A Typical Day of Diving at Bunakan

Three boat dives today, 8am, 10am and 2pm. The sky was clear for all three dives. No rain! I'm trying my Asako camera but without a filter the pictures and video are awful. At least it's a way to remind me of what I've seen. I feel blessed that we have seen turtles every day. The varieties of anenome  fish are colorful and entertaining as they dive in and out of the anenomes. Their different personalities are obvious. Some aggressively protect their homes and charge right at divers, sometimes even nibbling at us to move on. My favorites are the tomato anenomes, and many times they are with another type of anenomes, kind of like mixed races living together in harmony. Evan, our dive guide, pointed out some almost translucent balls secreted inside stag horn coral that are cuttlefish eggs. Too bad I hadn't read about them sooner or I would have known to look more closely to see the baby cuttlefish inside the eggs. More obvious are the bright blue and yellow neon colors of the ribbon eels.

The diving is nice here, but I feel like a trash collector. We've been told, because it's the rainy season, the tray flows from the rivers into the ocean. There are streams of trash along side the boat as we move from one site to another. It floats below the surface, settling on the bottom. I've been stuffing my pockets every dive.

Bali, Ubud, Bunakan

This fall has been a whirlwind, teaching sailing until the end of September, a week later heading to Southern California to help leisurely deliver a catamaran to LaPaz over six weeks, then spending Thanksgiving with my sister and her clan before heading back to Minnesota for two days during which time I finished my Christmas letter and stuffed the envelopes, prepped the house for friends who were to stay at my place while I was gone, and packed for two months of traveling and scuba diving. After all that you'd think I could sleep on the 30-hour trip to Bali, but most of the time was spent catching up on movies.

The flight arrived during daylight hours so I could see the gentle azure waters I'd soon be traveling underneath. My friend Rose introduced me to Sally, a sweet woman with long white hair coiled atop her head, and the woman responsible for planning our three diving trips in Indonesia. She was renting a open-style villa from a hotel in Kuta, which means that the living/dining/kitchen areas have three walls, with the fourth one open to the outside. Sally's bedroom had four walls, though the master bathroom has venting to the outside. Rose and I walked the busy streets, me getting used to the swarms of motorbikes at every step. We walked the beach and listened to each beach bar band trying to outdo each other.

Rose had arranged with Sally's driver to take us on a tour around Southern Bali. We visited batik and jewelry factories, climbed through rice fields, gazed at volcanoes that had erupted as recently as the 1970's, watched some Balinese dance shows, embraced the lush landscape and relaxed the quiet of a homestay in Ubud.

After staying at Sally's for a few days, Rose and I flew to Sulawesi, where I'd dived before on the southeastern part of the island. No private Wakatobi jet this time. Upon landing, a Safari Tour van picked us up and explained about the numerous Christian religions practiced here as he drove us to Manado. At Thalassa Dive Resort, we showed our cert cards and sorted our gear and were in the water for14 dives over the next fives days. Diving in the Pacific is hands down better than the Atlantic. I was so happy to see the clown, false clown, tomato and other anenome fish, the Titan and Palette triggerfish, the sea turtles and the vast array of nudibranches the Pacific has to share with divers. I needed to wait until Lembah to see my beloved cuttlefish.

Christmas Letter 2016

Happy Winter, December 2016

As I write my annual missive, snow is falling in Minnesota while I'm enjoying Thanksgiving in sunny Southern California with my sister, Chris, and her family and friends. This follows six weeks helping a friend transport his boat from San Diego to Mexico.

Reflecting back on 2016, I'm thinking my life has become somewhat routine--not on a daily or weekly basis, more on a seasonal basis. I spend a good portion of the winter and early spring in the Caribbean, the summer in the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior teaching sailing, and travel in the fall. That’s been fairly true this year. When I am home, I tend to cocoon with foster cats for a no-kill animal shelter and catch up on my reading.

Much of this year I have been surrounded by water. Starting in January I was again in the British Virgin Islands, which is beginning to feel like a third home away from home. Working two weeks on and two weeks off gave me the chance to spend a girls weekend in Bayfield WI on Lake Superior, my second away-from-home home. There was snow, but no sea caves this year.

While I was in the BVI, a friend linked me up with a woman moving to the Twin Cities from Texas so for two months I had a cat-loving housemate. What a joy to help someone out, build a new friendship and have a caretaker for the beautiful Maine Coon and Bengal cats I'd been fostering. (Just a minor plug that no-kill pet rescue organizations are a great source for animals of all breeds.) She tended to the cats while I was being scrutinized in Annapolis to become an Instructor Evaluator for wanna-be sailing instructors and enjoying the Blue Angels fly overhead for the graduation ceremony of Annapolis' Naval Academy.

I spent virtually all summer on Lake Superior, straying away from the Apostle Islands a few times teaching some more advanced sailing classes which included sailing by the moon and stars. It was an odd year weather-wise, with hurricane force winds (luckily our anchor held) and so much rain it washed out a nearby marina. Muddy and clear waters ran side-by-side like the tributaries to the Amazon River.

Did you know that Lake Superior boosts the largest island in the largest of the Great Lakes? That would be Michigan’s Isle Royale. The beautiful island draws sailors, backpackers and kayakers with its numerous hikes, moose, and programs put on by the National Park Service, which is celebrating its 100-year anniversary this year. It's easy to love the journey sailing provides equally with the destinations to which it takes me. I love my job!

What turned out to be the highlight of the year was the fall delivery of Strikhedonia, a 41’ Australian-built SeaWind 1160 catamaran. The plan included a leisurely pace sailing from San Diego to La Paz, with built-in weather windows and time to enjoy the heights of the geological formations ashore and the underwater world. The captain, a former sailing student of mine, made sure the boat was well-prepared for the journey but it is a boat and things happen. They sail from San Diego to Ensenada went smoothly and gave the crew of three time to acclimate to the boat and each other. It also gave our novice a chance to get acquainted with the strange new language of sailing.

The plan to haul the boat in Ensenada for some minor work expanded when we found water in the transmission. A technician from San Diego came to our rescue and gave us time to explore Ensenada, Tijuana for a Tequila Festival, La Bufadora, the largest blow-hole in North America, and Mexico’s wine country. Did you know Mexico had a (developing) wine country?

Dolphins blessed our departure from Ensenada, and an unlucky yellowfin tuna caught our hook as we sailed and motored 3 days south to Turtle Bay without incidence, avoiding the markers for fish, octopus and whatever other marine life was being caught. We steered clear of invisible rocks that appeared on our chart plotter and turned into Turtle Bay, happy to see Thallasic, a boat that preceded us out of Ensenada. Later that day Mardos, another boat from Ensenada, anchored behind us. We kayaked, climbed steep steps to the dock and walked the dusty town, glad to see the nice ball field and playgrounds, built partially with funds from cruisers.

Again dolphins hailed us as we set sail, unsure if we'd stop at Magdelina Bay, or sail southward to Cabo San Lucas. Along the way we had to stay alert for fish nets, and even as diligent as we were, we snagged two. One rolled off, the other had to be cut. It was a bit unnerving, especially because of how dark it was as we were approaching no moon, but we didn't foul either prop.

Four days later, two weeks of being in Mexico, we had our first margaritas in Cabo after picking up a new crew person, a friend of our novice, who works summers on a fishing boat in Alaska. We strolled along the busy streets admiring the Halloween costumes--lots of Frida Kahlo and sudsing beer cans. Stores give out candy when the kids say “Halloween”.

With our long passages behind us, we were now truly in vacation mode. Our days of sailing were merely hours long, and our days of playing in the water were longer. We had shoes for hiking, fins and goggles for snorkeling, kayaks, paddle board and float chairs for on the water, and games for onboard entertainment. Two more family members joined us in La Paz to share the fun. The best part was swimming with sea lions, in the largest rookery in the Sea of Cortez. They look you straight in the eye and before you can flinch, because they swim so close, they turn away. They twist and turn, do flips and are simply a joy to watch.

Of course, the time flew by and we had to make our way back to La Paz for crew departures and again hauling the boat, this time to remove the rudders to get to the bearings which needed replacing. Once the owner had the right info the task was relatively straightforward, but not until after spending several hours in frustration. Prepping the boat for two months on the hard was easy after that.

So now I'm on the fast track of heading back to the Twin Cities in order to pack and prep the house for friends to use while I'm in Indonesia and Vietnam in December and January. You might think my goal is not to sleep in my own bed, but actually it's to see as much of the world as I can while I still can. So as you read this I'm scuba diving with my Pacific marine friends--cuttlefish,”Nemo” fish, maybe even the 4000-pound sunfish in Indonesia, and then on to Vietnam. I plan to start blogging again so check out www.NauticalNomad.blogspot.com if you care to follow my adventures.

Have a wonderful toasty holiday and a new year of spice and adventure.
Vicki

vstaudte@gmail.com