Jumble Ventures: Tenacatita Part 2: Play

1/7/15 - 1/16/15

We didn't finish with the boom until the 14th or so, but once it was glued up straight, the challenging work was over. We spent several late evenings navel gazing and having great conversations with Dan and Kathy on LUNGTA, a 60' Ketch with a spacious interior and comfortable saloon. Well after midnight, we'd paddle back to JUMBLE, clip the dinghy onto the stern and watch the stars move across the sky for a couple hours. Without much light pollution and few clouds, our view of the night sky in Tenacatita was great.

View from the Lagoon entrance. Can you spot Jumble?

Lots of books and magazines sell cruising as a romantic paradise; a long vacation. Maybe this is true for the wealthy. I'll never know. For us and I suspect many others it's not much different in practice than life back home. Much of your time is spent working. Maintaining a boat in remote areas and in anchorages is more difficult than back home where the chandler is a short drive away. Also, your boat is used much harder and covers significantly more miles. Even at anchor, there's constant motion. Few anchorages are as mill pond flat as a protected marina in southern California.

It's true that you can cruise on very little money. I'll spare you the details of our financials, but suffice to say, they are abysmal; however: no debt! Not everyone can say that. Few cruising boats are on as low of a budget as JUMBLE, but we hardly feel destitute. There are no free lunches in this world and we put in a heavy sweat equity to offset our lack of capital.

Sterling Hayden (actor; we recognize him from Doctor Strangelove) wrote a pretty kickass book: Wanderer. Not your standard cruising narrative, which is no better than this blog, but a real novel with some great insights into life and sailing. Here's my favorite passage, I know I'm not the first sailor to quote it:

To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea... "cruising" it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.

"I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can't afford it." What these men can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of "security." And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine - and before we know it our lives are gone.

What does a man need - really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in - and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all - in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade.

The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.

Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?

This passage played a large part in our choice of "Jumble Ventures", rather than "Cruising with Jumble" or something like that.

These pictures don't show the mosquito bites, the heat, the lugging of water jugs, strange rashes in private places and all the other discomforts. I'm not trying to say it's not worth it, just the opposite. It's pretty childish to seek constant happiness or "paradise", which is what the advertisers like to sell. Adventure, on the other hand, can be satisfying as hell.

Enough puerile philosophizing. I just wanted to preface this slew of images from the picturesque lagoon at Tenacatita with a little honesty.