Fear & Loathing on the way to Roatan


One of the biggest fears a boater has when returning from an extended trip (short of sinking) is to find evidence of an advanced ant or termite infestation. We came home to a debris pile on our new back deck! Seems some wood-eating ants got into our back door frame. Of course living in a jungle does not really prepare you for shock that ‘something’ is eating your home. Moreover, that was the first thing we saw upon our return from our recent bus trip to Roatan as “back-packers”.

Well, backpacking is not the exact verb as we can fit most of our stuff in a collapsible ’Igloo’ cooler on wheels. With an extra wheelie cart for mask, fins, & snorkel, it is about as lite as we can pack. We planned to return home, heavy! Heavy with things we could not buy on the river, like Miracle Whip

In order to get from here to there, we needed to travel on two bus lines and transfer twice. Then a ferry ride to complete the voyage. We left the Rio on a Fuente Del Norte and went about 15 miles to Morales where we boarded a Maya Del Oro, which is an upscale FDN. After a 4 hr run to San Pedro Sula, we took a Hedman Alas thru to La Ceiba. The next day, we took the ferry to Brick Bay and a short taxi ride to French Harbor where John of “Diamond Lil” was waiting to carry us on the last leg of our trip. It is normally a ’lumpy’ dinghy ride, as part of the way through an opening to rough water before we are nestled in the calm lee of Fantasy Island.

Therefore, it was, with clear water, Fantasy Is., and beautiful weather, that Murphy settled in as well. You know, that “what can go wrong, will go wrong at the worst possible moment”. Now, John and Mel have been ’dealing’ with a few more problems than normal, with the Starboard engines transmission out, they were essentially a single engine boat that was difficult to control. Added to that, their gen-set motor threw a rod through the block, which meant there was no A/C current to run the electric stove! It really shows the true “cruisers’ spirit to have company when the stove is out of commission.

Fortunately, there was a propane cook top that John has totally mastered and featured delicious meals from shrimp fajitas to fluffy pancakes. A solar panel took up most of the battery-charging job with only a little motor running at the end of the day to take up the slack. The motor/transmission problem only would affect them during docking procedures and since they only intend to anchor, No problema!

What? you say, Murphy has already been aboard for some time! Well, he wasn’t quite done! The next most important area aboard, especially with two extra persons would be the head. Sometime during the middle of the night, when else, that ‘little’ leak became a big one. Mel caught me the next morning with a mop in my hands! Seems that there had been a little leak for some time, the extra weight of my fat butt just pushed it over the edge! You can read Mel’s much kinder version at
http://www.mytripjournal.com/travel-428070

Email is a marvel and phones are nice, but there’s nothing better than just hanging out and catch’n up with old friends and all too soon, it was time for Diamond Lil to carry Mel down to the West End where she had to w**k the weekend at one of the better restaurants. We made plans to catch up with them later as we were also invited aboard “Rock& Roll”.

Russ and Janet were enjoying all that French Harbor has to offer. That included morning’s SCUBA diving the marvelous reefs, afternoons filled with card and domino games around the pool at Fantasy Island and evenings of pot luck dinners as well as Russ and Janet’s BBQ techniques. Even though this picture might be sent into one of those magazines ’inviting a caption’ , it was just simply the only way to keep the Magma BBQ going in the wind while we cooked pork chops. Moreover, speaking of wind, the Trades were happening in full. Most nights we had 30 to 40 mph winds! We were not worried however as Russ has had his anchor down a long time. In fact, they had weathered a 45 + mph storm just the week before we arrived.

Contrary to Ben Franklin’s 3-day rule about fish and company, we were delighted to have just one more night aboard. We really enjoyed our last night at French Harbor with good friends, great food, and lively discussions as we watched a beautiful full moon rise over Fantasy Island.

By mid morning, we had said our Good-bys to Rock & Roll and were shopping in Coxen Hole. Always on the lookout for any taste treats, we cannot get in Guatemala. Things like Miracle Whip, BBQed beans, mild salsa (not made in New York City!), Amaretto coffee creamer and Smucker’s Mint chocolate syrup are always on our list. When you can find “IT”, we buy all of it! We enjoyed a night in a little bungalow at the West End of the island and had some more time with friends John & Mel. The next day we were off to the ferry and the trip in reverse except with a much bigger load.

The Ferry ride was as smooth as glass! And we made our “Primero Classe” Hedman Alas with plenty of time! We must have had 6 feet foot room with fold down footrests, drink holders, free breakfast sandwich and a soda! San Pedro Sula is not our favorite town. So it was good to have flagged a cab down at 5:00 AM so we could get out of there on the early bus. The Maya del Oro was nice, but not a Hedman Alas. We were at the start of the line with Fuente Del Nortes so at least we got good assigned seating. It was catch as catch can at the crossroads bus changeover for the connection into the Rio. The cute little kid sitting next to Jeanie gave her, his cold! Welcome home!

We were in time to save our door from the ants with a little Terro ant poison, which did the trick.
The shopping dining and camaraderie were all worth the trip. We are back in the river and relaxing in our little home on the water.

More Motor Repairs in Paradise

Or

Why didn’t we fix it on Roatan?

It would have been so easy to do as the water pump was totally exposed! Only three more bolts and we could have had it off! Well, not all the hindsight in the world will change a thing and the truth is we did not really have the time to wait on any more repairs. While living at Fantasy Island was great, it was very expensive and there was still the deadline of the high tide at the Livingston Bar. To miss the tide would delay our return to Guatemala’s Rio Dulce and Mario’s Marina for another month! We had all the fun we could stand! It was time to go home.

Besides, getting work done while tied to our ‘own’ slip takes a lot of the worry out of how long it takes getting the job done. It was for this reason; we postponed the repair until after the back deck repair.

It was early in December when we contacted ‘Johnny’ of Pez Vela Yacht Services. He and his helper showed up and looked at the problem. Yep, it was the fresh water pump. Moreover, his contact in Miami said that they could get us a new one for $650.00 dollars! Yes! Now that does sound like a lot, until you realize that this is a discontinued motor with a very limited number of parts still available. Unfortunately, the water pump’s internal seals are not one of those parts. These little rascals haven’t been available with a Volvo part number for a couple years!

It was a false start however, as the pump that the Miami connection sent us was a raw water pump that pumps seawater; we needed the fresh water pump, which is the one that pumps the anti-freeze/water mixture through the motor.

With the hopes of obtaining, new or rebuilt water pumps slowly being dashed on the shores of reality. I began exploring the use of electric water pumps and a separate heat exchanger. I have plenty of time as the back deck repairs should only take a week, remember…? ………………………………

Back Deck repair 101

Is sort of a ‘crap shoot’ in the Rio Dulce! While there are probably more persons and yards that can do this sort of job, we chose Abel’s Shipyard. Abel’s Ship Yard is a Father/Son business that came highly recommended by other cruisers. We even saw some examples of their work, and heard praises sung by many cruisers. There were actually a couple ’yards’ in the running, but Abel was right there with an available date,( the week before Xmas holiday) and breathed a sigh of relief as we set a Jan 5th date. That being the 1st Monday his people came back from holiday.

Monday morning started early as went thru the final process of getting things done like taking the front window shade down so I can see ahead and Oh, yes! Fill the water tank, as we will not have a safe water source until after the work is completed. We go through a tank in a little over 2 weeks so even doubling the yards time estimate of 1 week still had us a small margin for error. By around 12:00 we finally moored alongside a tugboat waiting for the young Abel and the workers that would do the work to finish lunch.

Right after lunch, young Abel, the son and 2 workers came aboard to discuss what we needed exactly. After a short meeting, it seemed they were on the right track and work began. All the warnings in the world will not prepare you for the sight of all the “polvo”, “Mucho polvo!” was about all the English Martin had but it aptly described the virtual snowstorm of fiberglass dust that enveloped our rear deck. Or for that matter, the gapping hole left shortly as the complete back deck was lifter out in one piece!

We were forced to ’walk the plank’ just to get on & off the Oasis! Since we had to get ashore to watch the rest of the work. That meant climbing onto the tugboat, then negotiating another, much longer plank to the pier. We were also hooked up to the tug electrically into a household type plug so would be electrically challenged for a few days.

As soon as our deck hit the beach Martin and his helper descended upon it as they began the process of removing the fiberglass and drenched balsa. The idea was to use the top or upper layer of fiberglass as a template. The balsa core proved to be a little more tenacious and took into the next day before they were able to scrape all of it off and lay the top portion on the shop floor to do the build-up. Then they put 3 layers of glass was put down as a bed for the ½ in. marine ply which was then covered with 2 more layers of glass to totally encapsulate the plywood. Our ’floor’ was solid once more. Now all that remained was to put it back!

The weather that had held off so nicely, decided to turn cold and rainy. All told, we were lucky as we only lost 2 days of work, but the ½ days lost are hard to keep track of…

After we were well into the 2nd week our rear deck only tabbed into place work ground slowly. Oh, speaking of grinding, did I mention “Mucho polvo!” and then came the painting part with lots of over spray! Moreover, speaking of spray, it is time to tell you about the showers in a third world boat-yard.

In an effort to cut down on the water usage, and the fact that the rear deck was missing, we decided to use the Abel’s facilities. It seemed to be the path of least resistance considering the alternative was trying to shower in our cramped head. This is probably the only thing nice to say about them except they were very clean. There was only one knob and one PVC pipe sticking out of the wall. Cold does not begin to describe it! The fancier one had a 90-degree PVC elbow for a shower head! Lucky for us, Tortugal Marina was close by with the nicest hot showers on the Rio so we did not have to rely on them the whole time!

In all, we cast off from our tugboat home 3 weeks to the hour from tying up! The time estimate was three times the quoted 1 week. The yard bill was only twice as high, but we “saved” 3 weeks slip rent while the work was on going. Overall, we would do it again. Not that we want to go through this again!

In hindsight, while repairs did take much longer than expected, the over all experience has been positive. We were not upset at delays or disappointed by any shortage of parts or materials. The ‘trades people’ here are every bit as capable as those are ‘stateside’ and we believe we saved quite a bit of $’s as well










Motor Repair cont….

We have put off the motor repair until we were “home” in our slip. There a few days later at the swap meet Johnny came up to us with an interrupter. Johnny said that the water pump could be re-built with non-Volvo parts in Guatemala City. Total time 1 week, sound familiar? Nevertheless, we were told, that when Johnny says 1 week, that is 7 days! Right! We decided to get started first thing Monday morning at 8:30. The mechanic showed up right on time and 4 hours later, he had removed all the same parts we had repaired on Roatan except removing the engine head. Removing the water pump only took an extra ½ hr.!

Lo and behold, next Monday afternoon (7 & ½ days!) the mechanic showed up. Unfortunately, I had another major project happening at the time so we had him come back the next morning at 9:00.

We had our motor running by lunch, well, a late lunch, but no leaks! We had thought that the motor part was going to be the most difficult repair and now to have it all behind us was a relief!

Things were going so nicely that we decided to have Pez Vela install an electric engine shut-off switch, as our old cable was rusty. Now Jeanie can shut the motor down with one finger! It used to take me both hands and a lot of cussing.

Now all that stands between us and a salt-water fix aboard the Oasis is a new anchor to stop the dragging and the will to go.