Great new updates!

I love the rappelling fire escape thing. The more you know.

Yeti - 12 miles for untreated sewage is the rule. In reality, everyone pees everywhere and solid waste really depends on the captain.

8th_Street - sure thing, hoss

plz come back

I didn't notice this the first time around - Is that a freaking faucet at your table??

good catch! Soy sauce on tap?
I would prefer it to be sake :-)

ime basically no one follows this rule and some people even dump their tanks in the harbor

i don't do it but I don't really have to worry about it because one of the companies i've worked for has an on-site tank to pump in to at the dock

also on an unrelated note i don't know if you've ever had to pump the tank on a larger boat but it can be... unpleasant when things go awry

yea toilet paper can be annoying, boats ive been on use the lowest ply possible. we have had huge issues with tampons.. and that is really unpleasant too

We **** in a bucket and throw it overboard on my vessel. With that RV toilet paper.

8th - sorry, been busy with family & friends in DC.

pig4bill - yes it is.

5 south - usually hot water or sometimes tea. Saw a lot of those in Hong Kong.

jmakin - the largest I've had to pump is a 60' cat. Nothing commercial, and do not want to imagine dealing with that. People are absolute animals when it comes to public toilets and sewage disposal.



With time running short in Seoul, I had to start prioritizing things. One of those things was the Noryangjin Fish Market:



Stuff like this is the bread and butter of what I like to experience. Who needs some random old temple or historical site when you can get down in the mix of it with hundreds of people trying to sell you fish? What you are seeing there is about 3% of the total market. It's exactly what you'd imagine it to be, and you should google image search up more photos because it's pretty amazing. Endless stalls of all kinds of seafood. This photo was in the grittier outdoor section that is kind of underneath the railroad tracks. There is also a much newer and nicer building next to this which contains the same stuff.

They have everything that you can find in the water, and then some:



and the place is hopping with people, even during the middle of the weekday:



which is when I figured it would be relatively dead. Must be a nuthouse first thing in the morning when the restaurant folks show up.

Obviously this is a great place to eat, so I carefully selected my baby octopus victims from one of the stalls in the newer building:



and walked across the hall to one of the many small restaurants inside where they will prepare whatever you just bought, in addition to serving their own stuff. I went with san-nakji, and I'll let the wiki entry describe it:

That's about right.

Here's what mine looked like:



What you don't see is that those tentacles were all wriggling around the plate for the next 12 minutes. Lots of videos on youtube if you want to see what that looks like. It's a pretty weird sensation to have the tentacles suctioning themselves to your tongue or the inside of your cheek while you are trying to chew them. A+, 5/5, would eat again.

Cooked seafood was also on the menu. Found a few sick choices in a place near Dongdaemun named Grilled Fish Street. It's named that for exactly the reason you are thinking. Lots and lots of little restaurants in a row grilling up fish, usually right outside the entrance:




got a few raised eyebrows when I walked into this place:



with the implicitly universal "are you sure you're in the right place?" looks. Mother****er, those looks are EXACTLY how I know I'm in the right place! I am here to get my eat on, and I want to eat what you eat, because you know how to eat.

You already know what I ordered, but here it is anyway:




Received a nod of approval later on when they realized I was in it to win it:




Here is the owner showing me how the magic happens:



she saw me taking a photo when the other worker was there, and wanted the photo to be of her, I guess. She was super awesome and was extremely selective about making sure I got a top notch fish. No matter what country you're in, being polite and respectful goes a long way, especially if you are obviously a foreigner. If you try to speak some of the language on top of that, people usually bend over backwards to take care of you.


While I'll gobble down pretty much anything, even I have my limits as to what I will eat, and I draw a hard line at this one:



I'm not eating a dog. Dogs are beyond awesome. They are far better than humans. No way am I eating a dog. If it was only me and a dog and we were both starving, I'd probably just let it eat me.

Now if it's a cat... ship me a napkin, I'm going in.

There are a lot of night markets around Seoul, including in that area:



and while I'm not a shopper, they are fun to walk through, especially when you come across things like this:




I think I had to take that photo about 8 or 9 times before I finally got one where someone wasn't walking thru the middle of the frame. You can see the black bag on the left for the person who just went thru that one.

To me, that is disgusting beyond words. A McDonald's Filet o' Fish is the max I can handle. Too bad you didn't video it as a gif. Then I would really be grossed out!

Kind of what my bedroom looked like in the apartment I lived in for 23 years.

Finally an update, thanks Chop!

I was in Korea 20 years ago, saw someone eating that mass of chopped up, wriggling tentacles, but sadly at the time I had neither the intestinal bravery nor the money (I was living the hippy backpacker life on something like $10-20/day) to afford it.

Big fan of your trip reports, my only request would be that you share with us cost of meals, trips, etc., so we can get a better feel for cost$ in country "X". A meal in Singapore might easily be U.S. $100, while a similar meal in another country might be $15.

chop,

Elite ordering! I would def. do the octi-eat and I would probably have really given the dog some very serious consideration.

Having said that, full marks on the fish joint ordering. My only question is, why can't we have these nice things in North America?

This guy is trying, but I guess it ain't easy in NYC...

http://www.bourdainmarket.com/

https://www.tastingtable.com/dine/na...market-details

Sounds amazing, if he can pull it off:

Damn, chop, that wriggly octopus looks great.

I have grave reservations about a world where "wriggly octopus" all chopped up and writhing around looks great. I'm sure I'm wrong, but that looks more like a punishment than a reward.

You're wrong.

If you mean grilled fish, most Korean restaurants in North America have it. Usually either mackerel or croaker. I prefer croaker.

Croaker (cooked) is not bad, as fish go. I really hate fish, so that's really saying something. I used to catch them a lot as a kid fishing in Mexico.

wriggly octopus confirmed delicious, and obv something everyone should try at least once.

PoC: The prices for the grilled fish places are visible in the back of one of the photos - about 7-8k won, which is around $7.50USD or so. The san-nakji was maybe around $18-19USD or so. About $6 for the live octopi, another $12 for a restaurant to prepare it and give you some seaweed or whatever to munch on.



After a little more goofing around in Seoul, it was time to return to USA#1 and join up with de captain and de cap bro for the sail from Honolulu to Seattle. The flight over to Honolulu was uneventful, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little excited to be back in USA#1. At that point it was mid September 2016 and I had left just over a year earlier, in August of 2015 from DC to Prague to join the boat that never left the Med. It felt like a lot more than a year at that point.

Landed, made my way over to the marina, met up with de cap again and checked out the boat. Mostly just looked it over for fun since de cap had already given it the once over and he knows this stuff far better than I ever will. De cap bro landed a few hours later, and we all went out for some dinner before starting the pre-passage work & errands the following day.

By errands, I mean going to the fishing store:



and picking up the goods.

Hawaii was still Hawaii:




But we had a fun drive along the coastline for a couple of hours one day. After a few days of errands, prep work, and a little bit of sightseeing, we hit our weather window and off we went:




Unfortunately for me, I was a moron and ate all the wrong stuff and none of the right stuff on departure day, which led to my first ever experience with sea sickness. Had a good run, made it 25k+ miles, but they say everyone can get sea sick, just a matter of what it takes for it to hit you. For me, it was being a moron. I've been around sea sick people enough that I know exactly what to do, so it wasn't a horrible experience, just an irritating inconvenience for a day. That'll teach me to get overconfident.

Well, hopefully it'll teach me.

The start of the passage was fine. We headed almost due north as planned, and weather was great. Had some sweet sunsets, etc:



Also managed to land a few fish:





Those are both mahi. They can change color like that on a dime, going from silvery gold with blue to yellow with blue and back again. Beautiful coloration.

Note the presence of our badass gaff in that one photo. That's a de cap special right there. Made to handle the big fish instead of the wussy store made gaffs that snap in half at the sight of a bluegill.

Almost all of the fish work was handled by de cap, and you guys would be amazed to watch him work. Dude is super efficient and his hands are basically a blur when he gets going. Can safely say we wasted pretty much no meat:





and with de cap bro handling the cooking duties:



all I really had to do was sit around and eat fresh fish. Twist my arm why don't ya.

Unfortunately, this nice start to the trip:





didn't last.

We had a problem with the holding tank that caused the V-berth to become unusable almost right after we departed, which meant that de cap bro and I were hot bunking in the salon area for most of the trip. I didn't mind as I had already known I'd be in the salon for the trip. Kind of like having a seat warmer for your bed. Bummer to mostly lose access to the V-berth, tho.

The weather turned sour after the first week, and with one or two days exception, it was kinda miserable most of the rest of the way. The cockpit was sealed up as best we could, but with the winds, the sea state, and the overall weather, it wasn't what you'd call a milk run. We knew we were going to be pointed to weather most of the way, but this was a little worse than I had expected. At one point we even hove-to for a half day because it was just too miserable to do much else. I slept through most of that.

On top of the weather, the autopilot broke, as it always does on pretty much every sailboat I ever set foot on. Here's how the conversation went before we left Honolulu:

chopstick: OK, so I need to let you know - every boat I've ever been on, the autopilot breaks. I'm an autopilot curse.
de cap: I've never had it break on any boat that I've been on.
chopstick: Hopefully your streak continues and mine stops here.

Sadly, it was mine that was to continue.

De cap fixed it a few times, but it was determined to stay broke so we eventually just gave up and hand steered most of the passage. That, along with the weather, was sad times.

Not all hope was lost, though - de cap made muffins a few times:



and they were the best muffins I've ever had, partly due to his mad baking skillz, partly due to the overall miserableness of the weather.

It wasn't just muffins, either - de cap bro continued his magic with some amazing dinners:





which was even more impressive given the tiny galley he had to work with:



which was constantly at a steep angle for most of the passage.

The weather got bad enough that we had to stop fishing for most of the remaining passage, but we did get a few more on board before that:





not pictured is a huge wahoo, a tiny little tuna, and a couple more mahi. We also effectively let one mahi go as the weather was just too rough to bring him in. I say effectively because he either made it off the hook or someone else came along and ate him.

de cap bro did eventually try to poison us with this:





but both de cap and I refused to eat it. It was the only thing we refused to eat in 23 days.


While the passage itself was pretty meh due to the ****ty weather, it was a blast sailing with de cap and de cap bro. These guys are consummate professionals. They know what they are doing and are very, very good at what they do. Mostly I just had to stay out of their way, not fall asleep on watch, and clean a dish every now and then. The weather put a damper on things (literally), but I'd sail with these guys again in a heartbeat. At no point was I ever concerned for my safety, and de cap never once asked me to do anything I wasn't absolutely sure he'd be willing to do himself. You guys should definitely try and wheedle your way onto one of his passages if you can.

Bonus conversation when de cap made muffins the first time:

de cap: what color wrapper do you want to be yours?
chopstick: green
de cap: you can't have green, that's my color
chopstick: blue
de cap: you can't have blue, that's de cap bro's color
chopstick: what the **** de cap what kind of operation are you running here goddamnit

Yup, them store-bought gaffs hardly ever come with duck tape.

What does that entail? You fold up the sails and start the motor?

Damn, that me me want to eat fish! And I hate fish.

That looks sort of what the local Mexicans where we used to fish, called sea trout. What is it?