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
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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!