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Questions and Answers We love receiving questions from people -- whether they are armchair travelers or world explorers. We’ve even had questions from our own parents! Please be aware that these questions and responses were from the year 2005. In some cases, we have changed the way we do things. If you have questions of us, please send them to mail@TwoGypsies.com. Q&A Q: Now that you’ve sailed out of the Caribbean, what were your favorite places? Q: You’ve traveled in many countries by land, sea and air. What’s next? Q: We know you are “exploring” the Caribbean, but what exactly do people living on a sailboat do all day? A: Well, our lives are different in different places. But this is our routine here in Culebra, in the Spanish Virgin Islands. Every morning we awaken to the sound of the car ferry at 6 a.m. Then his wake rocks our boat as he takes off for Puerto Rico, 20 miles distant. Thirty minutes later the passenger ferry leaves as we are brewing morning coffee. After breakfast we listen to the various weather forecasts on short wave radio, and then tune up the "Cruiseheimer's Net" at 9:30 a.m. Atlantic time (one hour later than Eastern time). A “net controller” takes position reports for scores of boaters, who want people to know where they are, and where their friends are. A value of this net is the opportunity to send or receive emergency messages. People call in from New England to South America. By then it's nearly 10 a.m. and we're just about worn out. Sometimes we do a few projects (yesterday I washed all my underwear and hung them on the lifelines to dry....where they still are, because it has been raining. The next project involves jumping in the water with snorkel gear and trying to scrape barnacles and other growth off places on the bottom of the boat, where they love to attach themselves to things such as the propeller. Yesterday we took the ferry to Fajardo, at the east end of Puerto Rico. It took only 75 minutes and cost $2.25 each way. The town is not impressive, but we were able to buy supplies and boat parts (light switches, etc.). At some point we run the Honda electric generator to recharge batteries. That way we don’t have to start the big diesel engine and run it at idle, which is bad for it. The generator runs just fine, but as of recent won't shut off. We phoned a dealer in Billings who is mailing a replacement switch. While the generator is running, we turn on the hot water heater for a while. We take showers in the cockpit later in the day. Every second or third day we jump in the dinghy and go to a little restaurant on a dock -- not for food, but for water, which costs ten cents per gallon. The sea is very rough there, so it's hard keeping the dinghy from ramming into the rusted pilings while we’re filling our water jugs from a hose. It entertains the people dining nearby. Then we go back to the boat, lift the jugs from the dinghy with a rope and dump the water into Pioneer's tanks. We use 8-12 gallons per day for all uses, including showers and dish washing. We often go into the little town for groceries and other stuff, leaving our dinghy at the main town dock, which is very convenient. Theft of dinghies is rare here, unlike many other places. In other water-related business, on some days, after heavy rains, we use a block and tackle on davits on Pioneer’s stern to pull up the front of the dinghy, allowing water to drain out the back. We try to play scrabble in the afternoons. Sometimes, while the generator is running, we watch a VCR movie on our nine inch TV. Or if we have a good battery charge, we turn on the inverter and run AC off the batteries. Sometimes I make some kind of lame breakfast, but Becky has been making some great lunches and dinners. Before we left the Chesapeake, she spent weeks provisioning. We have enough food to last months. At sunset, we occasionally visit friends on other boats for happy hours or dinners, or we have people onto our boat. But the sun goes down early, so we're often in bed by 8 or 9 p.m. On some days we take the dinghy (named “Scout”) to nearby coves and beaches, where we explore or snorkel over the reefs. The ocean seas are up to 10 feet high right now because of the “Christmas Winds” so we’ve been hanging out in Culebra until things calm down. After that, we’ll sail Pioneer to nearby islands and then westbound along the south coast of Puerto Rico. When we get to western Puerto Rico we'll have to watch the weather very carefully before going on to the Dominican Republic. They are separated by 100 miles of nasty water. There are strong currents...but the biggest problems result from the depth of the water. In some places you can sail in water 10,000 feet deep, and within a short distance it's suddenly ten feet deep. So the surface is always rolling around, and can be very dangerous in a storm or in winds stronger than about 20 kts. So our daily schedule will change during that period, focusing mostly on ocean sailing. When we get to the Dominican Republic, we hope to visit an orphanage we’ve heard about. Those days will be spent teaching some kids a few things about sailing. Things change a lot depending on where we are, the weather, the need for boat repairs, and other things, but we hope this gives a general idea of what happens on a cruising sailboat in the Caribbean. Q: How do you keep track of things? Most of us have houses or apartments, with lots of space. How can you stay organized aboard a small boat? A: Linda, you’ve hit on a major challenge not only of the sailing life, but all forms of life on the road: keeping track of things. Aboard Pioneer we maintain large expanding file folders containing manuals, warranties and receipts for shipboard systems, and we refer to them often. The only bills we pay via bank check are for insurance. They’re haven’t mastered online bill paying yet. Typically, we write fewer than a half-dozen checks per year. We do make extensive use of ATM machines, which in recent years have cropped up everywhere, and are not expensive. That way we don’t have to carry (and risk) large amounts of cash or mess with cashing travelers’ checks. We use a Visa card quite frequently, and it is paid automatically from an investment account. We need only check online now and then to guard against fraudulent use. We also carry an American Express Platinum card, and while the annual fee is high, it has proven valuable. We are able to call Amexco collect from anywhere in the world to solve all kinds of problems. Example: Our digital camera broke in Thailand a few years ago. It had been purchased with the card and was within the free extended warranty period (barely). Becky called Amexco collect and explained that we were volunteering at a mission hospital in the mountains and did not have the original receipts. An understanding supervisor looked up our purchase records and authorized us to go to Bangkok and buy a full-price replacement. All we had to do was mail the broken camera to Phoenix. Another example: Don had kidney stones on a very remote island in eastern Indonesia. Becky called American Express, which arranged to fly Don to Darwin, Australia via chartered plane -- at no cost to us!. Fortunately, the trip was not necessary. Even though we had not come across anyone who spoke English for weeks, let alone a doctor, she found sailors from a boat that had just anchored offshore. One turned out to be a recently retired British doctor, a urologist (!) who had a personal history of kidney stones and had all the necessary medications with him. Some “organization” involves luck! We pay our American Express bills electronically. It would be impossible to stay as organized as we are without our laptop computer. We use it to update this website, and have done so (at painfully slow speeds) from tiny places in Portugal, Nepal, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Thailand, for example, as well as through wireless connections in more electronically advanced places. Not only do we keep extensive electronic records, we have copied them to friends’ computers in case of disaster. Our address book has well over 1,000 entries, and we have retained 13,600 incoming and 7,700 outgoing E-mails, and 1,600 Sailnet message board messages -- some dating back to late 1999. It’s amazing how often we search old messages for some obscure address, phone number, child’s name, or other information someone once sent to us. We also have more than 15,000 Expedition photos stored in the laptop, most of them high resolution. They too are backed up in several locations in the States, with recent additions mailed on DVDs. It’s amazing how much computer disk space this takes. Our almost two year old 40 GB Dell laptop long ago ran out of space for the photos. So we carry an external 160 GB drive. It holds the photos, and backup copies of everything else. We have a second 160 GB drive that backs up the photos, and holds a second backup of everything else. Our address books, E-mails, etc., now require 436 MB of disk space, our backups of this website total 2 GB, with current backups (which have been lifesavers) on three separate drives -- all of which we store and transport in special waterproof, air-tight, cushioned containers. True, it takes a huge amount of time managing and backing up all this data. But now that we’re in our sixth year of travel, we realize how important it is to be organized -- and how much more attention it takes than in the days when we had a home where we could toss receipts somewhere and worry about them later. This answer doesn’t begin to address many details of on-the-road organization, but we hope to make the point that taking off to see the world requires a huge amount of planning and organization. We will be pleased to answer specific questions. Don and Becky Q: Now that you’ve sailed out of the Caribbean, what were your favorite places? A: After sailing to the British Virgin Islands from the Chesapeake Bay, we traveled island-to-island westbound and left the Caribbean when we sailed from the Dominican Republic to the Bahamas. Our favorite: the Spanish Virgin Islands. The Spanish Virgins are part of Puerto Rico, and lie just east of the main island. The island of Culebrita has the most perfect and beautiful bay and beach we’ve ever seen. There are no people on the island, and sailing there involves threading between reefs. But once there, it’s a real find. Just watch out for north winds, which could drive a boat onto the beach. Dewey is the town on the island of Culebra, and it’s a great cruiser hangout. There are no docks with fuel and water big enough to accommodate most sailboats, so liquids have to be transported in jugs via dinghy. But it’s a small price to pay to hang around the cute little town. Anchoring is better on the ocean side rather than the bay because stuff loves to grow on boat bottoms there, but the ocean side isn’t an option when ocean swells come from the SE through SW. The people are friendly and although services and supplies aren’t plentiful, they’re sufficient. The island a few miles south, Vieques, is completely different. Its east end was, until recently, a U.S. military bombing range. As a result, it’s the perfect isolated retreat. Just don’t walk beyond the beach because of unexploded bombs. The west end of the island, on the south side, has the most awesome “bio bay” imaginable. When you swim there on a dark night, every movement produces a brilliant angel-like halo. Theft is a problem in some areas, so watch your dinghy closely. So all in all, the Spanish Virgins are our favorites. We also enjoyed the British Virgin Islands, even though the anchorages are being filled with expensive mooring balls, forcing some budget minded cruisers to go elsewhere. The American Virgin Islands has developed very unwelcoming reputation. Cruisers are expected to leave as much money as possible, and depart quickly. The anchorages on Saint Johns Island are not only being filled with mooring balls, cruisers who anchor are being charged just as if they had taken a mooring ball. The Dominican Republic is rife with corrupt officials who will charge for various kinds of permits until your head explodes. But the country, the portion of it we saw, is beautiful. Oddly, Luperon has collected a number of American cruisers who have apparently dead-ended there and tend to drive people crazy. You could have sailed fifty years, and yet these so-called “experts” won’t fail to boss you around, if they can. Still, we would like to return to the DR -- whether sailing or not -- because once past the addled dead-enders and the cheerful officials with their hands out, there are a lot of beautiful places and delightful people. The nation is going through difficult political and economic times. The exchange rate for Americans has dropped from 50 to 1 down to 27 to 1. Still, most things are not overly expensive (except gasoline, at $3.80/gallon). We also liked La Parguera, a town on the SW corner of Puerto Rico. After threading your way through the reefs to the anchorage, you find great holding, good wind and wave protection, and a cute little town with everything you need, including free wireless Internet service. Obviously there were many places we lacked the time to visit, and other very nice places that we did visit. But for us, the places noted above were worthy of special note. Don and Becky Q: I know you have tried to be honest about the problems you encounter while traveling full time, but your site still makes it look like the great majority of the things you do are just great. Are they? I mean really! A: Actually, most things are great. But you did pose your question at the very time we have been facing some unique challenges -- like helicopter gunships! At this writing, April 16, 2005, we are holed up in the tiny inner harbor of Morgan’s Bluff on the island of Andros, in the Bahamas. We will be here more than a week, waiting for weather to clear between here and Florida. Today the seas in the Gulf Stream are 15-20 feet, and we’re not about to challenge them. They’ll stay that way for days. We have been trying to return to America ASAP because of serious health problems facing Don’s parents, and Don’s own escalating back problems. We thought, when we sailed the difficult 12-day nonstop passage from the Chesapeake Bay to the British Virgin Islands last November, that if we needed to return to the USA in a hurry it would be mostly easy downwind sailing. While much of it has been downwind, we never thought cold fronts would still be sweeping across the Bahamas and beyond in April, pinning us down for many days at a time. Making it worse, communications with the USA, only 150 miles away, are either very expensive or not available at all. We think that from a communications standpoint, this is the most isolated country we have found since we were in northern Laos sixteen months ago. We haven’t been able to update this site since leaving the Dominican Republic, and probably won’t be able to until we reach the SE USA. While none of this is unfairly burdensome, it adds up in times of stress. And some things are hard to anticipate. Here’s an example: The other day we sailed westbound from the mid-Exumas across the shallow Exumas Banks enroute to the deep “Tongue of the Ocean,” enroute to Andros. Winds were light, and forecast to stay that way, and when it became apparent we couldn’t reach our destination before nightfall, we dropped our anchor for the night. We thought this more prudent than entering strange (to us) and shallow harbor surrounded by coral at night. That night, forty miles from land, the winds picked up and the seas built to threatening levels. Pioneer was pitching so violently that we were being tossed around the cabin, and loose objects were flying inside the boat. Sleep was nearly impossible. We feared that if we tried to haul our anchor in the morning, the boat would pitch up violently just as the chain was shortened, resulting in a yank against the still-set anchor that might break the chain, or a shackle, or the bowsprit or rollers -- or that once the anchor was almost up and hanging there, the boat would pitch in a way that the swinging 60 pounds of plow-shaped steel would seriously damage the bow. Relief came in the morning when, with the winds down a bit, Don strapped himself firmly to the boat to avoid being tossed into the ocean, and finally retrieved and secured the anchor. Our glee was short-lived. After an hour’s sail westward, a U.S. Navy attack helicopter suddenly swooped down on us and made a complete orbit around Pioneer. A call on the VHF radio warned: “Captain, we are conducting live fire exercises. If you continue on your present course, you will be putting your vessel and yourself at grave risk. Request you turn immediately to a heading of 090.” That kind of message is hard to ignore. The helicopter stayed with us nearly an hour, repeatedly swooping past at low altitude until we were well east of the spot we had anchored the night before. Then it left. We repeatedly called for further instructions, but received no response. Finding no charted military areas to our north, we turned that way, now motoring in the hope we could still make it to Andros before sunset. Additional helicopters appeared, but did not call or answer our calls. We passed a stationary ship that was loaded with antennas. Suddenly a helicopter passed overhead. On a cable beneath, it was pulling what looked like a torpedo or missile. After several passes, the object dropped into the ocean with a large splash. The helicopter followed the weapon away from Pioneer, and although we listened for an explosion, we heard none. We did hear the Navy repeatedly warning other boats to stay clear. By then we knew we were just outside the testing area. We regretted having to motor so many hours, but did make it to Fresh Creek before dark -- anchoring outside the town (because of shallow water) but inside the protective reef. Our northbound sail the next morning was uneventful, until we arrived in Morgan’s Bluff and could not get any of our anchors to take hold in the flat, hard coral basin. With a major cold front coming and no protection from northerly winds or waves, we feared being blown ashore. Fortunately, there is a small, protected basin where supply boats unload, and we found just enough room for us and one other small boat to be suspended a few feet from shore. We had a few heart stopping moments getting tied up when our anchor again dragged and we were blown sideways toward a boat. But finally, with the help of a guy on shore and a fellow cruiser, we wrestled Pioneer into a stationary, safe spot. But not without a price: Don’s back was further injured. We have now learned via short wave radio that we’ll be here the better part of another week, waiting for the storm to pass and seas to calm. It’s not that this is a miserable place, although there is no town and a taxi to the village seven miles away costs $40 -- the bigger problems are that Don has a worsening medical problem, his father is desperately ill in Montana, and we are trying to make an important personal business meeting North Carolina, 800 nautical miles distant, in the near future. So in answer to your question, yes, our lives really are great. We feel lucky and honored to have the freedom and resources (although they are becoming significantly strained) to already be in our sixth year of travel. But our lives are not always physically or emotionally easy. Nor is life for anyone. In our case, it’s all part of living a rewarding life of great adventure, although if you want to know a secret, we do sometimes talk about the conveniences we’ll encounter when we again become dirt dirt dwellers. Imagine having a stand-up refrigerator, electricity all the time, limitless water, stores nearby, medical services, and high speed always-on Internet! With that said, we know you are asking if our adventure is nearing an end. It’s not. During our summer in Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota, we’ll be plotting our next mission. High on the list: South America. Don and Becky Q: You’ve traveled in many countries by land, sea and air. What’s next? A: Honestly, we’re not quite sure. Don’s father is very ill, so our first priority is to be with him in southern Montana. While in that area, we will attend a variety of unique musical and cultural events that may be of interest to our readers. Because we have been traveling almost continuously for nearly six years, and mostly in less developed countries, we look forward to taking a little time in Montana to catch up on certain things. For example, Don’s back problem has become severe, and he’ll likely undergo surgery in Bozeman in the near future. During the coming summer we will plan our next adventures. We’re interested in possibly spending a season in southern South America -- Chile, perhaps, but not for sure. We also want to resume our Asian travels that were interrupted eighteen months ago by a family emergency back home. In that case, we’d be traveling overland in southern and northwestern China, and in China’s neighbors to the south. One possible interruption in this schedule involves a book offer (one not involving our travel adventures) that Don is considering. The project would take as much as two years, seriously interrupting our international travels, so that will be a difficult decision. Our goal has always been to see the world while health is on our side (mostly!). Because Pioneer was not only our sailboat, but our only home, our transition from sailing is a big one. In addition to the very involved process of selling our boat (fortunately, without a broker), we busied ourselves in recent days traveling a broad area of the mid-Atlantic coast, collecting items left in storage with friends and commercial facilities. After days of removing the last of our personal items from Pioneer, and meshing them with all the other thngs, we finally managed to give some of it away and fill a U-Haul trailer with the rest. This is being written as we are pulling that trailer at 67 mph (much faster than sailing!) through West Virginia, enroute to Montana. So what will we do next? We don’t know for sure -- but we know that as long as we have basic health and a few dimes to our names, we’ll be living life as big as possible. Q: What is this surgery Don is about to undergo? Is it serious? We’ve been following your expedition for years and would hate to see it slow down now. A: Don has experienced back pain for nearly a year. It became worse after we were slammed around our sailboat Pioneer during a storm in the Atlantic Ocean 500 miles from land. We sought medical help in the Caribbean, but found the problem was beyond the expertise of the facilities we found. Not wanting to leave Becky alone on the boat while Don went to the USA for treatment, he toughed it out until we arrived in on the east coast. In North Carolina we sold Pioneer to a Canadian couple with whom we had been in touch for several months. After gathering possessions stored in several east coast locations, we drove to Montana, where Don’s father is in Hospice care. While in Livingston, Don saw doctors in Bozeman who diagnosed his problem as Spondylolisthesis and spinal stenosis. Tomorrow, June 8, 2005, in a six-hour procedure at Bozeman Deaconess Hospital, doctors will remove two disks, replacing them with a newly introduced high-tech bonding agent. They will also remove part of two vertebrae, and fuse three vertebrae together. The procedure is called: Lumbar fusion, pedicile screw instrumentation, decompression/laminectomy. The initial hospital stay will be five days, the initial recovery period thirty days. If all goes well, Don will be moving about in a few weeks and back to normal activities in a few months -- with full recovery in a year. Our thanks to those who were kind enough to ask what the problem was. When Don is able, we intend to continue our adventures -- the details of which won’t be decided until Don decides whether to take on a book offer. June 7, 2005 June 13, 2005 update: Although Don’s surgery proved more involved than anticipated, and complications developed, his prognosis is very good. Q: We were sorry to read that Don lost his father in June. Can you tell us about him? A: Thank you so much for asking. Here is the newspaper obituary. Mr. Hardy is survived by his wife Phyllis of Livingston, and by their three sons: Donald Loren and his wife Rebecca of Belle Fourche, South Dakota; Tom and his wife Kathi of Elk Grove, California and their three children, Tod, Gina and Troy; and Doug and his wife Cindy of Livingston and their daughters Michelle and Nicole. Mr. Hardy also leaves three great-grandchildren.
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