Fine Craft

The south coast of Cuba is strikingly rural, and life in the few small fishing villages that dot the coast is a step back in time considerably further than the 1960s when we lost touch with this country.

Yesterday we sailed 50 miles (or rather I should say motored because there wasn’t a breath of wind all day) from the small village of Chivirico to the next small village of Marea del Portillo. In the 50 mile stretch between these two harbors was a vast uninhabited shoreline where the Sierra Maestro range drops straight into the Caribbean Sea. We passed the tallest mountain in Cuba yesterday, 2000 meters above sea level. The more impressive statistic about this mountain range is that as we sailed just a few miles off shore the depths are at least equal to height of that one mountain. We were passing through waters that were from 5000 ft to 10,000 ft deep. This is a very dramatic coastline and an impressive mountain range.

Bob has written apost that beautifully describes what we are seeing in these small villages, and surprisingly agrees with most of what I would have written myself! We always find it a little surprising when we agree so completely on certain things, and this is one of those times.

We have only seen one or two boats when we are out sailing, and it’s no surprise that we end up in the same harbor every few days. There are so few harbors along this coast it is inevitable. The boats we’ve seen are all flying Norwegian flags. Last night we invited our neighbor Lars to dinner, after a long hot day with no wind we were all too tired to make much of an effort for dinner, and I think he was happy to have me doctor up some leftover rice with a bit of vege and egg and cheese. Lars has been living aboard his very pretty double ender, Luna, for more than 12 years. He has sailed around the world and has been in the Caribbean several times.

I enjoyed our evening with him in particular because he is the first person on this journey with whom I could talk a little about weaving and know that he would understand! Isn’t it interesting that after 4 years of sailing about this area I encounter a man who knows enough about weaving to listen to me talk about what I miss from home! One of my dearest friends is Norwegian, and there were noticeable about Lars that reminded me of her. I don’t know if that is because they both come from the same area of Norway, or if I was just bound to find them similar because I’ve been away from home so long and missing dear friends…. Lars compared the solitude of weaving to the solitude of single-handing his small boat. Also , the amount of preparation a weaver has to do before beginning to weave is similar to preparations for a sailing journey, and the concentration required for both while allowing our minds to enter a zen-like state while weaving or sailing. He was an enjoyable conversationalist for both Bob and me. This morning he left early to keep heading west while we have chosen to stay another day…maybe two.

In both Chivirico and Marea del Portillo there are government owned resorts just on the outskirts of the town. These resorts seem to attract Canadians. When we visited Hotel Brisas a couple of days ago for internet, we noticed all the people lounging in the courtyard were northerners (pale and fair haired) and then noticed that everyone was speaking English. The entire guest list on hand that day were Canadians, and all of them had been coming back to this beautiful secluded spot for numerous years. One couple, who’d been coming here for 25 years told us that the rate at the hotel was $750 for two weeks and included all meals and drinks and even the airfare. Unbelievable!

Pandora at anchor from about half way up the hill at Hotel Brisas.

On the one hand, while there are little window air conditioning units in each bungalow, there is rarely enough electricity to turn them on. That’s okay most of the time since there are ocean breezes to balance the discomfort from the heat. But the past week has had almost no wind, day after day. Still, the guests could float about in the pool or go down the 500-step stairway to the ocean and snorkel along the coral reefs, or just float in the water. The water is not quite cool enough to be refreshing at almost 90 degrees.

From our spot in the harbor we walked a bit beyond a mile to this hilltop resort, along a very steep, somewhat paved road with three switchbacks. Down in the village we asked one of the mule drawn cart drivers if he could take us up there, but he motioned that the mule could not make the steep climb. It was quite a trek. We were pleasantly surprised to learn that you can order as many things, including drinks, from the menu for one lunch fee. We had a number of cold drinks after that hot trek!

Water is also an issue everywhere in Cuba. Even in such a large city as Santiago de Cuba there are many days when the water system shuts down. As I understand it, it’s not they’ve run out of water but that the system has failed. The water system is from the 1950s and has had no updates or even repairs. The pipes are likely clogged with all kinds of debris, and the quality of the water is too poor for drinking. In the cities you can buy bottled water in large containers for drinking. In these little villages you have to boil your drinking water. I’m very glad that Bob and I are making water while we are out sailing. It is clean and clear and the color of deep indigo. Then our water goes through a number of filters before at last going into a Brita pitcher for drinking.

The sewars are in equally bad shape to the water system. The pipes have not been updated in the past 60 years either, so they also shut down often. You can never put toilet paper in the toilet. In many cases this means that there is no toilet in the bathroom, to prevent you from making that mistake! I knew before we left home that we would have to go ashore with our own. I was also warned that when the water system is shut down there would be no ability to flush toilets! And as I mentioned, this can go on for days—pretty horrible. For the most part we have only stayed ashore for the duration of time one can manage without a need for a toilet! I try not to drink so much water during the day when we are away from the boat, although that’s not easy in this heat!

So contrast these hurdles, which are admittedly rather large hurdles for me, against the dramatic landscape of mountains and pristine ocean, mostly unspoiled by any human habitation. It’s a rare and beautiful part of the world, but it does have it’s downside for a spoiled American like me who would prefer clean water and good toilets, and safe food!

A small house with tidy garden in Chivirico.

And where there people and animals living in clusters, the lifestyle is so simple. Everyone keeps chickens, and even pigs. They wander around everywhere, along with goats and dogs. The roosters crow all day and all night, and it reminds me of communities at home where you can call the local police to make someone get rid of their rooster for an offense like crowing all night. Yesterday we saw a very large pig being led down a sidewalk in Chivirico—now that’s something I’ve never seen. I had to wonder if that pig was on his way to a pig roast… Hopefully he’d just wandered a bit too far and was being led home…but at some point I imagine he’ll supply an awful lot of dinners for some family. I know he’s not just a pet. The goats seem to travel together and I wonder how anyone keeps track of whose goat is whose.

The men all seem to fish. They fish from their docks with hand lines…. They wade in the shallows throwing round nets. We’ve never seen them catch anything that we’d consider big enough to eat. The most interesting fishing vessel we’ve seen is an intertube. The fisherman floats around in it, using his hands to paddle himself about, and storing his catch in a milk crate that he has tied to the intertube.

No Cuban is permitted to own a boat longer than 20 feet. Hmmm…..is this to prevent them from going too far from shore? ….perhaps to another country entirely? Meanwhile, these small fishing boats all have inboard engines. I haven’t seen an outboard yet. I know the waters are full of fish here, so I think they get a good catch most days.

Along with big modern buses …alas, no AC…a very common mode of trasnsportation is mule or horse drawn cart. 

As I write this I have to mention that Bob and came ashore toay in Marea del Portillo with a desperate need for internet.  Our sailmail which is a sideband radio software that allows us to get our email when there is not internet has been slowly failing for over a week.  As of three days ago it has failed.  Bob has spent part of everyday for the past week trying to diagnose and fix it, but no luck.  This is very dire to both of us since it is our only connection to our kids and to the facilities where both our mothers live.  So internet was a high priority today.  We had to get to a hotel just outside the village, a long hot walk.  So we opted to take a horse drawn cart to get our internet!  I don´t think I´ll ever experience that again!  I´ll post a photo sometime….át the moment it´s still on the camera!

Lastly, a small comment about our most recent encounter with the Guarda Frontera: the official who visited us yesterday looked younger than our two sons, and he constantly referred to the last sheet in his notebook that was filled with writing, so I think he was very new to the job and was checking his to-do list. He asked a lot of questions that just seemed so trivial to us: how much water does our boat hold? How much gasoline does the can in the dinghy hold? We found this all fascinating as he carefully wrote down answers to all these questions. The Guarda Frontera have no boats of their own so they always have to flag down a fisherman with a skiff to bring them out to visiting cruising boats. In yesterday’s case the poor fisherman had no motor in his little skiff, so he had to row out to us on such a stifling day. We gave them both cold cokes, and I hope that helped.

Later, when we compared notes with Lars about the minutiae of questions asked by these officials, he a funny reply. He said that after all his experience with the Guarda Frontera you must simply go with the flow and answer their questions without giving it too much thought. They are not really looking for exact details anyway. They just need to fill out the forms. They have to write down something, it doesn’t much matter what. They will never check for accuracy. It’s all about filling out the form. He quoted what may be a well known saying in Cuba: “the people pretend to work, and the government pretends to pay.”

 

 

We are here! We arrived in Santiago de Cuba early Sunday afternoon, a full day ahead of our plans. Plans are always a wish and a prayer on a boat. Our brilliant weather router, Chris Parker, warned us that we’d better get through the Windward Passage before mid-Monday, and now I’m so glad we tackled that nasty bit of water even earlier. The sea state in the passage reminded me of what you see when you lift the lid on your washing machine and watch it agitate your clothes, only on a far, far greater scale. As you can imagine, in the dark, this was a terrifying bit of the trip for me. Maybe it’s a good thing that our first night out was about as idyllic as any landlubber could wish. I spent a good deal of the first night watching the stars. For the first time in my life I followed the course of Sirius and Orion completely across the sky to watch them set in the west at about 3am, just a short time before the moon rose.

That second night, approaching the eastern coast of Cuba and then entering the Windward Passage was exactly what I’ve always tried to avoid.

When dawn arrived on Sunday morning we were awestruck by the huge mountain range on the southern coast of Cuba. It is monumental!…like some of the island chains in Greece, or in Southeast Asia. What a view to discover as dawn flooded the horizon.

Passing Guantanamo in the morning kept me thoroughly riveted. It is a much more impressive compound than I ever imagined. It is far more than just a prison, and has large buildings dominating the shoreline, along with gigantic wind generators high up on the nearby mountains. Clearly, the US Navy has to supply all of their own needs here. As we approached the no-sail zone a high speed navy skiff rushed toward us. I was worried that perhaps we had crossed into the off limits area, but the navy boat stopped about half a mile inshore from us and then matched its speed to ours to shadow us all the way down that 100mile excluded zone of water. I wanted to wave to them, but wasn’t certain how they’d react. Surely they could easily our large American ensign flying at our stern, but still…. In the end I opted for not waving. The entrance to the harbor was quite amazing, a real natural wonder, being narrow and long and deep. All these mountains rise up for a couple thousand feet, and plunge into the water even deeper so that even a couple of miles offshore we were in very deep water. I guess I always imagined Guatanamo being a bit of backwater. If it is, the other US Navy outposts must really be something! When we passed the final border of the no-sail zone the navy boat stopped and watched us for a bit before returning to their post.

Finding Guantanamo so impressive should have prepared me for the first sight of Santiago de Cuba, but I was again unprepared for such a dramatic sight. This is one of the earliest settled areas of Cuba, and on the bluff that overlooks the entrance to the harbor is the thoroughly magnificent Castillo de Morro, built by the Spanish around 1587 to protect the settlement from invasions by pirates, who had sacked this city in 1554. Santiago de Cuba was the capitol of Cuba until 1607, when Havana took that role. In appearance, Castillo de Morro is the big brother of that fort in St. Augustine, Florida. In modern history, this is where Fidel launched revolution.

Santiago de Cuba was founded in 1510 and became the capitol of the Spanish settlement around 1515, after Barracoa had been the capitol for some years. Santiago de Cuba is actually closer to Haiti (across the Windward Passage) and to Jamaica than it is to Havana, so it has a mixed Caribbean culture that differs from other Cuban cities. I’m looking forward to discovering a bit about this.

Entering the harbor under the view of such a fort made me realize just how far we’ve come on this journey to visit the ‘forbidden gem of the Caribbean.’ It’s all been speculation and endless bureaucratic forms. Passing under that early colonial fortress suddenly made me realize that our long planning and speculating had become a reality! I’m really here!

This is a stunning harbor, with mountains rising on all sides of the harbor, mostly undeveloped. In the pleasure boat part of the harbor, which is the first part as you enter, there is a jolly sense of decayed luxury: a charming marina that must have once been quite a bit more than charming. The same kind of small mildly decayed hotel and two restaurants are adjacent to the marina. It is a lovely spot. Further down the harbor is a large commercial port that has more ships than I can count at any given time. These ships are constantly coming and going, so as we sit at anchor in our idyllic spot of the harbor with mountain views all around and just the few little vestiges of some previous luxury now run to disrepair, we’ll suddenly find our quiet view completely obliterated by some behemoth ship passing in or out. It is quite a sight!

The check in process was quite an experience. In one guidebook I read that Cuba is a very confusing place for Americans, and the best way to handle it is to just ‘go with the flow.’ Clearly that writer for Lonely Planet thinks this is a challenge for many Americans. Hmmm… Well, that has proven true on our first experience with dealing with customs and immigration. I did try to find out as much as I could before arriving so that we would have the appropriate things ready and not cause any concerns with officials. But of course I know that no matter where one travels, you simply cannot prepare for everything! So it is only a little surprising to me that nothing I read matched what actually happened! And it was a thoroughly enjoyable, albeit confusing, experience.

We’d read that dairy products and chicken are not allowed in Cuba. Some sources said that no meat of any kind could be brought into Cuba. We’d been told by some cruisers in the Bahamas that we’d also have to give up all our fresh produce. Great…I’d be trying out the procedure of washing the local veggies in silver nitrite, to avoid the possibility of Hepatitis A which we neglected to do, sooner than I had hoped. Well, we have a freezer full of meat! In preparation for at least having all our chicken confiscated, we have been eating nothing but for about three weeks! We’ve even had a couple of dinner parties onboard that featured chicken in order to get rid of as much of it as possible. We’d also read that in the larger ports the officials would speak English, so I was very glad that Santiago de Cuba would be our first stop. More time for me to learn Spanish in preparation for the rural stops in the future.

Our first guest onboard from the customs and immigration department was a woman who would check our general health and then go through our food. She was not in the least bothered by our frozen chicken. Perhaps she might have confiscated any fresh chicken if we’d had it. She barely spoke English, although her English was certainly far superior to my Spanish. With the assistance of the various Spanish books we have on hand I think we mostly understood each other. She was not concerned about our horde of cheeses or our two half gallons of milk (one in the freezer for future use).

We’d been told that no one asks for beer or alcohol anymore, but that we should have some soda on hand…there are no American products in Cuba, so having a Coke is quite a treat. We were ready with that, and when we offered our visitor a cold drink she promptly agreed. But then stashed the can of Coke away in her purse! Somewhat later she asked for us to “salut” each other, and although her attempt at describing what she meant sounded like we were going to take her to a bar on the dock, eventually it became clear that she wanted a beer onboard Pandora in order to welcome us to Cuba! She must have really wanted that beer because it took Bob and I an age to understand what she was trying to convey! So we gave her a beer and listened to her tell us about her family, show us photos of her young daughter who is her ‘princess,’ and answer her questions about our life in the US and our children. When she asked for a little money, we were happy to oblige. The whole process was rather enjoyable, and after all she’d just let us keep a staggering array of wonderful cheeses that we brought from the US and Nassau, milk for our morning coffee along with my precious herb plants and pretty pink geranium and my newly sprouting avocado seed!

We lowered our yellow “Q” flag (for Quarantine) and raised the Cuban flag on our starboard shroud and up anchored to head for the marina. There was no room for us at the dock –perhaps a good thing…time will tell—so we anchored yet again. We still had the young lady health official onboard, and she was surprised to see me take the helm while Bob dealt with the anchor. She asked me if I was the ‘Capitan,” and I laughed and said no! But I believe she may have said something the customs official when we all arrived onshore, because he had already put me down as the captain. I find this hilarious, and now for our entire stay in Cuba the officials will all be talking to me rather than Bob.

So it fell to me to be interviewed by the Customs and Immigration official while a tv in the background (hanging from the ceiling) played a Cuban soap opera and then an old episode of “Flipper.” Through that cacophony of noise I tried to understand his Spanish and attempts at English. He was far better understanding me than I was at understanding him! And he was clearly more used to the distracting tv noise than I was. After the interview and paperwork, he came onboard to inspect our boat and look for contraband –guns, drugs, pornography. But before he began the search (no dogs involved in this search, although we’d been warned that larger ports would use them) he sat down at our dining table and asked for a beer. Luckily we had one more chilled beer. (We will be challenged to have enough beer for all the ports we will be visiting….we certainly didn’t get accurate information about this!) He did not make as much small talk as his predecessor, but seemed to go into a relaxed state to enjoy his beer. It was a Yuengling, and he told us it was much stronger than what he was used to having. I asked him if knew of the US city Philadelphia, and when he said he did, I told him he was drinking a beer from that city. He recommended we try a very strong rum called Havana Cru. I guess Bob will be looking for that soon.

Once we were cleared in to Cuba we realized that no one had collected the fees for all the various things we’d heard would be charged. It should have cost us somewhat more than $25 for entering the country, and we’d read that we’d be paying $2.50/day for Cuban health insurance. But all we did was serve some beer and give a small tip.

So we awoke today, our first full day in Cuba, to a cool breeze coming down from the mountains and hot sun in this beautiful harbor. On one side of us is boat with a Norwegian flag, and on the other side is a boat flying a Swedish flag. The dock has several boats flying the French flag and one boat from Denmark. We do not see any US flags here, but then we are not flying our own. We’d been warned by the New Zealanders who gave us lots of information back in January, that a couple of ports, and Santiago de Cuba (the home of the Rebellion) for sure, would not be happy to see the US flag in their waters. If we had thought to bring along a small, discreet ensign we might have flown it, but what we have is an embarrassingly HUGE US flag given to us by our son Rob. It’s a wonderful sight flying off our stern, but not worth causing insult or injury here.

What to do first??? See the castle? Go into the city of Santiago de Cuba, about a 15 minute cab ride from here? Time to immerse ourselves in the local scene. It’s hard to believe we are finally here.

The past few weeks have taught me just how determined Bob is to get to Cuba.  There have been a number of setbacks, and I thought the jig was up yesterday morning…and again this morning….but NO!  Yesterday morning we still had no boat insurance in effect, and I cannot possibly describe how persistent Bob has been at working through this.  Insurance is a long, boring story, so I’ll skip it.  I’ll only say that it was yesterday afternoon when things finally fell into place.

I will also skip the details of learning that we should have had a 6-month course of Hepatitis inoculations that would include Hepatitis A which can be a problem in Cuba due to bad water and fresh produce–along with a course of medicine to prevent cholera. The doctor at the Georgetown Clinic said her family goes to Cuba all the time and never takes these precautions.  Bob was just fine with that…  Me, not so much!

So, this morning was farewell to Georgetown!  Last night we enjoyed a gathering on Monument Beach, affectionately called ARG (alcohol research group) and said our goodbyes to cruising friends.  I sure wish someone were going with us, but no one got their paperwork in order like Bob…no surprise!

This is the sunrise panorama that Bob took on our penultimate day in Georgetown.  These last few days have been the calmest days I’ve ever spent anywhere in the Bahamas!  Almost like the gentle summer days on Long Island Sound.

I took advantage of the calmness to work on my latest tapestry.  Bob took a photo of me working, but I cannot access it right now.  Just one of the many small frustrations of living off the grid!

So we left Georgetown at dawn this morning (about 6.15 am), and headed out the inlet toward the northern tip of Long Island.  It wasn’t long before our plotter which shows our charts, our location (GPS), and radar and AIS malfunctioned and quit!  Well, again, I tell you I gave up.  I thought for certain this was it and we’d be heading back into the harbor.

Not so for Bob.  He took apart the housing that holds these electronics and began to see if he could deduce what was wrong.  After a good hour’s effort he called Raymarine and spent another hour on the phone following a techie’s instructions.  Bingo!  We were back in business.  Now we are rapidly approaching sunset and have motor/sailed  70 miles, out of our 350 mile passage.  We are just off Clarencetown at the southern end of Long Island, and tonight we will head offshore to Great Inagua.  We need to maintain speed of 6.5 knots or more in order to get to Great Inagua before sunset tomorrow.  So far, so good.

Tonight Bob and I will spell each other in 2 hour watches, with some overlap time at each change.  There is a small swell this afternoon that is making me a bit green, and writing this post isn’t helping!  Hopefully I’ll do well overnight.

Our friends George and Nancy, aboard Trumpeter, say we must get to Great Inagua in time to go ashore tomorrow because there are so many parrots on the island!  They say that you hear lots of parrots calling when you go ashore and then soon after see them in all the trees.  There are also flocks of pink flamingos on this island.  That’s why we are determined to keep our speed up!  Next stop after that is Cuba!  Hoping for a gentle passage…

Can someone PLEASE turn off the wind??  I’m not sure what is worse: the buffeting about or the noise.  Have you ever lived with  howling wind for a full month, nonstop??  It sounds like the hounds of hell riding straight through me.  Sometimes at night it sounds like horses galloping right on the deck above our heads, and that makes me think of those awful wraith things in Peter Jackson’s Tolkien trilogy.

On the bright side, this boat sure is sturdy.  It has taken all the wind being hurled at it with a fair degree of grace.  On old Pandora we would have been heeling at anchor or at dockside.  New Pandora seems to take all this in stride and stays quite stable.

We had a rip roaring sail from Nassau to Over Yonder Cay on Thursday.  Bob loved it, and I tolerated it.  The wind was behind our beam (the mid-section of the boat) which makes for a pretty comfortable point of sail.  But the consistent 28 mph winds with higher gusts did not make it an easy day for me.  At least I did not get seasick, but I certainly could not do any handwork.  In all that wind, which was gusting over 30 mph quite often, new Pandora only heeled about 10-12%….amazing!

The day before we motored to Nassau in flat waters, about 60 miles from Great Harbour Cay in the Berries.  Bob did some quick provisioning at the American-style Fresh Market before we went out to dinner at Luciano’s, which has now become a tradition for us when we have to stop in Nassau.  Neither of us likes to stop in Nassau. In my case I’d say that arriving by boat in a large city is just not as appealing as arriving in a small town, or better yet, a remote location.  Cities just have too much hubbub for the cruising life style….but maybe that’s just me.  Nassau also has seen more crime in the past couple of years, which puts me on my guard.

The sail from Nassau to Over Yonder Cay was about 75 miles, and new Pandora raced here with speeds ranging from the high 8’s to mid 10s (mph).  This is a lot faster than any of our previous boats.  Bob just loved it…

Here is Pandora looking good on the dock at Over Yonder.

Yesterday in the latest gale, I stayed onboard all day and tried to be creative.  I made bread and yogurt.  The yogurt was my first attempt since back in the 70s when I had one of those electric yogurt makers by Salton–do you remember those?  Yogurt is not something easily found in the Bahamas, and milk will get scarcer and scarcer until there is none at all in Cuba, so I thought I’d attempt making it again, this time with irradiated box milk.  I was pretty convinced that it would not work, but voila!  It did!

I also spent much of yesterday going over the chapters I’ve put together for the Archie Brennan book.  I know I never talk about it, and everyone must assume by now that it’s a defunct project.  But I’ve been lurching along, and it is starting to shape up into something.  I am still quite smitten with this project, and there has actually been some very good progress–in my humble opinion!

I realize now I haven’t mentioned that I’ve worn my acid green t-shirt, newly adorned with tatting, a couple of times!  No one has commented on it–surely that’s a lack of boaters’ understanding anything about handwork, and not that it’s not adorable.

This is more accurate color.

  I made quite a bit of progress of my newest tapestry before I decided to UNweave all of it.  I’ve started again and am almost back to where I’d been when I decided to start over. Sheesh…

There is a lot going on at Over Yonder Cay even when there are no guests staying here.  Everyone works very hard to keep this place going–and to keep it being one of the most stunning spots anywhere.

Yesterday the mail boat arrived with lots of provisions…. the food must have come from the US because I’ve never seen so many beautiful vegetables and fruits in all of the Bahamas.  The produce came in crates!  A crate each of asparagus, mangoes, lemons and limes, cauliflower….

Then a seaplane arrived with a number of other provisions, including some kind of big pneumatic drill thingy…. It landed in the water right near us and drove up a ramp to stop right next to us onshore! Customs and Immigration arrived to make sure that everything had been properly invoiced.  Hmm…

We invited the couple we met two years ago, Ethan and Jaime, to come for dinner last night.  This time they brought their newborn son with them.  What a thrill to hold a baby after so many years.  He is a beautiful baby, and so mild mannered.  He let me hold him with barely a whimper at leaving his mom’s arms.  Jaime’s mother is visiting the island right now from her home in Long Island.  I enjoyed talking to her, Long Island being just the tip of the iceberg of what we have in common !  I hope we will see her again sometime in our own stomping grounds.  It was a very enjoyable evening for Bob and me.

This is a terrible photo, but I have to share it…. there is nothing like holding a baby!

Today we will take a walk around the island and then have dinner in the pavilion where we had a meal two years ago with Rob and Kandice.  I’m looking forward to that, especially if the winds die down as they are supposed to do.  And I’m hoping to see a lovely sunset (the pavilion is on the western side of the island with a lovely beach) without having my eyelashes ripped off.  Ever hopeful..

I’ve been making good progress on the second little tatted trim.  I had initially thought I would put it on a periwinkle, boat neck t-shirt I have with me, but I don’t think the color changes in the tatting thread work as well as I initially thought.  I have a lime green linen tank top onboard that I think will better.  So that’s the plan for now.

I’m a bit tempted to raid the fine cotton threads I brought with me to give to the bobbin lace maker in Cuba.  I’d like to try tatting on a smaller scale.  I’ll try to resist that temptation.

 

 

It was such a wonderful experience to arrive in Great Harbor Cay to soft warm breezes and brilliant sunshine. We had a couple of days of magnificent sunrises and sunsets—just what I needed. Since then it’s been gale force winds and ominous skies. Offshore the winds have been very high indeed, around 70 mph. Numerous friends have written to tell me about the cruise ship that got stuck in these winds and had to confine all passengers to their cabins while the ship returned to the US.

So, after getting somewhat used to this violent weather and calming down that Pandora was not going to rip herself right off the dock, I have picked up some projects again. I am about three rings and chains from finishing my little tatted lace trim. Maybe tonight I’ll be able to sew it to my t-shirt. Fingers crossed on that.

Yesterday, I took my copper pipe loom ashore to warp it (far too bouncy onboard for such a task). Bob rigged up a brilliantly technical, Rube Goldberg arrangement for clamping the edge of my loom to a picnic table. It involved two clamps, a length of webbing with a small clasp at one end such as is used for tying things to the roof of a car, and then a length of plain webbing and length of line (nauticalese for rope).

Can you see that Bob attached one clamp to the picnic table and then used the 2nd clamp to attach the corner of the loom to the first clamp.  So clever…. To minimize the torquing of the loom he has the car webbing running from the long bar of the 1st clamp to the other end of the picnic table.  The 2nd webbing is bracing the bottom corner of the loom to the picnic table.It was quite an engineering feat, and in the end, I was able to warp the loom all by myself while Bob walked to the market on the island. With my spool of seine twine in a bucket and tensioned by going over the brace of a picnic table nearby, I was able to use one hand to keep the tension on the warp while making wraps of warp with the other hand. I was done in less than hour!

All finished warping.  Then I sat down for a bit to space the warp threads evenly and weave a header that will support the beginning of the woven tapestry.  Does it look cold?  It certainly was!  The wind was blowing about 30 mph and the resultant wind chill was very un-tropical!

Here is the cartoon I’ll be using for this project. It’s the final line from one of my favorite Robert Frost poems, and it happens to be a favorite with our younger son as well. This tapestry is for him. In this photo I am measuring for possible border sizes.

Meanwhile, in my inbox yesterday I found a message from a friend alerting me to a post on Weavetech that she knew I’d be interested in reading. Now that internet is not a ‘given’ for us I have dropped the daily digest format, so I would never have seen this post without the ‘heads up!’ from my friend.

It turns out there is a new book out by Oxford Press about two subjects very dear to me: ancient Greece and weaving. Being a Greek student in college is what led me to weaving in the first place– 40 years ago. It was the connection between text and textile that brought me to weaving, and now 4 decades later a few people are looking at the connections between the words for various parts of early Greek ships and words used in weaving terminology. And now that I spend such a great deal of time living onboard my own little vessel (though not a ship) I am naturally curious to learn more about these findings.

The book is originally in German, and published by an English publisher (Oxbow) with a division in the US.  You can find it online here.  Surely it must also be available in English, especially since the title is translated –I am certainly counting being able to order an English translation.

Weben und Bewebe in der Antike: Materialitat–Reprasentation–Episteme–Metapoetick
(Texts and Textiles in the Ancient World: Materiality–Representation–Episteme–Metapoetics)
Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer (Author)

What I got to read, through the post on WeaveTech, is an article taken from the book, written by Marie-Louise Nosch and published on a website called www.academia.edu

Though I could not find the article by searching that site (maybe you will have better luck), the woman who posted on WeaveTech sent me a pdf. I’d like to post it here, but will first find out if I need permission for that. Stay tuned. It is a compelling study of the words for various parts of a sailing and rowing ship being the same as words used in both spinning and weaving. Since textile production is an older technology, it is presumed that the words used in ship building and  sailing terms were borrowed from textile terms, due to textile’s prominent connection to ships, ship building, and the act of sailing or rowing.

And on a calmer day Bob and I took a walk on the pristine beach at Great Harbor Cay.