’s an festival of art, music, and freedom of expression in the Black Rock desert. This year 66,000 people made up the temporary city called Black Rock City, where radical self-expression is stressed, and leave no trace is practiced religiously. There are immense sculptures erected in the desert, and molar-jarring bass pumped through the air. It’s HOT during the day, and cold at night. Temperature swings unlike I’ve experienced. Some people come for the art, some to find inner peace and community, but most come just to party like banshees. To get an idea of the seriousness of the ‘leave no trace’ policy, here’s the difference from before the party starts, and then during. (images courtesy of google earth)

Not sure how to describe the whole deal without showing it, so here are some shots of the desert city. It’s set up as a partial circle around an open area centered on a ~150 foot wooden effigy of a man. People ride bikes around visiting camps that give out pickles, snow cones, and lots and lots of booze.

By night, the place explodes into a sea of neon lights and music as DJs pound out dance music from each and every corner of the city from dusk until dawn.

Miranda and I were excited to go to experience all of the ridiculous fun Burning Man had to offer, but also to spend some time with my sisters and their husbands. It was our first big sibling outing all together. Chelsea and Dave are old BM salts, now the orchestrators of the Absofuckinlution camp, which brought in 14 barrels of good Seattle beer to give out. Liza and Felix were Burning Man virgins like us, which made for a serendipitous mixture of family with lots of advice and experience at the BM and others who were just as fresh and wide-eyed to the event as we were.

On Saturday night everyone gathers at nightfall for the big burn of The Man. There’s a safe ring so the burning structure doesn’t fall on anyone, and designated ‘tacklers’ to intercept any crazies trying to run into the pyre. Boy are there crazies. People whoop it up and get rowdy. The man goes off with a bang and fireworks throughout the burn. It’s stunning. Eventually the skin of the man burns off and the skeleton is left burning until the structure collapses spectacularly.

Some years it apparently takes longer than others. People party all night. And all the next day. It’s really impressive and daunting how little everyone sleeps throughout the week. On burn night we danced all night and into the morning.

The next night is similar. Sixty thousand people congregate in a huge ring around the temple where all week sojourners have spent time reflecting, meditating, and healing. However, this night is different in that the sixty thousand are silent. The temple is lit and burns into raging banners of flame and no one says a damn word. Some weep. Some console. Everyone is reflecting on the week, the month, the years. It’s pretty powerful.

We did our own post-burn reflection with our family, feeling especially lucky to be bonded to such a fabulous six-sum of sibling loveliness.

Then there are a few days of clean up for most before the exodus from Black Rock City. Others are stationed in the desert, willfully, for a month making sure the ancient lake bed is returned to its natural state without traces of human, wild or otherwise, impact. We helped tear down the structure that had been our shelter from the elements for a week in the desert then took off in a U-Haul with a fellow Burner who was kind enough to give us a lift to Reno. There were only two seats in the truck, so I sat on a duffel bag jump seat in the middle.

We all breathed a little sigh of relief that we had made it through. The road back was pretty packed, but not nearly as terrible as it can be. A quick overnight in Reno, three flights to Detroit, an overnight at Mikey’s, a five hour drive, and we were home. Fairly quick and painless, huh?