PAPAGALLO OR BUST

Hey All,

Tehuantepec fell through... there's nowhere to leave a boat there... I guess I should have driven.

Serious kiting potential there, however. I will be back.

Fortunately, it didn't blow the three days I was there... the boat would have gotten thrashed.

Three additional days and $90 in bullshit fees later, I am ready to cross the border out of Mexico... from Puerto Chiapas to the equally windy Gulf of Papagallo it is a mere 500 miles... should take about a week.

I sailed the last two nights and am too tired and hot to write... time to crash for 12 hours.

The dog is going to be pissed when we heave anchor tomorrow morning and go 285 miles to Marina Barilles, El Salvador.

Sometimes the whole boat thing is a bitch... at least I'm not paying for hotels... and I've got my skis with me.

Closer now to Peru than the USA, the SA winter is calling to me... but first the waves of Costa Rica.

I'm lonely, exhausted, scared and broke.

I'd come home if the prospects of falling back into American Culture didn't depress me worse than the thought of falling overboard and treading water until exhaustion-based release... about a horse a piece.

It could ALWAYS be worse.

Take care. I'll do the same.

Your Friend,

MAX

ps "Autopilot" Video

The Tehuantepec Plan

I'm sailing East tomorrow until it's kiteable...somewhere between Punta Canejo and Punta Chipequa.

On Monday the gale is supposed to abate... so then I'll be sailing to Bahia Ventosa... from there, with luck, into the gigantic Lagoon.

I am hoping to anchor here where the pink arrow ends...

The lagoon is 35 miles E-W by 10 miles N-S. Big.

The little green circles are small villages... I may be hanging out in any of them.

I hope to explore the kiting in and around this lagoon for a month or more.

Odds are I'll do most of my kiting near the mouth.

There is no tourism there. Internet access is unlikely... but I'll be looking for it.

The dog is stoked...


... NOT to go.

She can sense that this is a bad idea and is a shit whenever we're headed back towards the boat.

She'd rather play until exhausted and then...

OUT.

I have to keep her sauced during long passages or she continually growls at me.

Me? I'm scared. Way too much can go wrong.

We could get blown out to sea, take on water, and sink.

We could run aground at the lagoon mouth and get pounded by swell.

We could get robbed (or worse) by opportunistic locals.

Shit, I could simply fall overboard. The dog wouldn't turn around. Nor the autopilot.

Worst of all, I could chicken out and gootch on through like the rest of theYACHTIES.

Unlikely.

But whether things go good or bad...

... it'll sure as shit be worth a story.

Max

INSPIRATION: KURT VONNEGUT

This is a kitesurfing trip, right?!?!

Sure. And more.

As the punchline goes, "Hold onto your hat. We could end up miles from here."

If I could stop spouting thoughts about societal collapse, peak oil, the fact that EVERYONE is brainwashed (me included), WWIII, and such maybe I'd actually get some support from the sponsors I brought on-board before this thing got started.

But I can't stop. There's too much on my mind that's gotta come out.

I haven't heard back from or gotten diddle from a corporate sponsor in months, anyway. DISOWN and DISTANCE is the proper action from a marketing standpoint.

Not that anyone is reading anyway.

Maybe I should learn to RAP. RAPPERS can get away with saying super crazy shit... folks just nod agreement to the beat.

Ya FEEL me?

The biggest influences on my life have been a loving family, a great education, endurance sports, Camp Olson YMCA, beautiful women, monkeying around in the mountains, and the books of Kurt Vonnegut. Now the sea is playing a big part. As is my dog.


Kites are a little too fragile to bet the farm on.

I first read "Slaughterhouse 5" in high school and only caught about 10% of its significance.....got hooked on Vonnegut and have since read everything he wrote at least twice.

When his last book "A Man Without A Country" came out, I had just dropped out of medical school and fled back to my mountain stronghold.

Feeling safe, with all those elk and buffalo grazing nearby.

For work, I was setting up banquets at the WORT and sleeping through shifts of overnight security at the gated community where Dick Cheney's house is.

For fun, I was tempting gravity in the Tetons.

I bought the overpriced hardcover 'cause I needed to hear something hopeful from the wisest source I knew... excluding sunsets.

I stayed awake only one night of security work...

...the night I read and digested "A Man Without A Country".

Vonnegut had given up hope, lost his sense of humor, and it all spun from his view of the inevitability of our self-destruction.

"The good earth: we could have saved it but were too cheap and lazy."


I believe he is fundamentally right.

So now I'm saying the same thing.

Relax, though. It's probably in my head.

"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand."

I'm going sailing.

MAX