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Toast Hawaii – Multi Culti Food on Proximity
Some of you have probably heard me telling the story of ‘Toast Hawaii’, or more precise two stories.
I would think all Germans know Toast Hawaii. It is a slice of toast, topped with a slice of Canadian Bacon, slice of pine apple, slice of cheese, if it is really fancy one of these very hot red cocktail cherries goes on top, stick it in the oven until the cheese is evenly melted and voilá, the delicious meal is ready. I read the following anecdote in an in-flight magazine, written by a German on a quest for the original toast Hawaii. It is save to say that all Germans love Hawaii, and would like to go there sometime. Not too many do, but this lucky fellow got to go to the Islands of his dreams. Once there, he figured that there should be the most outstanding toast Hawaii available in just about any restaurant, right? You guessed it – wrong! No such thing was to be found anywhere in Hawaii, and probably nowhere else outside Germany.
Story two – true, all characters are real people. I was taught to prepare this ‘exotic’ dish while in Middle school, where all girls at the time had to take cooking class. Not the boys, mind you. My awakening sense of equality for boys and girls thought was just wrong, and I hated that class. But, I liked the toast Hawaii, and offered to make it at home for a special occasion, don’t remember which one, but it might just have been Christmas eve, because this became the dish mom would insist on for Christmas eve from the first time she ever ate it to the very last Christmas eve in her life. One year Rod dared to suggest that one might substitute white boring toast with some good German bread, and the cheese could be some good cheese as well rather than Kraft American slices, the individually wrapped ones, you know. That did not go down well at all with mom, no modifications thinkable.
Now we fast forward a few years and you find your intrepid Proximity crew at anchor in Ensenada de los Muertos, on the way south to Mazetlan, waiting for one of these pesky Notherlies to pass. There was a lucky brake a few days ago, as I discovered a stash of German Pumpernickel and black bread, no kidding, we must have bough tit back in Santa Barbara. We provisioned last in La Paz about 12 days ago, so tortillas are gone, they don’t keep too long, so what can we come up with to use the Pumpernickel for? We got Spam – yummy, a can of pine apple slices, and some ‘Queso Gouda la Campecina Barra’, the key word here being queso (cheese) gouda, melts really well.
Here is our creation of Toast Hawaii chez Proximity (per person): A slice Pumpernickel (has to be the real German stuff), a couple of slices spam, sepperately fried to be brown evenly on both sides, slice of pine apple, enough cheese to cover the pine apple, any nicely melting cheese will do. Pile it all up in that order, put in a non stick pan, put a lid on and heat on low flame until cheese is melted. The slightly fried Pumpernickel turned out to be delicious. To add a little twist to it, we added some Vietnames Chili Garlic Sauce, great if you like spicy. For now we are out of cheese, but you can give it a try at your home!
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Living in a fish tank
One of the most amazing things of being in the Sea of Cortez is the clear water. For somebody used to sail in more or less muddy waters just setting the anchor is fun each time. I can watch it go down all the way to the bottom ever since we anchored the first time in Cabo San Lucas. In Los Freiles I snorkeled, mostly on the surface, and followed the anchor chain along until I could see the anchor shaft ever so slightly sticking out of the sand. For the first time ever I was able to see Proximity’s full underwater hull in the water! That makes it very easy to check on the zincs, and the prop etc.
Around the bottom of the boat a little ecosystem started to form. Tiny little neon like fish were hovering around the boarding ladder, a group of larger fish inhabited the area around the keel. Every once in a while some yet larger fish would upset the peaceful division of territory and a feeding frenzy would diminish one or the other group, mostly the tiny guys around the ladder would be eaten until nobody was left. At night, when shining a light into the water, fish with glowing orange eyes were all around the boat.
One day at Los Freiles we went snorkeling close to the rocks. A beautiful underwater world unfolded beneath us, like swimming in a tropical fish tank. On the rocks we found hundreds of crabs climbing around, hiding when we moved, but soon going back to their crabby business once we stayed quite for a while.
Even in the anchorage we saw Manta Rays jumping out of the water and flipping around in the air.
There are other sightings, amazing, but not so welcome, like a water snake in the Marina Palmira in La Paz. It was black and beige in a leopard pattern, rather interesting to watch, but they do make me feel uneasy. Same with the small jelly fish species which we saw at Los Freiles. At first glance they looked like an air bubble, but at a closer look one could see some beautiful blue lining of the bubble, and the dreaded tentacle following them along. Amber from Rockstar, one of our neighbors at Los Freiles, had the bad fortune to come in contact with one of them, and she said it felt like being cut by razor blades.
Floating in this perfectly clear water, with all the animals around, I had to think about all the contamination and destruction we as humans impose on this perfect ecosystem. Even when trying hard not to, we can’t help but leaving some traces behind. There is the wastewater from preparing food, and cleaning and such. When offshore for extended periods of time, organic scraps like orange peels etc. go overboard. We make a point to not throw any cans, glass, carton and the like over board. I figure the ocean is like a mountain range, and what you pack in you pack out. After all there was space for those beer cans and wine bottles when they were full!
My awareness about water usage and management also heightened, now that we are trying to be part of the system. We make water by reversed osmosis, a system which reminds me much of my former life in the lab, and I refer to the membrane affectionately as ‘the column’. Making water of course doesn’t come for free, it is one of our larger energy consumers. We try to get as much energy from solar panels (they are very productive) and the wind generator (not so productive). So there is a very obvious connection between water consumption and energy production, of which I am very aware each time I open a water faucet. Saving water and electricity become a way of life.
For some more information on degradation and pollution I looked up a few websites. Most impressive is this video from Captain Moore, it says it all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7K-nq0xkWY
This wikipedia page has lots of links and is a good source for further information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
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Baja Haha and onwards
It seems ages ago that I last wrote anything for our website. What happened? Mostly we had no internet access, that is after leaving San Diego for the HAHA. In Cabo San Lucas there was access, but I simply needed to reset, and then we were back into no access land. So lets just pick up from where we are now, which is Los Muertos in the Sea of Cortez, about 40 miles form La Paz.
The HAHA went by like a whirlwind. It seemed like we were mostly trying to get to the next anchorage in time to participate in some of the activities, and if that meant to motor that’s what we did. It was fun though, the HAHA is really about meeting people, though I have to say you better be prepared to deal with whatever the ocean is dishing out to you or else. This was most dramatically illustrated by the loss of a boat in the fleet caused by hitting a whale during the first leg when the going was rather rough. I won’t go into that as you can catch up on lectronic latitude and in the upcoming December issue of Latitude 38. For us the 30 plus knots winds and accompanying waves of up to 18 feet were somewhat challenging because we hand steered for about 18 hours or so, so we simply got pretty tired, but I enjoyed it while we were doing it and am looking back at it as a great experience.
A wild event was almost being run over by a boat with an overzealous crew in a pitch dark night who were running their spinnaker (which we had no way of knowing due to lack of light). All we saw was their green running light suggesting a somewhat parallel course. Since the boat was unresponsive to several attempts to contacting them by VHF radio, the situation escalated to yelling from boat to boat, that’s how close we got. It was rather dicey. Shortly thereafter the moon came up, and the rest of the night turned out to be one of the most beautiful sails during the HAHA.
A very memorable moment was the arrival in Cabo San Lucas, or better the entry into the harbor and the mission to identify our slip. We had a photocopy of the marina chart, and our assigned slip was on N-dock. The only minor glitch was that N-dock did not show up on the chart, but we were assured that the labeling of the docks was really obvious and that there would be marina employees on hand to assist. Further we knew that there would be a fuel dock on our left when we first get in, we should turn to port at the fuel dock.
This area of the marina was laid out for mega yachts, thus there would be ample space to maneuver with our comparable tiny boats. Okay, Cabo, here we come! As we rounded the famous rocks, we were greeted by the crazy traffic of pangas, fish boats, seadoos, or whatever those things are called, completed by a catamaran full of dancing people, dancing to ‘La Macarena’ at full blast.
The whole scene was framed by three anchored cruise ships, some of which we already knew from last night’s sail. It sort of felt like we were floating in the middle of a bunch of bumper cars. But, great, there is the fuel dock on the left as advertised.
We are almost there, turn left at the fuel dock, and – nothing! No marked docks, nothing resembles the marina chart. We are approaching the end of the basin, which is rather small. A quick turn does not prevent us from briefly hitting ground, but fortunately we don’t get stuck. We seem to be lost. What does Captain Ron recommended in this case? “Just ask for directions!” And that is exactly what we did. We tied up in a pretty large slip close to the fuel dock, hailed the marina stuff on the radio, and ask the guys working a the fuel dock for directions, in our best Spanish. Turned out there are two fuel docks, and we ended up in the wrong marina. A half hour later we were happily tight up in the right marina, at the right dock, although at a different slip, since the one we were assigned was already taken. But hey, we were there! The marina stuff was super nice, and we were ready for a rest. As Valerie fro from Pacific Mystic commented later, there are really no words to describe the enry into Cabo. Several boats ended up in a similar situation like we, which now is another ea story. Since I was about to fall asleep over dinner at the Baja Cantina, we skipped the evening out at Squit Row to be well rested for the last upcoming HAHA events.
Cabo was crazier than I remembered from four years ago. The strangest thing was that lots of the street vendors, who are offering bracelets for a dollar or whatever, will without hesitation in the next sentence ask if you would like ‘some weed’. Guess that is legal now in Mexico. Amsterdam has nothing on Cabo. Well, Rod got his subversive Cuban cigar instead, that was enough drugs for both of us. I turned green just looking at him smoking it.
One of the big HAHA parties is on the beach in Cabo. We had fun memories of that from four years ago, so we were there! The Grand Poobaa himself was throwing water balloons at alarming rates, and then he recruited participants for the eternal beach kissing event. The story goes like this: in the movie ‘Verdammt in all Ewigkeit’, also known as ‘From here to Eternity’, there is that on the beach kissing scene, which I frankly do not remember. I might have read only the book, which appears an eternity ago. To make the story short, somehow I was convinced that Rod and I were going to be participants, thanks to the persuasion, amongst others, from the Peregrine crew. We even ended up being the first couple out. I had somewhat misunderstood, what we were to perform, therefore we had a lengthy exchange of words, me trying to re-inact something I was not really sure about. But eventually Rod threw me in the water to shut me up. It was all in great fun. One of the cutest couples were Larry and Mugs from Perigrin, who performed their version in full clothes. Luckily it was really hot.
The day after the awards party we moved to the anchorage in Cabo, where we were planning to get some quit time, which is an impossible concept in Cabo. But we finally inflated our kayaks for the first time and had a great time beach landing them in the surf. During those days we came to the conclusion that we did not want to rush on to the mainland, as we had planned, but to stay a little longer in The Sea of Cortez and the Baja peninsula.
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| Dana point anchorage in the fog |
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Foggy Dana Point Anchorage
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View in the same direction after the the fog lifted some
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Marina Village N-Dock Reunion - if you can recognize anybody
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Phase I – San Francisco to San Diego
Now that we have arrived in San Diego a couple of days ago, time has come to look back on our first month of our new life a sea vagabonds. To look back on the most memorable events, the scary, the funny, the serious, and compare the events of this first months to initial hopes and expectations, in no particular order, just as they cross my mind.
Talking of expectations, the weather certainly was mostly a surprise, not conforming with a ‘normal’ pattern for his time of the year. Thus, our trip was divided by three stays which were much longer than we had planned. The first one was in Half Moon Bay, where the fog engulfed us, such that we actually waited until we had a day with ‘patchy fog’ predicted, which we used to escape. This was the longest we had ever stayed at anchor; we got brave enough to leave the boat for several hours at the time (hint: the Micro Brew in Half Moon Bay is a really nice spot…). Bottom line: we were getting used to life onboard and, at the same time, already had this feeling of being delayed, something to get used to, or something very much like work – i.e. still chasing timelines. That is something to overcome, but it might take time.
The next stop was Monterey, and I won’t recount events which have been recorded in the ongoing log. For one and another reason we stayed 10 nights in Monterey, and whereas I would not mind to live there, that was eating a big chunk out of our planned leisurely trip to San Diego, and I started to think we never would leave No Cal. Of course we eventually did, after a storm had blown itself out, and we had finally got around Point Conception and entered So Cal. From here on out there would be no worries about weather windows anymore, we could plan our legs just like we wanted to, right? Wrong, no such luck.
The weather remained unusual, thus our extended stay in Santa Barbara. And it sure didn’t feel like So Cal at all. The weather was more like that in Bremerhaven, in Northern Germany. But SB is a pretty place, so it was no hardship to spend extra time, except now we started to feel like time was running out. We had a slip reservation in San Diego for the 19th of the month, and we figured that we just could not linger any more. Once we decided on the individual legs, it was just a matter of doing it. By that time we had figured out that we would either anchor or find a Yacht Club who would let us tie-up for the night, which we mostly did. The first one was in Oxnard. This was on the day after the storm we had waited out in Santa Barbara, and the seas really weren’t bad, but they were big enough to generate a really nice surf, if you are surfer anyway. Not so if you are sailboat and the entrance to your port is sort of in that surf.
As we approached the breakwater of Oxnard, I was watching the waves breaking on said breakwater with rising suspicion. Not only did they break on the rocks, but quite a way beyond. We studied from a distance how other boats got into the waves and then disappeared in the safety of the harbor entrance. Since nobody had capsized or ended up on the beach, we took a run for it. Now, this might be very normal for people in So Cal, but for us Bay Sailors this kind of almost beach landing was rather nerve racking. There were actually breaking waves on our port and starboard side. Things were flying around down below as we moved sidewise in between the waves. As we made this entrance, I was watching those airborn items, a surfer on the beach side of us, as well as the new approaching breaking waves from the other side. Boy, was I happy when we tied up at the dock! We went to watch from the safety of the harbor entrance how other boats negotiated the waves. It really didn’t look so bad from our safe beach viewpoint, but I was not looking forward to the next morning when we would go out through those waves again. As it turned out, the waves had laid down over night, and our departure was a non issue.
Gradually, the weather became nicer, and we finally arrived at our next stop at Redondo Beach in short and t-shirts. Finally we were done with our foulies, or were we? The next morning we left in shorts and t-shirts, the sun was rising, and it was oh-so-beautiful! For about an hour so. Then we were swallowed by a thick fog, but it was supposed to be only patchy, according to forecast. Needless to say that the fog didn’t read the weather forecast. The patch did stretch out endlessly, we never found the other side. In fact, it was so bad that we started to think of plan B. Plan A was to go into Dana Point and anchor for the night. Plan B would be to continue through the night on to San Diego. It was a "bailout" plan should we not get into Dana Point in the near-zero visibility.
The fog was rather eerie. At some point during the day, we were honked at by something big, you could hear it was big, and it made a big radar target as well. By radar and AIS, we determined that it was not honking at us, until it honked again, only much closer this time. All along you could see N O T H I N G. I have often driven a car in thick fog, both in Germany and in California, but fog on the road is not quite the same as fog on the water. Roads define the space you are on, there is a road side or the striping in the middle, you might remember the turns and up and down grades, but on the water there is nothing like that, you feel almost as if suspended in space. Your space consists of a pie plate of may be less of a quarter mile in diameter, and you hope nobody will enter your little sphere. But of course they do, in case of the ‘no doubt large honking thing’ it turned out to be a tug boat towing a huge barge, or maybe just a ship being piloted in, after all this took place in the San Pedro Bay, i.e. Long Beach Harbor area. We had planned so carefully to cross here during daylight, so we could see and get out of the way of commercial traffic. It did not work out this way.
But let me get back to Dana Point... We figured if we would be able to find the first buoy, we would go in. At some point Rod said, by GPS we were literally on the buoy, and I still could not see the darn thing. (Radar showed it verrrry near.) Eventually, I identified a shape not very far, which resembled a buoy closely enough to go on to look for the harbor entrance. So there we were, thanks to GPS and radar, very close to the spot where we would be able to shut off the instruments and just go to sleep.
Not yet! Look, there is boat, it’s sailboat! Sails all up, though there is not a breath of air, tons of people on board, just hovering less than 50 meters from the harbor entrance. Oh, look, there is a motor boat coming racing out of the harbor, right towards us. Don’t they see us?! Blow the horn at them, they turn. Wow, that was close. This is all happening in near-zero visibility! Strange people. Do they just rely on their luck, or what? Now, there is the other buoy, the harbor entrance, and some seals – no, they're kayakers (or at least, people in kayaks)! Can you believe that? What on earth are they doing out here in this fog?
It got only better from here on. As we made it into the breakwater, this strange world unfolded. It was surreal, still no visibility, totally glassy water, and people in kayaks, on paddle boards and in dinghis everywhere. We had to call Harbor Patrol to verify where to anchor. Since our cruising guide had mistakenly listed the phone number for the Newport Beach Harbor Patrol as that of Dana Point, we had to hail them on the radio. For those of you unfamiliar with this procedure, there is channel 16 for hailing and emergencies. So we hail harbor control Dana Point, and a voice comes back barking the question: Is this is an emergency?! We figured only later that these poor guys had all day long received calls from people who were simply lost in the fog, which is not an emergency. But anyway, so the guy explains to us to which anchorage to go, and off we are, very slowly threading our way through the kayakers in a rather narrow channel with not all that much depth, and then this kayaker falls off his kayak right in front of us, totally flat water, and he just falls off. He and his buddy are laughing their heads off. I don’t know about you, but I always find a forty-foot sail boat looks rather big when I am in my kayak, but these folks didn’t have a worry in the world. Finally, I detected some big boats which seemed to be rafted up – the anchorage? ‘Look, there are on the boats over there – oh no, don’t go there, they are ON THE BEACH’. Never mind, we finally had reached the anchorage, but it was very small and crowded. At a first glance I did not think we could even fit in there, but we were not going anywhere else at this point. So we inched our way in, and just dropped the anchor (a very good holding anchor – ULTRA, made in Turkey), with the shortest scope we have ever used, one in three. We didn’t back up on it nearly as much as we normally would - we just watched how the chain tightened as we were swinging. Right then, another sailboat came racing into the anchorage, the guy on the bow was holding an anchor up and he simply through it over the bow, they turned off the engine and the party was on. At this time, we were just laughing in disbelief. We figured that we weren’t going anywhere, so hopefully our boat would be stronger than theirs when we were going to touch. There was also this... Mega Yacht, I guess you would call that thing, like a hundred foot motor boat, five stories high, with a hot tub or pool on the top deck, a well dressed crew and a GENERATOR!, which did not stop runnung all night long. Once they turned on their lights, they also illuminated the water underneath around them, like wheel-well lights on a low-rider. Why? Who knows. Rod summarized the whole experience as ‘like anchoring in a swimming pool’. Eventually the fog lifted some, and we could see a ridge with houses surrounding our little cove. When we first got there we couldn’t even see how close to the beach we where.
When we got up early the next morning to get going for a longer day to reach San Diego, the mountain ridge surrounding us had disappeared again in the fog. When it finally started lifting, it was too late and we would not have been able to reach San Diego at day light, so we decided to head for Oceanside, which was only a few hours away.
After all, we reached San Diego on the day we had planned all along. We are in a Marina with lots of other HAHA boats, so Phase II starts taking shape.
Speaking of phases, this journey along the coast was truly a shake down for Proximity, more things than expected failed or showed weakness. The latest was a squeaking noise coming from the steering, which took the better part of today to figure out. It is quiet for now, so we are confident we will start the HAHA comes Monday, provided there will be no other Hurricane or other mean tropical storm brewing in Mexico. My take on this is that there won’t be any predictable weather patterns any more in the future, we can forget about Jimmy Cornell’s world cruising routes, thanks to global warming.
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