Gualby Nation : Belize These Days 3/31/11

       Meg tells me if I want to critique her blogs so harshly that I need to start writing some entries myself. And its true, I haven’t been inspired to do so in a while. I don’t really have anything mind boggling to discuss, so I guess I’m going to spit out some things that I’ve been mulling over lately, things going on with me now, certain feelings I’ve been having, etc. So basically this will be about me. The shitty part is that I know this is gonna sound like a gay-o diary entry, and I hate diaries. But here goes.
      So we are in Belize now, which so far has been pretty good, but we haven’t moved much since getting here. We are anchored off of San Pedro, in about 5 feet of clear water over top of white sand, with Belikin bottles scattered across the bottom. I’ve been snorkeling around picking these up because A). its good for the environment, and 2). If I get 24 of them I can turn them into the grocery store for 6 bucks American (12 bucks Belize). Our finances aren’t really that bad yet, but it is something I can do while Penny swims in circles around me and burns off some energy.
       That leads me into two of the subjects I’ve been mulling over lately: Penny, and earning money. First things first: Money. We aren’t out yet, or anything serious but when we planned this trip we expected to have to work at certain points along the way. We also thought working would add to the experience. Earn a little supplemental income ya know. Or disposable, whatever you call it. We have a handful of somewhat pricey projects we want to do before crossing the Pacific, and instead of waiting for our houseboat to sell, I guess we are just gonna try and hustle up some money and start getting shit done. I don’t want to disappoint anybody or anything, but to cross the Pacific while avoiding cyclones you need to leave between February and June, so we are running out of time for this year. Working legally or illegally in Belize is apparently a large hassel, larger than living and working illegally in Key West, amazingly (half the hospitality industry is illegal aliens in Key West). In the mean time the thought crossed my mind to take tourists sailing in exchange for a donation into our travel fund. (which, although would be nice, probably won’t work the way we expect.)
       What else,….F-me. Oh,…. Meghan bought new soap from here in San Pedro. Its called “African Musk”. I’m not sure about the African part, but when mixed with saltwater I would say the “musk” description is pretty accurate. So I’ve got that going for me. While on the subject of body cleanliness I’ll admit that fresh water has not touched my body since February 2^nd. Actually its been in my mouth at least every morning, and sometimes at bedtime. I don’t really miss it yet. I’m thinking about seeing how far I can go without.
       Ummm,……Oh yeah: we’re pretty pleased with the hand pump water maker we got right before the trip. We have it down to a science: to fill one single well in an ice cube tray takes 12 pumps. Whole tray takes 170 pumps. 1 gallon takes 45 minutes or 1800 pumps.
       Top priority boat projects: replace the joker valve on our toilet. I guess its called a joker valve, nothing really funny about it. It’s a one-way valve in the exhaust hose that lets shit go out but not come in, and lately its been working a little two-way. And when I say “shit”, I mean actual shit. I tried pulling the nurse card on Meghan on this one, saying: “look you have delt with human shit a lot more than me, and are therefore desensitized to it, which makes you a better candidate for this job”. But she put the kabash on that pretty quickly. So I’m looking forward to that project. Even if it is our own shit.
       Back in Mexico I made a cockpit table from a pallet we found on the beach. Its pretty sweet, kinda sits on one side of the cockpit, and sits 4 people around it for eating, playing cards or dominoes. But I’m thinking it be sweet if we had another one that sat on top of the captain bench, that you could take on and off for sailing. That way you could still utilize the whole cockpit. But summer’s coming, and I’d like to get that done before it gets too hot-I suspect spending more time in the cockpit and less in the salon will become mandatory.
       What else?……….I’ve got a few Penny stories I guess. She has been her typical pain in my ass, and is really loving San Pedro. Very dog friendly town, tons of bars on the beach. Mostly just golf carts driving around the roads, very friendly people, and lots of other dogs. Gimpy is pretty much living it up here as well, but Gimpy has gotten heavy attention in every place we’ve visited. Maybe cuz she’s, small, cute, quiet, clean, or any combination of these reasons. Penny, not so much. In Xcalak Ted and Shannon had Gimpy, and we were walking with Penny, looking for beer. This is a very small town with all dirt roads, just a couple of stores and restaurants, and a dozen or so fishing boats. Well every little kid that we pass in that town wants to pet Gimpy, walk Gimpy, hold Gimpy, and every adult wants to buy Gimpy, or trade something for Gimpy, and every dog we pass comes up to her and flirts, sniffing butts and what not, then attempts to play chase, or tag or whatever dogs play. And meanwhile dogs and human alike completely ignore Penny as Gimpy prances around like Queen of Sheba. I guess it was awkward enough that Ted felt he should lighten the mood with a funny comment or something and says: “Penny, maybe if you cleaned yourself up a bit you’d get a little attention as well”. So I look at Gimpy first, all clean, shiny coat, matching UF Gators leash and collar, all small and petite, harmless and cute, and then I look over at Penny and the hair on her back is all spiked up and oily-looking, almost as if it had hair gel in it, she has mud caked like black socks on her two front legs up to her elbows, she has stickers in her tail and dreadlocks in her chest hair, she has sand dried and crusted around her eyes and nose, she has foam on her chin from panting in the salt water, and Meghan is walking her on about a 3 foot piece of 1 inch 3 strand nylon that is green with mold from sitting in the anchor locker. Funny thing is I guess we got used to her looking all stanky. Every town we canoe in to in Mexico went like this: first thing she does is jump out of the boat, squat in the water and take a piss, run up the beach through the stickers and take a shit, run back down to the beach and roll in the sand or mud or both if available, then we put her on a leash which is usually whatever rope or line we find laying around the boat, and walk through town. When we’re ready to go back out to the boat we make her swim a few yards out to deeper water before pulling her in the canoe in an attempt to have her rinse herself off. But residual gunk is starting to build up, maybe she is due for a shave. That will probably happen soon.
       Another funny thing is that here in San Pedro there is a dog subculture roaming the town at all times, all these dogs just doing their own thing. And they all have their own street corners and stomping grounds. And when you sit and watch them for a while, its hilarious because you see them interacting on their little social level, scrapping over garbage, tucking tail as they cross another dog’s territory, running in small little dog gangs together, you can imagine. So as we walk Penny around town through all these different dog territories, the dogs run up to challenge her, but kind of turn off or stop when they see she is on a leash with us. She always gets puffed up but sometimes I can tell she’s a little nervous as they approach. I imagine it being a little demeaning for her to be on a leash and get walked through dog gangs, but its definitely keeping her out of fights. When we go into grocery stores or whatever we always tie her outside the store and she knows the routine, she just sits and waits for us to come out again, never tries to pull on the leash or bark or anything, just patiently waits. Well we tie her up in a corner in front of one particular store, go in, shop for a while, and we come out with our groceries to get Penny. When we see her she is sitting perfectly still, staring out into space, and looking very nervous and uncomfortable because between her and us is this big gnarly looking pit bull, about twice her size, huge sagging balls, all sinew and muscle, scars all over his face and neck from fighting, tail straight as an arrow looking straight at penny’s face. His face was probably six inches from her face. She won’t look at him though, or us, and he looks like he is just waiting for her to give him a reason to jump on her. Now she is tied up and cornered, and probably shitting herself. But as we start walking towards them the pit bull sees us, looks back and forth from Penny to us a few times, and finally wanders off down the road. Penny immediately relaxes and as we untie her she starts panting furiously, rubs her head between our knees, and keeps putting her foot on our forearms, like, “fuuuck that was a close one. You sons-a-bitches set me up”. We felt bad for her but had to just laugh about it.
       Lets see, what else….oh yeah, I’ve spent some money on engine work recently, which hurts because these mofo’s are only 6 months old, but I couldn’t figure it out and I needed it done. The starboard engine has always been a little bitch, even from the first day I installed it. It shifted stiff as hell, had difficulty going back into neutral, and in reverse, you would have to rev the rpm’s up before it would kick into gear, which can’t be good for it. The shifting has progressively gotten worse and worse, until it would go into forward, but wouldn’t switch gears, so you could give it more gas but the rpms would just rev up without getting any more thrust. This sounded to me like it could potentially be a big lower unit problem, so I was bighting my nails thinking about the worst case scenario. But I found a guy here in San Pedro who agreed to take a look. This guy Cesar, was totally knowlegable, had an outboard repair business, and didn’t seem at all shady, so I unhooked the rigging, took the engine off the bracket, and Cesar came and picked it up off the boat. Later that day I walked to his shop, and he told me he fixed the rough shifting, there is nothing wrong with the lower unit, and I had a spun prop hub. Turns out there is a tension arm on the shifting mechanism that was too tight, and 2 turns of the bolt on the arm loosened it up to proper shifting tension. This news made me feel like an asshole because 1^st: Had I known about this tension arm thingy I could’ve done that myself in two seconds without taking the whole f-ing engine off, and 2^nd: same with the spun hub. In my defense it did cross my mind about the spun hub thing, but I figured the engine was just too new to have spun a hub and I know I didn’t hit anything with it, so I dismissed that possibility prematurely. Secondly, I knew the motor shifted too hard when I first installed it, and I questioned the guys who sold me the motor, and even hired a mechanic in Miami right before I left to try and get it resolved. Funny thing is neither one of these numbnuts (both certified Honda mechanics and dealers) mentioned a tension arm on the shift mechanism. They both tried to blame the shift cables, even when I told them that when I unhook the cables the throttle shifts perfectly smoothly at the remote end, and I can’t even shift the lever on the motor by hand; its that stiff. To this they both replied (amazingly) that this must just be how this engine shifts. Oh,…just a intricacy of the engine. O k . So it took me getting to Belize to find somebody who figured out the tension arm. One more thing about Honda that I think is bullshit, is the warranty. So they give a ridiculous 5 year warranty, but only if the motor stays in the country you bought it at. For most customers I guess this isn’t asking too much, but if they’re all the same engine, why should it matter what country you’re in when the thing breaks down. This is completely absurd, and I knew this when I bought the engines, but the general concesus was that they are Hondas, and you shouldn’t need to do much if you keep up with the maintenance. Punk-ass Honda. Anyway, enough bitching.
       And continuing on,…new member of the Gualby Nation is : Little Black Bubby from Belize. We first met Bubby in this manner: Penny was standing on a dock on the beach and underneath the dock a small animal was growling and barking at her, like some kind of little troll or something. You couldn’t see what it was because it was tucked way up underneath the dock where the dock runs into the beach. So Penny has a coconut in her mouth but is trying to peer through the cracks to see what is snarling down there. Finally curiosity got the better of us and we coaxed this thing out and it was Bubby. Penny was kind of on her guard at first but when she saw it was just a little puppy she kind of just shook her head and ran back into the ocean with her coconut. Meghan on the other hand had the opposite reaction, and was visibly falling in love. Bubby would roll over on his back for you to rub his belly and let out little squeaks and whimpers while you scratched him. He was full of fleas and ticks and scabs. Disgusting ticks the size of blueberries. Meghan was somehow able to see through all the nastiness and found him adorable. ( I don’t know if that is a gift that women in general have, or nurses, or what, but she’s got it.)
       We went about the rest of our business that day, and for the next few days we saw Bubby every morning come out from under his dock and get his morning belly rub. Penny started getting a little put off by this and would try to chase Bubby back under his dock before we could get to him. One afternoon a lady from the kayak rental hut at the end of Bubby’s dock came over to Meghan while I was throwing coconuts for Penny, and I’m not sure exactly what was said, but Meghan came back and said she wants to give us Bubby. First of all we thought Bubby was just a stray, so immediately I figured this lady was just trying to have us get this stray off her dock. But she told us his name was Bubby, and he did seem to know his name, so we slept on it. Next day Meghan saw the lady and told her that we wanted to adopt Bubby, to which the lady replied: Ok, go ahead and take him right now. Which was a little startling, but after finding out he was allegedly 6months-ish old, hadn’t had any shots, wasn’t fixed, had never been to the vet, but was wormed one time, we did just what the lady said. We took him…….straight to the vet. Over a 24 hour period Bubby got about 10 shots, wormed, debugged, and neutered. So now he probably hates us. But he has a funny tough little personality. Penny pretty much hates him right now, but Bubby doesn’t take it personally. You can kind of tell he spent some time on the streets, because he has no problem growling at Penny if she looks at him while he’s eating, and when we take him into town the other strays come up to him like they know him, giving props and pounds and hand shakes and whatnot. He goes to the bathroom in the cockpit, which is perfect and we hope Penny catches on to this as well. He doesn’t take to the water like Penny, but isn’t scared of it either. One last thought and then I’ll let Meg go into more detail on Bubby: I’m not sure if we are really doing Bubby a favor by adopting him. Sure we got rid of all the bugs for him, and we’ll make sure he eats twice a day, but would he choose that over still having his own testicles, being his own dog, roaming the streets of San Pedro, fighting punk ass dogs that don’t show him respect, banging all the finest bitches San Pedro has to offer? Scroungin for food scraps in the street, laying on the beach, letting tourists rub his belly? Or would he trade that for 2 bowls a day of dry dog food, a leash and a collar, being told not to bite, bossed around by humans and Penny, and a lot of Human Love. Who knows.

Well I’m gonna cut this off now, cuz its getting a little long winded. Peace and love
Conor