A Splash of Reality

All you’ve heard about the adventure aboard Kamaya is a rosy painting of everywhere. Now I’m talking to those of you who might visit us, that’s not really how it is. For example, in Los Islotes, with Oma, I didn’t say anything about jellyfish did I? No I didn’t, actually I have been getting jellyfished the entire trip down, but I will give more detail later, because you get the point. Also there are many nasty odors, when we catch a fish there aren’t many great smells there, or when we’ve anchored by islands covered in guano (bird poop.) I often shut my hatch and close my door. Or in Mazatlan, where the forward head stunk so much that we had to take it out and clean it. In Bahia Santa Maria Kai and Bendon got pinched by blue crabs. There was some trouble with cacti in Isla San Martine for mommy and I. Sometimes we have to eat lobster, and don’t get breakfast or a few bites for dinner. There has also been some incidents: kids and grown-ups have fallen down the Stairs and recently Kai got bonked on the head by a chessboard and a light sabor that had rolled down off it’s place.

Jellyfish:
The jellyfish that hurt the most are the little ones. The first time I was stung by a large jellyfish. My foot got tangled with the jellyfish. After that I probably got attacked by fifty something jellyfish. The best cure we’ve found is to squeeze lime on the skin.

Sun:
I just plain hate the extreme heat and having to put on sun-block every day. Maybe I should move to Alaska.

Bugs:
The no-see-ums come out at sunset, especially in San Blas and Chacala. That’s where we suffered from many mosquito bites. There have also been little water things that prickle your legs and a few seconds after you get out you feel this tingling but think you’re imagining it. Once you’ve gotten out of the dingy it starts hurting, by the time you’ve dried off the little things are burning. So I scream that I need some lime and it begins to stop.

Toilets:
One of the hardest parts about using a marine toilet is you can’t put toilet paper in the toilet. You have to pump the toilet, some people aren’t very good at pumping, like my brother, Kai, who leaves poop in the toilet because he doesn’t do a good job pumping. When we sailed from La Paz to Mazatlan, we noticed that our head stank a lot and so my Dad had to take the whole toilet out and fix it. When we got the boat the aft head didn’t work so everyone had to use the forward head, it took a while to fix it and we’ve learned to put vinegar into the head.

Beware the cacti:
We went to Isla San Martin and decided not to go swimming because it was a little cold. When we got to land, there were nasty flies. We hiked up what looked like the trail heading to the lava-tubes that Charlie’s Charts talks about, and that’s when we saw them: the cacti. They didn’t look bad, at first, my mom turned a different way and from our perspective she seemed to be bush-wacking. Then we heard her yell, “help!” My dad had to go get her. At the same time, my foot got pricked on a cacti. My mom yelled more desperate, “forget the kids, help me!” She had cacti on both her hands and her feet and couldn’t move. So we went back to the dingy after getting the cacti out and when we went back to the island, we stayed along the beach.

Seasickness:
Some people get seasick easily. There was a girl who came to the boat when we were anchored in Los Frailles and she got seasick even in the calm anchorage. Kai used to get seasick, but doesn’t anymore. And we just took some Mexican friends from San Blas to Chacala and one of the women got horribly seasick. All the puke gets pretty disgusting.

So this is cruising life, or at least some of it. I wanted to give you a splash of reality. I’m sure we will have more bad cruising experiences and also lots of good experiences like swimming with sea lions, getting close to nesting booby birds, and watching humpback whales jump high into the air.