Kayak will inhabit an increasingly quiet anchorage.
Oscar and the “Phoenix” Oscar comes by Saturday mornings
in a panga with several of his friends, and we catch up over a cup of coffee, mugs resting on poor old International Chart 502. Oscar has been married in the last year. His girlfriend had delivered an ultimatum: stop partying and marry me or move along. Oscar has a ring on his finger and a baby on the way. After breakfast, we loaded up dive tanks and we bashed our way up to Tenacatita in the panga. Oscar has operated his own business, taking tourists diving in Tenacatita, diving a reef near La Manzanillo. He’s practically a fish, and prevented me from having a close encounter with a Moray eel I hadn’t seen.
One morning, after looking at boat
equipment, we drive out to Jaluco to the home of Oscars’ family, with his two young nephews. They pick mangoes for us to eat from the neighbor’s tree, fetched beer from a nearby tienda, and helped us pull out Phoenix’s gear from a closet. Sails, whisker pole, solar panel, bimini, electrical and plumbing
supplies cover the porch. We stretch out and survey the sails in the dusty yard. Oscar has sails from another boat that he has salvaged and the headsails are somehow perfect and of light material, ideal for catching the modest day breezes on Mexico’s Gold coast. Unfortunately, no sensible amount of maintenance was ever going to make her a boat I would want to take across an ocean. Oscar has a good idea: if he can
clean up the boat and learn to sail, make a mooring in front of La Mazanilla, and get her working as a charter boat, they have a chance to prosper. I am amazed. Phoenix may yet have another life. She has survived hurricanes, rat infestation and now a tsunami. She is the boat that refuses to die. I am leaving him with the title and
some of Kayak’s extensive anchor gear. Perhaps I will even return to help Oscar run charters! One afternoon we board the Phoenix
with the intention of sailing the lagoon, hastily running the rigging as the sun dipped toward the horizon. However, the anchor is stuck, the chain jumps out of the windlass pawls shedding
big chunks of rust, and I remember more vividly what it was like to sail the Phoenix, what it was to be on the razor’s edge of mere cruising survival. I hope now, with the Kayak, to travel far and do more than merely survive. As for us, Kayak’s departure from
California was a hasty one. Many things we would like to have now we left without, so we are appropriating some cruising gear from the Phoenix before I leave her. We are exchanging stoves, and will take the solar panel and charge controller. The LED tri-color is the last piece of gear I will retain from my first boat, Shelly B. With the hurricane season fast
approaching, there is still a lot of work to do with little time. But it is time for rolling up International Chart 502, and to begin studying 83020, Iles de Marquises. With some luck, Kayak will again ply the deep blue Pacific, and I will get to continue the journey I set out upon five years ago; to sail far from this coastline – destination unknown. Follow us at
Ironkayak.com
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Westerbeke Corporation, 150 John Hancock Road, Taunton, MA 02780 U.S.A. 508.823.7677 48° NORTH, JUNE 2011 PAGE 36
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