ALTERNATIVES...YOU GOTTA LOVE 'EM

S.V. Bliss already uses wind, solar and desalination systems. What next? Biodiesel?

For a news junkie like me, reading a newspaper is an excellent way to improve my Spanish. I have a copy of EXPRESO, a periodical based in Hermosillo (capital of Sonora state) next to my computer, with Ultralingua at the ready for those bewildering words and expressions I stumble on. With deadline over, I can poke my head out of my figurative prairie dog burrow and see what's going on in the world, specifically my new home, Mexico.

The lead article a couple of days ago was titled "Ahogados por Morosos" which translates into "Drowning in Delinquents"...not bad kids, but people who don't pay their water bills. The article says only 48% of water users are paying their bills on time. This is the main reason water isn't available 24 hours a day in Hermosillo. Some colonias (neighborhoods) have access to water 16 hours per day. Others can turn on the tap 8 to 12 hours a day.

Earlier this year, San Carlos had a similar problem. The community bulletin board would report one or another neighborhood could expect shutoffs just about every day. Finally, there was a townwide shutoff while COPAES, the water company, moved a major main from one location to another, explaining that it had been occupying land not belonging to the company. Three days without water in the middle of summer was an ordeal, but apparently the move resulted in replacement of much of the pipe, and now the shutoffs are very rare.

A sidebar in the EXPRESO article mentioned that several options are being considered to improve water service. The one that caught my eye was the possibility of a desalination plant that would serve not only Hermosillo, but Guaymas, Empalme and (maybe) San Carlos. So I Googled "desalination in Mexico" to see if there was a precedent for this process of reclaiming salt water, and found the following article in the Trade Commission Newsletter, August 2003:

The construction of the first desalination plant in the Mexican state of Sonora is nearing completion at the Tucson, Arizona-based Offshore Group's Bellavista Industrial Park in Empalme.

Empalme is located on the Gulf of California's Sonora coast (next to Guaymas and San Carlos). When the facility is operational it will supply 75,000 gallons/day of water for industrial use to The Offshore Group's manufacturing firm clientele. The company is the largest provider of comprehensive industrial support (shelter) services in Mexico to firms in the automotive, aerospace, medical device, optics and electronics industries. The desalinization plant is being built by Vivendi Universal's US Filter division.

Oh, well, that was for industrial use. The proposed new plant the EXPRESO article referred to will be in Cochorit, a beach community of Empalme. But these plants aren't cheap to build, and the debt has to be carried by the users, so the water bills have to be paid. Agua de Hermosillo is going to have to get tough with their morosos.

I found that the first-ever desalination plant in Mexico for residential use was built by Colima Development (based in Minnesota!?) at Santiago Bay, near Manzanillo, where the Capt. and I began our adventures this year.

A small operation that sounded exciting in Costa de Cocos, just north of Belize, was reported by Robin Daugherty on her expat website, The Robin Sparks Page:

Costa de Cocos was one of the first eco-conscious hideaways in Mexico. The resort's electricity is windmill-generated and an on-site desalination plant recaptures seawater and serves up solar heated water via a reverse osmosis purification process.

Wow! Solar-heated water, desalination, windpower, all on one site. And it wouldn't be easy to maintain, on the hurricane-prone east coast of Mexico.

Looking for an easily digestible explanation of desalination, I checked out Wikipedia for a pretty good explanation here. I learned that in the Middle East and North Africa there are dual-purpose facilities that produce both electricity and desalinized water, a twofer! Then I also saw that nuclear-powered desalination is being developed, with a pilot plant in the USSR. Uh-oh, wouldn't you know they'd put lipstick on that pig and trot it out again. I wouldn't be surprised to hear more of this, as water and its scarcity become a monumental issue in the future.

Desalination, solar, wind...these are some of the ideas I pursued for the ten years I worked as a journalist, and they still light my fire whenever I see any progress. When we visited Ft. Lauderdale earlier this month, I insisted on renting a Toyota Prius, the hybrid I've been dreaming of owning for three years. It cost us an extra $10 a day for our choice of car, but "Hey, this is research!" I told the Capt. We drove around the flatlands of Ft. Lauderdale for four days, getting lost a number of times, and still managed to spend only $2.66 on gas. I'd buy a Prius in a hot second, except that we live in Mexico now, and finding a mechanic who could service it would be just about impossible. I came here from Gualala, where I knew seven people driving Priuses. Here in Mexico I have yet to see one!

One thing I like about our boat is that it demonstrates several types of alternative energy. Wind drives us across the water. A wind generator on the stern boosts our batteries. Two solar panels run our refrigeration. We have a watermaker that produces drinking-quality water from seawater--our own desalination plant. We're gradually replacing our below-deck lighting system with LEDs, which last considerably longer than ordinary lights.

I'm hoping to improve on these systems in the new project boat we've bought; for one thing, the hull shape is more conducive to efficient movement through the water than our present Morgan, which does have a tendency to waddle through the waves. And I'm hoping someday, on those occasions when we have to use our diesel engine, we might be able to fuel it with biodiesel. Imagine, instead of stinking like a city bus, we'd emit fumes that smell more like french fries!

PEMEX DOGS

Sunday we found ourselves once again on the road north to Arizona. Twice now, in one month, both essential trips for the business but wearying. We have driven it so many times, I seem to know every town, every roadside chapel, every taco stand like my own neighborhood. Even the Pemex dogs are beginning to look familiar.

Anyone who travels this route is aware of the Pemex dogs, though most probably, like the Mexicans, ignore them. Pemex gas stations are often found in lonely spots on Highway 15, the toll road to Nogales and the border, and they probably represent the last survival source for stray and abandoned dogs. Admittedly, a few of them may "belong" to someone, but evidence of care and feeding are absent. We see them stretched out in the shade at the gas island or next to the convenience store, scrawny and homely, the females always bearing evidence of multiple litters. I've never heard them bark, or seen them beg, follow or threaten people. They behave as though they have been through their own peculiar training school. They look passively at passersby as though to say, "Feed me or not, it makes no difference."

Only once have I seen a young, enterprising male raid a trashcan when no one was looking and make off with a bag almost as big as he was. I hoped there was something edible in it for him.



When I pointed my camera at an emaciated black female sitting next to a gas tank outside Santa Ana, she ambled toward me and looked up into my face. I had no food in the car, and wondered if I'd be doing a disservice if I did feed her. Would she then begin an aggressive begging routine with the next human who made eye contact with her, and end up being banished (or worse) from the Pemex? She stared up at me for only an instant and while I was looking around the car for something I could give her she disappeared.



A tri-colored mongrel was lounging in the sun near Hermosillo, using the curb as a chin rest as he studied me and my camera.

A few months ago, I met a woman who was walking a typical Mexican dog (about knee-high, golden tan, shorthaired with the haunting dark eyes ringed with black) on a leash around the Marina. We got into brief conversation as dog lovers tend to do, and she said he was a Pemex dog. She didn't just toss a cracker out the car window, she was willing to open her car and her home to one of these dignified creatures. Not as an act of charity, but because she knew a good dog when she saw one. "He's the best dog I ever had," she added as they continued on their way.



While we waited in an endless line of cars at the Nogales border I saw someone who reminded me of the Pemex dogs. A young man with no legs, sitting in a wheelchair in the midday sun, was offering artificial flowers and hammocks. Other sellers of stuffed animals, Mexican maps and plastic toy guitars brushed past him looking for the next buyer, and a couple of ancient Indian women with their faces drawn in perpetual tragedy held out their styrofoam cups and Chiclets. But in the midst of this commerce he sat looking philosophically off into the distance. Buy a flower or not, it makes no difference. By the time I had dug out a ten-peso coin to give him, the line had moved on and he was far behind us. Next time I'll look for him.

THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW

Last night the Capt. was looking over the original brochure for the Morgan 43 project boat, Scarlet Lady, that we bought in Ft Lauderdale. It's all lush photos and flamboyant text: "A superb blend of traditional elegance and contemporary style...spacious elegance surrounds you...the ultimate in privacy and comfort...an elegant and graceful yacht, whose value is unmatched in the yachting world today."

If she resembled the boat in the brochure in her younger days, she was quite a looker. Plush corduroy settees, queen size master berth, all that teak and ash paneling and storage, eighteen opening ports and hatches, a BATHTUB, for Pete's sake!

The Scarlet Lady has fallen on hard times, and Capt. is the plastic surgeon who's elected to transform her and bring her back to something like her former glory. This is an opportunity, we keep telling ourselves, to create the kind of boat we never could have afforded to buy. It's just going to take time, ingenuity and, yes, some cash. Not to speak of optimism.

So I'll share what we learn as we work out the process of bringing her to Mexico, cleaning her up and piecing her back together.

Wish us luck!

GRACIAS, JUAN VALDEZ

This is the first thing I look forward to in the morning.

Beyond a certain age, people begin to spend more time pondering the Hereafter. They walk into a room, stop, look around and ask themselves, "Now, what am I here after?"

The Capt. found an article in a discarded USA Today at Barracuda Bob’s that he just had to bring home. It’s about our last remaining vice, and the benefits thereof. We talking about coffee, dear Reader. Preferably, in our case, the stronger and richer the better.

We consider coffee a vice simply we are addicted. We can get by, and usually do, on a couple of cappucinos a day, sometimes supplemented by black tea chai in the afternoon. Not extreme, compared to my old newspaper days when I downed ten cups a day brewed in a restaurant coffeemaker, along with chunks of bittersweet chocolate for an extra kick. It must be an addiction, if one morning without a single cup of coffee brings on excruciating headaches and irritability. Our brains are hardwired to require a caffeine charge. We have a joke around here that any task attempted before caffeination is risky and bound to fail.

We have shed all our other bad old addictions, and are living remarkably clean lives these days, except for the coffee. And now we find we may be better off to keep that one. The USA Today article reports that “the possible benefits of coffee now include decreased risks of: Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, suicide, liver damage in alcoholics and gallstones.” They go on to say that “people who drink coffee have a significantly reduced risk of type 2 diabetes.” Here they point out that the coffeine is not the magic ingredient in the diabetes results, and decaf will do the trick too. In the roasting process fats called quinides are produced that may affect blood-sugar control.

I’m not likely to resort to decaf. In my mind, that would be like taking a shower while wearing a raincoat. The Capt, however, will drink decaf in the evening, but then he’ll even guzzle Pemex coffee, the swill they serve at the Mexican gas stations. With nondairy creamer, yet! Ugh!

Here in San Carlos we are lucky enough to live a block away from Evie's, a coffeehouse with its own roaster. Last night the smell of roasting coffeebeans wafted through our kitchen window. They do a good French Roast, which is what we always buy. Forget the Irish Mist and Vanilla Hazelnut. "Entero, por favor," we say when Angelica weighs out our kilo of beans. Whole beans, please, not the ground stuff. The scream of the grinder is part of our wakeup process.

At least five elders on both sides of my family suffered from some form of degenerative brain disease, so I tend to to pay special attention to reports like this. Grabbing for the brass ring of hope, you might say. Lab mice, selected for a tendency toward a mouse disease much like Alzheimer’s, were fed coffee, while another group were given only water. The coffee-fed mice could still navigate through a maze even after symptoms appeared, while the water-drinkers were clueless. Just stood around staring at each other, I suppose, wondering what it was all about. As always, the article included the usual disclaimer phrase, “...falls short of scientific proof,” and probably the facts won’t be in until I’m long gone.

But it certainly gave me the urge to brew another cappucino.

LIFE AFTER DEADLINE

The family portrait, after 63 tries


Yesterday we emailed our publication to the printer and gave a huge sigh of relief. Several sighs, in fact. It felt, the Capt. remarked, as though we had been waiting to exhale.

We include a photo of ourselves in each edition. Probably reluctant to be confronted with how much we’ve aged since the last portrait, we procrastinated taking this shot until just before Zero Hour, when our friend from the Ranchitos agreed to photograph us. This is not as easy as you might think, since the portrait has to include Sophie. In every shot, one of us was laughing or closing eyes, Sophie was wriggling or hiding or one of us was grinning maniacally, showing too many teeth and trying to look perkier than we felt. Our patient amigo took 63 shots. Finally the Capt. uploaded them all and with his famous pixel-manipulating dexterity, created a composite we could live with. He used the rest of them to make an amusing little slide show. A little levity is a good thing at deadline.

To make the photo process even more interesting, we had two extra dogs who were eager to be in the portrait. Max was here, without Lola this time, and I gasped at how much he'd grown.

Little Max, not so little anymore

Also we’re dogsitting a Corgi belonging to a friend of ours, while he’s in Mulege trying to retrieve a powerboat. He stayed in our house and looked after Sophie while we were away last week. Vela's name is Spanish for "sail," and it fits since her ears are so big they look like she could be wind-propelled. She's been with us now for four days and has happily adopted us as surrogate parents. She sleeps with us, leaps effortlessly into our laps at every opportunity and tolerates Sophie’s grumpiness with grace. Sophie, whose lifelong fear has been the loss of status, food, territory, sleeping space and love to some mythical Other Dog, has had her nightmare come true. The look she gives me when I hold Vela in my lap is heartbreaking.



Vela, the Other Dog


Our detour to Ft Lauderdale crowded the schedule considerably, but I managed to get in some proofreading and last-minute contacts one afternoon while the Capt was out buying an enormous tarp for the new boat. The three nights in the hotel were all pleasure, with a big bathtub, a terrace overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway, fridge and microwave, a big, soft bed and the Atlantic to swim in. I grudgingly admit that those three days were probably the best deadline therapy I could have hoped for. Malcontent that I am, I couldn’t resist grumbling about the lack of reading lights by the bed on their feedback form. There I was, squinting through the most exciting part of "The Plague Diaries" by Ann Benson and feeling a sore throat coming on, a little twinge in my chest.



The hotel deck, where you can sit in a rocking chair, watch the Atlantic and sip lemonade. Just don't put your feet up on the rails, the signs warn.

I'm sure I'm not the first to notice that flying isn’t what it used to be. Once I loved to fly. Now the only way to endure it is to carry the absolute minimum, including the day’s nutritional requirements since that much-maligned airline food is a memory, and reading matter to while away the 1-1/2 hours advance time you have to wait in the airport.

Don’t wear shoes that lace up or buckle or you’ll be fumbling in line while everyone around you snarls and looks at their watches. Bring only travel-size liquids and gels, in a Ziplock bag; anything larger will be confiscated and tossed in a barrel. (There went my bug repellent: the bottle was one ounce over the limit.) Have the Ziplock in hand, not packed, when you go through Security, or they’ll sit you down and start rummaging through your suitcase. And keep your hands to yourself during the search; if you appear to be making a grab for your bag you might get arrested. If you have more than two bags in your hands you’re in trouble, as you’ll have to juggle your Ziplock, video camera, computer, shoes, and boarding pass and passport or driver’s license. Whatever you put away will be the item they ask you for (Murphy’s Law of Airport Security).

If you’ve paid the big bucks for a cup of coffee or a bottle of water, go ahead and throw it away because you won’t be allowed to have it. Don’t make any relevant jokes while standing in line, or they might be construed as terrorist code. Occasionally we’d encounter a security person with a sense of humor and a ready smile, but most were tense, grim and obviously not thrilled with their jobs. And who can blame them?

I had the middle seat on one leg of the flight and spent the four hours sitting at an angle. These seats are obviously designed for passengers the size of ten-year-olds or amputees missing at least one arm.

On the upside: We were surprised to find we were served free sandwiches. Cold, stale little rolls stuffed with a few paper-thin slices of processed turkey and a lettuce leaf. M&Ms and a tiny bag of baby carrots came with them. An hour after they were served, we even got beverages. But when last we flew to New York from California, everything was for sale, and it didn’t look much more appetizing than what they gave us on this Continental flight. Another little treat: the movie on the return flight was “The Devil Wears Prada,” one I’d been looking forward to seeing. Another gold star for Meryl Streep as the ice queen boss from hell.

We’ll have another flight to Lauderdale sometime next year, when we make arrangements to transport the boat to Mexico. So I’ve been thinking about how I can make the trip more bearable. Next time I’ll try to reduce my load to one carry-on and wear all the clothes I plan to take, layering them like a bag lady, topped by one of those hunter’s vests with 25 pockets in it, contents of each pocket on a list in case I forget where I stashed what. I’ll take a recorded book on my iPod instead of carrying paperbacks and newspapers. I’ll dispense with style and take only my trusty Tevas. And maybe I’ll get some meds, just for the occasion. Pretend I’m preparing for the jungle, because that’s what the flying experience has become (minus the diversion of the four-legged wildlife).

The last time I flew on American Airlines, I was bumped twice on the second leg of my return (already worn out and aching to get home after four days with my mother). I wandered the Dallas-Ft Worth airport at midnight like a homeless woman, dragging three bags with me, looking for an employee who could at least find me a blanket. I ended up paying for a hotel room for four hours’ sleep, smuggled there on an employees’ shuttle bus by a desk clerk who took pity on me. When I wrote American about it, I got back a form letter that said essentially, “Too bad, we’re working on it.” And now I get endless hints from Mother that it’s time for another visit.

Today the Capt. is tending to some chores on the boat and I’m decompressing the way I know best: by removing the clutter of the last three days’ madness, taking photos and blogging. There are a couple of large moths, as big as hummingbirds, with silvery blue on their wings, sampling the yellow blossoms in our back yard, but I could never get one in my sights long enough to take a photo. A big dragonfly landed on the clothesline and just as I was about to get off a shot, my watch alarm went off, scaring him away. So much for my hobby as an amateur entomology photographer. Oh, well, at least the flowers held still for me.


Las flores amarillas

A HALLOWEEN SURPRISE

Having bought a 50-foot Morgan project boat, sight unseen over the Internet (not a practice I'd recommend), we thought it in our best interest to take a look at it, and the Capt. decided to book a flight to Ft. Lauderdale just before deadline. This was either an act of pure genius (getting us away from the usual stress, allowing us a peaceful break for proofreading and refining) or wild recklessness, depending on one's point of view. Since I've never seen the Atlantic, never visited Florida and always thought Ft. Lauderdale would be my choice FL destination (too many John McDonald novels, I guess), I decided to adopt the genius viewpoint.

From our house in Mexico it takes 1-1/2 days of travel to get to Ft. Lauderdale: 4-1/2 hours of driving to get to the border, then a five-hour flight plus two hours' time difference to arrive at our destination. Monday night we checked in at the Best Western Pelican Beach Resort, on the beach in Hotel Row. This is not John McDonald's Ft Lauderdale; it's the one he railed against in all his Travis McGee novels. Highrise condos and hotels line the shore in imitation of Miami, which is only 25 miles south of here. You can see its lights from the beach. Inland for miles are row upon row of strip malls and big-name stores. I looked for the funky docks where Travis would have kept his houseboat, and decided they must be in another part of town.


The Capt stands in the shade of a neighboring freight hauler and admires the exterior hull of his new boat. From here, it looks pretty good.

Then yesterday, appropriately Halloween, we went to examine the boat. We received a personal guided tour from the previous owner's wife, an engaging Aussie with long silvered hair pulled back in a ponytail and a big warm smile. We followed her on a 45-minute drive to the storage area where the Morgan sits on jacks, surrounded by a couple of powerboats and a number of freight trucks. From outside she looked fairly sound, and her gelcoat gleamed in the sunlight as we stood looking up at her. Too bad it's the wrong color for the tropics, where a dark hull would only make a sweltering cabin hotter. We climbed the wooden ladder to gain entrance to the cockpit and...Boo!

I swallowed hard, kept my mouth shut and concentrated on taking pictures. I'll let the shots tell the story, as a detailed description is just too disheartening. I like to photograph beautiful things, but I've posted these in the interest of recording history. Someday, when the transformation has taken place (she wrote optimistically), we'll have an eye-popping before-and-after comparison.


The cockpit is somewhat narrower than the one on our 33-footer.


The galley, the 1st Mate's domain. In the foreground is a box that once housed a top-loading fridge and freezer. A bulkhead behind it separated it from the master cabin head, complete with small bathtub (which is still there, and in good shape!)


In the former engine room, the Capt found evidence of a fire, which may have occurred during the sinking.

We learned a few things that gave us a better picture of the boat's murky history. Her original name was Scarlet Lady. The previous owners found her at Marathon Key and brought her up by truck, the husband full of inspired dreams for her rehabilitation that the wife never quite shared, though she kept her misgivings to herself. They bought her from a woman whose husband had abandoned her and the boat, after they limped into Marathon with everything from engine trouble to sail trouble. Suffering from lupus, unable to tolerate the sun, the woman was desperate to sell the boat and escape. And, added our Aussie friend, whoever stepped the mast failed to put a penny under it. Bad luck! No wonder the Scarlet Lady, from her launching in 1987, has come undone.

While we were surveying our "new" boat, the previous owner was out in the Atlantic doing sea trials on his new craft, a 46.5 Morgan ketch named Saturday's Child. In the evening we got together to compare notes over a seafood dinner at a restaurant on one of the canals, founded in 1952 and still delightfully authentic and funky. Travis McGee would have felt right at home. The Skipper and I shared a combo platter piled high with three varieties of crablegs, followed by key lime pie.

We swapped stories about how we got into sailing, our previous boats and our most memorable adventures at sea, as cruisers do when they get together. We talked about all the places we want to explore: they envision heading back to Australia, where they met, at some point, and we're dreaming of the Caribbean and possibly Europe.

"Well, Bliss, what did you think of your new boat?" they asked me. I answered truthfully that it was the scariest Halloween I'd ever experienced. Not so much the boat itself, which I expected to be an ugly shock, but the prospect of getting her to Mexico and getting her back into seaworthy condition.

Back at the hotel, the four of us walked down to the beach where I finally dipped my toes in the Atlantic for the first time, the best part of the trip so far.


From our 9th floor hotel room we can see the Intracoastal Waterway, which goes all the way to Brownsville, TX according to Wikipedia