[Barcelona, Spain 2003]

The above picture used to the document the world record number of nude people in one place at one time (7000). Cheyenne and I are on the left just below the break in landscaping. I was just randomly surfing this morning and came across a news item about how Spencer Tunick has out done himself in Mexico City by assembling 18000 nudes! You can find a good photo gallery of the event on USA Today.

Aransas Bay, Texas

Every year the Bahia Marina in Ingleside Texas puts on a party called the Bahia Hee Hee and invites boaters from all over to sail in and participate. There is a pot luck dinner and live music. I used to work here back in high school when Thomas Greisen had his sail loft, so the suroundings and many faces looked familiar. I even remember the band, although I think some of the members have changed. I recommend stopping if you’re cruising through.

We sailed over with Bill on Wing and a Prayer. At times the breeze was fresh enough to really get moving. In the video we’re making around 15kts!

These flash videos don’t seem to be working with Internet Explorer. They work fine with firefox so use that until I get the problems ironed out. I think WordPress is mangling the script when I submit the posts.

My cousin Danielle got married last weekend and as part of the festivities we all went sailing on a couple of racing trimarans. They aren’t as roomy as the TimeMachine but boy are they fast. Even loaded down and in light air we still zoomed around at a good clip by our standards.

[John Williams on his F-31 Gimme Samoa]

If you look behind his head you can just make out the speed of 7.2 kts but you can see by the water that it can’t be blowing much more than 8.

[Wing and a Prayer]

My uncle (Bill Coxwell) built this trimaran out of a Moore 30 and a Stilletto 23. Very cool.

[Bill]

[Gimme Samoa with Wing and a Prayer in the distance]

We got all the girls on our boat leaving Bill with all the muscle.

[Fancy sailcloth]

As most of you know, we are planning to take a break from cruising. Since we don’t know when or where we will take it up again we have decided to put the TimeMachine up for sale. There are too many boats sitting in storage and we’d rather see the TimeMachine on the water and being enjoyed. Also, Cheyenne has certain criteria for the next cruising trip: standing headroom everywhere and a dedicated double bunk! We still plan to haul it out and do some necessary work and a few cosmetic things. A classified ad will be in the June issue of Latitude 38 among other places.

The obvious questions is “What will happen to the blog?” We’ve been discussing it and the current plan is to continue blogging in continous manner using the same database. However, after we sell the TimeMachine we may move the continous blog to another domain and leave sv-timemachine.net as a static site about this experience. We are radically unprepared for normalization and have no intention of settling down to normal jobs, so the adventures should continue although they may not always involve sailing.

I have been late in updating the site with text but it has been a social marathon for us since arriving in Rockport. Joshua’s cousin Danielle got married this past Saturday (we didn’t even know until we arrived) and relatives have been materializing from everywhere and there were dinners and drinks and much visiting to do. Now that the wedding is over, things are quieting a little.

Choosing Texas as the reinsertion point after being out of the country for so long hasn’t exactly done any favors for our culture shock. Where there were Mexicans/Panamanians/Salvadorians/Cubans/Colombians/etc. before, there are now Texans, speaking Texan (e.g., “That y’allses truck out there?”). Texans with tattoos of the state of Texas that say “100% Texan”—we saw two of these in one day. Country music stations predominate and Miller Lite is drunk (the low-carb choice, I’m told).

I have managed to curb my slack-jawed staring at every new thing somewhat. I still can’t get over how nearly every person in this town drives an enormous, shiny new truck—the kind with four doors, a roomy back seat, and a built-in flight of stairs to help you get up to the cab. Many of these trucks have a burly rack over the grill, presumably so that one can go blasting cows or small volkswagons with immunity.

As with every new and exotic country we visit, the first sightseeing mission is always to the grocery store. One must eat and you never know what you might find. The Rockport HEB is brand new, easily the size of an IKEA and just about as difficult to navigate if you deviate in any way from the prescribed flow. I brought the camera.

The shredded cheese display is so massive that I had to climb back into the frozen meats trough to fit it all in one frame. Fortunately, HEB shoppers do not find strange foreign types frolicking in the meat freezer that odd and I didn’t get kicked out.

Here’s a close-up. White, yellow, mixed. Repeat unnecessarily.

We spent about an hour in HEB (enough time so that I was nearly crawling out of my own skin by the time we hit the checkout line)—mostly because we got lost a couple of times and had to navigate back to hit the frozen aisles, which is a labyrinth of seven-foot high freezers covering an area the size of a city block.

All the key ingredients you need to make a, uh, molded salad.