Tawodi Sailing Adventures

30.41 N 117.45 W 120 miles south of San Diego
Eight months spiced with a handful of days; the time it took us to chase the sun around the bottom of the globe. We left San Diego, California on October 20th, at the tail-end of hurricane season 2008, scurrying after summer in the Southern Oceans and crossing back out of the tropics at the face-end of hurricane season 2009. It’s a heck of a thing to race the seasons, to race the sun all around this planet.

All that rush, all that comedy, tragedy, work and expense allowed by the Southern Hemisphere and there we were, off Guadalupe Island, Mexico, with scant time for one last bit of commotion: participating in an elaborate Abalone relocation program.
The Captain calls it catch and release but that phrase is a smidgeon too terse. What Bob and Stan, the Abalone, went through rivals the machinations of most Witness relocation programs. Catch and release makes it sound, at worst, briefly violent- catch, swim around with, toss, carry, drop, pry, transfer and then release- that’s more the way Bob and Stan’s experience went.

Peeled off whatever slab of ocean they clung to, slapped down into a fading, oil stained Mexican fishing ponga, puttered up to the side of Tawodi, unceremoniously thumped onto our decks, thus began Bob and Stan’s adventure. In exchange for them, the Abalone, two smiling Mexican fishermen were looking for beer or wine. Cerveza o Vino. The Captain explained; inflatable globe- replete with magic-marker tracings of our journey- in one hand, the other gesturing its way through his Spanish vocabulary, that May 3rd had been the last time we’d been remotely near someplace that might sell such liquid refreshment but that we had water- good, home-made, fresh water. Yummy water. They settled for that, the wondrous elixir of life, but wouldn’t take Bob and Stan back- even after we said- No, No thank you, No Gracias, No, really, No, please por favor, no. No, No, No, Bob and Stan stayed on our deck in their puddle of brown ocean ooze. We waved and smiled and off went the fishermen and here stayed the Abalone.
Bob and Stan got scooped off the deck and put into the handiest container available- a dirty saucepan.

From dirty saucepan the were plunked into a soup pot.

They got a little too intimate with the soup-pot- sucky, squishy parts latching on while wavy little feelers poked about- a butter knife was used to convince them they would be much better off squidging about inside a yellow, plastic Tidy Cat clumping kitty litter bucket- let’s be frank here- there just wasn’t enough room for them and all there clinging and squirting in the soup-pot.

It was in that butter knife, prying off, transfer from soup-pot to plastic bucket that the Captain committed the sin of calling them pets.

I would have been forever content thinking of them as things just to one side of extra-terrestrial poop but then he called them pets.

Call a living thing a pet around me and it will, first, be named- hence: Bob and Stan, the Abalone- and, second, no longer be available as a meal item. I mean who would want to sit down and have Fluffy for dinner, that would just be wrong. So it went for Bob and Stan.
They spent an hour or so glued to yellow plastic. At the north end of the island we dropped them back into the water and wished them well.

And there went our last, tiny adventure before calling an end to this globe circling odyssey.
As for other end of days bits of news;we ate the last of the potatoes. It might be a while before either of us have a hankering for either potatoes, beans or rice. We’ll finish off the onions and the one remaining orange today and then Friday morning we’ll be shoving our nose into the waters of San Diego Bay.

We’re aiming to be close to Ballast Point, near the submarine base, around 8am. We welcome, whole-heartedly with open arms and big smiles, anyone wanting to come out and escort us back into our home waters. If you can’t make it onto the water, the good ship Tawodi will be tied up at the San Diego transient docks on Shelter Island, for about a week after our arrival. Come down, say hello, take a tour, swap stories and help us revel a little in the joy of being home.

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