Travel Log of
Jill Rupert
Epiphany on la Ruta Maya
Days 173-178, the Yucatan Peninsula to Belize City, Belize
December 28, 2002 – January 2, 2003
Chemeketa Voices
Life at Sea:
Jill Rupert
Jill Rupert has a simple way of separating the needs in her life from the things she considers luxuries. She calls it the Guatemala Test.
After earning a Ph.D. in English literature, Rupert and her husband spent more than a year on a sail boat traveling along the coast of Central America. It should be noted that neither Rupert nor her husband, Jeff, a Navy vet who had never operated a sail boat, were not what one might call knowledgeable about life on the briny blue.
“I am not an outdoors girl, I am a book girl, so this was a big stretch for me to do this,” Rupert said. She read the entire works of Charles Dickens on the voyage.
The couple set sail for the first time – after – buying the boat. They paid a friend to fly to Tampa, where they bought the boat, to teach them how to operate it on the trip back to their home in New Orleans. Still, in retrospect, they could have used a lot more training.
“We hand-steered the boat from New Orleans to Honduras,” said Rupert. “When you are on a passage, it is not like a road trip when you pull over at a motel and sleep for the night. If you are at sea, you are at sea. You sleep three hours then you are on watch for three hours steering the boat.”
One way to alleviate the fatigue of the schedule is to purchase an autopilot, which steers the boat with the assistance of global positioning satellites.
“You still have to watch for other boats and pay attention, but you don’t have to be steering the boat. You can go down to the head and pee and come back up, which you cannot do when you are steering,” she said.
When they arrived in Honduras she told her husband she wasn’t going any further without an autopilot.
Boater code
Purchasing something new for a boat at sea is something of a convoluted process and rarely as easy as it sounds. New parts arrive on land and then need to be transported to the sail boat on a dingy in deeper waters.
Rupert was anchored at a Marina in La Ceiba when the autopilot was ordered, but the couple soon tired of the surrounding area and wanted to head out to some nearby islands.
“The autopilot hadn’t arrived, but the Marina owner convinced us to leave the money with her and she would have the autopilot shipped to a friend who lived on the Bay Islands of Honduras we wanted to visit,” Rupert said.
After exchanging U.S. dollars for local currency, they left the payment with the Marina owner and set sail.
“After we were back on the water, we realized that we could have been making a huge mistake in being so trusting. A day later, the guy delivered the autopilot to our boat,” said Rupert.
They figured out what they were doing as they traveled, which was the most exciting part of the trip, she said.
Jill and Jeff set out in July with a plan to travel the coast of Central America and pass through the Panama Canal to arrive on the West Coast in about a year. By Christmas they’d only reached Cancun.
Troubled waters
Unlike U.S. waters that are marked by buoys, international waters are virtually unmarked. Knowledge, specifically, GPS waypoints and local markings, is passed from boat to boat in passing. There are charts available, but they are not detailed to the point of showing anchorages and the kind of details boaters need. An official guidebook may contain hand-drawn charts.
One of Rupert’s most vivid memories is trying to make anchor in rolling seas in the Bahia de la Ascension with a hand-drawn map.
“There were no navigational markers in the area and I’d already become emotional after taking a fall earlier,” said Rupert. “It was pitch-black and we tried and tried but could not get our anchor to take hold.”
As Jeff tried to triangulate their position, he put Jill on deck to watch a single lighthouse on the horizon. That’s what she was doing when it went dark about five minutes later.
“The lighthouses are powered by solar panels and car batteries. So when the sun goes down, if the battery doesn’t stay charged, it’s done,” she said.
By the time the lighthouse came back to life, the couple had motored to a different spot in the total darkness. They split what was left in a bottle of brandy and went to sleep.
“When we woke up we discovered that we were in exactly the spot we were trying to reach. But it made us realize we were pushing ourselves too hard and it was no longer fun,” Rupert said.
The net
A single-sideband radio is one of essential components for any extended boat trip. SSB radios are used for relaying weather forecasts, emergency information and general communication between boats. Depending on the model, the device can be used for things like e-mail.
Every morning, Rupert or her husband would have to check in with “the net” for the area they were in.
“There is a moderator and you check in, and so you say this is our boat and this is where we are, and the moderator can put you in touch with other boats,” she said.
Rupert was applying for teaching jobs throughout the trip, but she always felt she was hamstrung by the steps that any school would need to get in contact. It also met traveling significant distances on terra firma to send in applications when opportunities arose.
“The school would call my father and he would send an e-mail to one of our friends on another boat. The friend would then have to call us on the SSB,” Rupert said.
An experience on a bus trip between Rio Dulce to Guatemala City to sightsee and pick up provisions for the boat formed the basis of the Guatemala Test.
“I was just watching the countryside and I saw a woman whose home was cinder blocks and a dirt floor. She was slaughtering a chicken, and I was just looking at her and thinking, ‘Wow, she raised that chicken,’” said Rupert.
After submitting an application, she returned to her boat, but the imagery stuck with her. The couple was sailing off the coast of Vivorillo Key in Honduras, when they got an SSB message stating that she had an interview at Chemeketa.
She had a layover in Houston on the trip back to the Pacific Northwest where “everyone she passed look like a millionaire.” She overheard a conversation in which a woman complained that her swimming suit was from the previous season.
“My swimming suit was two years old at that point and I was grateful for it. I had been taking showers in a gallon of water, washing dishes in salt water when our freshwater reserves were running low. We were without refrigeration for up to eight weeks at a time,” Rupert said.
It got her thinking about the bare necessities and how little it takes to experience a full life and the amazing ability of human beings to adapt – the things that, as an English professor, helped her understand better the writings of Daniel Defoe in “Robinson Crusoe.”
Rupert had to make hard choices about what she could bring on the boat knowing full well her other belongings were safe in much larger spaces on land. Visiting with the people of Central America, she met many who survived with far less than she had on the boat. The combination of experiences culminated in the formation of the Guatemala Test, something better demonstrated than explained.
“My husband and I were recently talking about getting a new computer because ours is ‘so old.’ Our culture, my culture isn’t simple. American culture puts us in these mindsets and we forget how little we actually need,” she said.
The new computer didn’t pass the test, but “Robinson Crusoe” is on the required reading list for her British Lit class.
Travel Log of Jill Rupert
The ancient Maya traversed the Caribbean coast from Guatemala to Mexico for trade and ceremonial purposes. Our route south from Isla Mujeres, Mexico, to Belize City, Belize, followed the traditional “ruta Maya.” We only saw two other people in five days: another cruising couple with whom we celebrated a lonely New Year’s Eve in a sparsely populated bay about 100 nautical miles north of the Mexico-Belize border. I doubt that any aspect of the trip conformed to Maya standards of trade or ceremony, but we did share food, drink, and goodwill with our fellow sailors. Our main objective was to get to Belize as quickly as possible, so that we could see its attractions and move quickly southward to stay on our schedule to reach the Panama Canal. The Maya belief system strongly emphasized the dual nature of things—life and death, pro and con, sacrifice and renewal, you get the picture. Our thoughts and goals were not particularly Mayan in this regard, either, until we reached the Bahia del Espiritu Santo.
Along the Yucatan coast, the trade winds howl and kick up considerable seas. A strong current flows north, so in order to make headway, we had to sail close to shore, where a counter-current pushed us southward. We found that the benefits of this current come at the price of sustained terror that a sudden gust or big rolling wave would push us perilously close to the coral reef that runs parallel to the shore. All three of us fought seasickness for the entire seven-hour passage from Isla Mujeres to Hut Point. I couldn’t believe how quickly my nausea turned to gnawing hunger the moment we were within the reef’s protection. We set anchor, ate dinner, and collapsed. Later we learned that other cruisers have had difficulty finding the opening into the reef that affords access to the anchorage at Hut Point, but we were prepared with GPS waypoints given to us by our friend Klaus back in Isla Mujeres.
Slightly better sea conditions met us the next day. Though no one was seasick, it was an excruciatingly demanding sail of more than 12 hours to reach our anchorage in the Bahia de la Ascension. Intermittent “splishes”—ten foot waves crashing into the cockpit and drenching everyone including the cat—and the strenuous helm, added to the continuing concern about skirting the reef, made for an exhausted crew as we pulled into the bay through the opening in the reef. By the time we had motored to the anchorage, we had only the faintest daylight left. Forty minutes later we were still trying to set the anchor. The depth sounder began to malfunction in the swirling sediment stirred up as we lowered and raised the stubborn anchor. It was pitch black but for a Mexican Navy lighthouse on a spit of land directly behind us. We sat down to talk our way through our next move. The recommended anchorage—behind the reef but not behind the protection of land, just wasn’t going to work for us. In good light you can find the stretches of sandy bottom where the anchor can set, but in total darkness we kept dropping it into grassy patches where it would only skip and slide. The water was relatively shallow, so the risk of running aground was high. Behind the spit of land with the Navy lighthouse was the large bay, and it offered three lighthouses at varying distances on the far shore. Bravely using them and our chart, Jeff began to triangulate a slow course back into the bay to a more protected anchorage. My job was to keep my eyes on the southernmost lighthouse. We crept along in total darkness. I willed myself not to think of how alone we were out there. I willed myself not to think of our various homes in New Orleans, where I was often within walking distance of friends, and certainly within phone distance of anyone I might care to talk to or solicit help from. I kept peering at that light. And then it went out. Our guidebook had warned that most Mexican lighthouses are powered by automotive batteries which are kept charged using solar panels, and that they don’t function long after sunset.
Of the thousands of words I could write to describe this particular experience, suffice to say that due to Jeff’s clear head and sure hand on the wheel, and my help at the bow with our “two million candlepower” floodlight, we found a safe haven, set our anchor, and again, collapsed into sleep for the night, a little more than two hours after we came through the reef. I don’t think I have ever greeted the light of morning as thankfully as I did the next day. We were delighted to see that we had spent the night in the EXACT spot recommended by our guidebook for those who could get back into the bay.
We took a few moments to congratulate ourselves and then got underway for the day’s scheduled passage to the Bahia del Espiritu Santo. By sunset we were safely at anchor behind the protection of a small island. There was a small Maya village on the far shore, its three or four lights visible only by binoculars, and a pretty yellow schooner sharing our anchorage. Our plans called for making an overnight sail the next day so that we could ring in 2003 in Belize, but our exhaustion convinced us to spend it at rest instead. After a good night’s sleep and an unrushed morning, we made plans with the other boat for a New Year’s dinner together in our cockpit. Before our guests arrived, we spent the entire day discussing the pros and cons of this trip. The excitement of seeing new places and meeting new people and the thrill of traveling by windpower and navigational skill were paling in comparison with the ravages of nasty weather, rough seas, and the serious challenges of sailing, not to mention the isolation from society and our friends and family. The race southward was beginning to seem much more like a chore than a glorious adventure. Maybe putting miles under the keel was less important than enjoying the places and new friends we could make along the way. Call it epiphany, the inspiration of the Maya, or the spirit of the Bahia del Espiritu Santo: on the first morning of the new year we set out with a new set of priorities.
By Eric A. Howald. Have a great Chemeketa story? Send us an e-mail.
Updated March 7, 2008 by Marketing and Student Recruitment.