Today was an exciting day!
People have been telling us in San Diego that we would have great winds and following seas down the coast of Baja California. I was hoping we would too, but we had been so unlucky the last month with winds right on the nose or very fair that I had been considering to break the cruiser’s curse and appease the wind gods by performing a seductive dance on the bow. There were suggestions made that that would help.
But today everything changed and we sailed fast. We rode waves and sailed with only the genoa (headsail). Like the other night for a short stretch, today we made 8-9 knots just with the genoa. Once we were jolted to 9.6 knots by a very large wave. Raising the main sail seemed too risky that we would be going too fast. We do have three reef points, on which we can make the mainsail smaller, so next time in a similar condition we will try the headsail all reefed in.
It was a great ride for 6 hours until we turned East to approach Bahia Anuncion, the bay where we wanted to spend the night. We were slammed into the side of the hull by the same size waves, who had propelled us earlier, if not larger ones. One slammed into us from port side and drenched us and things banged around in the cabin below. Quickly we changed our approach to overshoot the bay a bit to be able to turn back and motor right into the waves. That worked better, but was a struggle for at least an hour against the waves and also wind, because the afternoon winds of about 20 knots were right on the bow. Once deep in the bay in the wind shade of a hill, we found a nice large shelf of 25′, ideal for anchoring.
We high-fived on the successful navigation of waves, wind and rocks and had a Cuba Libre in the cockpit overlooking a landscape resembling the deserts of Arizona and the volcanic high plateaus of Iceland.
Our new friend Hal introduced the Cuba Libre to us as Hemingway’s favorite drink, which is essentially a Rum & Coke made tropical with the juice of half a lime. Such an appropriate drink to celebrate our day and it reminded us that Obama recently ended the dramatic era of estrangement and embargo between the US and Cuba. Cuba hasn’t been a thread to the US since the fall of the Eastern European block 20 years and it was high time to lift the embargo. The resilience Cubans exhibited since 1962 is not only because of their leader, but the 1950’s American cars driving still on Cuban streets are emblematic of what Cuba achieved: autonomy of an economic model, which only works if things need to break so people buy more. Our current economies rely on constant growth and constant growing demand and growing markets, but our planet is limited and cannot sustain more growth, it in people nor industry nor pollution. Maybe Cuba proved, being isolated and nearly totally autonomous, how a new economic model could work without expansion. The answer might be education. Cuba has one if not the highest literacy percentage of the world. And the cars prove that after they were build industrial production made sure that cars would drive not more than 200.000 miles. But they can. Free education makes sure that every new generation gets an education. That builds a solid base for a country, it’s citizens and their future. Not the outsourcing of labor and production and incidentally all pollution associated with production as well. Maybe Cuba had to care for it’s citizens because of isolation, but there isn’t any good reason for what the US has been displaying in parallel, a steady decline of what made America great in the first place and what we are nostalgically looking for in the diners with candy stripes and jukeboxes. It seems so far away from the world of the monumental student loans and two jobs reality of most Americans, as it is. Might as well be as far away as Cuba, physically or ideologically. Or maybe the America of the 50’s diner is indeed closer to a Cuba than the US is today. I am sure that this opinion won’t be very popular, but I see more similarities between the all countries in the 50’s, capitalist, communist or European, then there is now between the US and the Eu countries. Although with roughly the same population, the quality of life is exponentially higher in Europe in income to personal debt ratio, education, health care, transportation, public utilities, city infrastructure, commuter time, public spaces, sustainable energy and more. Although the Euro was deemed a failure for most of existence and kept artificially high in exchange to the US dollar by the American …. to fuel exports of American products made in China, the countries of the European Union have all come back strong from the 2008 crises except for Greece and the US.
I might have digressed now a bit and overshot my target like we did this afternoon, but how can we judge our country and the world without digging around in the details of if. The details of economy and history shape our lives and our opportunities. The US used to be the land of opportunities until it became recently more opportune to reap benefits without giving back a dime. Suddenly a social market economy like Germany and Sweden and others have look really good. The US has used historically 60% of the worlds resources but being only 5% of the world population. 350 million of 7 billion. That will and has already consequences. This will be very hard to supply and keep up in the future. No wonder the US has opposed all climate conferences and treaties until Obama. The US is standing alone in this, the next best and as reticent colossus is Russia. Both still carry the worlds largest armies and both are in danger of becoming obsolete philosophically and idealistically. People are looking elsewhere for answers. To Bhutan, which has appointed happiness assessors and instead of a GP… instituted a gross happiness index, GHI. To Denmark where the happiest people on earth live. To Iceland, which stopped, declared bankruptcy and heads of banks were put in jail….
Maybe we could look to Cuba and find out what they have learned. A combination might be the answer with a local twist to fit the local and the countries needs, but in alliance with all others. A true United Nations?
Imagining a better future and finding at least some solutions is what we are searching for on our travels with the Imagine. It is not incidental that we named our Alberg 37 “Imagine” after that infamous song. Sailing fast on an open ocean for many hours at a time can blow the mind open and mix things up in it a bit. Much like a very good conversation, fabulous art, great music or a yummy Rum & Coke with a twist of lime.
