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Houston, TX 77401

Travel

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Australia is Burning

Everyone has seen the headlines — “Australia is burning!” “Bush Fires Threatening all Areas of Australia” But, what people forget is that Australia is a large country and not all of it is burning! In fact, the fires, while horrible for those people living in or near these areas, are only in a small portion of the country. And, like the California fires, they have displaced people and wildlife but once under control, and extinguished, there is new growth coing back almost immediately.

The Australian department of Tourism created a few videos hoping to let people know that things are returning to normal and that they are open and ready for business. Here is one of those videos.

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New Video – Who We Are

Ann’s round table had an assignment for each of their members — at the meeting you are hosting, you need to tell the group more about what it is you do. In true executive fashion, Ann assembled a team (ok, a team of one additional person) to develop a summary of what Oceanic Ventures does. The following video resulted from that team meeting.

Please shoot over to YouTube and tell us what you think. And, while you are there, please subscribe to the channel.

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Australia Exploratory Trip Announced

This adventures to Great Barrier Reef Trip in the Coral Sea departs 19 February 2021

If you missed the Club Aquarius Social Club meeting last week, you probably missed the announcement of an exploratory trip to the Coral Sea aboard the Spirit of Freedom.  This trip includes a rare opportunity to visit to the SS Yongala, Australia’s largest shipwreck.  During this trip we will be visiting a number of sea mounts not visited by dive boats and operators.  We will be exploring them for the first time and we will even have the opportunity to name at least one of the sites we visit!  There are a limited number of available spots (both Eric and Ann have signed up to lead this trip) so now is the time to reserve your spot.
We will be publishing more trip information in January but you can always send Dive Mom a note to find out more before then.  You don’t want to miss this opportunity!

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Panama Bound (#1)

15 March 2002 13°07N / 071°46W

Headed towards the Panama Canal. This is an area of unusually high winds and seas so we’ve been waiting for a decent weather window for days hoping to have an easy trip. Twelve hours into the trip we ran out of wind and turned south towards the Colombian coast hoping to find it again.
0100 Local Time – Getting any sleep during the first night of a trip is hard for both of us. I’m in the back cabin, dozing fitfully in my carefully arranged nest of pillows that help stop the rolling. It’s two hours into my three-hour off-watch period and I’m finally getting snatches of sleep when a large wave breaks just at our stern and throws a few buckets of seawater through the hatch. This soaks the curtain, sheets, a couple of pillows and me. I yell for help. Karen strips the bed, rolls everything into a ball, and sends me back to bed saying we’ll deal with the mess in the morning..

0300 Local – I’ve been on watch for an hour now, sitting in our well-protected cockpit. The rolling isn’t so noticeable when you’re not trying to sleep. The early morning skies are gorgeous with Sagittarius and the Southern Cross high in the southern sky. In the middle of this uneventful watch, a flying fish buzzed past my head, flew down the companionway, and onto the floor under the Nav. station. I wasn’t sure what had happened till I heard the desperate flopping of the fish on the clean carpet. I threw the fish and loose scales overboard, wiped up the mess, poured a cup of coffee and went back on watch.

Karen on the bow of Enchante


0730 Local – Up early to enjoy the beginning of a beautiful, cool morning. We jibed in light winds and the gooseneck fitting on the main boom broke – before my first cup of coffee! It took three hours to get the main sail down and the broken boom and sail securely tied along the side deck. It would have gone a lot quicker if the topping lift hadn’t managed to snag the main halyard requiring a trip to the top of the mast. I don’t mind going up in a calm anchorage, but the top of the mast swings wildly offshore. Back on deck, after dropping the sail, I sat and enjoyed a large glass of water before I calmed down enough to help Karen clean up the mess of lines, blocks and heavy sail and boom. This fitting was replaced two years ago by an experienced, high-priced rigger in Houston. Half of his rivets in the fitting missed the boom. When we reach Panama I’ll order the parts and do the job myself.

Meanwhile, we’re continuing on in light airs. This long-distance cruising is rough!

19 March 2002 In Panama!

W E MADE IT!!! We arrived in Panama this morning. Had to slow down yesterday because we were going to make a nighttime landfall and we avoided that at all costs. We are anchored in the area known as the flats. Lots of rolling from the tug boats and pilot boats coming through. “Flats” must have been a euphemism. “Yacht Club” is another euphemism. We took a quick tour around there with the boat. Tomorrow, we’ll go in and put our names on the list so we can get a slip. It might not be much, but hopefully, it will make getting work done on the boom easier. We’d like to get it fixed here instead of the Pedro Miguel Yacht Club because that would mean doing 2/3 of the transit with the boom and sail in the way.

14 April 2002

Your email arrived on the same day as one saying our parts have been shipped. The $190 FedEx charge helped push this project to the usual $1000 (1 Boat Bill) range. Hopefully, everything will match Isomat’s catalog dimensions. Knowing it’s on the way, we’ll start the process of having the boat measured and scheduling our transit. Our transit should be one week or so after starting the paperwork.
Last week I went through as a line handler on another boat. The locks are very impressive but not nearly as large as I expected. Our raft of two boats tied alongside a tug and shared the three up locks with a huge container. After a long motor across Gatun Lake we rafted back together and locked down the center chamber in front of another container ship. Interestingly, sailboats cross the lake as quickly as large ships. We get to take shortcuts outside the main channel, don’t have to reduce speed when passing dredging operations, and don’t need the assistance of tugs for the tight turns going into the lock area.

I worked on a letter describing the city of Colon but haven’t finished. On the plus side, there are some very nice locals and excellent Chinese food is cheap!

Hopefully, we’ll get everything together and be on our way to the Marquesas in a couple of weeks. 

[Note from Eric: in 1997, one of our instructors, Carl Strange and his wife set off to sail the world.  Everyone wanted to know what was happening with Carl, Karen and later with the addition of their new crew member, Rebecca.  So, we started to publish “The Strange Chronicles” so everyone could travel with them.  I was looking through some old files and found the Chronicles.  I started rereading them and decided it would be fun to republish some excerpts from them. They are an insight to the cruising lifestyle.]

Carl Strange Avatar
Carl and his wife Karen set-off on a journey around the world on-board their sailboat S/V Enchante. Along the way, they had a lot of adventures and in Aruba, a new member of their crew was born. Now a family of three with Rebecca’s birth, they sailed the Caribbean and the Pacific experiencing life along the way.

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Our Palau Adventure – A Quick Update

What a trip! This was my first trip back to Palau for over 20 years and I can’t understand why I stayed away for so long.
Like on our previous trip we stayed at the beautiful Palau Pacific Resort.  This is one of the nicest hotels on the island and over the years since my last visit they have added a small, exclusive hotel within the property as well as some over the water bungalows complete with glass viewing ports.  But while the hotel has grown, the warm, friendly atmosphere created by the staff has not changed.    They excited to be there and made us all feel welcome.  The staff at the poolside bar was simply fantastic (yes we spent a lot of time her).  Maria even remembered every customer’s name and room number as well as what you were drinking the previous night — if only I had her memory.
While on our previous trips the Mantas alluded us in German Channel, on this trip they were in abundance also with sharks visiting the cleaning stations – wait until you see the photos.  The weather was even calm enough for us to visit Pelilu and dive Pelilu wall.
Navot and Tova from Fish -n-Fins have assembled a great team.  Our dive guide, Hiro, was wonderful to work with and he was patient having to work with normal recreational divers, CCR divers and even divers using sidemount.  He made it a nice trip for me taking much of the burden for the group underwater  He was assisted on the dive by his “trainee” IB and Captain Rodney.  They were all fun to work with and kept things light and fun during the day as we visited multiple dive sites each day (3 dives a day).
I am only sorry the trip had to end but I and 1/2 of the guests were headed to Truk Lagoon for another wreck diving adventure.
I hope it doesn’t take me so long to come back.
 

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Travel Tipping

Dining

“How much should I tip?”  This is one of the most common questions that we receive as trip and tour leaders.  For our escorted trip adventures, we always include a tipping guide to help people answer these questions for themselves.  Here are some guidelines:

  • For yacht travel, we recommend 10% – 20% of the trip cost which is usually paid at the end of the trip to the Captain or the Cruise Director.  The tip is shared by the entire crew. More often it is closer to the 10% amount, especially in third world or lower cost of living countries.   But there are some high-end luxury boats where the appropriate amount would be in the 15%-20% range.
  • For daily boat dives the percentage is generally the same 10% – 20% but you should pay it daily.  The best person to give it to is the boat Captain so that it will be shared properly with the entire crew.
  • Lead shore dives are generally more personal dives so you may want to tip a little more than you would for a boat trip, depending on the level of service you received.
  • In Cozumel, we have the benefit of Victor taking care of the diving equipment every day.  He does not share in the boat tips so we tip him separately.  This type of service is also available in other locations so you will want to tip these people separately.  $5.00 to $15.00 is a good tip range depending on the level of service you receive.
  • For destination tours, plan on tipping the guides $5.00 to $20.00 per day depending on the length of the tour and the activities they have taken you to.
  • In a post from Travel & Leisure, they recommend tipping the housekeepers $3.00 to $5.00 per day.  This of course depends on where you are staying and the local economy.  In Japan, you may need to tip more than you might in Borneo.
  • Tipping the Restaurant staff depends on the system they have in place.  If there is a service charge included on the bill, like in Grand Cayman, then you only need to tip a small amount if you received good service.  In other places, like in the United States, 15% to 25% is customary.

Remember, a “Tip” is really an abbreviation for the phrase  “to ensure prompt service.”  But even if things went horribly wrong, there are still people in the tip pool who worked hard but just didn’t have total control of the events affecting your trip.  So, a zero tip is not really something you want to do.  Find the people who did work hard and make sure the Captain knows that you appreciated their work and if possible could he “skew” the tip their way.  It might not happen but you have rewarded them with praise and made it evident that you are not disappointed with everyone.
The other thing you should do if complete the survey of you are presented with one.  This is the only way the crew can improve their service for the next guest.  If someone made your visit special, single them out on the form and let the operator know how much you appreciated them.  This type of praise goes a long way.

Eric Keibler
Eric’s Father used to say that Odessa (where Eric grew up) was the hub of water in the state. You can drive 500 miles in any direction and hit water but there was nothing in-between. So it is not surprising that Eric moved to the coast to be nearer to water and trees. An avid diver and sailor, Eric loves being on the water. He serves as the Managing Director for Oceanic Ventures, Houston’s premier Scuba Diving facility where he teaches both recreational and technical diving. He is also an accomplished author, photographer and sailor.