Ada's boat blog

Location: Montreal, Canada I'm almost done my quarantine! It's been quite an isolating two weeks, but it was worth it. I'm enjoying the snow from my window. Also, it turns out that adapting to a cold climate after two months in a hot one is much easier than adapting to a hot climate after a lifetime in a cold one. Who would have known? While patiently waiting to be able to go outside again, I thought that I might pass the time in a semi-useful way and write something to keep my brain from disintegrating. I have a few micro-stories from the first part of my trip: During my initial Grenada quarantine, I had written about how fast the covid test results came compared to how long the delay was to get me tested. To recap, my negative result came back on October 18 at 4:30 pm, whereas I had expected it to only come back the day after. What I hadn't mentioned was that at 11:30 on that day, I had gotten an email from the hotel manager asking me if staff could come in the early ...

Location: Montreal, Canada It's been a good couple of days! I saw some nice places, I ate some good food, I heard some great stories, and I bought a frog knife. Richard has led a Very Cool life. He left home at 19 and traveled the world, mostly by motorcycle. He started by moving to Montreal in time for the Expo '67, but then when the weather got colder, he decided that he didn't want to live in a place where frost develops on the inside of a car, and moved further south. He lived in a few places in the US and in the Bahamas, crewed on a Pacific ocean crossing without knowing how to sail beforehand, lived in Yemen for a bit, and went to various other places in Europe and Asia. He reminisced with Jem about delicious, crying-level spicy tom yum soup. He's currently building a house in Portugal but with Australian architecture. Richard has had several near-death experiences, including nearly falling off a cliff while motorcycling in Pakistan, almost being eaten by a shark ...

Location: Panama City, Panama I meant to publish this in Shelter Bay, but the (purchased) wifi only works for two devices per account, and my cellphone was piggybacking off Jem's account so I couldn't use my laptop. The wifi, which was slightly expensive, was of the same consistency and quality as my sleep schedule at sea. (Bad.) I've been getting eight hours of sleep! It's miraculous; I don't feel about to drop dead every second that I'm awake. Along with good sleep, I finally got a good shower, and we washed our sheets! Centuries of muck have been peeled off. I am a new woman, excluding the back pain and cracking joints and affinity for going to bed at 10pm. Jem refers to my age as "nineteen going on ninety." Monday we took the bus to the nearby town of Colón, near the mouth of the Panama canal. On the shuttle bus to town, we met a lovely couple from Kingston. It was nice to hear Canadian accents again. (They nearly missed the bus back, because the l...

Location: Shelter Bay, Panama Bro. You have no idea how exhausting that was. Night watches are three hours long. We alternate who starts the first watch. You either do 18:00-21:00, 00:00-03:00, and 06:00-09:00, or you do 21:00-00:00 and 03:00-06:00. I like the former, because you're naturally awake during the first and the last shift and you get two solid blocks of sleep, whereas with the latter, you get one solid block of sleep and two crappy blocks (one is cut short by supper and the other is during the morning so it's light outside). Whatever the case, I only got 4-6 hours of sleep per night. As the days wore on, I got more and more tired during the day to the point that I'd only be fully awake for a few hours at dinner, and the rest of the time was spent feeling almost feverish with exhaustion. I was also seasick for the first few days due to the swells, and became thoroughly dehydrated. It felt like final exam season. Another downside of multi-day sailing is the hygien...