#this is what he looks like getting ready to board Fernando's boat

[rollinbrigittenv8]

A Galapagos Cruise On Board the Incredible Mary Anne

When heading to the Galapagos, you certainly have some options. You can try and do it alone, basing yourself out of Puerto Ayoro and arranging day trips to other islands. Or you could join a multi-day Galapagos cruise and travel between the islands on a boat.

A Galapagos cruise is not a typical cruise. These are not huge ships with thousands of passengers. Most of the boats are of the yacht type, some looking good and others looking like they’ve seen much better days, holding anywhere from 10 – 100 passengers. Itineraries vary between 3, 5 and 8 days (sometimes longer) and between eastern and western and central routes as well.

I took an 8-day, eastern itinerary on board the S/S Mary Anne, run by the excellent Andando Tours.

The Mary Anne is the only sailing vessel in the Galapagos and the only vessel that could indeed complete its voyages by wind power only.

She had a presence. She was different than every single other boat we saw during our 8-day trip. She had a classic style to her, whereas the other boats were just that, boats.

The Mary Anne holds 14 passengers, with a combination of double, twin and single cabins (with no extra fees if you’re a solo traveler!). There are 10 crew members, too. The price of the trip includes accommodation, transportation, food, local permits and all activities.

Here’s a short video I made that shows you what it’s like on board the S/S Mary Anne…

S/S Mary Anne Galapagos Cruise: Accommodation and Food

The cabins are a good size, if not the largest cabins I’ve ever seen. And while they are simple, they are spotless, bright and comfortable (they have A/C, great beds and even closet space, along with good-size bathrooms with a full shower). I slept wonderfully every night, falling asleep within seconds of hitting the pillow.

All meals were eaten communal style at two large tables, with all kinds of dishes being served. The food was excellent and varied at all times. Breakfast would involve eggs, fruit, breads, local pastries and more. And for lunch and dinner, there was fish and meat, salads, soup, a couple of local sides and a delicious dessert.

After most of our activities, there were also fresh snacks waiting for us when we got on board and there were always snacks, coffee, tea and water available in the dining room throughout the day.

S/S Mary Anne Galapagos Cruise: Activities

When it comes to activities, each day is divided into a morning and afternoon session and usually, there were two activities per session. These could be any combination of hiking, snorkeling or kayaking, depending on what island we were at and what there was to see.

The hiking was never too strenuous as it was always along well defined paths set up by the Galapagos conservation board. The hiking pace was always slow as there was simply so much to see everywhere that our guide would stop frequently to explain what we were looking at. Even after a two hour hike, our group wanted more every time!

Kayaking took place on sturdy two-person kayaks and we usually took them out along the coast of an island, into beautiful coves, along white sand beaches where sea lions were playing around and past rocky outcrops where we could spot all kinds of wildlife. It was super fun to be out there paddling around in such settings.

With the snorkeling, the equipment was top notch, and the snorkel sites were some of the best I’ve seen anywhere in the world. Hundreds of fish, sharks, sea lions, octopus, stingrays, turtles and more would make up a typical snorkel session. Every time we went snorkeling I said to myself that I would only stay in the water for 20 minutes or so and every single time I ended up out there until the end, usually an hour or more.

(One of the staff from the boat would follow us in a dingy so that if anyone wanted to get out of the water at any time, he was right there to pick you up.)

All of the above were not mandatory of course. Every activity is always optional as the idea is for all passengers to have the experience they want to have, something the staff stressed often.

S/S Mary Anne Galapagos Cruise: Our Guide

Our guide, Fernando, was phenomenal. Every other guide we passed during our hikes would stop and ask him questions as he clearly had more knowledge than all of them combined. His lengthy experience in these islands was unmatched and his passion for his work turned every single activity into an eye-opening, educational treat.

Again, phenomenal is the only word to describe him.

He also took safety very seriously.

While we watched as passengers from other boats fell on rocks, got separated from their group and were forced to board their dingy in dangerous conditions, we never had any of those issues. Fernando and the team were always watching, always helping and always making sure that everyone was safe at all times.

This might not seem like a big deal but in the Galapagos Islands, it’s a wild and rough terrain. And if you’re not careful, there are opportunities to hurt yourself. But again, nobody on our trip had any issues at all thanks to our guide and the incredibly attentive staff.

S/S Mary Anne Galapagos Cruise: The Experience

At night, we would head outside and stare up at the sky in order to take in that magical delight that is a sky full of stars, from horizon to horizon. The boat gently pushed through the small waves, we sipped our beers and enjoyed a mix of conversation and silence until we were ready for sleep.

In the mornings, despite the early wake-ups, there was plenty of chatter, with the excitement about spending yet another day in these islands quite evident among us.

And if you think that watching sea lions and sharks and iguanas and albatross and blue-footed boobies and turtles would get old after a couple of days, believe me when I say that boredom is not possible when in the Galapagos. Every moment spent observing wildlife is beyond fascinating, it’s never the same as any other moment and it only further solidifies the notion that a trip to these islands is an experience of a lifetime.

It’s not only the wildlife though. It’s the views, volcanoes, beaches, colors, natural aromas, plants and trees, warm winds and pure remoteness that builds this trip into something that can’t be copied anywhere else on this planet.

A Galapagos cruise is surreal. It needs to be experienced. And I can’t imagine a better way to visit this mind-blowing destination than on the beautiful S/S Mary Anne, a ship as unique as the islands she travels around!

Any questions about the Galapagos or about my trip on board the Mary Anne? Let me know!

More posts from my Galapagos cruise:

My Galapagos Trip – 34 Favorite Photos My Galapagos Trip was an Experience of a Lifetime

The post A Galapagos Cruise On Board the Incredible Mary Anne appeared first on Wandering Earl.

[itsworn]

Take Five With Kenny Duttweiler

Saticoy, California, is a small town that sits just east of Ventura, which is a bit northwest of Los Angeles. In the last census, there were 1,029 people living there. It’s the sort of place you can drive through without ever realizing you’ve been any place at all.

There, in a ramshackle building off an alleyway where his shop has been since 1970, Ken Duttweiler is building some of the best engines on Earth—engines like all-billet V6s turbocharged to the tune of 2,000 hp. Engines like those that have found a home in George Poteet’s Speed Demon streamliner that seems to set a new record every year at Bonneville. Duttweiler’s fantastically powerful engines have spread his renown across the planet. If there’s anyone who has become a legend in his own dyno room, it’s Duttweiler.

He’s close to finishing his eighth decade, but hasn’t cut himself any slack. As you read this, he’s likely bolting his latest ridiculous concoction up to his dyno and getting ready to run a few hundred pulls to get the fuel delivery exactly right. Duttweiler is still as sharp as ever, and now he’s armed with even more experience.

In 2015, Jeff Smith did a Take 5 with him, so here’s another one—actually, this is more like a Take 67, because 5 minutes isn’t enough. If you’re with Kenny Duttweiler, the best thing to do is shut up and let him talk.

HRM] Are the challenges today different than they were when you started?

KD] I don’t think they’re necessarily different, but they’ve grown more intense. Things were so simple when I was 30. You had carburetors and electronic ignition (if you were really into it). And today we have all these late-breaking innovations and electronics and stuff of that nature. Plus, there’s the ability to build stuff that never existed. Today you can just say, ‘I’m going to build’ and someone will make it for you. You have to think further in into everything you’re doing. It’s more challenging today than it’s ever been.

HRM] How many of your customers still want Buick stuff?

KD] It’s really weird. In the ’90s, I wanted to get away from that Clark Kent syndrome (people get typecast—like George Reeves, the original TV Superman). It’s just a family of things that you do, and they don’t seem to just go away. There are like four or five Buicks out here. You don’t want to make that your mainstay, but it just keeps going.

HRM] Is there anything you’d like to do that you haven’t already done?

KD] The only thing I don’t get to do that I’d like to do is hit the dragstrip more often. That’s my personal, little fun thing. Other than that—I’m not a guy who takes tours, I don’t like airplanes, and I hate boats. So I’m pretty easy to please. And I haven’t set lofty goals that I need to go someplace or do something. But keeping me away from that dragstrip mentality is tough.

HRM] How much longer do you think you can do this?

KD] Right now, I’m in the same position mentally and physically I was 10 or 15 years ago. You hate to look at the hourglass because people like to project. It’s tough for me to project, because I treat this as business as usual. The amazing thing is that people don’t realize how old I am, or don’t care how old I am. Because they just keep requesting to get stuff done. If I took them all on right now, we couldn’t even walk through the shop. I have to kind of space them out. Luckily, my reputation is out there for not getting them done immediately. So people are willing to wait. And I’m willing to go as long as it takes. I could not be retired. No way in hell I can. Sitting around and watch TV. The only way retirement could work for me is that I’d have to have so much goddamn money that I couldn’t figure out how to spend it all.

HRM] You have one daughter and three grandkids. Do any of them want to come in and run all this?

KD] The oldest grandkid, when he was real, real young, he lived at the dragstrip with us. So I kind of figured he get the hook in him real good. In fact, the middle one was more interested in that. So he works at ARP. And his dad works at ARP. That older one, he works for an auction company. He’s got that computer-generation mentality. He loves that stuff. So, the girl, she’s smart and goes to college. All three turned out good and all three are smarter than hell. If you want to make a good living with a good retirement and all that, businesses like mine really aren’t the way to go. Because the billable hours that you come up with are usually way, way less than the amount of time you put into it. You might spend 4 hours making a bracket to hold a crank sensor, and then turn around and figure you can’t charge 4 hours for a piece of aluminum with a hole in it.

HRM] You’ve been in this alley forever. Haven’t you ever thought of moving someplace else?

KD] Always. But you get more involved in what you’re doing, the convenience of it. I’d love to have a Taj Mahal, I think everybody aspires to that. But what I’ve got going here is pretty darn good. At the end of the driveway, we have a little coffee shop thing up there, so you don’t have to walk more than a couple hundred feet to go eat lunch. We’ve got ARP, which we rely upon for a lot of what we do, and they’re right here in the area. And it turns out that Turbonetics and the Vortech supercharger guys, they all kind of moved this way. So instead of me moving toward them, they moved toward me. It’s cheap enough to stay here. The rent isn’t that high. Location might mean something if you’ve got your name on the building and you’re soliciting people. One time I went down to Milodon’s down in the San Fernando Valley. I had some Chrysler Hemi heads and they were going to put those little O-rings so you could pull the plugs out. So I’m driving around and driving around, and finally I spotted a building and a little side door was open. So I stuck my head inside and, sure enough, that was Milodon. It impressed me that a guy with that stature—and he was a big name in the ’60s—and no name on the building. You couldn’t even hardly find the number on the building. And I thought that was pretty cool. So I just never put a name on anything. Now you can just put the name into the smartphone and it takes you here. I’ve noticed in the last 10 years or so that people say that they’ll come by, and they show up. And prior to that, you had to give them directions—get off the 101 to Central Avenue to Vineyard.

HRM] You’ve never had a line of Duttweiler products. No catalog or mail-order business.

KD] That may be the one thing that should have been attended to much better. We’ve had a few parts. At one time, we had intercoolers that we sold. Then when competition came in, it was easy to back off on that. The most enduring thing we’ve had is the neck for the intercooler on the Buick Grand National. We sold so many of those I can’t even count them all.

HRM] So the major product you sell at Duttweiler Performance is Kenny Duttweiler.

KD] Yeah, it’s just me. And as long as I’m around, it’s around. When I’m gone, there’s no one to sell it to.

HRM] So who is working here now?

KD] It’s just me, Margie, and Nick.

HRM] How far can you push yourself? When do you have to cry uncle?

KD] The thing I run into, it’s not anything mechanical, it’s when I have to deal with electronics and stuff like that. Wading through some software that’s going to do the control valves on the dyno back there. I have no background in it, and all I know is that you’ve got the software to look at it, and I have no clue what this stuff means. So I start hunting around and then I have a friend of mine who’s wired up like an electronics board. I don’t see that stuff. I see mechanical stuff.

HRM] Are there any cars out there you’d like to own?

KD] There are two or three new ones out there. The new GT500 Mustang that will be out shortly. Or maybe the ZL1 Camaro. I like the looks of the Corvette, but I can’t put myself in the driver seat of a Corvette because that’s not me. But I can be in the ZL1 because that’s a Corvette with a Camaro body. I’m so picky, I can find a fault with every car. There’s not one that I haven’t found four or five things I could fix to make it more like me.

HRM] So you’re haunted by your own expertise.

KD] Yeah, sometimes it gets in the way of my own fun.

HRM] You’ve never been an old-car guy. When you started futzing with the Buicks, they were brand new.

KD] When I flip that page in a book, I’m not going back to that page. We’ve already been through that and we can’t change it. But if we’re working on something for tomorrow, we might be able to change that.

The post Take Five With Kenny Duttweiler appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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[lil-shiro]

Lance ~