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Monday, October 03, 2005
HURRICANE OTIS; BURSTING AT THE SEAMS; “THE DOZER”; SOME PICTURES FROM RANCHO EL NOGAL
Sunday, 02 October 2005
Mid-afternoon and it’s really starting to rain again. Tropical Storm Otis has been upgraded to a Category 3 Hurricane. Since yesterday we have been feeling its effects. Even though the storm centre is still south of Cabo San Lucas at the southern top of Baja California Sur, the larger pattern of warm air producing clouds and rain is being felt all over northern Mexico. For us in the Tutuaca Mountains it’s humid and warm, it begins to cloud up by late morning or early afternoon and, sometime well before dark, we get an intense tropical squall, which sometimes includes hail and gusty winds. It’s like having the rainy season back again just when we thought it was over and when the grass and meadow flowers were beginning to turn brown. Now every meadow is covered in tall yellow flowers.
The metal for the roof over the front half of the ranchhouse is still on order. So now, within a few minutes, rain is dripping from the big stripped-pine rafters and running down the adobe walls. Clearly there is not much that can be done about the drips until a roof is completed over the front half of the house. But a pity about the walls that were painted such a lovely baroque ochre. After several rains earlier in our stay here, the paint has now fallen away to reveal the wet mud walls. Then the mud begins to run down to the floor as well. In the kitchen and dining areas, we put pots and pans around to catch the drips.
Vilisar is tied to a mooring buoy San Carlos, Sonora, i.e. closer to the main path of Hurricane Otis. The storm is heading straight up the Sea of Cortés with winds predicted to be 85 mph with gusts of 105 mph. I sent a message to Alex, our neighbour in the anchorage at San Carlos, asking him what he intends to do and if he would please check Vilisar’s mooring lines and, especially, the chafing gear. Back in Washington State a few years ago when we left the boat on a state marine-park buoy, we returned to find that one of the lines had leapt out of the bronze chock during a storm, the chafing gear had slid down, and the rope had chafed through completely, leaving the only back-up line to keep the boat from drifting away or washing up on a reef. Alex wrote back that the marina staff had been around to check everybody’s mooring.
We shall see. Certainly there is nothing to do from this distance and I can’t get back before the hurricane comes. And what would I do if I did go back? I could, I suppose, run the boat’s engine to take the pressure off the mooring. But that means staying on Vilisar during the hurricane. Do I really want to be doing that? I guess if I were on the scene and Vilisar were to be washed up on the beach I could prevent the vessel’s being plundered. Well, watch and pray. The brunt of the storm should pass through tomorrow.
Rancho el Nogal bursting at the seams
A day or so before I left the ranch with Bob for (as it turned out) a week in Chihuahua, a family of five arrived at the ranch from Florida. Bill and Terry, the parents, along with Joe (19), Jeannie (17) and John (15) have a lot of ranch and farm and especially horse experience. They also know a lot about off-grid electricity including solar and other eco-friendly power generating systems. They are really nice and pitch right in. John is a walking encyclopaedia about reptiles; Jeanie is helping Tanner (10) to prepare her driving miniature pony for the upcoming show in a nearby town. And Joe, the eldest, is quite an expert on solar power and electrical power. He and his Dad are working to rewire the 12-volt system that supplies power to the ranchhouse complex. I am scheming to get Joe to improve the setup in the guest house so we can read in bed at night and charge my laptop there.
At present they are eating ranch-style with everybody else here at the ranchhouse. Cooking at present therefore means feeding fifteen mouths at each sitting. After weeks of just a few of us, the pandemonium can be a bit much; screaming kids; several adults in the kitchen trying to be helpful, lots of people talking at once, uncertainty about who is supposed to be cooking and cleaning up.
We have however now developed a kitchen rota (which I call the Kitchen Patrol or KP) whereby each family unit takes a whole day: breakfast is ready by 0700, dinner at 1900, and some grazing-type lunch at 1300. The cooks put out a big basin of washing up water and everyone is now expected, encouraged, cajoled, nagged, or ordered to wash up their own dishes in hot soapy water and rinse them under the tap. The cooks are left with cleaning the pots and pans, washing off tables and leaving a clean kitchen for the early-rising KP the next morning. This has taken a little of the confusion and even tension out of so many new people getting along.
The amount of comestibles consumed by fifteen people is pretty amazing so we are having to go for giant packages of everything. At present there is no vegetable garden at Rancho el Nogal. Until there is – and I have no idea whether it is already too late to plant one –shopping involves not just soap, toothpaste, cooking oils, butter, and canned goods, it also means picking up fruit and vegetables as well. There are some special dietary requirements in our expanded group but so far we have been able to work around them and everybody gets fed. Bob and Cindy push beans and tortillas pretty heavily, but Norteamericanos don’t really fancy a steady and monotonous diet of beans. At least the KP rota means that you get a couple of days off so the duty doesn’t seem that onerous any more.
Bob wants to wait until the weather gets cooler before butchering the mean-tempered bull, one of the pigs or the lamb. For one thing a few cold days will kill the flies, which can be a real nuisance. (As an aside, we don’t really have many mosquitoes here because of the very porous and rocky ground, not to mention the steep and mountainous terrain; there is therefore very little standing water for mosquitoes to breed in.) The colder weather also means that the cool rooms are more effective. (While Bob and I were a week away in Chihuahua, Dutch cleared out both of the storage rooms in the old house and sorted out the tools, equipment, harness, parts, oils, and food storage. I am secretly glad I was not around to have to help! But what a difference it has made.) (An interesting project the new family are talking about, by the way, is installing a hydroelectric generating plant in the Tutuaca River below the house. This could eventually mean real refrigeration.
“THE DOZER”
“The Dozer” is a 60-tonne monster with four huge rubber tires, a huge diesel engine, and a big dozer blade. Ranchero Bob bought it cheap at auction a few years ago in the U.S.A. and brought it down by truck to Yepachic and drove it in from there. The idea is to use it to keep the ranch road passable. Goodness knows the road needs lots of work.
The first job that Bill took on after arriving last week was to get the road in shape. Nothing had been done to it for a year and the past twelve months have seen plenty of heavy rain.
About a mile from the ranch while traversing a cut that runs across a hill about sixty feet above an arroyo with a stream, the monster slipped down sideways off the road. The right two balloon tires were still on the road; the left two were off. The whole dozer would have rolled down the roughly twenty-metre slope into the stream bed below had not the machine come up against a road-side tree. We can thank the tree for preventing the dozer from rolling and Bill being catapulted out of the driver’s seat and probably killed or injured. As it was, his heartbeat was probably at an all-time high.
Unfortunately, the ground is basically just loose gravel and sand. Since this approach seems to be taking too long, however, it is decided to rig heavy cables to the blade of the dozer, let the rear end swing downhill and then let the whole dozer drop down backwards into the streambed. From there, it is believed, the dozer can be driven downstream and eventually out where the stream meets the road. The risk is high that the big Michigan dozer will roll and cause major damage to the machine. This risk is contemplated and accepted.
A lot of hours are spent rigging heavy cables from the dozer-blade up to trees farther up the slope. Since the topsoil is so thin here in the mountains, these scrub trees (live oaks, arbutus, etc.) therefore have no real root systems and are unlikely to resist any real pull. The heavy rain last night has made the ground even more unstable; just standing on the edge of the road you can feel the ground slipping away beneath your feet. Nevertheless, the thinking is that, even if the trees pull out they might actually feather the dozer’s fall and keep the front of the behemoth pointing up the hill.
The heavy cables are affixed to the blade. A come-along is attached to a huge boulder underneath the dozer; Dutch and Simon are underneath the machine working the boulder loose. Parallel to this, Ranchero Bob finally cuts away a log that is contributing to holding the machine up. Then finally, Bill and Joe attach separate lines to the steering wheel and the throttle, Bob climbs up near the driver seat to start the engine. He is wearing a mountaineer’s harness and Axel and Dutch are holding the safety line ready to yank him free if the dozer starts to roll. The clutch is engaged in forward, the engine revs up with a throaty roar, along with huge amounts of smoky diesel exhaust from the stack. The wheels, spinning, try ineffectually to push the vehicle uphill but, when the throttle is cut back, the vehicle, now pointing up hill as planned, begins to churn in the loose gravel and sink backwards and then sideways again down the hill coming to rest a couple of yards down the steep slope. As it goes, the cables fastened to the trees up the slope pull out and a big rock or two plunge down onto the road right next to where Bill and others are standing. I hear people shouting warnings. The rocks hit the road, shatter into pieces and keep on over the edge of the road into the ravine followed by a lot of other debris. Nobody hurt and no damage done. The engine stalls and the silence is strong. We run forward to inspect the situation.
The fact that the dozer has not rolled can be considered a major achievement. I have been taking odds that it would. But now what? It has not slid that far, in fact. After deliberation, it is decided to try again but this time simply to let the engine try to swing the vehicle so it can fall directly downhill. Bob gets up there again, the engine roars, the remote steering and the throttle are engaged and the wheels churn again. The dozer begins to slide rapidly downhill and only comes to a halt when the rear end catches a bigger tree about two-thirds of the way down.
It is still sideways but this time the tires have really bedded into the soft ground and a couple of logs have jammed under the chassis. There is no weight on either the right front or the rear left tires; the whole machine is tipped at a very precarious angle. The risk that it will roll if the tree gives way is great. By this time it is 1430 and Bob decides that it is time to head back to the ranchhouse for lunch and to ponder what to do next. Bob is on an adrenaline high from the danger of crawling onto a dangerously tilting machine.
It was interesting to watch. It was a real guy thing. Everyone focussing on the technical problem at hand, playing with big machines, handling heavy hand tools and equipment, dealing with physical danger. The group leaders were talking well to each other. No arguing. Nobody trying to push his weight around.
Now they shall have to work to get the bulldozer the final third of the hill down to the stream bed. Stay tuned.
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