Oasis

2011-04-07T17:58:00.007-06:00

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

2010-03-11T04:18:00.057-06:00

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!

2009-12-15T10:29:00.014-06:00

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

2009-10-28T06:26:00.013-06:00

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…?

2009-04-15T01:48:00.016-06:00

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

2009-04-15T00:19:00.022-06:00

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.

Copan & Macaw mountain

2009-01-09T10:31:00.012-06:00

Our weekend in Copan…
Began as sort of a “spur of the moment”/ but, always wanted to go there any way. We had just never found the time until our card-playing friends from Roatan, John and Carol of “Jabulo” announced that they have suckered their grandson, Jesse, into crewing for them to Panama. Moreover, he was due to arrive the day after Christmas! Well, it did not take much more than that to convince us that the time had come!
Jan 1st dawned on the two intrepid travelers standing on the dock loading gear into a launcha. Well OK, it was 9:00 AM but I had not even had my second cup of coffee! We both tend to over-pack so it was amazing to see we got every thing into Jeanie’s 18 inch X 18 inch foldable ice chest on wheels. We looked like pro travelers. We didn’t even have a hotel booked! Anything we’d either forgotten or needed, we’ll buy on the fly…
We met our van driver Otto who spoke about as much English as we did Spanish. We got along just fine! His Toyota van was clean and very well maintained but it did not have A/C! While that would be a deal killer in the summer, the internet weather had forecast daytime highs in the mid 70’s and nighttime lows down to 55 degrees F. and no rain. We’ll just leave the windows open. Seems like the right proper way to travel in Central America anyway!
Just as expected, the van ride was cool and breezy. In addition, a record run as it was supposed to be a 5-hour trip. As it was a holiday and we were going early, Otto shaved 45 min off that time! That was great as it allowed us enough time to go through the ‘in town’ museum.
We were told not to miss this treat as it had a lot of “stuff” that was not available at the ‘ruinas’ (ruins). This one lived up to it’s reputation with mummified bones, jade artifacts, and most amazing actual skulls that had embedded jade in their teeth! It was well worth the $3.00 admission! It had been a long day and tomorrow we were going to do the ruins, so after a pizza dinner at, of all places, Jim’s. We all turned in early.
Ruins day was beautiful and after breakfast at the hotel, we loaded cameras and walking sticks into a van for the short ride to the ruins. Only about two miles, I know we could have walked it, but we were saving ourselves! Turns out the van ride was the most expensive one of the trip at $10.00 each way, so we used “Tuk Tuks” for the rest of the trip, more on that later. Even before we entered, the place was magical. Our guide Melvin is actually a studying archeology. In addition, was involved in many of the “finds” on the site. He claimed to be part Mayan, yet at over 6 feet tall, we teased him about being descended from the space aliens that myth has led us to believe, passed much knowledge to the Mayans. According to Melvin, there is absolutely no truth to that myth. Nevertheless, admitted he would be considered a God! God Melvin! He was a fantastic guide and made the ruins come alive.
The coolest thing was that the Mayans built a temple right over an existing one and as the artists’ picture shows, it was totally preserved! Right down to the actual colors! The paint was still intact! And, an exact reproduction was built in the center of the on site museum! The archaeologists tunneled out all around and through the one still standing to reveal the other. In fact, tunnels explore a lot of the site in order to have as little impact visually on what is above ground. There is a “Tunnel” tour, but we were told that it was not worth the price of admission.
Considering all that is there, the $22.00/ head admission fee was a bargain. We had lunch at the site and explored until mid afternoon when our van came to pick us up. We were a much worn out-group! Over a hamburger at Jim’s that evening, we taught Jesse how to play Baja Rummy and called it a day!
The next day, Since it does not take long to see Macaw Mountain, we had time to do a bit more exploring around the town of Copan and discovered the town market. What a colorful place to say the least! After we had explored our butts off there, we arranged for a couple “Tuk Tuks” to take us up the mountain.
As you can see, there is not much to them and the builder did not waste a lot of $$ on things like suspension springs or soft seats! The cobble stone streets and ruts are not kind to them or the passengers, but they are cheap and quick. I felt as if we were racing up Pikes Peek on a go-kart! Probably the best ride so far, except for the ride back down! Wow!
The Macaw Mountain is populated by wild and semi wild Macaws. The park also accepts donated birds that have been mistreated. There are also Toucans, cockatoos and many other types as well. Most in large enclosures, but many, free flying as well.
While John and I were busy exploring the market, Carol and Jeanie were busy scouting out a place for John’s surprise birthday dinner that night. It turned out to be a real surprise, as John had no clue. We had candlelight dinner on the terrace over-looking the pool and the town square Christmas tree. The music from the xylophone band filtering up through the bougainvilleas and something called a “Three milk cake” to wish upon. I know my wish probably will not count, but I did hope that my 71st birthday would be spent in much the same way! In addition, all of yours as well!
Otto our van driver was there at 11:00AM and the hotel grounds keeper was taking the holiday lights down from around the pool so I guess our time there was at an end. Tomorrow, we deliver our boat to the shipyard for a back deck repair while Jabulo and crew will prepare to leave for Panama and places far distant. Here’s hoping fair wind, until we will meet up again…………

2008-06-17T14:03:00.008-06:00

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

2008-03-06T11:24:00.007-06:00

“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!

2008-03-01T12:45:00.003-06:00

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”

2007-12-12T13:46:00.000-06:00

Oasis Log Rio Dulce to Roatan, Honduras
(On the other hand, should I call it the Oasis Blog?)
Saturday, November 25, ‘07

Well, friends and neighbors, as most of you already know, we escaped the magnetic pull of the Rio Dulce river region which has captured so many cruisers over the years. However, I am getting ahead of myself, so I will start at the beginning…

The Rio Dulce area as a whole has it all. Friendly locals, nice marinas, and the cost of living is still a bargain! We were also, in what we considered the flagship marina of the whole river! So why leave, you might ask.

We also wanted to be able to jump off the boat into clear water. Chase lobster and catch fish worth eating. The water in the Rio has 2-foot visibility at best. It also was too warm to be refreshing. The ‘Majarro’ and Roballo (local for Snook) were OK, but just not Dorado! Moreover, the thought of eating fish out of the river so far down-stream is not very appetizing. Therefore, we ate a lot of chicken and beef. Enough “Cheese-burgers in paradise”, we want Fish Tacos! The regional cuisine is very bland. I guess we miss Tex-Mex! All that said, next Hurricane season we do plan to be back there. After three or four months, we will be ready for a dockside fix!

Our first hurdle was to un-hook from the power grid, which we did the day after a delicious Thanks Giving feast at Mario’s Marina. What followed was a great lunch of leftover turkey and dressing, hugs all around and then the marina crew towing us away and casting us off into the river. We superstitious cruisers consider it unlucky to start a trip on a Friday! Therefore, our plan was to visit Mike and Sherry at their Texan Bay Marina and have more leftover turkey.

The Gods must have thought we were violating the Friday Rule because we had not even gotten to the Golfete (a very wide part of the river) when rain and wind hit us right on the nose! We tossed them some money to appease them (another superstition) and explained that we were only going to Texan Bay. Shortly thereafter, we saw the most beautiful sight, a perfect rainbow stretching clear across the horizon. The Gods, it appears, were indeed appeased! We motored through the arch as if it was a gateway to the beginning of our trip. That night spent in Texan Bay was calm and clear. The almost full moon bathed the area in a silvery light. What a way to begin a journey!

We still had some issues with clearing out of Guatemala. It seems our boat extension papers were in process but not in our possession. We were in effect illegal. Really only two months overdue, but that could be a problem, as we wanted to cross the Livingston Bar with a 2.43 high tide and a full moon which would occur Saturday at 7:30 PM. Talk about cutting it close! Well, we did have a contact in Livingston, or at least we thought we did until we tried to call him! After calling five different phone numbers, all wrong, we gave up on Julio. Our other ‘go-to guy, Roul (5510-9104), was there for us and cut right though the red tape! For only Q 250.00 ($33.33) and $10.00 each for a new stamp in our passports and we were legal again! The whole process took about 20 minutes. We had a nice lunch at the café Bahia Azule and went out to visit fellow cruisers Gary and Susan of Pacifico and review our exit strategy. (Susan painted the Oasis Palms on our transom.)

Our thought was to start about an hour early. That way, if we did go hard aground, the incoming tide would still lift us free. Great idea, but we still bounced a bunch of times so waiting an extra 15 or 20 minutes might not have been a bad idea. There was some wave action and the approximately 2 to 3 foot waves were actually dropping or bouncing us over the bottom, which also meant that we were getting lifted over as well! As in all ‘good’ landings and we must have had at least 15 or 20, we did sail away. So as ’they’ say about landings,” It is a good one”! After an un-eventful sail across the bay to Tres Puntas, we find ourselves alone in Ox Tongue Bight and planning our next jump. Yate’ Pacifico left at 10:00 AM the next morning for Belize. We figured to go around the point in the next day or so and will update you soon.

Monday Nov.26 ‘07
We are still in Tres Puntas waiting on the weather. It is deceptively beautiful here, but depending on which source you believe, there is either a major front or just a squall headed this way tomorrow. Therefore, we plan to head around the point on Wednesday, winds permitting.
P.S. Tuesday @ 9:00AMThe storm brought 10 to 18 MPH wind and filled our dink with nice rainwater. It is time for a nice bath! See you later.

Since no story would be complete with out an admission of just how dumb we really are, here it is!

Shortly after the marina crew towed us into the river, we discovered our depth sounder was not operational! Depending on how blasé you are, this is either very important or just an inconvenience. My feeling was that since there were not any parts in Fronteras anyway we might as well try to fix it as we head down the river toward the highest tide and the fullest moon available for the crossing of the ‘Bar”! Jeanie’s was somewhat on the more conservative side as you might have figured out by now! We wiggled more wires and cleaned the transducer of any growth to no avail. Still wanting to make the high tide, we called our friends on Pacifico and arranged to follow them out of the river as they also draft six ½ feet, the same as us. In addition, their plan was to go to Tres Puntas that evening, perfect!

I convinced Jeanie that we could get into Puerto Barrios, a major port just 10 miles south of Tres Puntas, without a depth sounder. If nothing else, we could simply follow a tanker in and anchoring right beside it! Jeanie finally bought into that idea as any parts we needed would have to come from there anyway and we could save many expensive taxi rides.

Therefore, having everything sorted out and a plan in effect, we started down the river and with not much else to do except hold the old Oasis in the middle (read deepest) part! I got to looking around and noticed a little switch hiding under the depth gage! I just moved it over a notch and Click! Oh, for crying aloud, it worked! Sigh of relief and Jeanie is now a much happier camper! I guess that after 5 months sitting at a dock we had forgotten how to turn things on!

We still tell each other “I love you” every day that keeps us turned on!

Wed, Nov 28th Noon

Enough rock & Roll! The Admiral Sez “GO”!

In direct violation of rule #1 or is it #2? It must be rule #2 as Rule #1 states that the Admiral is always right! We decided to do an over-niter to Utila, as we could not make Puerto Cortez, our next planned destination, before dark. In addition, Rule #3 states that there will be no pulling into any unfamiliar anchorage after dark!

Our original plan was to simply harbor-hop slowly across the top of Honduras. Beginning with a 38 mile jaunt to Puerto Cortez, Then 18 miles to Puerto Escondido and possibly going another 50 miles to La Ceiba before going directly North to Roatan. This would by-pass Utila completely as we had not heard much good about the place. The anchorage is wide open to the South-west and dinghy theft being just two reasons. Well, the day after the front came through, a serious rolling came into Tres Puntas and when the current picked up and set us sideways we began to look for alternatives. By leaving at noon, we could not get to Puerto Cortez or Roatan. We were just too far away so, that is how we find ourselves in Utila. It being 98 miles (a 24-hour sail), that allowed us to arrive during daylight hours. Now, it is only 30 miles (6 or 7 hours) to Roatan and if this calm weather holds, we will be weighing anchor first thing in the morning. However, that is just the plan tonight; let us see what tomorrow brings?

Problems in Paradise!

Oh, crap! The head packed it in just after we started our trip around Tres Puntas! Not a deal killer as it still pumps out. The pumping in of the clean water is the part that quit. We will haul buckets to flush until we can get it looked after in Roatan. I think it is an impeller, but could also be a switch. Tried to call Wilcox Crittenden (the mfgr), but our phone is acting up! Oh well, another thing to research in Roatan.

Roatan, Honduras
Friday Nov. 30, ‘07

Life is very good when your plan comes together. As you can tell by the heading, we made it to Roatan. Jeanie got us up at 4:00 AM, and a good thing she did, as I was really sawing logs! I guess the 24-hour crossing took more out of me than I thought. I had a morning nap and an afternoon nap but I still would have slept through starting time. We figured to wait ‘til sun-up, but the moon and our foredeck light made pulling the anchor a breeze. By 5:00 AM, I was on my second cup of coffee and we were turning east out of East Harbor, Utila. The seas were gentle and we had about a 10 MPH breeze on a broad reach clear to our turning mark at French Harbor. We had the hook down and were exploring “Fantasy Island Resort” by noon. Had wanted to have lunch there, but at US $25.00 each, we went back to the boat and ate Ham sandwiches!

After lunch, we decided to explore the Roatan Yacht Club marina and ran into Tom of the ‘other’ Oasis. We were neighbors at Mario’s in the Rio. He was a wealth of information and we will probably end up staying at the RYC for a while. The marina would not be our first choice except that it is a bargain! No one has figured out quite why, but the owner of the marina was shot on the way home from dinner one night! For the last 6 months, since the shooting, the marina has been going downhill! Not that it was a five star marina before the shooting, we are told the owner ‘had plans’, don’t we all! I am sure the estate will find a buyer for it soon. Then it too will cease to be a bargain!

Moreover, speaking of plans, I had plans to catch many fish while sailing from place to place. So far, my efforts this whole trip have resulted in a goose egg! Either the fish are a lot smarter in the Caribbean or I have lost my touch over the past 20 years! I have tried the lures that worked for us in Mexico (I never throw anything away!) and, the ones that came with the boat. Kevin (the seller) told me he did catch fish with what was aboard so I will keep trying. We really did not want to thaw out the chicken and steaks just yet!

Wednesday Dec 5th ‘07
Roatan Yacht Club aka French Harbor YC

Yes, we find ourselves tied to a dock once more. Tom and Jamie used the old take away close on us, telling us that two other boats were heading this way, for the one last available slip. Since 1st come 1st served is the norm, and we being the closest, we got here 1st! The rent is low, only $220.00 and that includes water, power, cable hookup for the available five channels of TV, and free wireless internet!

On the downside, we have to climb 52 (I counted them) steps to get to the clubhouse to use the internet! Did we tell you that this was a mountainous island? The internet also suffers from the same problems that seem to prevail in most of the third world countries. The first being the occasional power outage where nothing is working. On the other hand, just working slowly because too many folks are overworking the system. This makes for a lot of exercise carrying our laptops up ‘just to see’ if a good connection can be made.

We have heard conflicting reports about the water being drinkable so are going to have to pre-filter it before it goes into the tank. We also intend to disinfect it with bleach. Being as how filthy the harbor is we decided to put biocide in the water-maker. Under normal circumstances, it needs to be run every 3 or 4 days to prevent a build-up of growth on the membrane and any oil or silt would hurt the membrane!

Other shortcomings include, but are not limited to, any hot water in the shower. The shower has not been cleaned in at least 6 months! Moreover, the locals tend to throw all their trash into the water around the marina. The EPA would have a stroke!

All that being said, we love it!

Oasis Log Rio Dulce

2007-11-11T14:35:00.001-06:00

Oasis Log: Rio Dulce, Guatemala '07

So far, there haven't been very many emails because there wasn't anything interesting or exciting to report. We have been doing mainly the same mundane things you do at home, where ever you call home. Be it Texas, California, East coast or Canada. Only we've been doing it in a 3rd world Paradise! The only traffic signals with-in 200 kilometers of here only flash red and most drivers we've been with don't observe them anyway!

We do our local shopping in Frontera, about a 15 min. dinghy ride from our marina. It has only a 2 lane road through it that is shared by 18 wheelers, cattle and lumber trucks, and us shoppers! Since the locals have built stalls on what might be called the sidewalk and there is no provision for parking, you might imagine the congestion when a couple cars park to shop and all the major traffic is trying to get by around them and pedestrians! It is quite a mess and gives us seniors a bit of exercise running back and forth across the street!

But, starting with our river home. We live at Mario's Marina (www.mariosmarina.com) and get most of our local news through a highly flawed source at Rio Dulce Chisme.com – Home. Here is a video of our Halloween Party:

Also you can check out a fellow cruisers blog site for some of the controversies that can occur when a micro population of both North & South Americans(including Canadians) and Europeans even some friends from Africa all try to live together on a 4 mile stretch of river!

You might think that there's not much to do except sit around on a small boat and look at each other. Not so! First thing every morning(except Sun.) at 7:30 is the Rio Dulce cruisers net on VHF channel 69. this is where such important issues as the restaurant specials at the various marinas are announced, you may announce your coming and goings also if there are folks willing to carry flat stamped mail to the states or Canada or even Europe. Also discussed are any security issues, you should hear the 'flap' over how high an anchor light has to be, and don't even go near the subject of requiring life jackets in dinghies! By 'nets' end, it's time for breakfast. Then the rest of the day........

Starting with Saturdays, There's the cruisers Swap meet in the morning where all kinds of stuff appears out of peoples bilges and bodegas (that's a storage shed or room) gets displayed and sold or traded. We even have local artisans bringing clothing and jewelry. A launcha from "Casa Guatemala" (pork,chicken,cheese, and eggs) a lady selling the must delicious 'coco bread' a dried nut peddler and once in a while a shrimp peddler round out the affair. This is usually followed by a very good piece of Mario's pizza and then off we go to town as Sat. is also restocking day in Frontera. So the best selection of fruits and veggies is available.

Sunday there is football(or rugby or soccer)on the TV in the palapa by the pool. The Cayuga club, which is the name of the restaurant at Mario's has Mahjong, Bridge,Domino's, and Poker depending on who and how many folks you can put together. Their is also a TV there which is for non-sports types and usually has a movie playing.

Monday is the day Jeanie has her Bridge lessons and since the restaurant is closed, the cruisers have a pot-luck which is open to anyone on the river. These cocineras (cooks) really pull out the stops and with two or three tables piled high with food, nobody ever goes away hungry!

We have been taking lessons in Espanol on Wednesdays and Fridays now for about eight weeks and have learned a lot. In two or three years, we might even be able to carry on a conversation with a 'local'? We keep telling ourselves that because we're older, it's harder to learn, but also, the Guatemalans seem to speak a lot faster than what we were used to while in Mexico in '86.

As you might be aware of by now, there is a lot going on here to keep us busy. I've barely scratched the surface. Throw in a couple boat maintenance issues and a week can get pretty filled up. And while I'm on the subject of projects, our time here has been well spent. The projects that were put on hold when we left Texas have been mostly resolved with the generator being the only untested one left. But as Captain Ron says, "If it's going to happen, it's going to happen out there!" and we're planning to head for the Bay Islands, primarily Roatan, Honduras.

Mario's Marina is doing to a huge Thanks Giving spread on Thursday. These gals are working on only two of the five turkeys that were cooked in a huge fire pit and were delicious!
Then Friday we plan to pull the dock cord. Our current thoughts are, weather permitting is to cross the Livingston Bank Saturday at the7:00 PM high tide our 1st leg will be a 3 hour run to Tres Puntas and from there to either Belize(for passport renewal)first or start harbour hopping Eastward along the Honduran coast. We figure to take a look at the weather first thing in the morning and if its favorable, we'll hop to the next bay and then the next, ending up in La Ceiba and a short jump to Roatan. We try to avoid doing overnighters