Copa, Copacabana - Lake Titicaca

After a few nice days on lake titikaca catching rediculessly slow moter boats I hoped accross the boder to Copacabana, a charming little village on the boarder of Bolivia peru. Here i stoped for several hours to drink jucies, eat lunch hike up to a little mountain cemitary and sail on a sailboat... for 10 bucks I initially thought that I was renting it for myself. However (luckily for me) it came with ‘El Capitán’. Sailing involved about 15-20 min of rowing, due to my obvious muscular physic, i was doing at least half. Grasping the splintering hulks of wood in my powerful clutches and with my demi-godlike muscles flexing beneath my taught shirt, I rowed with much sound and fury - and sadly little actual forward momentum. Once we got to more open water we attached the rudder and sail. Impressed with my creative steering and cores plotting skills, I finally attempted to tack. Unable to clearly establish my intentions and then heroically cocking up the turn by getting the mainsheet (or is that an outhall) caught on the ore and having the boom flap uselessly in the fallow breeze ‘El Capitán’ helped out with a few strokes of the ores and then attaching the boom back where it belongs. So impressed was he at my nautical skills that promptly promoted me to head bilger which i excelled at. With ‘El Capitán’ at the helm i attempted to make some small talk amongst two salty sea dogs as we were. This too did not go as planned – possibly because i don’t know my pico from my.... uhm actually that’s the only Spanish word i learnt and i’m not sure if it’s sail, boom, gaff, rig, or sheet. The explanations ‘El Capitán’ gave were short involved nodding generally limited to ‘Si’ and at one point followed by something that sounded an awful lot like ‘You’re not paying me enough for this shit’. At this point i should take a moment to describe the boat to a sailor i would say it’s a small squaresail (gaff rig) like a couta... however unlike the beautiful king-billy pine example that some of my families sometimes sail up the Tamar, this one has ores made of rough round timber with two unequal sized planks nailed on; the boom floats freely (no goseneck) till you tie it (a twine downhall?) to one side of the center bunkseat, which then occasionally needs to be banged in again with an ore; The bilge pump consisted of a cut open coke bottle; The sheet is tied on to a rusty hook not fed though a non-slip thingy or a figure of 8 thingy (yep run out of nautical terms); There is no centre board, and the rudder will lean in at a 45 degrees angle when trying to steer. All of this seemed as natural as raindrops on kittens to ‘El Capitán’ but it was ‘Muí diferente’ from where i was sitting. ‘El Capitán’ guided the boat back to the pier where i leapt off and moored our boat and payed the good captain upon which he looked for the first time impressed :)

A Fun day and one of my best bussing days so far.