Jack – Page 2 – Jack Lewis

Volcanoes melt me down

Crossing into Costa Rica, I had turned up during a big Rodeo in Liberia. The bull was joined by a couple hundred spectators actually in the ring, tormenting him, while cowboys lasooed him and tried to drag him around and rile him up. It was outrageously cruel and made the US rodeos seem like Animal Hospital without the sex offending.

In the Liberia hostel, I managed to rope in two fellow backpackers to share the day’s car hire cost to Monteverde. Costa Rica was a lot greener than Nicaragua – and the whole country seemed more house proud. “Elevation”, my sister would call it. She loves elevation. My sister was on my mind because she had just told me that she was going to have a C-Section the next day to deliver her baby, a couple of months early.

Feeling estranged

The birth of this newest niece was a moment I was sad to miss, although my sister and Whatsapp ensured I had the same front row seats as the rest of the family. Abbie Christine Charli West was okay, thank bloody goodness. It was a day of hugs and cries with familiar strangers that I promise to return to, but only once all the plots of this story have settled into the day-to-day.

Costa Rica was the site of many of my girlfriend Ell’s holiday stories, as her brother Will lives there with his wife Maria. It attracts surfers from all around the world with its consistent surfable waves growing uninterrupted from the Pacific before breaking on the volcanic sand.

Maria had suggested I visit Volcan Arenal, an exemplar of volcanoes, symmetrical with a little cloud on the top. A 4 hour drive from Monteverde ended with roads winding round Lake Arenal. I took the opportunity to put my singing lessons on the car stereo – I must have looked like a nutter.

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Feeling old

Having reserved at Arenal Backpackers, it looked like a five star resort, not a hostel. It had a pool bar! Unspeaking bronzed backpackers populated the communal area, their concentrating brows illuminated by their backlit displays. I normally find myself playing the back-in-my-day backpacker at times like this, lamenting the days when travellers were excited to talk to each other in hostels, instead of defaulting to the rhythmic inane swipe-and-press on a blue and white screen. But today I didn’t mind – there were videos and images of my new niece to cry over silently in the corner!

With only one day in Arenal, I signed myself up to the Two Volcanoes Tour, an “extreme 8 hour hike” up the side of an old volcano and round the side of a “new” one. It was a $55 splurge. Walking alone elsewhere had been calming, but I missed the context a guide gives you, and anyone who’s ever dived with me will know I am shocking at spotting wildlife myself.

Feeling young

We were ushered onto a bus with 27 other backpackers. Hmmm. The hike itself was fun, not extreme at all. I like to think three half marathons and a hike up Scarfell Pike last year prepared me well. But I think they were just trying to weed out the miserably unfit. I felt like a child running around Redhill Wood woods again, jumping over logs and running down dried up muddy trails. I resigned myself to the wildlife being scared off by 28 trudging backpackers, but we did see a toucan.

Reaching the summit, I swam in the lagoon created in this ancient volcano’s crater, resisting swimming across it in case I inexplicably started to drown.

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Laguna created by rainwater filling a 3,500 imploded volcano

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A waterfall followed, then a view of the sunset framed by Lake Arenal and its classically symmetrical onlooking father, Volcano Arenal. The lake was man-made, cloaking the town “Arenal” under its surface, which had been devastated in an eruption in 1968. We had set off from a town on the other side, which escaped every eruption of the volcano – La Fortuna, literally meaning “The Fortunate”.

Feeling funny

The tour ended with the bus stopping on the side of the road, where we were instructed to strip down to our swimming costumes and waddle through a cut open gap in a high security fence, and lie down in the knee high 36°C river, that was warmed by the lava of the volcano. Pitch black, I wondered if it was secretly the effluent from a sewage treatment plant. We were served rum and juice while we soaked our tired muscles for an hour. On exiting, I asked the guide whether we were trespassing on public property. “No”, he said, sounding offended of course. “The hotel up the road put this fence up because they think they own the access to the river, but they don’t, because the river and the road and 15m in between are public property. So we came down one night, bashed that wall in, and cut open this fence”. Wow, I thought. When the hotel laid claim to this land, I wonder if they expected the locals to take a fence.

Feeling nervous

I dropped the car off back in Liberia and took the bus down to San Jose to meet Will and Maria.

Of course I was nervous, I had never met them and it was important to make a good impression. But they were chilled and welcoming. At 4am Will and I woke up to drive to the beach to catch the best surfing at high tide. I didn’t surf, of course. At first my nerves dissolved my personality but that soon subsided and it was nice to have a chilled day on the beach, napping and reading a book.

Can you spot the macaw?

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I enjoyed their company so much I stayed an extra day, and went to work with Maria the next day. Maria is a drugs rep so has a ton of pharmaceuticals in her house. Scavenging her garage and leveraging her relationship with the local pharmacist, I ended up with an enormous bag of drugs to handle the most common treatable conditions one might encounter on a 15 week ocean passage.

Drugs for the journey!

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Feeling accomplished

The next day I got on my 17 hour TICA bus to Panama City, which is where I am now. Phew! I can’t promise to always be current, but it is nice to speak in the present tense.

I have bought myself the requisite supplies, including a Personal Locator Beacon that will alert search and rescue and my dad by satellite should I activate it in an emergency anywhere in the world: $418. Mum’s peace of mind: priceless. A sunhat with a built in headtorch: essential. Zinc Oxide for the nose: melano-thank-you. I’ve downloaded guitar and singing lessons, as well as got my home studio ready in case I am driven to record something. And of course I have an entire pharmacy of drugs.

New toy. Can anyone guess what it is?

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I am just waiting for Geoff to email me to say I can get on board. He is currently in Colon on the otherside of the canal, organising the canal transit and having had a few issues clearing customs/immigration.

Give me miles of mountains and I’ll ask for the sea

What is coming feels like the crescendo of the trip. Thanks for sticking with me these last few blogs. I hope to blog again before we leave around the 16^th March with a report on crossing the Panama Canal, AKA “I have a feeling we’re not on the Kennet & Avon anymore”.

Howler monkey chilling on a tree in Laguna de Apoyo

I don’t know why and I don’t know what for

At many times I have wondered why I am squandering a redundancy pay-out that could have set me up a new business, or given me quite a few relaxed months in Australia while I figured out what the hell was next. What is with this stubborn but meaningless self-imposed rule to not fly? Oh, woe is me.

Well I’ve still not figured that out. But I decided to stop moving and make some time worth something by booking myself into some Spanish lessons for a week in Nicaragua. But first I was to spend a night in San Salvador, El Salvador.

I’ve seen the picture for myself…

People normally skip El Salvador and Honduras, not least because they both have two of the highest murder rates in the world and are considered to be tourist-hostile. Last month El Salvador made international news for having its first murder free day since January 2015, with the daily murders usually exceeding 20. But this is generally gang-on-gang, and one can normally stay safe with some common sense and trust in your instincts. I’ve already spent a couple of years in Honduras, and people also say bad things about Colombia, which is one of my favourite countries. (Now I write this I remember that people I met there have both been murdered and have murdered others. Oh, the selective memory.)

With Spanish booked in Nicaragua on Monday, I only had a day to visit San Salvador, the capital. I stayed at a hostel in the Embassy district, and a day time city walk proved to be safe and beautiful. The people are friendly, funny and keen to assuage their country’s reputation, much like in Colombia. The map is full of surf spots; perhaps I will return once my girlfriend’s dad teaches me how to surf…

Look at this VW beetle conversion. I want IBM one

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Free drinks that you pay yourself…

Back at the hostel I met a guy called Billy, who claimed to be working for AT&T in El Salvador, and invited me out for a drink with two Americans in our dorm.

After telling us about his time in the US Marines, his crack and heroin addiction that led to him having his entire blood volume filtered to expel his addiction, and the team of 300 call centre attendants who worked under him, he said he didn’t have his money with him to pay his bill. He’d get the beers tomorrow. Hmmm. A reminder that sometimes the ones to watch are those staying within the iron bars of the hostel.

First class and big hotels…

I’d hastily booked my Spanish School at Estacion Biologica, which was on the banks of a lake, or should I say the crater of an ancient volcano that once imploded and filled up with rainwater. The hostel tripled as a Spanish school and environmental research and conservation establishment.

Arriving at night, it was very basic but I like that – makes me feel like I am not spending too much money. The hostel seemed to attract intellectuals – the proprietor has a PhD, one guest was an environmental engineer and the other doing a PhD in Anthropology. The wall was carpeted in the hides of animals dispatched by natural causes, alongside sketches of the local flora. The hostel was directly under the jungle canopy, interrupting its density, where howler monkeys were to wake me the next morning with their babies on their backs.

Howler Monkey above my hostel

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All food, board and 4 hrs Spanish a day was provided for $250 for the week.

In the morning I met my Spanish teacher, Adriana. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king, and I felt very clever to have the best Spanish of the gringos. Each morning was as much a cultural exchange as a Spanish class.

In the afternoons I swam in the lake, and ran around it in the evening, in a vain attempt to shift some of the weight I have gained from lack of exercise routine and all the rice, beans and tortillas.

One evening we ventured out to Masaya to a karaoke bar. It was disappointing – there is no showmanship! A guy walks around the tables and gives singers a wireless microphone as they lean back in their chair lazily muttering out the lyrics in between swigs of their Toña cervezas.

A dodgy guy with a Chelsea smile and glaring eyes started a conversation with me before touching the face of one of the girls we were with. Having been in such a situation before, we made our exit. The rest of the bar seemed fine, I must point out. The type of person that approaches strangers in bars is sadly usually a wrong ‘un.

It’s time to take new measures…

The next day I boarded two chicken buses to the Costa Rican border, now an expert at avoiding the taxi drivers who insist theirs is the only onward option. When I got past passport control I was ripped off by a Nicaraguan who took $20 to get me onto an onward bus. To his credit he gave me the money back once I figured out his game, and I got on a local bus to the town of Liberia, where I would stay the night before upgrading myself to someone who hires a car for a few days…

*The headings are lyrics from a song, perhaps someone will guess it (without Google)!

Short detour to Guatemala

I should have planned Mexico to Guatemala better. A 5 hour bus to Chetumal ended with a taxi driver persuading me to let him take me to the Belize border, where I could get an onward bus to Flores in Guatemala, and be there that evening. So it was, but Belize side, there was only a solitary chicken bus*, and it was going to Belize City, which I had hoped to skip.

The chicken bus took 5 hours, and with an unexpected stay I had to ask a taxi driver to take me to “a hostel”, the proprietor of which advised me that the streets were unsafe at night. So I stayed in my light-less lifeless room all night, waking to catch the morning bus to Guatemala.

I have started to track the whole trip on a map here, which I will try to keep updated as I go.

Life is rough for a backpacker, huh

The bus to Flores, Guatemala, dropped three of us in front of a tour agency at El Remate, on the way to Tikal, the “must see” Mayan ruins in the jungle. Of course the tour agent said there “weren’t any other buses” but he would be happy to charge us $50 each for the journey. Smelling a rat, we walked up the road to find a chicken bus doing the trip for $1. A Spanish backpacker noticed the locals were being charged 50 cents, and proceeded to have an argument with the bus conductor, asking if it was because of the colour of her skin.

I liked the idea of sleeping in a hammock in the jungle, so opted for the campsite. Unluckily, so did aforementioned Spanish girl and her boyfriend. So I waited while she argued with the camping guy too, saying that “all of Guatemala is like this, overcharging foreigners”, and then lifting up her skirt and asking “what else do you want, my body?”

Jeez. Putting aside the substantial difference in income, think about the luxury you have to faff about looking at old stuff for fun. Look around and see people working before and after their adult teeth have come and gone. Trying to get a good deal is fair enough but lifting up your skirt and playing the race card is as scanky as it is woefully ironic.

But Tikal was a special place

I think there is a guy called “Mr Cacao” buried underneath this one. It is in the central plaza of Tikal just before sunset

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An entire Mayan city in the jungle, it was half archeological curiosity, half nature watch. I took a sunrise tour, climbing an ancient pyramid to look over the clouded canopy, listening to the jungle wake up in a chorus of howler monkeys and bird calls, in the company of 40 or so silent travellers. Continuing the tour, our guide’s enthusiastic explanations of each ruin were interrupted only by his exclamations on hearing a rare bird or monkey. This place deserves its “must see” status and ticks both the nature and history boxes. If I were to do it again I would wake up at the same time as the jungle and skip the morning clouded sunrise, and save $5 on the early entry ticket.

Lake Atitlan

A friend from Mallorca was in Lake Atitlan, and many had recommended it. So I took the overnight bus to Guatemala City, and 5 chicken buses and a boat to get to San Pedro. Speeding over the lake under a volcanic landscape, it seemed promising.

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But on land, hostel after hostel had English names, staffed by gringos for gringos. Tonight was pool night in the neighbouring hostel, after beer pong and tequilas. I did meet up with Katia and we had a beer on the pier, and talked about what was wrong with this, concluding that it seemed these places were gringo owned, employing gringos, raising the price of everything with seemingly very little trickling down to the locals. But more than this it just felt peculiar.

I would loved to have spent more time elsewhere in Guatemala. Very few of those “I’m going to murder you when you’re not looking” glares, just kind faces and curiosity leading to inquisitive conversations. Their Spanish is also slow and easy to understand, as its their second language – their first language being one of 24 Mayan languages.

Katia was learning Spanish in a homestay so was on a different track with a bit of purpose. I decided I would leave the next day to Nicaragua and find some purpose of my own.

*Chicken buses (“camionetas”) are old school buses from the USA and Canada that have been driven down to Central America or Mexico when they are ten years old or have driven 150,000 miles, usually repainted garishly and sometimes fitted out with a badass sound system of ill-advised power. They are the backbone of local transport and local cargo across Central America, and stop anywhere on the road. I have never seen a chicken on a chicken bus.

Never really been but I’d sure like to go

Ruling out some of the riskier options, I crossed the border on a Greyhound directly from Houston to Monterrey, Northern Mexico. I couldn’t help reflecting on the sad state that relations between US and Mexico had found themselves in. A visit to the Monterrey Museum educated me on the history of the wars and purchases that led to the border’s finalisation, with the narrative being that Monterrey and its region feels as much a part of the USA as of Mexico. I wondered if they would ever be updating their exhibitions to include a Trump era.

Another oddity from the museum was the paintings that they had inn colonial times, that gave names to the offspring of interracial couples. A practice that was born out of a similar tradition in horses, these classifications of human were also ascribed typical personality traits.

“Casta” paintings in 18th century Mexico categorised offspring accordingly their racial mix.

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I didn’t stay overnight in Monterrrey – I just left my bags with the Guardia de Equipaje in the bus station, explored the town for the day and then went back to catch the night bus to Mexico City.

Mexican pyramids

With one day in Mexico City, I explored Teotihuacan, the famous Pyramid of the Sun and Pyramid of the Moon. The ancient town is about 3,000 years younger than its Egyptian counterparts, but still interesting to see how civilisations can stumble across similar ideas without cross-pollination. The builders believed the Sun was born here, and held political and religious ceremonies attracting thousands, often involving a kind of week long basketball game, the victor of which having the honour of being sacrificed. Maybe life was pretty shit anyway.

Standing on top of one of the pyramids warranted the rare appropriate use of the word “awesome”, imagining those thousands an age ago. The centre of their modern world, the town thrived for 500 years until its inhabitants ended up inexplicably burning it down and abandoning it. It made me think about how stable we think our current civilisation is and how we may suffer the same fate.

Mexico City does not deserve its reputation of being dirty and unsafe – I found it to be no worse than London, although every city has its dodgy parts.

Diving the cenotes

Next was to be Tulum, as I had heard stories from other divers of the magnificence the cenotes, underground freshwater cave systems previously worshipped by the Mayans. As luck would have it two friends from the Roatan days (Billy and Megan) had surprisingly got together and were holidaying there, so I took the 23 hour bus a little early and stayed with them.

It was fun to see them both – we got wasted almost every night. And I did two dives in the cenotes. $140 is steep for two dives but it was unforgettable. Entering in an opening about the size of the bus I am writing this on, the first cenote opened out 30m below into the size of an American Football field, with a stream of light descending, echoing the Blues Brothers’ “Have you seen the light” moment. The freshwater, being less dense, floats over the saltwater layer and creates visual disturbances in the “halocline”, the thin layer in which they meet. Undisturbed it resembles a trail of smoke from a forgotten cigarette in a windless room. Diving through it looked like petroleum in water, and I felt disorientated as my eyes struggled to adjust their focus.

“The Pit” Img Src: ngm.nationalgeographic.com.

Only a flexible mind would categorise the second dive “Dreamgate” as anything other than a cave dive. Luckily the guide had such a mind, and dive it we would. Much shallower than the first dive, the dive meandered through horizontal tunnels, resembling the 80s film “Inner Space”. We were given torches (flashlights) and followed in single file as we were guided under stalactites, over stalagmites and between columns formed where they meet, pondering their ancient, painstakingly slow formation and trying not to break them or impale ourselves. Every now and then I considered how this was absolutely terrifying, with no direct access to the surface should anything happen. But I was too distracted by how bloody cool it was – eerie, prehistoric and atmospheric. There was absolutely no life in either cenote, but this was about the topography and it did not disappoint.

Our (my) Mexican gig

Our amazing gig in Tulum

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One day Billy and I were having a beer at a beach bar, with my guitar perched against the table. The barman took us to the manager, who gave us a gig that weekend. Playing in between sets of a trumpet/DJ combo, Billy deferred to me to start, and actually never played himself. And that was the story of “our” gig in Tulum.

A healthy dose of middle class guilt

Another theme that began in Tulum and continued later was the international gentrification of such places. Playa del Carmen, just down the road, is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, and eventually holidaymakers get tired of other holidaymakers and like to spread out. And it tends to start with the backpackers. That’s what was going on in Tulum. I should say Tulum also has Mayan ruins set idyllically next to the beach, although I never went, to my shame. Add to this the cenotes, of which there are hundreds but only 16 or so are safely divable, and you can see why Tulum is experiencing rapid growth. You can pick up a bit of land for a little over £10k. In doing so, as a foreigner, you push up the price of property for those who have grown up there. But you could decide to build a business that brings more people and money into the town, and hire Mexicans for a better wage than they could otherwise expect… Can this be a good thing, then?

I spent a week in Tulum discussing such things with Billy and Megan, invariably ending up at the excellent live music venue Batey’s, which served Mojitos made with freshly pressed Cane juice.

Both kinds of music

Having secured transit from Panama to Australia, I was feeling pretty proud of myself. And here I was in the capital of country music, Nashville. My sister has been trying to get me into Country for years with some limited success. She showed me The Thing Called Love, an 80s film about an aspiring singer-songwriter who finds success at the Bluebird Café open mic night, and Rachel always said we should go to Nashville together. So I felt a little guilty being there alone.

I watched a country and western band and ate a burger in Robert’s Western World as suggested by my recent friend Danni Nicholls (of growing Americana fame). But I wasn’t feeling it, and moved on to her second suggestion, The Listening Room. Four singer-songwriters playing “in the round” – meaning they take turns to play a song. It is a great format – mixes it up for the audience and artists. And the audience was dead silent. These singer-songwriters were 4 of thousands of songwriters in Nashville writing predominantly for other artists. Being on your own isn’t awkward in a music venue where no-one’s talking anyway.

A quick visit to the Johnny Cash museum reinforced what a good bloke and prolific artist he was. Not sure it was worth the money though tbh.

The Bluebird Café, being mid-week low season, had no queue at al and I got a seat. If you do go, pre-buy tickets on the website. Despite being made world famous by The Thing Called Love film and Nashville TV series, it is a small café in an unassuming promenade of shops seemingly in the middle of nowhere. This wasn’t the famous Monday open mic night with the sign-up process akin to buying Glastonbury tickets. A fundraiser for a local hospice, we were treated to 4 singer songwriters, playing their own songs that had been recorded by other artists. The audience was dead quiet except when applauding or laughing at the witty banter and exchanges between the performers.

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It was an experience of a lifetime, and I was surprised to hear Eric Clapton’s “If I could (Change the World)” performed by its original songwriter, who was one of the most relaxed, charismatic and talented performers I had ever seen. Coincidentally one of the performers was James House, whose songwriting workshop I had attended in Belfast on a Foy Vance pilgrimage a few years ago.

Returning to Broadway the vibe had changed into one of unpleasant loud American drunkenness. I sloped off to the hostel to sleep before the next day’s bus to Memphis.

Memphis was all about the Blues. It was a little touristy, yes, but the music was good so who cares? Bars defiantly allowing smoking indoors, genuine Hammond organs, cocky harmonica playing frontmen, bassists with sunglasses in dark rooms, and an octogenarian saxophonist. One band was seemingly original, playing lesser known blues classics with drawn out solos by every member of the band. Another played exactly what we had all come here for, Stax classics from Sam and Dave, through Otis Reading to interpretations of what Beatles songs would sound like if they had been recorded in Memphis. Think “Yellow Submarine” but with the band from the Blues Brothers. Not sure I can imagine it but it would have been good.

The next day I got another Greyhound down to Baton Rouge where Dave made his second cameo appearance for a weekend in New Orleans.

We tried the heralded “things to do” like beignets and coffee and jazz at Presevation Hall. The former tasted like fat sponges and dishwater, with the latter making us wish we skipped the coffee so we could have a snooze. I remembered that I hate jazz.

But there was music of all sorts everywhere. Getting into the slightly less touristy area towards Marigny, every bar had a band of some sort, ranging from ragey girl grunge through indie pop to smooth Memphis RnB, which is where we ended the night. It was better than Memphis itself, in my very limited experience.

The next day we drove to Houston, where Dave lives, and I stayed with him for a week for some much needed rest and relaxation. The quick travelling pace and bus sleeping had given me a fever and sore throat (yes I can hear your sympathy). It was comforting to spend a week planning in Dave and Nicole’s house with the company of their very cute two sons. It now felt like I was sitting at the top of the road through Central America to Panama, and I had the space to plan the onward journey.

Jumping the next puddle

Stepping off the boat, I felt free; we had worked 48 days without a day off. Often the hero in times like this, my old school mate Dave picked me up after flying in from Houston for a weekend in South Beach, Miami. Despite my own no-fly rule, it appeared I had no problem with others flying to see me.

Dave was patient with my diarrhoea of unsorted thoughts, excreted over craft ales and cuban sandwiches. An old friend was exactly what I needed, and proof that who you’re with always trumps where you are (Miami Beach is shit)!

My mate Dave at the Rodeo in Miami

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I started off weak. I was missing Ell. Should I just fly to Brisbane? Experiencing so many new things in such a short time had made it seem so long. But as I decompressed it became clear that this story does not end with flying to Australia. And the Pacific would surely be the best bit – all those isolated islands and seldom seen communities. Of course I should continue, by land and sea to Australia.

Pacific Puddle Jump

I got back on the laptop and found a Yahoo Group with 1,600 members called Pacific Puddle Jump (PPJ). PPJ is a network of cruisers on “smaller” sail boats making the trip from the West coast of the Americas across the South Pacific, on what is sometimes known as the “coconut milk run” or “puddle jump” which includes Galapagos, Marquesas, French Polynesia and sometimes further West. For many reasons it helps for these guys to keep in touch to share tips, latest visa info, discuss the ethics of giving gifts to indigenous communities, organise radio nets and just to party on the way. Yahoo Groups, most of you will be too young or cool to know about, is an email distribution group from Victorian times. But it is perfect for the job because every post just drops into your inbox, and these cruisers don’t want to waste their limited bandwidth on pretty pixels on other social networks.

I sent a little note to the distribution list stating my intentions and hoped for the best.

Panama by March

Awaiting a response, all research suggested I head towards Panama, where most trans-Pacific crossings will at least touch. The cyclone-free season in the South Pacific runs from April to November, meaning that many crossings leave in March to give themselves a comfortable margin for delay.

But Miami boats don’t go anywhere

After Dave flew back to Houston, I went to the nearest marina to look for boats heading Panama way. “No-one here goes anywhere on their boats” I was told. Really? That couldn’t be true. But looking at the hundreds of boats in front of me, maybe 1 in 1,000 were going further than the Caribbean, and what are the chances I even find that boat, let alone persuade them to take me?

The Greyhound

Like in many an American movie, I decided to use the Greyhound bus network, giving me control of the timeline. And with my guitar on my back, I noticed some of music’s greatest American cities were kinda on my way… I planned my route via Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans, towards Dave’s house in Houston.

The breakthrough

On the 25 hour bus ride to Nashville, someone responded from the PPJ group suggesting I look in the “crew wanted” site for Latitude 38, some kind of e-magazine for West coast cruisers. How could I have missed this?

It was a gold mine. I started by emailing a guy called Geoff, who was heading to Australia. 2 bus changes later, I checked my email and there it was. Geoff wanted a call to discuss it. After my first beer at a honkytonk in downtown Nashville, I stole some wifi outside a bar to call Geoff.

A husband and father, he had bought a 46 foot Bavaria sailing boat in Greece and was sailing it back home to Sydney, via the Panama Canal, and wanted me and my guitar to join him. And he sounded normal. While it was my first and only option, it was the perfect option and I decided to stop looking. He wanted to see the sights of the Pacific but similarly didn’t want to hang around too much – he had a family to get back to.

And so the onward passage was found. 15 weeks is the estimate, from Panama to Sydney. I’m sure the world’s biggest ocean will have some surprises in store. Galapagos, Marquesas, Tahiti and Fiji, with a few extremely long passages of 30 days or more without land. I am nervous about it, almost scared of being in such close quarters for such a long time. But fear and excitement are closer than love and hate.

Of course, it could still not happen. Something might happen to Geoff’s boat or there may be other things beyond our control. But I can’t help getting excited about crossing this vast expanse, and seeing these lesser visited islands and hopefully making some connections with people with a hugely different outlook. It really is a long trip, a map does not do it justice… I say this as if I have sailed it already, but I’m just saying – look at Google Earth… You actually can’t see the whole route from space. We start the trip through the Panama Canal on the 6th March.

Leaving the boat

Those reading carefully will know that I left the UK aiming to get to Australia without flying, leading me to create a music video CV that, posted on Facebook, led to a job oiffer on a superyacht crossing the Atlantic. But the offer was for a permanent position. I was ready to decline it, but was tempted by the scuba diving part of the job. After all, I was looking for a new career. I took the job with a mind open to the long haul, accepting that I may discover it wasn’t for me.

It wasn’t for me

Firstly, there was a misunderstanding about the diving; they did have a compressor and a dozen sets of equipment, but it was now a sad Scubapro graveyard, no longer used for insurance reasons. I thought back and realised I had never been explicitly offered a diving job. In the phone interview the Captain had said my Instructor credentials would be useful, and an old listing I found online mentioned the boat was a dive centre. The rest I may well have wishfully constructed.

Deckhand / Dive Instructor

So I got on with it. But I noticed I wasn’t as excited as others to be serving on this superyacht. I wasn’t as impressed with its size, its curves or technology. I didn’t find it beautiful – it was just a boat, really. Others did – and somehow that helped, to know that others loved it meant it wasn’t the boat or the people – it was I that wasn’t right for this.

If I was ten years younger, maybe I would have stuck it out longer. No living expenses, a generous tax free wage, and a career eventually promising three months on and three months off – after about ten years in the business. Or, just do a few years and buy some property or set up a business. But in the meantime, you give every part of yourself to it, and that I can’t justify right now. I have a girlfriend in Australia, and friends and family all over. While modern technology keeps us in touch, nothing replaces sharing life by sharing experiences. Pausing life to sit in front of a webcam just doesn’t do it. Each day apart is a sacrifice that needs to be justified. Sure, I had been choosing these sacrifices through travelling anyway, but it was for a mission and end goal that felt worth it.

Handing in my notice

So I did hand in my notice, citing the diving confusion as the reason, and served out the remaining four weeks of the charter we had onboard. The captain was very understanding about it, saying that “you work to live, you don’t live to work”. True, and at the moment I “ live at work”, I thought to myself. The next four weeks I tried my best to keep motivated, although I found myself tired, unable to concentrate and eating more than I needed to.

The job itself was a challenge for all the reasons you might expect. It had been a while since I have walked into a job without knowing how to do anything. Most of the time I have something to offer – computer skills, using sound equipment, something. With the exception of 15 minutes when I made an awful sounding Russian karaoke system bearable, I was being patiently instructed on the finer points of polishing and cleaning every 10 minutes.

Bahamas, Cuba and Florida

From Nassau, we cruised down the Bahamas and Exumas, via Staniel Cay and Long Island, before spending a week in Cuba, anchoring in Santiago, Trinidad and Cayo Largo before finishing in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where the boat will be until late March available for charter.

Obligatory old car photo

A photo posted by Jack Lewis (@jacklewismusic) on Jan 13, 2017 at 6:19am PST

All in all I learnt a lot in those short six weeks. Knots, mooring, charts, cleaning, driving jet skiis, and even a jet boat at one point. But I also learnt more about what I want from life, and how I react in certain situations. In that way it was an invaluable experience that I would not change. I am grateful to everyone on that boat and appreciate fully what an opportunity it was.

Onward and downward

Over the next few days I hope to catch up to where I am now, in Belize en route to Guatemala, with the eventual goal of reaching Colon, Panama on the 6^th March. But I will leave those details for the next post…

Crossing ocean

Again, I find myself apologising for not updating you on the going-ons of the last few weeks. Well, there is a reason for that. I got myself a job, on a yacht that is steaming across the Atlantic as I type in one of its cabins. I wasn’t sure how much I was allowed to divulge until I signed the contract.

It’s a 70m+ motor vessel, which isn’t what I had in mind, but I am most definitely not complaining. So how did this come about?

The basic training

As I’ve said, I had to do STCW, which is shorthand for the basic safety courses that crew must do legally. It was mostly about fire-fighting, fire being the biggest risk. The course was excellent – culminating in donning breathing apparatus and entering a smoke-filled shipping container to extinguish a fire as a team with a fire hose. There was also basic first aid, sea survival, and security awareness talking about piracy, and stowaways and such like. I had wondered if STCW was just box ticking but was left in no doubt – and it was sobering to know how devastating a fire can be to a yacht, but reassuring that every crew member was trained to at least a basic fire-fighting level.

The video

But, while doing the course I couldn’t look for work. So, I did what anyone would do, and made a music video CV. Cringe alert. I posted it to “Palma Yacht Crew” (PYC), a Facebook Group for people working in the yachting industry in Palma and further afield. With my finger poised over mouse on the “post” button, I wondered if this would be the best or worst decision I had made this year. Throughout the day, the likes grew to 600 and comments to over 80. People were recognising me in bars – as Ron Burgundy would have said, I was kind of a big deal. So, I hoped something would come of it and it wouldn’t just be some cringetastic flailing fail (no you won’t find a link to it here).

The interview

Two days later, the day after completing my basic training, I got an email from the captain of this boat, asking me to call him. He asked me to go to an interview with one of his friends in a bar – the captain of a similar sized motor yacht nearby.

There I sat opposite this captain, and the guy in the table next to us said “hey, aren’t you Jack from that video? Mate, if I had a job going, I’d give you one”. There were a couple of difficult questions about being older than my boss, and how could I be a musician AND a deckhand? I answered honestly, and a few beers later I had two thumbs up.

The visa

The next challenge was getting a B1/B2 visa – necessary to work on a vessel in US waters. No visa, no job. PYC had been awash with stories of yachties being denied visas in Madrid and London, and I was certain I would be one of them. 25 hours of travel from Mallorca and I was in the US embassy in Lisbon. When the visa interview came I had hardly slept from travelling and anxiety. When asked “have you ever lost your passport”, “have you ever been denied an ESTA” and “have you ever reported anything stolen to US police”, I answered a confident no in all cases. Turns out this was wrong, and my visa was to be “on hold”. That was it, I thought – no visa, no job. After a bit of email inbox interrogation, I discovered I had lost two passports, which in one case led to ESTA complications, and had reported stolen cash in Vegas. I think I may have good reason to forget some of that trip…

So I emailed the embassy, and miraculously got my visa approved the next day – even going to the central post office depot to interrupt my passport’s delivery schedule so I could be sure. Another 12 hours via Faro to Gibraltar, and off we went this morning.

The boat

And it is insane. I can’t begin to describe how surreal it is, to be paid to do this. I am the lowest of the low, a Junior Deckhand, the most inexperienced person here. And yes people younger than me are telling me what to do, and I am very fine about that. There are two crew decks, crew mess and lounge, and about 5 other decks, I lost count. There are 29 crew right now, with positions ranging from Captain, Chief Engineer, Technology Officer, Laundry Stewardess… Even the crew accommodation is like a hotel and that’s before you step foot into the guest area. The master bedroom is twice the size of my flat (although I was pleased to see that I think my bed is still bigger). There are jet skiis and jet boats in the “tender garage”, and the rescue boat is about the same size as the boats I am used to sailing on. The bridge actually resembles that of the Starship Enterprise.

The crossing

On the crossing we are working 8 hour days – today we washed the whole boat with soap and it was actually quite fun. I also have to sit on watch for a couple of hours with whoever is driving the boat at 3am in the morning. Yes we have sophisticated radar etc, but you still have watch, because “small” sailing boats often evade the radar.

So, there you have it. What an extremely surreal and fortunate time; I am very aware of how lucky I have been to land this. In less than a fortnight we will be in the Caribbean. I am not sure how much I will be able to blog, or what I can blog about – we are under strict instructions not to breach confidentiality of guests, or mention the boat name in public for reputation and security purposes. But I can say that the boat is Classed by Lloyd’s Register, my former employer, which is a funny little twist I guess.

First single released – My Island

As Monday 28th November is the end of the Crowfunding campaign for the Crossing Oceans EP, and just over £1,000 away from the target, I asked Producer Paul to hurry up the release of this song so that you could get a feel for what we are trying to achieve. Apparently it takes a few weeks to get it onto Spotify and Itunes etc, so for now you can download it with bandcamp, or just play it with Youtube or Soundcloud.

People may ask which I prefer you to do. I’d love to reach the Crowdfunder target, so if you haven’t pledged and have the means to do so, that would make my day. I’m keen to update you on my latest releases and how things are going, so signing up for updates would also make me happy. Don’t feel you have to pay for it on bandcamp, especially if you have already pledged on Crowdfunder, that would just get annoying.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this song in the comments section or personally. People’s reactions have surprised me a lot. Some people have very sincerely told me that it has helped them with personal challenges. I never expected that and can’t tell you how satisfying it is to hear that.

The song is not everyone’s cup of tea. You need to listen to the lyrics, and there are a lot of them! Ironic, because I am rubbish at listening to lyrics and usually sing the first verse a few times when playing covers! Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. If I haven’t pushed the message home enough, please pledge in my Crowdfunder! The campaign closes on 28th November.

Thank you to Paul West for producing, playing drums, and bass; to Charli Napier for the beautiful cello, and to Lucy Fox for producing your signature artwork at such short notice.

It only takes one…

In this long overdue blog I am just going to try to catch up, so that I can hopefully get to a more little-and-often approach. So please indulge this rather unstructured update:

I live in a flat

Yes, I have stopped unpacking my things every 3 days and now live in a flat 150m away from a rather nice beach a 10 minute cycle from the City centre.

My blog now asks if you want to sign up for updates

It waits 20 seconds, so it should ask about now. Well, I figured you might want them. And with a string of songs coming out over the next few months it made sense to me too. Don’t worry, it won’t pop up again, and you can find it elsewhere on this page if you regret dismissing it in a fit of interrupted rage.

Dockwalking is not too bad

Finding a job on a yacht as someone who is “green” (people here don’t seem to know what a Day Skipper is and 100ft is considered a “small boat”) is tough without having a personality. Luckily I have one of those, but it doesn’t easily come across on a CV or cover letter. It took me a couple of weeks to get into the groove of approaching boats in the right way and in the right places. I am getting a good response now but this week I am doing the STCW training so can’t dockwalk. Which means…

You need Jack on your crew

If I can’t get in people’s faces this week, I need something to do it for me. Taking inspiration from Donald Trump, if you are not particularly qualified you can always just be completely ridiculous and you might get the job. So, adapting something similar I’d done previously, Palma Yacht Crew Facebook Group (PYC) will be seeing a 45 second music video in the next couple of days called “You Need Jack on Your Crew”. It is cheesetastic and I am sure will get me off this rock one way or another, even if it is through exile for crimes against integrity, artistry and just not being some kind of weirdo.

Getting in on the dive scene

On said PYC (which is a very popular topic of conversation in yachty circles), I noticed a post from Palma Diving, a one year old company run by Alex – a seasoned commercial diver who is diversifying with recreational diving tuition. There was to be an underwater clean-up, in which I participated. It is always good to hang out with divers, there seems to be an easiness in the air – maybe it is just my tribe.

We then had lunch on plastic plates surrounded by posters raising awareness about single use plastics. A bit of a catering fail on the part of the local council, who was organising the event. But the presentation that followed highlighted the inspiring decrease in sea pollution the group had achieved. I love these kinds of people – instead of getting overwhelmed they just decide to try and fix what they can see in front of them. While it was all in Spanish, I discerned that their education strategy was to teach the kids on the beach so that they gave their parents an earful.

Mallorca has some pretty interesting environmental problems due to a lack of fresh water, reliance on desalination and massive tourist population relative to its size. Not to mention the British ambassadors we send to Magaluf every year…

I need a Euro, Euro, Euro is what I need

Taking money out of a British bank account in Spain is very painful right now. The prices reflect the old exchange rates (my seafarer’s medical cost £80 in the UK but €120 here). So I am happy to have picked up a spot of daywork on a couple of yachts out here, dropping sails and cleaning engine rooms. And even though it is low season an English pub has hired me to play a two hour set every Monday.

Big boat small boat

My STCW finishes on the 18^th November.

A typical conversation:

Me: I’ve got my STCW booked in for 14th November.

Yachty: Oh, you haven’t got your STCW?

Me (oh, maybe he didn’t hear me): No, I’ve got it booked in for 14th November.

Yachty: Oh, you’ve got to have your STCW, no-one’s gonna even look at you without it.

Me (hopefully hiding my disdain): Yes, I’ve got it booked for 14th November.

It only takes one

As nice as they are, being told “we’re not crossing” or “we’re not looking for crew” by every boat is a bit demoralising, and not getting a job because you have “no experience” is like being a 16 year old job hunting in a shopping mall again. But everyone is going to say no until one boat says yes. It’s like “it’s always in the last place you look”. Well, of course it is. And when that boat does say yes, I will stop getting told no, because it only takes one boat.

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