The captain of the catamaran that took us sailing in the Bahamas was quite a character! Captain Mark Pomerenke reminded me of some mountain guides I have met by the quiet, methodical, and non-sensical way he handled things and people. A former USAF jet engineer, he was shot down by a missile during the Vietnam war and survived both the crash and the military hospitals he went thru (although he had to escape one under threat of amputation!). He took advantage of his years of physiotherapy to earn an MBA degree in hospital management he put to profit once he had retired from the USAF. After he quitted his medical practice management consulting firm, instead of settling down in Phoenix, he started taking chartered guests on his catamarans, mostly in the Caribbean. In addition, he loves telling stories about his time in the USAF and of his adventures at sea. Once started on the issue of being boarded by various law enforcement authorities, over and over, he is unstoppable! His story of facing Katrina because of an unlikely weather prediction is also amazing… As are, at another level, those stories about the whims and follies of some of his wealthy clients! The most incredible of his many stories is nonetheless the one about being caught by the high tide amplitude (5.5 meters today) in Folkerstone, England, and finding his boat hanging by the mooring at low tide!
Archive for Bahamas
Captain Mark
Posted in Kids, Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags Bahamas, chartered trip, Folkerstone, Straycat III, the Exumas, tide on August 21, 2011 by xi'anTornado watch
Posted in Kids, pictures, Travel with tags Bahamas, Emily, Florida, webcomic, xkcd on August 19, 2011 by xi'anA xkcd strip that reminded me of watching Emily the week prior to our Bahamas trip:
Life on a boat
Posted in Kids, pictures, Travel with tags Bahamas, catamaran, sailing, sea, sunrise on August 15, 2011 by xi'an
Spending one week on a sailboat as we just did in the Bahamas is an interesting experience! The boat, Starycat III, was a catamaran of a respectable size, with five cabins, and well-equipped with several showers, air conditioning, showers, a freezer and even a washing machine!, but it remains nonetheless a confined space with very little privacy and no way of getting away either from the sea or the clammy heat from the tropics (the air conditioning unit is a major fuel consumer). I ended up sleeping on the deck most of the nights, trying to catch whatever breeze was available. although this made for particularly short nights and glorious sunrises! Getting used to the constant rocking of the boat was not a problem (it is actually funny to have to get reacquainted to land!) but the unpleasant issue of uncleanliness is… Taking a swim only alleviated the problem for a short while, especially because we had to save water and thus limit showers to a minimum. This was another interesting part of the trip, namely to be fully aware of our consumption of gas, electricity, and water. The boat was equipped with solar panels, a water generator, and ten batteries, but having eight people working on those resources was too much for the energy thus produced and we had to stop twice to refuel for water as well as gas, and dump our garbage bags. (Next to luxurious behemoths carrying a single family with an army of staff members, as well as a pair of jetskis…) We were not particularly lucky with the wind, which was mostly blowing the wrong way, so had to use the engine quite a lot, and did not get any luck with our fishing, since the only fish that came near our line cut it in one bite!
Cooking was surprisingly easy as the boat carried two propane barbecues that we used almost every night, discovering “Straycat potatoes”, a recipe made of potatoes chunks cooked with onions and peppers and a lot of seasoning in a sheet of aluminum foil. (The fact that we used sweet potatoes made it even better!) Although we could only be at most two in the kitchen and cleaning (again!) was never entirely successful.
