so, Karaka is sitting in a boatyard in La paz, Baja California , Mexico, while Kim and Tom in an act of unprecedented betrayal, are sailing on another boat along the coast of eastern australia…

We just completed a successfull crossing of the pacific on a 40ft steel cutter called orianne, that we are about to resell.

So for now Karaka is not going anywhere, but soon, soon, she’ll be ready to roam the ocean again. Tom is about to fly back to mexico to take care of Her, there are a few months of work that are long overdue. basically an extensive refit is planned, elimination of all the rust, repainting, revarnishing, plus some conversion and modification that have been too long on the project list…

We won’t need crew as such for a while to come, and we already have a lot of people who want to sail with us through the pacific next year, but in the good ol’tradition, we’ll welcome anybody willing to give a hand to the refit, there will be work for everybody, and some of the craziest, tequila fueled, mayhem making parties you’ll ever seen… we’re going to put mexico on fire, and hopefully get karaka all shiny and beautiful as well…

Kim is going to stay a while in australia to work and make a bit more money( it is going to be expensive sailing in the pacific, and all the money we’ll have will probably be eaten by the boatyard bill) and will come back to the boat sometime in february maybe, we’re not sure.

so yep that’s it, sailing in oz for now, fixing up orianne, visiting kim’s island, then down to brisbane to sell the boat, then tom back to la paz to work on karaka for the next few months. that’s the plan…

You can follow our progress on the blog we set up for Orianne, and that we are going to keep up to date via satelite phone. The link is :

Http://blog.mailasail.com/belmont/

We’re all over the place. We don’t know what’s happening next but it sure is exciting.

We had everything ready, we went early, emptied all we could onto the dock, sails, books, anchors, rope, bits and pieces, tons of stuff, and karaka lifted about 10 cm out of the water from being free of all that weight. but then despite the high enough tide, we could never get the boat on top of the machine that takes it out of the water, and after several attempts we had to give up. so our plan to be in that nice little family boatyard in la Paz with our cozy little private corner where we were going to make a gypsy camp and work on making karaka the beautifullest ship in the harbor, is not going to happen. it is very annoying as we spent the last few weeks checking all the shops for supplies, organizing parts and tools, preparing the boat, making friends, making plans for a longish term stay including circus class and busking and all kind of cool stuff, and now we are back in our anchorage, wondering what to do. there is no decent other boatyard in town, so our options re now getting somehow limited. we need to think hard and seriously about what we do next. Karaka needs a refit, but we also need to do it in the right conditions or it won’t be done properly. we don’t have that much money to spend so we need a small yard with cheap rates and where we can do the work ourselves… it is likely we’ll have to look in another town for that…

but for now we are trying to save the day, we are going to go get kim’s violin which is ready at the repair shop, then back on the boat for a night of revelry and bachanal, pizza night on karaka, gypsy music and lots of tequila. fuck it, we’re not going to be depressed over the ruin of all our plans for the past 3 months.

Quote of the day:

Iif you want to make God laugh, try to stick to a plan.

today we started emptying the boat, trying to get all the heavy stuff out of the lockers and on the deck so we can take it to shore before the machine lifts us. we have already 8 cardboard boxes full of books, and i had to run to the supermarket to dumpsterdive some more.we got piles of stuff. karaka will be incredible when she’ll be empty…

on the crew front, kim is busy taking circus classes and african dancing classeas and also getting tired riding her new bike… martin is still with us and helping. he has no set plans and will be hanging out for a while longer, helping with the work in the yard. we got one couchsurfer, jamie from tasmania, australia, and also there is laura, another australian we met in costa rica, who is around for a week or so. we also met another very young cruiser, alex on moondance, who just sailed down from santa cruz, california. he is setting for a world cruise and he is hanging out with us at the moment. actually as i write that he took both laura and jamie out to a nearby island for the night.

otherwise, well, the weather is improving, the cold spell is gone and now it is about the nicest weather we ‘ve had in a long time. it never rains, it is cool but not cold, always sunny. just great. ideal for working.

kim is doing her best to find time to finally answer all those mails , so if you have been waiting for news for ever, it might actually happen soon…

ok, that’s it for now. no pictures i’m sorry, but klim’s camera is broken and we don;’t have another one. we’ll have to get the pictures from martin or from our other friends and crew…

What happened is that the guy from the boatyard under estimated the size of karaka and so when we showed up at the appointed date and time, the tide was not high enough. As a result everybody got a bit grumpy and we had to go back to the anchorage. i went back just after to confirm a new date, but then the guy started telling me Karaka was too big for his machine and that he did not want to take the risk of breaking his machine taking karaka out…

We got a bit distressed by this as the other otpions in town are not good, either too expensive, or full, or too far from town, or they won’t let us work ourselves, etc. so we went back armed with pictures of a flimsy trolly that was used to haul karaka out in thailand and the boat papers showing the registered weight of karaka, and we manage to sway the man. we are rescheduled on friday the 18th. we’ll have to go early before the hightide and then empty the boat of all the heavy stuff such as anchors, dinghies, sails, life raft, etc etc in order to lower the weight of the boat, and hopefully the machine will be able to take us out…

after that there is just one more issue we are concerned about, and that is finding a nice spot on the yard. we had asked for a nice private corner with shade tree, but that was attributed to another boat so we’ll have to fight to get a good spot now. anyway, all good, have to run now..

well it should pass soon, and the place will be it’s wonderfull balmy self again. in the meantime we are just taking it easy.

we stil haven’t posted the stories of the crossing cause kim’s laptop is acting up and so she gave up writting for now. hopefully it will be fixed soon . our internet is sketchy at best, so we are procrastinating about writing back to all the emails. we will tackle that when we are in the boatyard next week, as we will have good connection and unlimited power for the computer. right now i have to be on deck to get on line and with the wind chill i have to be covered with layers after layers of clothing and i’m still freezing.

two of our crew are gone, alex back to sweden and greg back to texas. we have a new resident, matiss is a friend of zack from canada who came here on a holyday and is staying on board for the moment. zack will be flying back to canada next week.

martin is still with us and he will stay in la paz for a while. he plans on exploring the area a bit and also help us with the fist part of the refit.

otherwise yesterday we went with a local friend to a remote area of town where there are several second hand shops, huge warehouses littered with tons of random stuff for sale. we got a nice bike for kim, a huge single speed schwinn cruiser. she is already in love with it. it will be important for us to be mobile when we are in the boatyard, as it is about 4 km from town along the malecon, the water front, and with bikes we will be able to zoom back and forth and not feel like we are lost in the middle of nowhere.

so that’s it for now, we are taking it easy on the boat, trying to slow down a bit on the partying as it gets expensive and tiring. it feels like winter so we close the boat, play soft music and eat warm soup. next week i will be exploring the town for all the supplies we need for the refit, and we will try to go fo a short trip to some islands nearby as well.

Kim is writing down an account of the crossing from costa rica to here, we had a good crossing, some adventures, and some nice stories to tell. Whenever kim is done with that I’ll post it here as well.

We are now anchored in the harbor of La Paz, the capital of Baja California Sur. It is an awefully nice place and we are going to stay for a while. the original idea was to sail to Guaymas further north and do the refit there, but I found another boatyard here in town that is actually a bit nicer and about the same price so we are not going to go to Guaymas after all.

We have a couple weeks to prepare ourselves, let the crew get ready to leave and also go for a last little trip to a nearby island and then we should haul out the 14th of february. The boatyard is called Atalanta marina, it is situated just north of the Marina Palmira just outside of La Paz.

The exact location is : Latitude 24° 10´ N and Longitude 110° 18´ W

the address is Atalanta Marina, 

Carretera a Pichilingue Km. 2.5, Colonia Lomas de Palmira, La Paz, BCS, México
But don’t send us stuff right away I need to check with them if it is okay first.

It is a small run down familly boatyard, it looks like the place was waiting for us, just our style. It is no more than a square of desert with a wall around it. The boats there are mostly in storage, with only a couple being worked on and also a few being totally abandonned. I secured for us a corner where we’ll be cozy, we even have a couple trees for shade. We will have to be sort of camping as the inside of the boat will be worked on, grinding rust and painting, and it won’t be comfortable to sleep in the boat. The place have some facilities and comforts, we’ll have power and water, a nice storage area for all our stuff, showers and toilets, an internet connection, a shuttle to town, etc etc.

So that’s it for the moment, I ‘ll post more when we are hauled out with more details. For all of you who mentioned you wanted to come and visit, and maybe give a hand, we’ll let you know asap all you need to know about that. We probably won’t need many people right away as we will tackle technical jobs and bang rust, but later on in march and april it would be great to have some manpower and company. The boatyard will let us do anything we want there so we can be as many as we want and they won’t be objecting to having a gypsy camp in their yard so we’ll be able to make some noise…

Karaka is twitching with anticipation of all the manicuring she’s going to get. We will eliminate all rust inside and out, overhaul the engines, rebuild the engine room, and repaint and revarnish about everything… lots of fun in perspective and plenty of work for all those who want to learn the pleasures of boat maintenance.

La paz is a very nice town, with a lot of nice people, excellent cheap food, active nightlife and relaxed atmosphere. We have already made a lot of friends amongst the student comunity, we contacted all the couchsurfing hosts of the town and invited them to a big party on the boat, so know we have a bunch of local friends. The last few days have been hectic, after 40 days at sea we are now having a party almost every night. We are going to slow down during the refit but the potential is there…

Ok, enough for now, I have a lot of catching up to do on the net

more news later

Click here to see where we are :

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0BBKlGUTZOAbXTp3j0q2qbVtHXMrfO5lP

For those generous souls who would like to help the dream go on, we are now able to receive donations!
Click on this link to accede the page on the website: http://karaka.voila.net/donations.html

Karaka is at the moment especially in need of funds, since we have a major refit planned for the begining of 2011.

For the information of donators, here follows our current wish list. It is the list of how the money you donate will be used.

- 3 month refit, january to april 2011

Haul out and boatyard fees, paint, tools, material, etc.

Among the tools needed, there are :

- Cutting torch/plasma cutter

It is a tool used to cut steel.

- 200L Air compressor

To power a jack hammer to chip rust, a sandblaster to elimnate all rust, a spray gun to paint, etc

- A new set of batteries

We need to replace the batteries that power the whole boat’s 12 volt system. The ones we use at present are 6 years old and are only supposed to have lasted 5. We use golf kart batteries as they are about the best quality for their price on the market.

- 800 watts power inverter

It is a small machine that converts the 12 volts DC power from the batteries to 220 volts AC power that we can use for computers and small power tools. The old one went up in flames.

- Solar panels

We use those to recharge the batteries in order to avoid having to run the diesel generator. We have three solar panels on board at present but they are old and their output is insufficient.

- Marine stove/oven unit

The one we use at present is very old and rusty, eventually it will become a safety risk. It is time to replace it.

- Jib sails

Jibs don’t last very long on the open ocean and we ripped several of them lately. We still have a decent wardrobe but it would be good to find spares before the one we use at present fail us.

- Sail maker sewing machine

It exists a special kind of sewing machine designed for repairing sails and tarps. We would save a lot of money on the long run if we could fix our sails ourselves.

- 12ft aluminum dinghy

Our dinghy has served us well, but she is now ready for retirement. She must be at least 25 years old and fiberglass is not meant to last that long. We think an aluminum dinghy of the same size would be ideal for Karaka. Aluminum is light and strong and doesn’t corrode.

- 2hp outboard motor

Coupled with a good pair of oars and a simple sailing rig, a small outboard engine would make the dinghy the perfect tender in all situations.

- Refrigeration unit

Everybody enjoys a cold beer… Plus it would enable us to preserve the fish we catch. We have never been able to afford the cost of an instalation yet and it doesn’t look it will happen in the near future as their are other priorities, but here it is anyway…

And also for the generous souls, we would gladly accept gifts and donations directed toward us as individuals and not toward the boat funds… We make a point of not using the boat money for our personal expenses and that means we usually have to find some ways to make money on the side. Any donations would enable us to dedicate ourselves fully to Karaka. Also we are trying to set up a Karaka co-op which would enable us to function as a collective without having to ask a contribution from the crew and any financial help would make it easier to put together.

Thank you.