With the emotional Hawaii send-off astern, we resolutely beat north against 25 knots of NE trades. Aunt Abby's tropical bouquet, still lashed to the bow, met green water regularly for three days and the flowers gradually eroded away to a few desultory nubs.

Sunrise at sea

As we neared the edge of the tropics, the North Pacific weather situation remained unfavorable. The semi-permanent high-pressure area responsible for the prevalent NW wind in California was unusually and stubbornly camped way out on the dateline, leaving Orca with a poor choice between headwinds and calms. On the fifth night, as expected, we coasted into a brick wall: 600 nautical miles without a breath of wind. Orca floated perfectly still surrounded by the absolute silence of outer space; the stars, planets, milky way, and moon indistinguishably reflected by the ocean's invisible surface. Sweeping raindrops occasionally brought reprieve by disturbing the microorganisms at the water's surface to lead a pulsing wave of phosphorescence over the ocean.
The ocean became mirror calm, without even the ubiquitous long-period swell. The horizon disappeared into the sky and even standing became difficult, balance tricky.

Drifting with a now-familiar cluster of plastic flotsam, we baked in the day's heat and reveled in the night's magnificence for a week. Finally, a fitful breeze riffled the water's surface from the NW. The sails filled, barely, and we crept forward shadowed by curious Minke whales. Passing Oregon's latitude at 1,100 miles offshore and free from coastal upwelling, we stood night watch in shorts, and then a tee-shirt. Crossing 50N, the temperature plunged and the air became cold, hard, as clear and brittle as crystal. If anything, the stars blazed brighter. Closing the Alaskan coast, an undulating curtain of eerie green light rose in the north until dawn revealed the towering glaciated mountains, volcanoes, and endless tree-lined fjords of Baranof Island. We puttered into Sitka Sound in a dead calm, appropriate to a 27 day passage in light winds and calms.

If South Africa was the wildest place we've been from a socioeconomic standpoint, Alaska has been the wildest in the true sense of the word. Sitka, little more than an outpost of 8,000 people clinging the edge of an island 70 miles off the mainland coast, is the ex-capital of the state and the fourth largest 'city' in the Nation's largest state. One can walk across it in 15 minutes.

This isolation results in a rare breed of people, reminiscent of the New Zealander. In the village south of Sitka, seven houses were broken into by grizzly bears in a single night last week. We asked why people didn't board up their windows and the response was "its easier to replace the window than the whole wall." Last month, the start of deer season was no secret. Headless carcasses hung from the rigging of boats in the harbor, dripping and swaying as they were efficiently disassembled. With such a low population density, the hunting rules are generous to the point of being ludicrous: in some areas, ten wolves per day--unless in self defense. Californians will have trouble imagining a scenario in which its necessary or even possible to survive an attack by more than ten wolves, but it's something Alaskan law takes in stride.

Getting Cold

Salmon in the river

The season is changing rapidly. The last salmon carcasses have rotted to skeletons and the bald eagles are restless. Every ten days another hour of daylight is lost and the nights grow cold. The rain has turned to sleet and hail as the snow creeps ever further down the mountains. This morning there was a thin layer of ice on the water around Orca and at high noon, the puddles stayed frozen. People are buttoning up and the town is pulling together for mutual support through winter's cold and darkness. Every night, it seems, a new community event debuts featuring scalding coffee, brightly defiant lights, thick hearty stew, a roaring cedar fire, banjos, bagpipes, Tlingit drums, knitting for the old and dancing for the young. And through it all, at a much deeper psychological level, Kara and I are still wondering just what, exactly, we've gotten ourselves into.

Snowy Gavan Hill View

Through the mountains

Hello friends,


We apologize for the long silence, we have been very busy.

Faithful transit crew

As we retired from the western-most bar on the Atlantic, we were feeling very nervous about our Canal transit. The air hung heavy, expectant, and still around us; the seasonal onshore trades that had been long been holding the temperature and humidity to the low 90's had died, and millions of bird-sized dragonflies flew unerringly west through the marina. Howler monkeys rumbled in the jungle, and as we stepped aboard, a boa constrictor uncoiled menacingly from behind the steering wheel. We would be glad to move on.

The Canal Authority requires a minimum of five people plus a pilot aboard any boat transiting the canal. On the morning of our transit, Orca was still short. We put the word out, and the sailing community responded. A french doctor, an American home insulation consultant, and an Australian sailor--from a boat even smaller than Orca—each volunteered the two days to get us into the Pacific. A dozen used car tires lashed around the rail for extra protection, and four hundred feet of dockline completed our preparations.

Flooding the chambers

A heavily populated Orca puttered out of the marina, meeting a pilot boat on approach to the first set of locks where we shipped two pilots—one in training. Now overloaded with seven people aboard we rafted to a pair of fifty foot sailboats and nosed into the first lock chamber. It seemed very narrow and impossibly tall, the land-side figures manning our lines along the rim scurried about like ants. The gates boomed closed behind us, while ahead, sixty vertical feet of rusty riveted iron held back the weight of Lake Gatun. At mast-top height, water trickled from the seam between the double doors. A cruise ship was maneuvered carefully into position at an adjacent lock, its waterline fifty feet above our heads. Orca suddenly felt tiny, smaller than she ever had at sea. The massive submerged valves were opened and suddenly the water was churning. A Honda-sized whirlpool boiled past, the water rising quickly. Our triple

Cooling off

raft-up surged and twisted, and Orca's cleats and blocks took loads from all three lurching boats, lines bar-tight and creaking under the strain. Elevator-like we rose surprisingly quickly, all of our volunteer crew glistening sweat as they worked to keep the lines tight and the boats centered. After three repetitions, we emerged onto the lake, where the pilots quickly directed us to our night's mooring. They cruelly left us with a stern warning against swimming: man-eating caiman, a variety of alligator in the 10-12 foot range. The temperate and humidity were both pegged in triple digits. Steam rose thick from the jungle.

sharing the road

We dove in, hell with the caiman. Underwater, we felt a change in ambient viscosity but, disappointingly, no reduction in temperature. We suffered an endless night and were glad to run up the rusty diesel at 4am to pick up a new pilot for the lake crossing. Lake Gatun began as a misty, muddy, and muggy jungle swamp. Vines hung over the water, and monkey and toucan calls pierced the haze easily above the dark mirror water. The feeling of prehistoric, unnerving timelessness seeped again and again through our crew, intermittently interrupted by brightly colored panamax freighters 80 feet high and 1,000 feet long tearing out of the jungle and fog at 17 knots to send wakes washing over Orca's deck. Eventually, we emerged into a long and unnaturally straight channel, lined with huge dredging machinery battling the continuous mudslides along either bank. Orca followed the cut and sailed blithely through a mountain range, into the locks, and out into the Pacific.

Pacific Sailing

We love the Pacific, but it takes experience in the other oceans to fully appreciate it. Only in the Pacific could we depart Panama and have 47 days nonstop smooth sailing to Hawaii. We sweltered our way south, out of the gulf of Panama. On day five we brushed past the cold Humboldt current flowing up from Cape Horn. I even felt a bit of a chill during a rain squall once, and brewed a hot cup of tea – the first in nearly a month – and while huddled around it Kara noticed the thermometer had plunged into the high eighties and even braved a sip herself.

Honolulu arrival

Kara insisted we sail a conservative course to Hawaii, incorporating an extra 1,000 mile loop south to avoid the burgeoning North Pacific hurricane season. Over the next seven weeks, we watched several tropical storms and a full hurricane blossom along the more direct route, and I had to admit that it had been an excellent decision. On day 27 we crossed our 42 month-old path between Mexico and the Marquesas. Orca had sailed around the world.


By day 46, Mauna Loa was close but still lost in cloud. The city lights on Maui, low and golden between rainsqualls, crept along the rail. We entered the notorious Molokai Channel, finally rounding Diamond Head in a balmy 12 knot breeze. Kara's resident Hawaii family met us on the docks, reaching through the cyclone fencing and razor wire coils of the quarantine zone. U.S. Homeland Security officials held us while working tirelessly to ascertain the threat level our homebrewing equipment constituted and its possible effects on

national security. When they released us, I stepped onto US soil for the first time in almost four years. A friendly yachtie lobbed us a pair of icy Budweisers, the cans proudly emblazoned with the stars and stripes.
We'd scarcely managed to get the boat attached to the dock when we were whisked away. Apparently, while Orca was at sea, a fly-in welcoming committee had formed among Kara's Californian family, reached critical mass, and snowballed to include extended family and beyond. Visitors were pouring in from all over the country, entire airplanes must have been booked. We were bounced from hug to handshake, house to hotel, and drinks to dinner to desert until the next thing we knew, Aunt Abby was lashing a tropical bouquet to the bow pulpit, Uncle Bart was singing Aloha 'Oe, and cousins were lei-ing us as we set out into the dregs of Hurricane Yasi on the final offshore leg of our journey: passage to Alaska.


Thanks to all, especially Kara's family who took such good care of us during our stay on Oahu.


John & Kara

Orca Update 35

Kestrel overlooking a BVI anchorage

Hello friends, 

Our time in the Caribbean is nearly finished, and we still haven't recovered from the culture shock. We arrived in St Lucia to find hundreds of boats anchored in Rodney Bay. We took a spot in the marina for a night and were perturbed to find the smallest berths—and smallest prices—available were for 50-foot catamarans; when we slid Orca in there was still room for a half-dozen more 30 footers. After clearing with customs, immigration, the port captain, and extracting ourselves from the clutches of the very persistent street merchants, we moved into the bay. Kara was anxious to stretch her legs ashore, but the first two beaches we attempted to land on were staffed by security guards who came running to demand money. Our third attempt was successful, but only because we promised to stay below the tide line. Kara got her first walk ashore--after 27 days at sea--knee deep in the shore-break.

Coconut makes a beer run

The second thing we did in St Lucia was find internet for news from home. We were excited to digest all of our mail, but nestled in amongst the well wishes was a bombshell: along with Kara's sister, her father—none other than the revered Pastor Johnny himself—was dropping into St Lucia for a surprise visit between sermons. And yes, he would be staying aboard, in Orca's five-star luxury accommodation. My first thought was: where am I going to hide 10 gallons of booze? Kara's first thought: thank God we finally fixed the toilet.

We were a few minutes late meeting them at the airport. Pastor Johnny, brandishing a stack of chocolate bars, was battling to hold off a platoon of aggressive taxi drivers. Robyn remained unmolested; fresh from a long sunless winter in foggy Humboldt, she had cunningly camouflaged herself by remaining motionless against a white sheet-rock wall. The taxi drivers slunk away when Kara told them we knew about their dirty little secret: St Lucia's inexpensive bus system.

We quickly realized that, with resort security keeping us off the beaches, the boat was very crowded. Our collective sanity would require a whole lot of snorkeling. The unfortunate side effect was that, by day two, our guests were sporting severe--possibly terminal—sunburns. This affliction in turn required vigorous application of cold beer and margaritas—strictly for medicinal purposes. After a week, we put our guests on a plane in a blizzard of skin cells and Orca set sail for the next rendezvous.

Keeping pace with the parents

Months ago, in a uncharacteristically daring show of bravado, my parents reserved a 36-foot sailboat in the British Virgin Islands. Their lack of experience was causing a spike in parental anxiety as the charter date approached, so Orca arrived a day early and found a lovely anchorage within spitting distance of the charter dock. 

We loaded Tim and Ann onto their boat and Kara skippered them over to Peter Island. We installed them next to Orca, where I imagined they would relax for the remainder of their trip—but the parents had other ideas. Nearing 60, they seemed to have more energy than most 3 year olds; swimming five times daily, snorkeling morning and evening, hiking miles up hot dusty roads, and sailing for hours—often slamming relentlessly to windward—each day. They "did" the BVI in a flurry of activity that left the Orca crew listless and exhausted in their wake. At the end of their visit, they sashayed through customs and sprang lightly onto the ferry, putting in a solid 30 travel-hours to arrive home at 3 A.M, in time for a cup of coffee and a surf before beginning the 8-hour workday. We slept for three days.

Third snorkel of the day

Recuperation was slow process, but eventually we felt strong enough to set sail toward the Panama Canal. We gave the hostile Venezuelan shoreline a wide berth. Skirting the Colombian coastline we were twice overflown by unlit propeller planes at mast height—either drug runners or anti-drug patrols—before we reached Panamanian waters after 1,100 miles.

Panama has a monopoly on canals. On arrival, the Port Captain wanted $200. Immigration wanted another $220. We waited five days (at $50/day) in the marina for the Panama Canal Authority to send someone to verify that our thirty foot boat was, in fact, less than fifty feet long—for a fee, of course. Another $1,000 reserved us a spot in the locks, but we're required to have at least six people aboard. Bodies are available for hire--for a hefty fee, of course.

Transiting the Canal takes two days. On day one, a group of sailboats uses the three Gatun locks to climb nearly 100 feet from the Atlantic to an artificial lake. After spending the night, we will use the four Miraflores locks to descend into the Pacific. Each lock is a thousand feet long, a hundred wide, and are primarily designed for freighters. When they are flooded, the turbulence and wash generated by the enormous volume of injected water is said to be the greatest single danger to a small boat. To lift Orca up to Lake Gatun and lower her into the Pacific will require the release of over fifty million gallons of lake water. 

Orca is roughly scheduled to lock up to the lake on Friday, May 3 at about 1500 and lock down into the Pacific at about 1000 California time the following day. You can watch our transit live at http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html. On arrival in the Pacific, it is customary to toast the 30,000 men who lost their lives in the construction of the Panama Canal.

Thanks again,

John & Kara

Hello from the Caribbean!

We were leaving Cape Town. After a day of departure paperwork involving only five visits to officials in distant corners of the city, we were permitted to depart. The weather forecast looked excellent as we sailed out in a benign Cape Doctor zephyr; just 38 knots on the anemometer—calm compared with the usual 50 or 60. The weather was slow to warm with the frigid north-flowing Benguela current keeping pace beneath us. Ten days out of Cape Town, the first flying fish began to crash into the cabin and we shed our jackets. As we crossed the Prime Meridian, the wind settled to ten knots from the ESE, where it stayed for the next four weeks. Feeling strong, we blew by Saint Helena, a spire of volcanic stone in the middle of the South Atlantic made famous as the place of Napoleon's exile in the late 1800's.

black triggerfish on Ascension

Four weeks out of Cape Town, Ascension Island appeard on the horizon. Despite the lofty name, the island is more of the desolate-pile-of-rubble variety. A small USAF base maintains an airstrip for refueling fighter jets on trans-Atlantic missions and serves double-duty as emergency landing for troubled commercial airliners. The millitary also runs a desailinization plant to generate fresh water for the soldiers, which we had hopes of sharing. After nearly a month at sea, we had used 27 gallons of water, exactly half our supply. Even so, before leaving Cape Town, we'd contacted the authorities on the island asking permission to stop for 30 gallons of fresh water. We submitted our information for the required background checks and were eventually given the green light. We would be allowed up to three days on the island but only between 8 am and 9 pm each day.

We anchored in the dubious protection of the tiny island, next to a floating pipeline for transfering jet fuel ashore. Big eight foot swells rose under the boat and crashed onto the jagged lava coast. Orca rolled mightily. We'd only been settled for a few minutes when we discovered that A.I has, essentially, a one-species ecosystem. The situation is natural and was recorded in journals by square-riggers hundreds of years ago. Regardless, Orca was quickly, entirely, surrounded by a sea of six-to-eight inch triggerfish—only the black variety. We launched the dingy and began the long trek ashore. Rowing through the triggerfish was like rowing through watery soup.

Not sure what would happen if you got tangled up in this big guy...

A beach landing was obviously out of the question; the shorebreak was a raging caldron of sandy spume. The only jetty on the island was a twenty-five foot high brick of concrete poured onto a shelf of black lava. We left the dingy on a string of dilapidated local skiffs tied like Christmas lights to a line anchored about 30-feet off the jetty. After swimming to the pier, a timely surge allows a desperate grab at a knotted rope hanging down the concrete face and slippery climb to a staircase. Once ashore, we were confronted not with the high-security military situation we expected, but with a cadre of dock-workers lounging in the shade of a gutted bunker drinking beer at 10 am on a Monday morning. They offered us a beer but we declined, conserving our wits for a possible millitiary interrogation. We reported our presence to the local authorites—a cherub faced officer who was delighted to see fresh faces and sincerely apologetic about the port, immigration, light, and water fees we were going to have to pay for even our short stop. He was a fount of island information and was so excited that it was impossible to be angry.

black triggerfish following the dingy

We followed his advice and watched the sunset from the beach that evening. As the sun flashed green at the horizon, a dozen giant green sea turtles began to climb laboriously from the ocean. Keeping very still, we let the 550 lb behemoths climb around us to dig their egg holes. They left tracks in the sand like 8-foot wide tractor tires and, stumbling back in the dark, Kara nearly dissapeard into a nest hole. The next morining began early with a startling banging on the hull. I thought perhaps we'd come adrift and Orca was on the lava but investigation revealed 1,200 pounds of oblivious mating sea turtle, their shells bumping the hull. The turtles were friendly and curious, hovering around the boat most of the day. They added a new thrill to snorkeling; they preferred to inspect swimmers at about a six inch distance. We would have prefered ten feet or more.

As we left Ascension Island, I did some mental math; I just couldn't help myself. All told, we had payed almost $3-a-gallon for fresh water. Kara reminded me that, during the next 3,200 miles of sailing into the remotest parts of the Atlantic's watery desert, we might find ourselves willing to pay many times that. We decided to cut Kara's luxurious hair off to save water on the this long passage; we estimated we could save up to 250ml per shower this way.

smooth sailing in the South Atlantic

We quickly picked up the 10-knot SE trades again, and ticked off the next thousand miles to the equator. 900 miles west of Nigeria and the Ivory Coast, we left Africa's newest pirate problems well to starboard. In the center of nowhere, flashing schools of mahi mahi rode the bow wave for hundreds of miles, catching the flying fish Orca spooked. We dried salted tuna strips from the rigging. Eventually, all of our fishing lures were destroyed, the hooks all straightened, the plastics and wood all mangled, the reels all spooled. A blue marlin the size of a canoe followed us for hours. We sailed through zooplankton blooms that tinted the ocean a cloudy salmon color. Neon pink man-of-war jellyfish the size of corn tortillas drifted past. Pilot whales and vast dolphin schools visited; sea life was unabashedly vibrant.

Then we reached the doldrums, the area just north of the equator where the north and south Atlantic trade winds collide and spiral vertically in an area of dark, brooding, sweltering and windless weather with towering castles and battlements of purple cumulonimbus, thunder, lightening, and rain. Torrential, biblical rain. We were battered by enough marble-sized raindrops to fill the tanks every minute. An innocuous fold in the mainsail instantly filled with 20 gallons. The scuppers were overrun, Kara panicked—she couldn't breath on deck. The surface of the ocean seemed to be reaching up to the clouds. Lightening flashed so bright it didn't matter if our eyes were open or closed—we only saw red.

In a way, the heavy rain helped us through. The friction of big raindrops through the atmosphere causes cold downdrafts below each thunderhead. When these hit the ocean's surface, they spread out as weak breezes which we used to pick our way through the doldrums. After only a single night of light air, we ghosted into the north Atlantic trades and blasted off towards the Caribbean, closing the Brazillian coast as we put six consecutive 145 mile days in the bank. Even so, it took us over a day to pass the 175-mile wide mouth of the Amazon river.

exiting the doldrums

Twenty-seven days out of Ascension island, we anchored behind St Lucia in the Caribbean. We had two Cape Town onions, an orange, and an African pumpkin remaining. The water tanks, thanks to the rainy doldrums, were full. The bow and stern, where our sailing wake rode up the hull above the antifoul, were crusted with three-inch gooseneck barnacles, but a few coats of varnish, and some elbow grease should put Orca back in top form.

Hello from Cape Town!

With the boat safely parked in Zululand, we set out to explore the bush. Well—not really. The surrounding landscape is a rolling, green and lush, and completley tame. Every square inch is covered in eucalyptus timber farms, cow paddocks, and villages—but we were heading for the famous Hluhluwe and uMflozi game reserves. These reserves, along with Kruger, are Zululand's main tourist attractions; essentually large areas partolled by anti-poaching squads where the natural ecosystem is allowed to function free of human influence. The rangers don't give non-poaching visitors much thought—a small sign at the entrance depicts an elephant overturning a car, but this warning leaves you totally unprepared for the reality of the self-service, self-drive, unfenced, and unsupervised park.

As we rumbled over ten feet of electrical fencing laid across the road—to keep the lions from raiding livestock outside the park—a marvelous transformation took place. Instead of a biological landscape entirely composed of cattle and people, we found ourselves in an area of incredible density and diversity. In the first kilometer we saw a flock of playful yellow weaver birds, a herd of nervous impalas, a troupe of mischevious baboons, a hungry warthog, two grumpy white rhinos, a herd of watchful buffalo, and an arrogant elephant. Life was really happening here and the environment man had created for himself outside the park suddenly seemed sterile, depleted, and monochromatic.

The limited size of the game reserve can support only a handful of apex predators—the lions. We didn't spot any in the big park, so we decided to cheat a little. A lion breeding program nearby keeps a dozen lions in a smaller paddock, enclosed by what seems like a ludicrisly high electrified fence. The ranch makes limited money selling cubs to zoos, so, to suppliment the beer fund, the rangers let tourists drive into the lion cage. Again, a small sign warned "No soft-top vehicles. Close all windows, lock all doors. Keep moving." The implication that the lions might rip the top off the car, or that they knew how to open unlocked doors to reach the tasty morsels within, was not lost on us. Once inside, the restive lions came to investigate the car and we realized the 30-foot high electric fence and warning signs were not ridiculious at all. Their paws were the size of dinner plates and they could go from a lazy sprawl to a light-footed 30 mile-an-hour lope instantly.
After two days in the game parks, we drove back to the boat. South Africa is the only place we've been where one can watch hundreds of white people drive Mercedes, BMWs, Porsches, and Maseratiis past millions of black people living in self-built mud huts. After we sailed from Richard's Bay, we entered a stretch of coast torn by poverty and racism. The only 'white-safe' places to stop were the yacht clubs, the last bastions of apartheid. The first club we stopped at huddled behind fencing installed by their friendly neighbors—a Mercedes Benz factory—and the last club had three sequential security gates with 24 hour gaurds walking the dock. The occasional white-affluent neighborhoods are embroiled in a have-to-keep-up-with-the-Joneses arms race of towering walls, rows of barbed wire, coils of razor wire, electric fencing, steel spikes, cameras, and motion sensors. The safest neighborhoods are protected by a communal system of 20-foot electrified steel fences, high-tech motion detectors, and special-forces army vetrans. "Its so safe, kids can even play on the street here," one South African boasted to us. The fact is, the tiny white minority feels like it's in hostile territory and with the huge economic disparity, the advent of democratic elections, and their past abuses of the native Africans, they probably are. South Africa is a raw place, but its not all bad. With the new black government still finding its footing among the huge socioeconomic and racial issues, there hasn't been time for the lawmakers and court systems to litligiously excise the ideas of common sense and personal responsibility. Its only in a country like S.A. that one is allowed to drive their Avis rental into a lion cage.

We arrived in Simon's Town for Chirstmas. This little port huddles in a tide pool just twelve miles from the Cape of Good Hope in some of the most consistently blustery condions we've seen. The docks, which drift around alarmingly, are losely chained to granite bolders which seem able to hold the hundreds of sailboats in the consistent 45 knot winds. Miraculously, it was calm on Christmas morning. Santa brought a big sack of dried raw antelope meat--billtong—and an anti-baboon slingshot, which you definitely need. There are bands of maurauding monkeys living in caves on the cliffs behind town. Originally, they only harassed hikers and picknickers, but recently they've started breaking into the mansions to raid for candy bars. In response, homeowners hired guards with paintball guns to patroll the streets and drive the monkeys back into the hills. The smart—and now very angry—baboons now retaliate by throwing rocks, and the resulting pitched battles are a common hazard along the hiking trails.

Kara, of course, was dead set to go for her family's traditional Christmas hike—which was why she'd sprung for the slingshot. We set off, up a trail into the towering cliffs above town and soon wandered deep into a box canyon terminated by a waterfall. It was a lovely spot, with not a baboon in sight. We were feeling pretty comfortable after an undisturbed hour when the snap of a twig echoed down the cliffs. Kara's head snapped upward, quickly followed by her drawn weapon. A half-dozen surprisingly large baboons were creeping down the cliffs around us. It was a coordinated ambush, designed to drive us from our picnic. The chief monkey's yellow eyes flashed agressivly and he let out a powerful rumbling bellow, displaying yellowed fangs. Kara loosed her rock and tossed the slingshot to me, asking for covering fire while she gathered our things. The baboons returned fire and we beat a hasty retreat under a withering hail of rocks, with the monkeys following along the canyon's rim just out of slingshot range. Our cowardly run back to the the boat was only slightly delayed by a five-foot cobra crossing our path, at which point we briefly considered a retreat back to the baboons. Safely back at the boat, we decided to put the traditional hike on hold until next year.

Orca is sitting low in the water. We're looking at 55 days to the Caribbean, with little or no opportunity to ressuply en-route. Among other things, 60 cans of tomatoes, 50 packages of noodles, 12 bottles of rum, 10 pounds of cheese, 30 pounds of potatoes, and 60 gallons of water will sustain us over the next 5,500 miles of sailing. Leaving now, we expect to arrive sometime in March.