Our original plan was to go to the Honduran Bay Islands to play around for the winter…now, why all these ‘Alligators’?


We wanted a salt water fix! You know, swimming, fishing, and fooling around. Catching and eating lots of lobster. And to meet up with our friend Tim on ‘Sound Spirit’ who was bringing a bunch of goodies down for us from the States. Our play-time, however was interrupted by two occurrences, each worthy of it’s own blog. However, because of all the afore mentioned “fun”, slow access on-line at Internet cafés, and relief in the aftermath of the repair, it just didn’t happen.

First was the repair of our ‘anchor windlass’ which happened during our “drag racing” period. And the second was a bit of major engine work which surfaced just in time to prevent us from making our high tides for crossing the Livingston bar and entering the Rio Dulce in May as we had wanted.

Now a month later as we wait at “West End” settlement for hurricane Alma to get out of our way. We’re getting the boat ship-shape for a crossing and holding our breath that nothing else goes wrong………………………………..

Our plan is to leave at dawn on Monday morning and race the sun to the West! (we don’t race anything, especially the Sun, but I liked the analogy) If we could just do our best run ever, and make a 24 hr run of 130 miles! We could be crossing the dreaded bar first thing Tuesday A.M.! Other-wise, we’ll hang out at Tres Puntas, and cross on Wednesday. Thursday is the last day of the only tides in June high enough to allow us across, missing this window would have us waiting for the tides of early July to cross and really disappoint Jeanie!

Enough of this, here are the two repair Blogs and I'll get back to this later

Boat Repairs That won’t Wait…

Our windlass broke. A windlass is the device that sits on the bow of many boats and pulls the anchor up. Ours is a real workhorse! On a nice calm day, pulling the anchor is not that difficult. Our anchor is all chain and it weighs 1 pound per foot, added to one end of that a 45 lb. anchor and you get an idea of what it must pull each time we want to go somewhere else. On that calm day, in 20 feet of water, it must pull in about 100 feet of chain by lifting 20 feet or lbs., if you will, until it gets to the 45 lb anchor and then it still has to lift only 65 lbs.! That is the calm day and even I can do that!

Now, let’s imagine its midnight and the wind is blowing 35 MPH and gusting to 45 MPH AND the anchor is dragging! Now it has to haul in 145lbs. plus a ball of weeds and mud the anchor is still trying to hold onto, all the while the boat is being blown down-wind at 3 to 5 MPH! This is more than I can pull and apparently, more than it, or more precisely, one of its gears was able to deal with.

Nothing dramatic like loud grinding or snapping noises, it just stopped after it had pulled in about 10 feet of chain. Fortunately, our anchor, a Danforth style, re-hooked after 3 or 4 boat lengths and we were clear of the rest of the anchored boats in the bay. The end result was a sleepless night watching that we didn’t have a repeat anchor drill and thinking, “How the Hell are we going to get a 25 year old windless fixed in Honduras!”

Our first order of business was to secure the boat, which meant returning to the French Harbor Yacht Club. I don’t know which appealed more to Jeanie, the 30Amp power for A/C or the prospect of a full nights rest tied to a dock, but getting a repairperson out to an anchorage was more rigmarole than we cared to deal with. Besides, getting someone qualified who would work at all seemed like a big enough hurdle.

Our friend Jaime of Tabutne I, a 70 ft dive dive boat, recommended we use his mechanic Merle, an internet search by Tim Williams confirmed that Galley Maid was still in in business and got us a phone number that confirmed they still had parts! The situation now didn’t look as bleak!

According to the folks at Galley Maid, it could be as simple as a rubber ‘coupler’ or …? The ‘or’ was going to be expensive! The mechanic was near-by on a Sunday and came down to the boat to pick up the unit. It was not the coupler! Seems like it never is the easy fix! The problem turned out to be the vertical shaft and the lower gear that causes it to turn. I guess, after 25 years, it decided that, that was enough!

Problem identified, parts found, now, how to get them here? Contrary to popular belief, “Yate’ en Transito” is not a guarantee of easy entrance of repair parts delivery into a third world country. You are still at the whim of custom officials. All it takes is one who feels that the part needs to have duty paid to make your project Hell! This generally works to be at least one and possibly multiple trips to the city and depending on how much money they want either paying it up front or paying a facilitator who will spread the money around so you get your part and the officials get a bit of pocket change as well!

It is for this reason, that if you ever visit a Yate’ en Transito, do not be surprised if your carry on luggage is not a whole lot heavier! At this point, enter Jeanie’s 75+ year old but youthful Mom, coming to visit us on a Caribbean cruise! She had already agreed to bring down a bunch of relatively light stuff, but would 30 lbs of windlass parts be the ’last straw’? Fortunately, for us, Mom was up to the task and our parts arrived on the cruise ship “Voyager of the Seas”. Now it only remained to get the mechanic on the ball so we can get back out cruising!

Turned out to be not as bad as it was only a week later that we were back together, our windlass repaired and ready for another 25 years of service. Now back to our ‘dragging anchor’ problem… whom can we talk into bringing us a 66 lb Bruce anchor?




And now the motor repair...More Motor Problems in Paradise

There wasn’t any smoke or loud explosion, no loud banging sounds from the bilge area where the motor lives, but something was wrong! While doing our morning charging of the batteries, the first thing we noticed was an uneven sound while cranking the starter, which quickly went away upon start-up. I thought it might be a bit of carbon caught between a valve and its seat because shutting it down and re-starting it gave no indication of the same malady. The next day, the engine would not idle smoothly. It would ran, but would speed up from700 to 1400 RPM a couple times before it would settle down and begin purring away like it always had in the past. The next day was the same except worse! Time to change the fuel filters I guess…? It was while I was bleeding the fuel system that I saw salt water pouring out of the raw water pump! What was not immediately apparent was that the raw water pump’s inner seal was also breached, which allowed water into the oil pan! So far, nothing was going right this morning!

Doing repairs on our boat would be somewhat like having major work done at your house. Only thing is, they have to lift up your living room floor to tear out part of your basement! Also compounding our dilemma was we didn’t know any trust-worthy mechanics. There are no Yellow pages or Better Business Bureau to contact in Roatan. Nevertheless, we have to do something!

The first step was to get to a dock while the motor was in a ‘running’ condition. Mid-night anchor drills are not any fun, even with a motor, without; we would be on the rocks in a hurry. In addition, it seemed we could get a mechanic aboard a lot easier. Finally, we needed shore power to keep the batteries up. Do I need to mention providing air conditioning for Jeanie? In addition, while I do prefer being at anchor with the cool trade winds blowing through the boat, I must admit that I enjoy it, also! Especially as the dock, we were headed to did not point into the wind. As you can see by the aerial picture, we found an “end slip” (far left boat) at Fantasy Island! Why should we suffer any more than we have to…! (Please note my first attempt at using MS paint to label the photo. This will give you a feeling for where we have spent the last 6 months, in and around French Cay Harbor.)

Our first thought for a mechanic was to use one of Fantasy Is.’s, as we were right there. Maybe he wanted the extra money. Turns out he was very young and knew only about “Cummings” not an antique “Volvo” as we have. Merle, the mechanic that fixed the windlass, was too expensive and slow even by island standards! Then someone suggested that we ask Michael, an enterprising young man who spoke great English and has been very helpful to all us cruisers. He does everything from hauling laundry to selling “Tigo” phone minutes. He did know one and brought Will by the next day! Will seemed to know he was looking at a Volvo, a start, and indicated a price that seemed right so we gave him the go-a-head and he began tearing it apart right then!

As a lot of you know I was, and can still be, a mechanical sort of person, but I was not about to try an upper engine repair in a foreign country! It turned out to be a good decision as there were more things wrong, than were initially apparent. Besides water in the oil, we also had three broken valve springs and the injectors needed parts and re-calibrating! It also needed a valve grind as long as it was ‘down’. Clearly, this motor needed more help than I was equipped to handle!

The parts list from we got from Will was brief.
De-carbonizing gasket set
8 outer valve springs
8 inner valve springs
Raw water repair kit
2 “O” rings for the oil cooler
In addition, a later addition of 4 “nozzles” for the injectors.

Locating a proficient “parts person” states-side proved almost as difficult as a mechanic in Roatan did. After trying a couple I found on-line, I thought to call my brother Dale in Savannah GA. He was smart enough to contact the yard who was doing work on his boat and asked them to recommend a good engine re-builder and parts house. It was through this connection we got a hold of Claudia at Superior Diesel of Charlotte NC. She was both knowledgeable and quick, as we needed the parts to be at our freight handler, Roatan Air Service in Fl by Friday. She also had an edge as any question that she could not answer; all she had to do was go out into the shop to ask one of their mechanics! She was able to get everything on our list except the injector nozzles which Volvo has discontinued carrying.

Well, except for the ‘nozzles’, every thing went as planned. Claudia got the parts to FL and Roatan Air got them here on time! I picked them up at 2:00 PM and had them to Michael by 3:00. Now all we have to do is wait… Wait we did, but more on this later.

Now, of course there is a Plan B! Moreover, it turns out to be more fantastic than our original plan for sure! It happened that every body knows everybody else’s business and sure enough, a cruiser Rick of Sea Dragon had just replaced his Volvo MD21 A in La Ceiba and the engine was still in the yard. We could contact George, the crane operator, to buy the whole thing, or just the parts we needed, like injectors! Turns out, we would actually be “re-buying” almost all of our old parts. It seems Rick knew the previous owner of our boat and bought most of the old motor that was removed during the reconstruction of the ‘Oasis’ back when she was called ‘Back2Basics’! It is hard to imagine the twists of fate that would put so many of our ‘original’ motor’s spare parts only 30 miles away!

It is very difficult to be patient when A) it’s your home and B) when there is no communication between our mechanic and us! Of course, our limited Spanish would not have helped us communicate with the mechanic. Yes, we got a hold of Michael, but he was unable to reach the mechanic, which was hard on our nerves! All we needed was an update and some idea when we could expect to see Will, and our parts. Turned out to be a little over a week, but on 13 May, at 2:00 PM he was back at work. By 7:00, he was done and we had a working motor once more! Hooray!

After a couple more days tied to Fantasy Island while we did “clean-up” and re-packed the boat, it was time to go back out to anchor and plan our move to the Rio

While having any work ‘done’ on your boat is expansive, having it done in a 3rd world country is the least expensive way to go! The parts and U.S. shipping was the largest expense at $642.00. The freight forwarder, Roatan Air Service was only $45.00 and our stay at the island was $500.00 (we needed to stay somewhere, and this was only a little more than the Roatan YC would have charged, but MUCH nicer!). Will’s original estimate was only$200.00! We did slip in some extra work as we had him exchange our heat exchanger and he also had to get the injectors re-built (nozzles replaced) locally for an additional $100.00! (Stateside price for this, $110.00 per injector, times four injectors or $440.00 plus shipping both ways!) His final bill was still only $300.00 plus the $100 for the injectors! A bargain, I am sure, in any country!

In conclusion, while a bit more nerve wracking, our repair went as smoothly and was a LOT less expensive than a similar project in the States. For the 3 weeks spent at Fantasy Is., we got a much prettier place to stay then in a shipyard, the mechanic was less than stateside prices, and the parts situation, after we found Claudia and Superior Diesel, was a toss-up. While the parts were expensive, they only ‘cost’ us an additional $45 bucks to have shipped to Roatan.

Not that we would want to, but both Jeanie and I agree that if we had to do it again, this was about as painless a way to effect repair as we know!


And now, on with the trip...
Our trip to the “Rio”….. cont.

As our attention shifted from cleaning up after the motor repair to preparing for our trip back to Rio Dulce a bunch of low weather troughs got together and formed “Alma” Depending on how fast or slow she was, she could definitely affect our plans! We decided to go to the ‘West End’ anchorage to watch for a favorable weather window. As things like this happen, during our time there, ‘Alma’ made her pass to our East.

With the internet weather sites predicting high winds from all different directions, we were a little nervous about the mooring we were attached to even though it was still standing up after a full season of boats pulling on them. And yes, some had pulled out during the season putting one boat on the reef. We were discussing going back to French Harbor but didn’t want to go backwards! It was then that we were offered the use of a “private mooring” which turned out to be a ½ sunken diesel tractor block and transmission and 5/16 inch chain! As it turned out, the winds weren’t as bad as we had thought, but we felt very secure!

The hurricane just past, and the internet predicting equally high winds and seas for Monday and Tuesday, being our last day to make the scheduled entrance, we chose Monday so we had a one day cushion.

We slipped our mooring at 0700 hrs June 2, ‘08 and threw ourselves into the tempest! Sounds good, but it wasn’t really that bad either. We were running just off the wind and surfing off 5 to 8 foot seas. The auto pilot steered a very nice course so all we had to do was hang on! It started to moderate about mid-night and we then rounded Tres Puntas at dawn in a dead calm! A perfect place to rest up for the next days crossing of the Bar!

We timed the entrance to be early and have a rising tide going over the bar so did hit bottom once, but by ‘wiggling’ the boat, we got right through . Our check in with Roul handling the paperwork went smoothly and by 11:00 we were on the way up the Rio Dulce on the way to our next blog.


We love ya'll for your support and attention,

Jim & Jeanie









Us at Mario's

“Breaking up is hard to do…”

And so is leaving Roatan Dive and Yacht Club, especially the power, cable TV, wireless internet, and fresh water! Jeanie especially misses the air conditioning the 30 Amp inlets provide. We called this ‘home’ for 6 weeks and it was a very convenient location. There is a rumor that a new owner is on the way. Changes are in the winds, I’m sure!

Our next move was just outside to French Cay Harbor where our view to the West is the town of French Harbor and our Easterly view is toward Fantasy Island. Yes, there really is a Fantasy Island; it caters to Skin and SCUBA divers of all ages. It and another resort Cocoa View to its East across a small channel have some of the most beautiful reef diving available right off their front doors! Besides diving on Fantasy’s reef, cruisers can enjoy the full run of Fantasy Islands’ amenities, which include wireless internet, gorgeous pool and beach showers and groomed beaches. The bar is open as is the dinning room. They’re just very pricey. $25.00 per person for an all you can eat lunch and $2.00 for a 6 oz Coke and $6.00 for a domestic beer are not in most cruisers budgets! Being able to rinse the salt off with the poolside showers; Priceless! Moreover, it sure makes our water supply last longer!

Speaking of water, our water maker is doing a great job of keeping up with our water consumption. I just love not having to haul water! We run it about 6 hours a day, and that keeps us in all the showers and dishwashing we care to do!

Catching fish is still a mystery to me. I’ve only caught one little Yellow Tailed Snapper that was about 4 bites. I saved part of him for bait and that afternoon, I actually was fishing, using more fish for bait than I had saved for dinner… didn’t catch a thing!

Jonesville and Hole-in -the -Wall.

Sunday Jan 16th we pulled the anchor in French Cay Harbor and bid ‘Adios’ to Fantasy Island. Next stop about five miles up the coast to do a little exploring of Jonesville’s little town. First stop was Hole-in-the-Wall for all you can eat steak and lobster, mashed potatoes, coleslaw and beans! Did I forget homemade rye bread and lemon bars for desert! Yummy! All this for only $20.00/person! I may not have to eat for 2 days!

While I’m on the subject of food, we’re going to try to see if we can avoid any food purchases for the next 2 weeks. We stocked up pretty well at Eldon’s Market on Saturday just before we left. The only thing we forgot was carrots, but Jeanie still thinks we can go the distance even without them. Oops, just found a couple items in a tienda in Jonesville, but to our credit, didn’t buy carrots!

The other thing that was a draw for Jonesville was the promise of wireless internet at our boat! Something we haven’t enjoyed since Mario’s Marina clear back in November. The trick is that in order for a good connection, we had to anchor in a direct line between Woodside Marina and the house directly across the bight. This put us right next to a floating B&B. Not a bed and breakfast, but a bar and brothel, or at least that’s what we were told. We’re not even sure it’s floating, but the lower ½ is a ferro-cement boat. Talk about your ‘highest and best use’!

Between the loud music, a slow wireless connection, and the promise of some nasty weather with possible late night anchor drills, and Oh, did I mention that there wasn’t going to be a Super Bowl party in English there either! (Watching football with Spanish announcers sucks) We decided to head back to French Cay Harbor after only about a week. All in all, a very short stay for the Oasis crew!

We managed to wrangle an invitation to watch the American Icon that is the Super Bowl game at Tim Williams of ‘Sound Spirit’s house. It overlooks the back of Fantasy Island and looks East toward Coco View Resort. His boat is moored to his boat-house in one of the few hurricane holes on Roatan right below his house.

Tim graciously agreed to take us to Coxen Hole where we would spend all morning shopping for a lot of back-up supplies and loading the boat up for it’s next jaunt. Tomorrow, we’re going to West End for Valentines Day!

West End Village
Valentines Day ‘08

Have you ever heard, ”Boy, you should ‘a been here yesterday”! Well, the weather the day before our trip turned out to be a flat calm ‘just like we like it’ day! We missed the calm cruising day while shopping. The 3 hour ride to West End was spent rolling down 3 to 4 foot waves the next day. That was more than made up for however as John of Diamond Lil had one hand saving us a mooring and the other awaiting our mooring line! Very shortly we were nice and calm in a gorgeous protected bay! John and Mel are our power-boat friends in a 3850 (38 foot) Bayliner! The four of us enjoyed Valentines dinner of fried Snapper at one of the many nice dinner spots along the beach.

There is “free” wireless internet at most restaurants so we usually go ashore for breakfast every 2 or 3 days. However, at $17.00 for breakfast a couple days before, it’s far from free! It’s also slow, but while we do enjoy a leisurely start to the day, it taxes our laptops batteries. For $10.00/Hr, we can do high-speed internet, but that doesn’t include high-speed typing skills so I’m trying to write on the boat and transfer it to a memory stick. Maybe that way, my eggs don’t get cold!

A word about our “mooring”. This whole area is designated as a protected marine park and they’re especially protective of the ‘Eel grass’ which almost completely covers the whole bottom of the bay. If we and a few hundred others were allowed to anchor anywhere we wanted, it would very soon be ‘clawed’ to pieces. The Roatan Marine Park has installed about a dozen moorings which are no more than large screws into the bottom and have attached a line with a float to it. The screw is somewhat like what is used to hold a mobile home down in tornado country. However, we just need 1, as a MH might use 10 or 12 but I guess you get the similarity. In this fashion, each boat only ‘hurts’ about a 2 foot circle and we’ve held in wind gusts of up to 25 MPH so far.

Since it is a protected marine park, there is no spearing of fish not to mention lobster and crabs. It is OK to fish with a pole however! They must know what a safe bet that is as I’ve not had much luck catching anything worth going to the bother of cleaning yet!! Turtles surface next to our boat some as large as 3 feet in diameter. I guess they’re what’s eating the Eel grass!??

Being on the most western end of land for a long way sure provides us with some spectacular sunsets and we were in a perfect place to watch a total eclipse of the moon as well. The beach restaurants close just after dark so there is very little light pollution to hamper our stargazing. The nights are cool and beautiful. We’re far enough South that the North Star is just above the horizon.

We really loved the West End and planned to stay a long time. However. Feb 27th we got blown out of West End! We watch the weather forecasts on the internet religiously, and the ‘event’ which predicted 25 MPH winds from the West (NOT good for the West End!) was down-graded to 12 to 15 MPH even up to Tue A.M. We felt that our mooring was good and planned to stay longer. However, when the locals start to pull their boats out of the water and the water taxies quit running, it’s definitely time to bail out! Getting outside the reef and the mile or so south to the point was sloppy, but after that we enjoyed a lovely broad reach (down-wind) back to French Cay Harbor.

Even in protected French Cay Harbor. We weren’t able to totally ignore the weather ‘event‘! We had wind gusts to 40 MPH changing from West to North and finally drug our anchor at about midnight! Is there any other time? We had a harrowing night of re-anchoring and anchor watching! Definitely a downside to the cruising life! The next morning, as the wind abated and swung around to the south, we moved into the little bay behind Tim’s house to wait for Oasis weather (flat and calm)!

Our next move will probably be to Old French Harbor to get diesel fuel and propane loaded aboard and then head back to the West End ASAP, We both loved it there. We will probably stay until the next storm drives us out!

I have been busy in my retirement. Among all my other accomplishments, can now be added "Professional Author"! That's right, what follows is the result of my writing skills and the helpful input from Mel on 'Diamond Lil' to send it into Living Aboard magazine. She did say that "they'll print almost anything", but that didn't slow me down at all!
What got me going was just the frustration of having a problem with a new part, the head, that if it was designed properly, wouldn't have broken from the git-go!



Wilcox Crittenden Santa Cruz Head Repair

Given a choice, women and truth be told many men as well, would prefer an electric head to the hand pump variety. Therefore, it was with this in mind I went shopping for the most heavy-duty electric head I could find, when my wife and I were outfitting our retirement cruising boat. Since I was still working, price was not especially important, but dependability was high on the list. I chose a Wilcox over the rest of the offerings. I cannot speak for how the others might have stacked up, but I feel comfortable addressing the one I choose and the Groco head it replaced.

The previous owner had a Groco electric head and over the five years of his cruising, found the water pumping systems to be inadequate as well. He had retrofitted two Jabsco Water Puppy pumps to handle the operations, one to it to pump raw water in, and another to pump the effluent discharge side. It seemed to work OK, just not heavy duty enough to handle the macerator discharge side very well. I know, “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it! In retrospect, hindsight being what it is, I should have left it alone! However, I was not feeling comfortable using a Water Puppy as a macerator pump. Moreover, getting back to my dependability issue, I decided to replace the whole head.

Well, it has not quite been two years since I was the proud owner of a brand new head and as you can see, we are poopin’ in a bucket. The head died on a passage from the Rio Dulce region of Guatemala to Roatan, Honduras! Being at sea is never the most convenient time to be doing any repairs, head repairs especially

Upon reaching Roatan, I tried to calling the manufacturer. The first 800 # gave me another, and finally after being on hold a bit, a non 800 #, which after a lot of holding… now I know the “call is important to you“ routine, so why don’t you just answer it! I finally gave up and I tried email next at info.wilcoxcritt…etc. It has been over a week, and still no answer. (I never got one.) What is a person to do? There surely are no parts available in paradise! Dissembling the pump revealed that it had not ingested any gunk, only that the inlet impeller was slipping on the shaft in both directions! Some sort of tricky little grippers built into the inside bore of the impeller were intended to grip the shaft in one rotational direction and not in the other. The idea being that as the motor rotated one direction, the impeller engaged and raw water was drawn in and the other direction, it would ’slip’ on the shaft so that the macerator could evacuate the waste water from the bowl. The whole system relies an a few ridges molded into the bore of an impeller! People, is this any way to build something for the harsh marine environment? I expect that if our boat was used only on weekends and we had a fully stocked chandlery just out-side our front door, I might be tempted to buy a rebuild kit and do the job “right”, but the whole system just stinks, it should have been better engineered and not have broken in the 1st place!

The accompanying pictures show the “fix”. I had an Atwood 500 aerator pump aboard, (Where did I put those Water Puppies?) which I plumbed into the inlet side by using a couple of locally obtained garden hose repair barbs. I’m currently using the original Wilcox motor minus the B/S impeller to pump out the bowl. When and if that motor dies, I will not get another, but will use any brand of locally available macerator pump I can find and modify it to fit.

The head now works much better than it did when new! It’s quieter and pumps cleaner than ever before. Pushing the top of the electric switch fills and cleans the bowl while pushing the bottom, causes the macerator pump to evacuate the bowl.

The lesson is that simplicity and ease of repair along with availability of “local parts” should be foremost in the design of all marine equipment. In addition, when you are in paradise cruising, necessity is the mother of invention!

PS. I did use two hose clamps on all the ‘below the waterline’ connections.

Jim and Jeanie Long are currently living aboard and cruising the N.W. Caribbean aboard their 39’ Lancer motor sailor “Oasis”