[Approaching Isla Providencia from the SE]

Enough people have asked us about the website (how to and stuff) that we’re pretty remiss in not having a general about page.

Dreamhost: The site is hosted by Dreamhost. There are many free blogging sites, but if you want complete control, no ads, your own email domain and stuff like that you need a real hosting service. We have the very generous sister-of-a-founder plan which isn’t generally available, but even for you it’ll be less than $10 a month. With 500GB of disk included that’s cheaper than buying a hard drive and they’ll keep it backed up for you. Use the dreamhost promo code “TimeMachine97” and get up to $97 off¹. Woohoo.

WordPress: The blog software itself is WordPress 2.3.1. It’s licensed under the GNU public license (that means it’s free and open source). Dreamhost has a handy installer that does most of the setup work for you.

Spam Karma 2: A handy plug-in for WordPress that keeps the comment spam at bay. It’s also GNU and it works unbelievably well. If only email spam filtering worked this good. If your comments don’t show up this is probably why. Try rephrasing without using the words “hot teen sex.”

Subscribe2: Another GNU plug-in for WordPress. This is what sends out new post emails to all of you on the subscription list.

Creative Commons: Everything on the site is published under a Creative Commons License. This means you can use the material for almost any non-commercial purpose (including derivative works) without getting permission. We definitely appreciate hearing about how you use it. We know pictures and articles have been used for various club newsletters and classroom activities. You need permission only if your publication has a cover price, contains ads, or is promotional material of some kind. Read the legaleze if you care.

Photos: We both take photos and usually don’t keep track of who takes which. Unless it’s a picture of a cow, in which case you can be pretty sure I took it. We use a Canon S2 IS and a Canon SD600 digital elph. We’ve had many digital cameras over the years and these are far and above the best. We like to have a pocket camera and a big camera. There is a direct correlation between lens diameter and photo quality that you can’t get around. The weight of the big camera allows you to take better pictures especially in low light or at high zoom. Moment of Inertia… A heavier object is easier to hold still. Also, the image stabilizer on the S2 is the cat’s ass. However, we usually don’t like to carry a big camera around populated areas. Hence the smaller auxiliary camera.

Who: The people from Latitude 38 pointed out that we don’t identify ourselves anywhere on the site except for vague references. We are Cheyenne Weil and Joshua Coxwell; from Oregon (more or less). Cheyenne is a jeweler and an artist. You can see her work at cheyenneweil.com. When employment is necessary, Cheyenne does graphic design, writing and editing. I find itinerant labor developing software. We both graduated from the University of Oregon (Russian and Physics, respectively).

¹The dreamhost promo code TimeMachine97 gives $97 off if prepaying 1yr or more and $51 off if paying monthly. This is the maxium possible discount we can offer in the dreamhost promo code program.

Isla Providencia, Colombia

I like cows. Looking back you will see many pictures of cows with bovine expressions all their own; wary but hopeful. Not like sheep. I hate sheep with glazed glaucous eyes like they can’t even see. No pictures of creepy sheep.

Isla Providencia, Colombia

These lizards abound on the island. This creature seems to be unknown to science (or at least the internet). I can find zero information even on massive lizard fetish sites. One site even claims that “the worlds only blue lizard is threatened with extinction.” I thought for sure it would be it but no. That blue lizard (an anole) is totally different and from Isla Gorgona (ironically also Colombia). None of my pictures turned out so I stole this one from Velella.

We’re on Isla Mujeres and legal. Much to our chagrin, we have to go to Cancun to pay the API fee which can only be paid there. Welcome to Mexico. Last time I was here we were on Jade (a searunner 40 built by my dad). 20 years ago.

Happy Birthday Tucker!

A rare picture of TimeMachine under sail taken by Velella as we were overtaking them out of Isla Providencia. We are making about 7 knots into 15-20 knots of wind. Notice the triple reefed main.

We stopped at Isla Barbareta, Honduras to work on the rudder some more. The old tie in system from the kickup rudder just wasn’t working so we drilled some holes and bolted it on. It seems much sturdier now, but it will probably rip the transom off if we go aground since the rudder sticks down below the keel. We had this in mind today as we wove our way through the many coral heads in Lighthouse Reef. We anchored SW of The Blue Hole and did some snorkeling. Snorkeling at The Blue Hole is like Boogie Boarding at Ollie’s Point. Luckily the real divers didn’t show up to chase us off. Actually, we didn’t spend too much time in the hole itself. Cheyenne didn’t care for deep blue abyss. I guess I shouldn’t have mentioned the hammerheads until after we saw them… We didn’t see them, but there were some large barracuda stalking us. Back on the boat, we’re anchored in 20 feet of calm clear water but can’t see land in any direction. Just waves crashing on the reef a couple miles to the east.

Isla Providencia, Colombia