Hull Delivery

Even before we had docked after returning from Bilbao, I was offered the opportunity to depart the next morning as part of a minimalist crew (consisting of a skipper and two watches of two each) in delivering one of our Clipper Ventures Dubois 68s up to the town of Hull (on the mid-northeast coast of England) and back. The occasion was a weekend press conference announcing Hull's sponsorship of one of the race boats.

Out of the seven day trip, we spent slightly more than four days sailing up and back. The skipper was happy to leave all the sailing to us, as we requested. If you do the math, it obviously works out to six hours a day at the helm for each of us. That's quite a bit of enviable experience in learning the feel of such a large boat in what was often rather uneven and disagreeable seas.

It was also very cold on the North Sea in November.

Midnight dance of the bio-luminescent dolphins

On October 23rd, the day after the Velux 5 Oceans race began and all our duties had been completed, the two Clipper boats began the four day sail back up to Gosport, England. We headed a bit west of north to pass around the upper corner of France before we could head into the English Channel.

Occasionally we would see dolphins in the day. Something I'd never considered before, however, was hearing them. The first two days were rough sailing with high winds, heaving seas, and a crashing boat pounding loudly as we'd repeatedly crest a wave and then drop down into the trough with a thud. On the second night, however, things had calmed down enough that the most noticeable noise was simply the light wind and a bit of whispering water passing the hull. That night, as I stood at the helm while the skipper sat nearby, I saw him turn quickly to glance out onto the water beside us.

"What?" I asked.
"I thought heard dolphins," he said.
"You thought you heard them?"
"Yeah...you can hear them take their breaths when it's this quiet."

We heard or saw nothing more that night but the next night after our watch had stumbled up onto the deck at 2:00 a.m. in our sleep-deprived state for our four hour shift, the first mate ran through a quick briefing before heading down to her bunk:

"Winds still out of the southwest, maintain a heading of 340, and the dolphins have been putting on quite a show for a couple of hours."

We all looked over either the side of the boat and collectively dropped our jaws at what we saw.

I've witnessed glowing bacteria in oceans in California, Costa Rica, and even the Bahia Fosforescente in Puerto Rico. What I saw below me, however, was nothing like any display of bio-luminescence I could have imagined.

Around 15 dolphins sped along both sides of our boat like a group of school kids playfully harassing a grandmother pushing a shopping cart. Though our speed of 8 kts. wasn't particularly slow, it was still amazing to see how easily the dolphins clearly could move at any rate they chose in relation to us. Moreover, their path just a few feet underwater glowed and remained glowing for 50 meters or so. At a distance they looked like glowing torpedo tracks but as they drew near, you could clearly see the entire dolphin under the water by the outline of the glow all around him.

Even more delightful was to hear them breath. It sounded so human, so much like we might sound if we could swim like that.

The best way I can describe it is that it sounded just the way the Scandinavians (particularly the Danes) say, "Yes." It's a "Ja" coming not from the larynx but only vocalized by a quick inhalation that follows a sudden curling back of the tongue to open up the throat after a vacuum has been created with the diaphragm.

Yeah, I know that's quite a complex description but if you've ever been around a Dane or two, you'll know exactly what I mean.

Someone from our watch had already taken over the helm so, free of any immediate duty, I clipped my safety line to the jackstay (a length of secure webbing running the length of the boat) and worked my way up to the bow. At the very tip, I laid my chest onto the deck and moved as far forward as I could until my head projected through the pulpit next to the anchor at the front of the boat and my face was just a few feet above the five or six dolphins playing in the bow wake.

I've only just begun to experience the majesty of the open ocean but it's hard to imagine anything can top this experience. Below me in the rustling waters, these huge glowing shapes surfed left and right with these happy pulses of energy, their breaths sounding more like a gathering of sycophant Scandinavians than anything else.

After twenty minutes of this delight, I returning to the cockpit to watch the dance of the other dolphins on the sides of the boat. They mostly traveled in pairs or threes and sometimes you'd see five streaking by in perfect formation. Once in a while you'd see one some distance from the boat hurtling to intercept our path at twice the speed that the others were doing as they moved around and under out boat. As often as not, one dolphin would come to a complete stop as it would suddenly wheel into a six foot circle, as if he'd found something to eat.

We also saw what we thought were mothers and children; a pair of dolphins in formation with one of them being only half the size of the other.

Obviously I couldn't take a photograph but I've created two simulations of what it looked like. Understandably, it doesn't come close to capturing the true majesty of the moment.

Click on either picture for a full screen version to get a better idea of the performance we had for all the four hours of our watch, from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.

The sea was never as bio-luminescent again during our four day journey north. Nor did we ever see any more dolphins. A friend on another boat sailing roughly the same journey as our two clipper boats has e-mailed to ask if I saw the night dolphin show that they saw. Apparently it was the night to play all over that part of the Atlantic.

Three weeks in Bilbao, Spain

I spent the first three weeks of October in Bilbao,Spain, supporting Sir Robin Knox-Johnston's preparations for the Velux 5 Oceans single-handed round the world race sailing race. For a quick summary of Sir Robin and the race, take a look at the following September 17th, 2006 article in the London Times:
Timesonline.co.uk article on Sir Robin

As you might imagine, rubbing shoulders with the elite of the sailing world was an heady experience. Better yet, I arrived in Bilbao by way of an amazing sail from England to Spain with Sir Robin on his "Open 60" class ocean racing yacht. These 60 ft. boats are built purely for all out speed and, as the above article states, are considered to be yachting's equivalent of a Formula One racing car.

The greatest treasure of this experience, however, were a small group of friends I made in Getxo, the port that serves Bilbao. Saioa Martín and her husband, Rafa Aspiunza, along with German Garcia de Gurtubai run their own website dedicated to photography and local news of the region:

http://www.aspiunza.com/






Rafa is the kind of photographer that leads one to humbly realize what is truly possible in photography (in contrast to whatever level of praise you might have convinced yourself that your own photographs should merit). As one of the other notable people I met in Bilbao, Diana, wrote later in an e-mail, he shows you things you never thought to notice even though you might have been looking at the same view. It's worth a moment's pleasure to browse through his photographs on the website listed above.

German owns a 32 ft sailboat. Two nights before the race started (and the weeks of mounting pre-race festivities ended), I was invited to join a party on his boat, the second time I had been the recipient of his gracious floating hospitality. I was the only American there and while most everyone spoke excellent English, at times the conversation moved back and forth between English and Spanish.

I've always been greatly heartened at the willingness of various hosts in different nations around the world to speak at length in their own language when I'm part of their gathering. It shows that they understand my eagerness to experience their lives as they live them, and not as a guest to be focused upon and catered to. I felt very fortunate to have found such good friends as these in such a short time in Spain.

As we sat down to nibble on various meats and cheeses set before us, German announced, “Tim, this party, it is for you." I hadn't known that. I thought I was just joining a gathering. I was deeply touched.

Eleven of us crammed into the cockpit to eat where, in the first picture, only six people are sitting (German with most of the women of the group). After sampling some of the meats and cheeses, I reached into a small bowl which, in the darkness at arms length, appeared to hold something like peanuts. I popped a few into my mouth and found them to be rather hard to chew at first but manageable.

Two years before, at my first evening meal in Ecuador with my French/Brazilian friend Manuela, she had given me a bowl of large corn kernels, dried and salted, and explained they were a typical Ecuadorian snack. That night on German's boat I wondered if these hard, crunchy kernel-like morsels were a unique but typically Basque treat. I was delighted with their curiously almost sweet-tasting center.

Halfway through the evening, someone noticed me popping these into my mouth whole and exclaimed, “Tim! What are you doing? You don't shell your pistachios before eating them?"

For the record, then, pistachios can in fact be eaten whole without any deleterious effect.

Later in the evening everyone moved onto the dock alongside the boat, bringing a few votive candles with us, and opened up the bottle of Pacharan I had brought along (a strong liquor made from a current-like berry found in the Pyrenees). Eventually a guitar was passed around.





Several different people took turns playing while everyone...everyone sang along with any song anyone could think of, most of them in English. Sometimes a few of them even harmonized, sending goose bumps of unexpected delight down my forearms.

I sat there with such a feeling of contentment, trying to balance myself between appropriately simple enjoyment of the moment as it actually was occurring and an overwhelming awe that such is the good fortune of my life to be given gifts like this. I felt so utterly happy and marvelled at all the glorious serendipity that somehow someway enabled me to be part of this evening with these people in this location at this time in this life.

Of all the people I met and all the experiences I had in those amazing three weeks in Spain, these friends and this gathering were clearly the most memorable part of my time there. I even ponder that the simple beauty of this night might have been the highlight of 2006 for me. I've done some rather amazing things (so many tales I've yet to tell) this last year but if I had to pick one moment of 2006 to relive again, it would be that night on the dock.

These friends have even dedicated an entire page to me on their website. It's in Spanish, of course, and I can only vaguely understand the gist of it but even just looking at it gives you an idea of how generous they are.
http://www.aspiunza.com/Magazine/EspecialVelux/HonorableTim/

I’ll be returning to Bilbao in April for the finish of the Velux 5 Ocean race, and again in September when Bilbao is the first stop out of Liverpool of my own round the world sailing race. Beyond those two occasions, I hope to return simply to spend more time with these dear friends and to see more of the beautiful area around Bilbao.

Between the combination of a lack of a car, my sprained ankle (long story for another day) and the heavy workload of getting Robin ready to race, it was 10 days before my life extended beyond sleeping on one of the two Clipper racing boats that had also sailed down from Gosport, working on Robin's boat 100 yards down the dock to the left, having 2-4 beers with Robin and the crew at the end of the day's work at the bar on the other end of the dock 100 yards to the right, scrounging up a dinner (if I had the energy and/or sobriety) back in the Clipper boat, then collapsing in my small bunk at 9:00 or 9:30, if not earlier.

The first occasion I had to venture beyond those small confines was only because my sprained ankle required I visit the medical facility one block away. My Getxo friends were astounded at how little I managed to see while there for such a relatively long time and are eager to show me all that I missed, and I'm equally as eager to see it with them.

I look forward to many adventures with these friends in the Bilbao area and, hopefully, elsewhere. Vague plans are afoot to rent a sailboat together this spring in Greece or some other exotic location and explore new lands by sea.

A two and a half minute/24 picture slideshow of my Bilbao experience can be found here.

I now live in Gosport

Though I've been basically homeless by choice since September 2004, as of July 2006 I've been settled in the small English town of Gosport. I moved here to be near as possible (about 200 yards, in fact) to the center of operations of Clipper Ventures, the organization that runs the yacht race for which I'm preparing.

"Settled" is a relative word, of course. In the roughly 120 or so days I've been paying rent on this place, I've probably spent only 60 nights in my bed. Still, it's nice to have a sense of a base to return to.

The area is still heavily influenced by British naval operations but not nearly as much as about ten years ago, when Gosport was considered a seedy and rowdy sailor town. This entire northern end of Gosport (my end) is undergoing heavy development and renovation into high priced homes and apartments. Click on this GoogleMap link to see an aerial photograph of where I live (though at the time of the photo, it was just an empty field). You can zoom out to get the overall view of where I live in England.

The marina where all ten of the Clipper Ventures' 68ft ocean racing boats are moored didn't exist at the time of the aerial photo as well, though I can see the tops of their masts from my balcony. I could even hit them with a snowball throw (or two...maybe three) from here if it ever snowed here.

I doubt it will, though. The area is too influenced by the relative warmth of the sea to ever get appreciable snow, even though I'm further north than any part of the States. That's the miracle of the Gulf Stream, which has influence even up into Iceland. I'll be sailing all winter long and be far more comfortable than I would be in any waters off Virginia.

I've put a 16 picture slideshow of Gosport on Shutterfly. Click here, and then select "View Pictures" then select the pink button; "View as Slideshow."

The best thing about this apartment is the great view from my balcony, allowing me to enjoy many sunrises over the Portsmouth harbour with a cup of coffee in my hand.

...about this blog's title

During my September-October 2004 trip to Nepal, the new friends I made there started calling me the International Man of Leisure. Even though it was intended to be funny, it sounded too pretentious so I asked them to modify it to International Bozo of Leisure.

To this they readily agreed.

The photo directly below was actually the last taken, when the two guides and myself had a end-of-30-days-on-the-trail haircut and shave. The remaining 17, however, are chronilogical from start to finish. Click on any photo to get a larger image on your screen

I should note that I took 2,500 pictures in those 30 days. These 18 can hardly show the experience but it will have to suffice.









Campsite on the edge of glacier at 19,2000 ft.


Breakfast next morning after a midnight snowfall


Plastic shoes on our favorite sherpa as snow begans to fall. He told us he didn't want to soil his leather shoes.




Heading out at dawn to cross a 20,000 ft pass


Working the fixed lines up and across the pass


Our two guides just over the other side; British/American Adrian and Ecuadorian Jamie


The back side of Ama Dablam (22, 494 ft)


Two sherpa loads compared to our loads


Viewing an Everest sunrise from the summit of Kala Pattar


The sun rising behind Everest




Looking towards Everest from Tengboche


Heading home, Ama Dablam to our backs