Reflections from the Pacific

They say the hardest part about writing is getting started. Whoever ‘they’ are, it’s spot on! My excuse has been that nothing exciting has happened so why write about grocery shopping in exotic locations when you could, if you wanted to, drive to the nearest “world” market and even have a larger selection! Well now we’ve visited 4 countries, transited the Panama Canal, and are on our way north up the Pacific. I guess a blog is in order!

As I sit in my cockpit gazing out at a flat sea, reflections are easily come by. With hind-sight being 20/20, high lights and low lights all become fond memories.

Since I know you like the Oh Shit parts as well, I have to admit that even getting out of Bahia de Amatigue was a trial for both us and our buddy boat Rock n Roll with friends Russ & Janet aboard. For them it was a malfunctioning auto pilot. No-one wants to look foreword to having to hand steer over-night for 125 miles to Utila, don’t let’s even think about Roatan and beyond! Our issue was much more stupid; we got our dinghy tow rope stuck in the prop! I know, a real bone-head stunt, but the decision was to go to Graciosa and get re-organized! And did I mention that that day was Friday! Superstition or not, we know that it’s bad luck to start a voyage on a Friday so the story holds true! And we are after all a sailboat! We also had a depth sounder that only worked part time, and our old trusty computer was giving us fits about wanting to run out navigation program! Therefore in order to ward off any and all evil spirits, we decided to officially start our voyage the next day, a Saturday, from Bahia de Graciosa.

True, we still had an overheating engine and Rock n Roll were hand steering, but our prop was free of the tow rope, but we did have a nice rest up overnight and were prepared to face a 20+- hour run to Utila. All we had to do was follow R n R as their depth sounder and navigation program was working!

We did encounter a rather nasty squall around 3AM which didn’t seem so bad until we saw the height of the waves at sunrise. Easily 10 to 14 footers!

After an overnight rest at Utila, we had a record run to Roatan! 10 hours, our longest time ever! It’s typically a 5 to 6 hr trip. By now the engine is making clunking sounds as well as over heating! We limped into French Harbor and secured a slip at Fantasy Island and began the search for a mechanic we could trust! After 4 or 5 no shows we took one that was breathing! Actually, he was pretty good as our clunking noise was diagnosed as 3 very worn rocker arms due to the previous mechanic we had work on it 2 years ago had pinched the upper end oil supply pipe! We were very relieved as thoughts of putting a new motor in were giving us nightmares!

On the high note, we had an absolutely great time at Fantasy Is.! Harbor! Great diving and even rubber ducky races! We had the guys at West marine Garland send us a depth sounder got our computer Navigation program running and a fellow cruiser even installed 2 back-up programs on my laptop and 1 on Jeanie’s. We had back-ups to having to follow Rock n Roll! Alas, time to move on came and boat repairs done, there was no way to escape the fond farewells to our Roatan friends and make for our next small jump. Only about 30 miles to Guanaja and there to wait for a long weather window, as our next jump would be over 350 miles to Providencia Columbia.

That was our best passage yet! There was a group of 6 boats all going the same way and all six were watching the weather! We actually made such good time, we had to drop anchor at a small group of islands so we could kill 7 hours! Otherwise, we wouldn’t have daylight to enter the harbor at Providencia! It’s never a good idea to enter an unknown harbor at night!

The city front of Providencia, all lit up with Christmas lights and a fireworks show for New Years Eve was very special. A 50 ft. plus catamaran became the party boat for gift exchange and pot luck. Do you get the idea we eat a lot and well? We ended up staying for two weeks, one because it’s a pretty town, two waiting for another weather window, the next leg of our trip was 250 miles without any convenient islands to rest and kill time and third, as an aside, the first Caribbean island with no bugs that bite! It was really an island paradise!

After checking into Portabelo, Panama we visited our last Caribbean island paradise, Isla Linton. Linton was everything an island paradise should be with palm trees, warm water, and cool breezes in the afternoon. And about a mile and a half away through a mangrove cut was Panamarina with great hamburgers, laundry facilities and internet!

At this point, we realized we needed a marina fix! Besides just wanting to pamper ourselves, there were two issues we needed to address. First was our mechanical battery charging system and second a solar charging system. We have to this point been getting by running our main engine for an hour in the morning and another hour at night. Besides being noisy and hot, it’s not very economical and way too much wear and tear on our poor main motor
.

Shelter Bay has got to be the nicest marina we’ve stayed at since we left the Boardwalk Marina in Texas! It is also the absolutely most expensive! How expensive, you might ask, only Jeanie knows and she’s not telling! I can tell you that having a cool pool, and floating concrete docks was priceless! Boat projects became almost a pleasure. (Notice I said ‘almost’)

After many hours of climbing back into the darker recesses of our bilge I discovered that our battery charger’s cooling fan wasn’t working which caused the unit to heat up and reduce the charge rate. The solution turned out to be as simple as duct taping a ‘muffin’ fan over the opening and hard wiring it to a battery. Since I had all the parts, fan, switch and wire, aboard, the ‘fix’ cost me nothing! We had planned to spend $400 to $500.00 for a new Battery charger so decided to go ahead with adding solar power as well.

In Colon, we were able to buy the material to mount the panels to our davits for $140.00. It took almost a whole day to bus into Panama City and pick up the panels and 2 more days to have the system up and running!

Our solar panels start charging at first light and at the height of the day put out more than 20 Amps! We are now able to sit at a secluded anchorage for days without any motorized charging! Very peaceful!

We didn’t get to the mooring on Lake Gantun until 10:30 PM and after a pasta dinner all hands turned in as the advisor was due at 6:00AM! It was a good thing he was late as we didn’t even get moving until 6:20! Then began the tedious part of the trip, a 28mile run across the lake and the advisors won’t let you sail! The controllers of the locks always allow 6 hours to do the lake, so if you’re a fast boat, over 5 knots, they make you wait at the Pedro Miguel lock until your time. In our case, being on a very fast boat, we had to wait for over 2 hours! At last we re-rafted with our buddy from the night before and started down. Down is much easier and anti-climatic! We stayed rafted for about a mile to the 1^st of the Miraflores locks and after doing 2 more “downs” we were in the Pacific.

After a very restful night tied to a mooring at the Balboa YC, Russ, Janet, and I boarded a bus that would take us back to Colon and Shelter Bay where Rock n Roll was waiting for her turn. Jeanie had to stay with the Oasis as the YC wouldn’t allow an unattended boat.

My thoughts are that while I wouldn’t go out of my way to line handle, I’m glad I did and while horror stories abound, a canal transit is probably as safe as or safer than a trip to the supermarket, except, a hell of a lot more fun!

We stayed at Balboa for a few more days while gathering provisions in Panama City, but the wakes from all the tanker and tug boat traffic made the decision to get along with our trip a little easier!

Fantasy Island, Roatan

And where is that little ‘Apu’ character anyway?

When Guatemala say’s you must get out for a while and get a different countries stamp in your passport before you are OK to return, where do you go? Some think Belize.
Certainly, the brochures and beautiful water lead one to believe that paradise lies just a few hours north and east of the Livingston Bar. However, checking in there is quite expensive and difficult. You not only need to check in with the Port Captain and Immigrations, but Customs and Agriculture as well! Then, we must remain there 3 days before you can check back in to Guatemala. The Guatemalans have not liked Belize since the British stole it (Belize) from them! Now, recent activities there indicate unfriendliness toward cruisers in general. In general, their attitude is, while you are here, leave all your $$! Then get out! In addition, the weather is a factor as between the winter storms and summer’s hurricane season, anchoring in not too good holding ground behind a low laying island; off a lee shore is nerve wracking! (Roatan is a very tall island and a decent wind block.)

The Mexico and the Caribbean Rivera is just too far away! Therefore, that leaves Honduras!

Now while we cannot speak from experience, to cruise the Honduran mainland coast can be very beautiful as well as daunting. There are very few charts of the bays and inlets and those that exist are rough drawings in cruising books with “not to be used for navigation” written all over them. Also these anchorages are on a ‘lee’ shore with North facing entrances and questionable holding ground, therefore, during any one of ‘your’ winter storms, it can be uncomfortably lumpy to downright dangerous in any of the bays open to the North!(Which is most of them!)

Now, our plan has been to watch the weather for a favorable wind and do a 24-hour motor-sail from either Tres Puntas or, like last time, directly from the Livingston Bar to Utila. Once we have " made landfall" at Utila, we have been able to get a good nights rest and complete the last 40-mile son to Roatan the next day. Getting back to the Rio is easy as long as the trade winds are blowing! In addition, while in Roatan, French Harbor and West End are both our favorite places until now!

I say until now because this year we discovered dockside living at Fantasy Island to be delightful! We moved into the marina the week before Christmas to get set up for Jeanie’s mom, who spent the holiday with us. Stepping onto the dock is a lot easier than climbing into my inflatable dinghy and using taxis’ is a whole lot easier than clambering up onto a ‘working’ shrimp boat dock! Especially for an octogenarian and, it seemed to work even better for us ’just’ old farts! After she left, the dock-master, Wally, made us an offer we could not turn down! We have been in our favorite slip ever since (2 going on to 3 months now)!
Therefore, we thought you might like a few pictures to show you what our idea of paradise is like: These are a few photos taken from our version of "Da Plane!" This shows F.I., French Cays Harbor and across entrance above the island, is the resort of 'Coco View'. Within a mile either way from the entrance is some of the best diving Roatan has to offer!Just out of this shot, the reef drops to 100 ft and then quickly to over 500feet! This is the part we skin dive.Oasis is the one around the corner to the left. Below is what we call our "Covered Wagon" look: Since it's the back of the boat, we call this our Back Yard, but this is our front door as well.
We have a tranquil view of the bay from our "porch".

Our hummingbird feeder has attracted over 4 dozen birds and their antics and posturing over the feeder is quite a show. Some have become very tame, but none have landed on our fingers, yet,! A couple more of our 'pets', below... Like this bug eating machine who lives in this speaker
Holy bat shit, Robin! At night, our Humming-bird feeder becomes a bat feeder. Aboard the Oasis, we welcome anything that will keep the bugs away! and F.I. has a solution as well...6 days a week this guy fogs the whole island! We prefer the more natural method of insect control, but this way is very highly effective! As a result, time spent on our front porch is much more pleasant.


I don't really know how many gallons of water in our 'Salt water' aquarium, but on nice days, we can swim in it! The next photo was taken through my prescription polarized sun glasses!
The 2 ropes that cross the aquarium lead to a tree on the bank and are used during high North and North-west winds. With them, we were quite comfortable during 45 to 50 wind gusts even if the docks are not in the best of shape. This is a result of the earthquake last year.(far right photo) Unfortunately, the current management team has decided not to fix this as at this time, boats can still tie to it. We just have to run a lot of lines ashore! Unfortunately, these "pets" do not live in our aquarium, but are prevalent below 50 feet on the reef. We do have pet monkeys, but they don't taste as good We have many other "pets" running around loose, like peacocks, geese, iguanas, some really strange looking Chinese ducks, and even stranger looking tailless rat looking animals that hop around like rabbits.
The hot showers are a disappointment. When we first arrived, they were "open air" meaning "no doors"! Since all the dive boat workers eat lunch right about where I stood to take this picture, we think they enjoyed the show! If you look closely, notice there are no shower heads, only a pipe sticking out of the wall, but the water is really hot! And speaking of "Hot"? Maybe this will help answer the question of why it took them so long to put doors on!? The lagoon is a great place to sun bathe,
splash in, or just wiggle your toes in the sand.. Then again, relaxing on one of the many beach beds has it's appeal to many who do not worship the sun as much................ This is a view of the beach from the raised pool deck down to the lagoon.. While being tied to a dock will expose your boat to falling pine branches, but not worrying about boats running you down or doing mid-night anchor watches......... "Priceless!"
And no, this 168 foot dive boat did not hit any one, but the
wind shift and blow that very evening did cause the whole outer anchorage a whole lot of lost sleep! And by the way, this little guy who's watching over my hanging planter 'project', is a Mayan god statue from Copan. We call him "Apu".

Oasis is on the Move, Again!

Guatemala has a few rules; the ones most pertinent to us right now are about the length of time a boat is allowed to visit. Visit being the operative word! Currently, a boat may visit for 3 months and then allowed a 1-year extension. The previous ruling allowed an additional 1 year to be added on to that, therefore a visit of two years was possible and we were ’grandfathered’ in by way of the previous ruling to do just that.
The problem is that the government can’t or won’t process the paperwork in a timely manner, and that brings us up to our current dilemma. We can stay and wait for our extension to come thru (we applied over 6 months ago) and in effect get an additional year for a total of 3 years! On the other hand, leave, paying a small fine and returning as a brand new boat under the new rules? What to do?
On the one hand, Mario’s is offering very cheap rent for cruisers who stay there through the season. On the other, we have secluded anchorages nude swimming off our almost brand new back deck and watching all the fresh water growth die and fall of our bottom as soon as we hit salt water. We choose the skinny-dipping!
We left Dec 1 and enjoyed great ‘motor’ down the river. Unhooking from the power was not too traumatic for Jeanie as the weather in the morning was cool and we left our slip around 10 AM and headed to the fuel dock where we took on 100 gallons of diesel. That, with the 40 gallons of old fuel we had, should be plenty enough to get us to Honduras. I really want to use the ‘old’ fuel up first.
So far, our only mechanical holdout is the newest depth sounder we just installed along with our back deck last January. At least we have not forgotten how to turn ‘on’ the old one as you might remember was the issue last time we took off. The autopilot was very hard to get started as we had been trying since leaving the marina to “wake up” our third crew-thing. Awakening it involves a lot of un-plugging and re-plugging it into power. In fact, it is somewhat like waking a teenager up on Sat morning, we must have restarted it a hundred times when it finally began staying on for longer and longer and by the Gulfete, was full time, but watched warily. Our other ‘untried in real life’ piece of equipment is our newly repaired anchor windless. We had the motor rebuilt when we put the 66 lb Bruce type anchor on last year. I did drop the anchor in the slip and pull it up, but that is not quite the same thing. I am sure there will be more repairs along the way, but for now, life is sweet.
The dawn of our first day away from the dock finds us anchored off Tex’n Bay Marina, waiting for Mike to open for breakfast. He promised to make his famous “Texas style” biscuits & gravy! What a treat! There was talk last night that he might be doing a Tex-Mex dinner tonight. However, a last look on-line at our weather sites convinced us to stick to our plan.
Chris Parker, a Single Side-band radio weather Guru has predicted a bad bit of weather from the low, which has stalled over Mexico for the last couple of days.
Our plan is to go to Livingston this afternoon to check out with the authorities. Raul, our ships agent, had the papers ready and waiting. After paying a small fine for staying past our supposed exit date and getting our passports stamped, we were clear to leave Guatemala. The next ‘leg’ was to spend a day or so waiting for our perfect window of fine weather. When the window appeared, we would sail round the point and it would be a down wind ride to Roatan!?
We enjoyed a leisurely lunch in a sidewalk café that would haunt us the rest of the trip! Back on Oasis, we pulled the outboard motor off the inflatable and secured both items for the duration. We had bone everything that we could think of in preparation, Now all we gotta do is get across the dreaded Livingston Bar!

Livingston Bar, the easy way!

Don’t start thinking I’m wimpling out, but the trip across the Livingston Bar is always a high anxiety threshold to the laid back style of living that lies just beyond. We are on the way out right now to discover the joys of cruising the Honduran Bay Islands and specifically French Harbor and Fantasy Island. It has been 2 years since we have had salt water under our keel and we find ourselves facing the dreaded bar going out!
Now we have done the transit both ways unassisted, but the third time was not the charm! Last night was a real show, or would have been if anybody were around to watch. A storm, remember that low over Mexico, was predicted and most of the fleet was going later. Since we were only going as far as Tres Puntas to hang out the decision seemed prudent. There always seems to be a small problem that sets things off and this was no different. A slipping fan belt demanded immediate attention! I was hoping it would hold until we got to Tres Puntas that would allow us to let the engine cool down over night, but no luck! We got a late start and could not seem to get to any of our marks without hitting bottom! We spent about a half hour leaving keel prints all over the Bar before the fear of being aground on a falling tide over came our need to be in Tres Puntas a day early.
We got back to deep water, 8 feet, and anchored. There was another reason we wanted to escape Livingston and it had nothing to do with egos and “beating the Bar” or even missing Tex-Mex! It’s called security! Almost everyone will tell you, “Do not spend the night in Livingston, it’s not safe”! Indeed, the next day, I noticed that the ‘thieves’ got us for a couple junk fenders! They were the pair that ’marked’ the boat by leaving blue crap that had to be taken off with a razor blade. Good riddance! I should have thrown them away long ago, but they still held air and the thought of making a cover for them had some merit.
The next morning, tails between our legs, we again called Raul, our ships agent and asked him to set us up with a “tow boat” to possibly tip us over and guide us across the Bar. Enter Ernesto! He showed up around 3:30 PM and we agreed on a price and a time 5:00! A full 3 hours before High Tide! We thought it was a bit early, but he assured us that as a fisherman, he knew his Bar! He Did! He got us to with-in 50 feet of the deep water before we hit bottom and it only took him a minute or two to relocate the groove. We were in deep water and ready to go a full 3 hours ahead of the fleet! We did not even have to be “tipped”! The whole thing was over so quickly that I did not even have a chance to get my camera out! Between pulling the anchor and following Ernesto, I was very busy!
Experiencing very light winds and no wave action, we set course to by-pass Tres Puntas. Utila here we come! Our plan was to peek around Tres Puntas to see how rough it was before committing to an over-niter. The Oasis crew was blessed once again as the breeze, while on our nose most of the way, never got over 5 or 10 MPH! The seas remained calm at mostly one or 2 footers! Moreover, these conditions continued clear to Utila! This is what we used to call a ‘Pemex’ crossing in Baja! We dropped the hook in East Harbor, Utila just after dark.
By early morning, a breeze had built out of the south-west and the anchorage got real lumpy, so after a cup of coffee, I changed a fuel filter and pulled the anchor we got right out in it! We got a nice push from a rainstorm between islands, which we quickly out ran. We even turned off the motor and sailed for a while! It was not long before we were sitting on our “mark” off French Harbor and by 2:55 PM, we had the hook down and were hanging behind the boat riding “noodles” and thinking how nice it is to be us.
Just to recap our problems: 1) that hamburger gave us upset digestive tract problems all the way to Utila! 2) the ‘fine’ or secondary diesel fuel filter filled up and at 1900 RPM, the engine was starting to act starved for fuel. We changed over to the fresh diesel tank and kept promising we would change the damn filter once we got to Utila! It did indeed wait until then! 3) the good news is that at 66 years of age, I can pull a 66 lb bruce type anchor out of 25 feet of water and with a rock cradled in it’s ‘crook’ ( anyone remember Angle Island 1985?) 4) our new depth sounder never would read the bottom, and 5) I need to replace the bearings in our Wind-Bugger wind generator.
We’ll try to fix things as we go along, but that will be for another blog………

Flores Guatemala

Romantic Flores Get-Away

We just got back from our 5 day 4 night visit to the island town of Flores, Guatemala. It is a small but quaint town on a clear lake called Petén. Access to the ‘island’ is via a manmade causeway and serviced by a curious mode of transportation called ‘tuk-tuks’. For 5Q a person (roughly 60 cents) they will take you into the sister town of St. Helena for major shopping or a quick lunch at Pizza Hut. There are many delightful restaurants in town however and it was at one of them we learned many things about the Mayan ruins around the area that were inhabited during 400-900 AD, including one called Yaxha’ (Pronounced “Yashaw”) more on this later.
The hotel we chose to stay at was the Casazul, which was decorated all in shades of blue. We had the third floor “penthouse” with a huge balcony/patio.
The patio was furnished with a rattan sofa, two matching high back chairs, a coffee table and two sets of wrought iron breakfast tables, at which we enjoyed our morning coffee and the gorgeous view of the lake. Then, off to one of the many cute restaurants for breakfast, where we discussed our day and watched the town come alive.
One of the highlights was a museum on an island in the lake. We hired a boat to take us there and the owner of the ’museo’ Luis showed us all the amazing Mayan artifacts in his little museum. While most museums that have 2000 plus year old artifacts have everything under glass and it's, "look, but don’t touch", not his. He offered and even encouraged us to hold, touch and even play the ancient musical instruments. Jim got to blow a 2500 year old conch shell horn and we even held an obsidian ball that was used in one of the ball games that decided life or death to the combatants. There is some discussion as to whether the winner or the looser was sacrificed to the Gods.
After hearing Dieter’s (who’s worked on many other Mayan sites including Tikal & Yaxha, uncovering and stabilizing them) seminar at a local restaurant over dinner one night, we decided to go ourselves and quickly found a van to take us there.
It’s an hour and a half ride from Flores with the last ½ hour over semi paved and totally dirt roads. There were another 3 couples along with us and we decided to meet back at the van at 1:30 PM so were free to explore at our own pace for the next 3 hours! Boy, just about wore us old folks out!! We enjoyed that the ruins were all on one level so the only climbing we did was purely optional. As we wandered through the ruins, we couldn’t escape the feelings of mystery and reverence, it’s truly a magical spot!
Jim opted to climb the pyramid called “Red Hand”! While there are very nice wooden steps built up the side of the pyramid(122 steps) there were also 2 flights of 42 and 72 steps each to get to that level. Just about wore Jim’s poor knees out, but what a view! You might even say, ‘Fit for a king!’ Jeanie even spotted and chatted with both a crew member and a contestant that was in the “Survivor Guatemala” reality show !
Our ride home from the ruins was momentarily held up while we waited for a parade of over 2 dozen horse back riders doing a “U” turn on the main highway in one of the ‘aldeas’ that we passed through! They were all garbed in their Sunday best with one little girl ‘honored’ with a crown! No idea what the parade was for, but pretty neat considering where we had just been.
From there we ask to be dropped of at the ‘Linea Dorado’ buss terminal to buy our next days ticket out of town. Then a last candle light dinner of the local “Blanco” fish. For desert we walked to the church plaza overlooking the whole town and lake and ate Sarita ice cream while watching the sun set over the lake. Am I the big spender or what…?