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February 26th, 2008 (Christine's FOG) Hi everyone! Christine’s FOG has now officially started. I have been meaning to start writing on the website but things have been so hectic with moving to Florida and trying to get a boat. If anyone is wondering if Fog is spelled incorrectly, that I’m illiterate, or just thinking HUH? I picked “fog” deliberately, instead of log as an ode to Chapman’s “bible” for sailors, Piloting, Seamanship and Small boat Handing (51st ed, 1974, pg. 590) he writes that: “..the skipper’s logs may well be supplemented by a “female’s log, or “fog” for short. In this record, the skipper’s wife records names of boats seen, new friends made (and don’t forget addresses), new recipes discovered, points of interest ashore, and any other bits of information that will aid her in planning for other cruises or will just bring back memories..” What a rare gem of advice in this day and age of female empowerment. I just love it. Let’s cheers to Chapman and his misogynistic views! I bet he is or was (is he still alive?) the type of man that yelled to his wife from the cockpit, “more beer babe and how about that bl*w j*b already?” Har har! What a salty seaman he was. No pun intended. And why in the hell is the cockpit called the “cock” pit and not the captain’s pit or even sailor’s pit? Hmmmmmm. We can all waste brain cells to ponder that, but I think we all know why it’s called the cockpit… *** Lets take time out here to warn people that I possess what is known as a very black sense of humor. Sick, crude all are in my vocabulary. I can’t help it – I was born on Halloween. That makes me A LOT weird and a little eerie. Also, I’m a Scorpio and you know what they say about scorpios don’t you? So just a little warning – READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!! Some of the contents of my Fog may offend. Chris would censor me if he could, but I will always find ways to creep back in. I think he has given up because it is a futile endeavor. Now back to the term Fog, it sounds like I’m lost, dazed, befuddled, and confused. Also, it’s as if I had thick coke bottled glasses on. It’s the truth most of the time when I’m sailing because I’ve only ever taken a beginner sailing’s class at a local community college. Shoot me! I say sometimes it’s better to dive in way over your head without thinking too much than to spend years on planning. People who plan too much for a trip inevitably have life interrupt them and they put their dreams on hold. (For anyone that is interested in learning how to sail, I recommend looking at your local community college. It’s the cheapest way to learn. I think we paid around $100 each for the course). Needless to say, we both fell in love with sailing and Chris bought a 25 foot McGregor named Sea Angel. Sea Angel was such a beautiful little blue/green sailboat. Obviously she was not named after me, we just kept her name when Chris bought her. She was the best starter boat anyone could wish for and we took her 2 times to Catalina from Long Beach. Let her new home love her as much as we did! Amen! Chris on the other hand, has been reading and learning anything he could get on sailing, and I tried, I really did, but anyone that has read any of the sailing books knows how utterly boring it is. This sounds scary but I am going to learn on the road so to speak, and hopefully Chris doesn’t fall overboard any time soon, because we will be in MUCHO trouble. If you have laughed about Asian female drivers on the road, you have seen NOTHING yet, wait until you see an Asian female sailor on the water, WOOHOO – watch out and MOVE OUT. Danger AHEAD! Muy peligrosa! La Chinita en la barca! We are still searching for our boat so there is really not much news, hence no updates. We went to the Miami boat show with Selena (a friend Chris met at Burning Man 2006) – and while we were discussing and lounging in the Telstar Trimaran, talking to Will, who works for Performance Cruising, about the boat, lo and behold, we met Tony Smith, the builder of the Gemini Catarmans! That’s our dream boat! Chris recognized his name and we came up to introduce ourselves and chat a bit. He was a very nice unassuming Brit and he seemed awfully embarrassed that we both were giggling like 2 school girls while talking to him. I bet he doesn’t get recognized a lot. We asked to take a picture with him and he seemed speechless. I wished we could’ve grilled him on questions about the Gemini but he seemed embarrassed enough so we reluctantly walked away. We also met up with a friend from CA’s uncle that works in a marina in Miami – Joe – who was very helpful and awesome in getting us boat tickets. He has been extremely helpful in numerous ways and we can’t say thank you enough. Thanks also to Selena who is a very talented girl (she is becoming a Reiki Master and getting her paramedics license – for letting us stay at her apartment in Fort Lauderdale and for teaching me that cooking doesn’t have to be hard. From there, we drove to Key West and we took a picture of the Southernmost point in the US. We drove on to the Everglades, known affectionately as alligator alley. It was very exciting to see alligators in the wild while driving on the freeway. I must’ve seen over a dozen or so. I heard that in the evening, hundreds come out. I wished there was a joint that sold alligator burgers - that would have been very delicious. So now we are back in Orlando, Florida. We have been keeping busy by buying supplies for the boat – gazillion canned goodies, plates, dishes, floor mats, sarongs, swimming trunks, rash guards, the list goes on and on. We have been spending money like a drunken sailor. The best purchase so far has to be the Spot Satellite Personal Tracker. Supposedly Survivor Man on the Discovery channel uses it. We paid $139.99 for the hand held device and than there is a $99 annual service fee. It’s like an EPIRB GPS device that can locate your GPS coordinates when you are in an emergency and you push the 911 button that activates a signal for rescuers to pick up so they can locate you. Pretty cool stuff. We can text or send emails to our friends and family that we are ok anytime we want. We haven’t tried it out yet but it seems like a very cool device to have on board. This will put our family and friends minds more at ease I hope. I wish there was more exciting news, but that pretty much sums up the lastmonth that we have been here. Hopefully the next posting will bear better news. Ahoy until next time mateys!
Monday 03, 2008 (Orlando Gets Wild With The Lovable Lesbians) Got the men’s attention eh? Even the bicurious girls? Don’t worry this will not become an X-rated website, just R if you have a great imagination. The weekend was very wild and fun. Selena came up to visit us with her “pseudo-girlfriend” Michelle (both of them are lesbians so Chris and I call them the lovable lesbians because truly they were very adorable and carefree). Selena decided she wanted to put up a tent in the house. The tent became a love shack for lesbian love. Shaka Boom Boom. We heard giggling laughter all night from the tent. In the morning, we came down, and although it didn’t rain the night before, and the house was dry, the strange thing is that the tent inside was wet. Very wet. Smelled very minty too. Hmmmmmm. Kara, Selena’s high school friend (not a lesbian) came over too, and she also ventured inside the shaka boom boom tent, not fearing for her beaver. That completed the strange tableau of people in the household. It was like a Burning Man reunion except that most of the people didn’t go to BM but who’s counting? On Sunday, we all gathered to Smyrna Beach. It took us hours to get there because when you get a couple of lesbians together, they giggle like mad in the bathroom for hours, have their friends come over, talk about complicated relationship issues, and take forever in leaving the front door. Oh yeh, this is universal female behavior that all females engage in that drive men from the world over completely nuts. When we got to the beach, which was a very public beach, the girls decided to go topless and it became a boob fest. There were an interested audience gathering and poor Kara was embarrassed but she braved it out. I, on the other hand, went swimming, so was shivering with cold, and bundled under a blanket. It got real interesting when Michelle (who has awesome Double D’s, but I think they are way bigger) and Selena started to wrestle and Michelle pinned Selena to the ground. Everyone was riveted by the wonderful jiggly display of bouncy boobs. It ended in a few short minutes but it was a sight to behold. Poor Kara was worried that someone would call the cops but we all laughed. She ran to the bushes to get changed, but little did she know that she was more visible in the bushes with her firm boobs bobbing (she also had Double D’s) than when she was on the sand with us. I was never invited to a lesbian love shack tent before or asked to take a shower with girls before so this weekend called for a very interesting, fun, strange experience. If you’re wondering if I turned lesbian or bi-curious, I have to sadly say that I declined any Sapphic activities since it is not my cup of tea. I can say that lesbians sure are a horny, affectionate, sexual, giggling, wild “bunch” (even though were only 2 of them), I love them – they were a riot. Selena ended the weekend with a peaceful, spiritual lesson about Reiki, by teaching us to harness our energy to heal and soothe. She attuned Michelle first, Chris second, and me third. (Hurray number 3 is one of my favorite numbers)! I could literally feel tingles coming from my body and hopefully with practice and discipline, I can use my energy to get to the next Reiki level. Reiki is basically an alternative therapy developed in Japan to treating physical, emotional, mental diseases with the healing power of the hands or literally meaning “laying on hands” to areas in need of healing. One time when Selena gave me energy work, I could literally feel heat coming from her soothing hands and it was completely amazing to me that anyone can learn to harness energy to heal. I felt deep thanks to Selena for teaching me level 1 and I look forward to level 2. This weekend just comes to show that odd, random events sometimes happen to Chris and I - with funny, strange people, and we embrace the events and the people with open hearts and minds. The wonderful, sweet girls brought very cute affection and hilarity to our weekend.
Friday March 7, 2008 (Scary New Pet...La Gatita) Today is my favorite cousin's birthday! Happy Birthday Chi! I won't be there to celebrate with her so that's a little sad. The worst thing about going away on such a fantastic voyage is that I miss my family and friends. But nothing is perfect I guess. As of now, we are still waiting..waiting..always waiting. Something really tragic and scary happened to me the other day. After going to Smyrna Beach, I took out my braids (I usually braid my hair and look like a prepubescent mail order bride because it's so long), I washed it and got lazy that night and didn't brush it out. When I went to wash it again, to my utter horror, I found a HUGE knot the size of my fist. The truly horrifying thing was that it was the biggest, tightest knot I've ever acquired in all my years. Usually a tangle or a knot is coming from one part of the head, but this knot was coming from two big clumps of hair and somehow it magically, disturbingly got twisted together - and became a very tightly woven bird's nest. We couldn't figure out where it ended or began. The knot was also very close to my scalp so it was almost impossible to get to. It hurt every time I brushed it. Chris said that my hair would be a great survivor item since you could apparently make thick knots with it. Chris always warned me to brush my hair out each night but I never listened, and when he saw the huge knot, he had that "I told you so look" and to make matters worse, he said it out loud. I spent over 3 hours trying to brush it out and I was in a daze of depression because deep down I had a feeling that this knot was NOT going to come out. We looked for advice online and it said to put baby oil. I called my sister Ylang and she suggested vegetable oil. Chris put a sock over it to soak over night. He suggested going to a professional to comb it out. I thought it best that I go to a salon that specializes in hard to manage, kinky hair so we found a black salon. We went in and when I asked the lady, she exclaimed, "well chile, how did you get THAT?" She said she didn't do tangles so referred me to a second salon down the street. The girl there worked on it for 10 minutes, washed my hair, put a huge ooze of conditioner in my hair, but after a bit, she said she didn't think she could get it out. She felt really bad and said that I would have to get scissors. I asked her what it would look like if I just cut the whole tangled mess out and she said I didn't want to do that since there would be a HOLE in my head! WTF?? A HOLE? She also said if I cut the knot, I would have a 'Demi Moore' haircut. That put chills down my spine. She sent me on my way without making me pay anything because she felt so bad for me. I went home determined to get rid of my knot. I looked like a crazy girl with the huge knot on the side of my head. The knot was literally the size of my fist or bigger. It was a big chunk of my hair and I don't even have that much hair to begin with. I took the dreaded scissors out and slowly started to HACK into it, than pulling, yanking out bits of torn ragged hair. Chris helped me hack and tear out the rest. Hair was all over the bathroom sink, floors, bathtub. A fourth of my hair was cut off and Chris assures me that you can't really see that there's a huge chunk of hair missing from my head. Thankfully the knot was on the back of my head. This knot was almost impossible to get out. I think a witch put a hex on me or that when I practiced my Reiki skills, all my energy got wired up in my head and something went haywire. Now, I have two scary pets that I acquired unwillingly. I wanted a pet monkey but now all I have are two horrific pets. I named the big one La Gatita (for little black cat) and the other one is half of a mustachio. Please feel free to laugh at me when you look at my cute little scary pets. I think I will keep the knot as a reminder to always brush my hair, especially in the harsh Carribean conditions in the sun. If a pirate tries to board our vessel, I will just throw La Gatita at them and they will run away in fright. I hope any girl or any guy with long hair will treat this story as a cautionary tale. I will post soon but I'm not very happy with the hole in the back of my head, but I guess I should be happy that I was able to keep most of my hair. I will try to post pictures of my pets so everyone can see the AMOUNT of hair that was hacked off (and the knot is smaller than the real knot on my head since it was hacked into pieces). My Gatita is meowing for attention now, she's a very demanding pet. Satuday, March 8, 2008 (I Want it...I NEED IT!) Time is running out for me to submerse myself into all the convenient, cheap superstores around. I never knew that a Wal-Mart Superstore or a Target Superstore existed, but now I’m a converted shopper. For all those out there who are not lucky enough to live close to a super center – it’s just a Wal-Mart or a Target with a supermarket attached to it. What a great concept. All your shopping needs 24-7, any time of the week. Everything is at my finger tips. If I have insomnia, I can go to the super center and just mosey around until I get sleepy. Chris and I have been frequenting Wal-Mart almost every day or every other day. There is even a cool aisle for boat stuff. Way cheaper than West Marine. I’m not big on corporate conglomerates and I like the Mama & Papa stores and restaurants, but these super centers make me lose all convictions and morals because of the cheap prices. I’m a blind consumerist whore. I can’t help it. It’s not that I want these things…I NEED them. Everything I see lately, I feel that I need it on the boat. There won’t be cheap super centers in the islands – most everything is imported and everything will be a lot more expensive. Also, I’m addicted to stores like Ross and Marshall’s for their household items. I mean, how can you get cheaper than $2.99 for 3 set of kitchen towels with pretty print? I need EVERYTHING in the store. I always exclaim to Chris that I NEED it and I feel that I do. I’ve been raised in America, which is the number one consumerist society. I’m used to convenient stores a few miles away, stores upon stores of great bargains. Even if I didn’t need the items, they are just so f*cking cheap that I can’t help myself. In this day and age of the modern malls, just walking down the stores, my veins start throbbing. Even if I went to the mall just to keep my sister company, I start wanting and needing everything just because everything is so cheap. Before this trip, when we were planning it, I ended up buying literally over 40 to 50 pairs of shorts, over 20 pairs of slippers and on and on. Everything was on sale so I had to get everything. I wish I could take a picture of all my shorts and slippers lined up but unfortunately, Chris made me leave a third of them home. Of course I got each pair of shorts for less than $15 each and the slippers were at Old Navy for 2 pairs for $5.00. Cheap. How can a consumerist whore like me resist? Not to mention, with a click of the mouse away, I can order shorts online for a very good price. I’m inundated by the super centers, the discount stores, the cheap prices, online products, malls, and everywhere I turn, bargains are to be had. I’m like a crack addict surrounded by crack! It’s the society I live in. The US consumes more than it produces. I’m a product of that environment. How am I to leave this heaven of consumer society and go sailing to the islands with its natural environment and NO super centers? We as a society are obsessed with material possessions. In California, we work hard and we spend harder. It gives us pleasure. Almost orgasmic pleasure. A natural high to buy something we like. The thought of leaving all the stores behind, leaves me feeling inadequate, scared…chilled to the bones. Helpless. What do you mean I can’t run to Wal-mart and get 59 cents canned goods? The islands will be triple the price because they have to import everything. Don’t get me wrong, I know that the islands will have stores, but the problem is that they do not get them in mass quantities so the prices will be that much higher. I thought I could go to the farmer’s market in the islands and purchase fresh produce, but my cousin Tim who has been to the islands over a dozen times, assures me that in the Bahamas, everything is three times the price. My fantasy has been effectively wiped away. I do not want to buy a bag of oranges for $10 dollars. I would probably die of scurvy. Compared to most girls I know, I don’t even shop that much. I don’t focus on the name brand sunglasses and purses, and I mostly buy everything on sale. But the closer we get to leaving the US, my OCD is kicking in and I am hoarding products like no tomorrow. Chris is worried that we will sink with all the junk I’m buying. He researched the maxim weight we can have on board and it’s around 3000 pounds. With the rate I’m going, we will definitely pass the limit. Our boat will be our little home on the water, I feel that I need to have everything on board. Canned food in Florida, $.75 to $1.00. Canned foods in the islands, $3.00 and higher probably. I must slowly wean myself away from this materialist consumerist mindset. It’s hard but I’m slowly trying. When we take off, I will feel like a piece of me has been torn away. I guess most of the time when I think I need something, it’s just because it’s so damn cheap and it’s such a bargain. Everyone please pray for my sanity when I leave. Amen. *PS…just a short update on La Gatita (my hairball). She is getting familiar with Chris and I and I’m getting used to the fact that she is no longer a part of my head of hair. It says a lot that I’m calling her “she” and not “it” as I should. Chris is becoming concerned about how attached I am to La Gatita. I have even made a bed for her by the bathroom sink. I have to put her in a box, because she sheds like a real pet, black hair all over. I have decided to take La Gatita on the trip with us as a reminder that my biological clock is ticking and also that I must comb out my hair each night. I will post La Gatita’s picture up as soon as we find our lost camera. Sunday, March 9, 2008 (Back To the West Coast) I feel very mellow right now. Chris and I had a nice dinner of steak, potatoes, grilled onions, salad, & garlic bread. We decided to eat all the things that we are not able to eat on the islands on a budget. I need red meat! That's the only thing that gets me full. We also guzzled down lots of Pinot Grigio white wine. In the islands, wine will be a premium. We will try to load up as much as we can on wine and beer, but as every alcoholic knows, it is NEVER enough. It seems to me that most people who love to sail LOVE to drink. I read reports of other sailors and their drinking habits, and I am glad to say, that I feel that I belong. I'm glad that the sailing crowd are not tea-totalers because I sure love to drink until I lose all dignity and wake up with a pounding headache the next morning. How are we to load the boat with enough alcohol? That's a major concern I have. When it comes to I want it, and I NEED it, alcohol is number one on my list. I like to have beer or wine with my dinners, and I have seconds and thirds. We have not been able to locate our camera so I have not been able to post a picture of La Gatita the scary hairball. We should have GREAT fantastic exciting news in just a day but I can't say anything for fear of jinxing ourselves (I am very superstitious). *Cross fingers, twirls around 3 times* Even with such big news about to be announced, I will not be here for 8 days. I'm flying back to the west coast (to Seattle) to help out my sister Yvi. She just had a newborn named Kailani (love that name - it's Hawaiian by the way) and her 2 1/2 year old son Ryan. I love both of them to pieces and can't wait to hug and squeeze them. This will be the last I see of them for a long time. This is my 5th time to Seattle in the last 5 months. Chris says that it's not FAIR for me to leave at this time, but prior commitments call. I will be back shortly and continue updating my fog (with the amount of wine I consumed tonight, it truly is a fog). Cheers with Arriba, Abajo, El Centro, Al Dentro!!!
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