S/V Stolen Child Sailing Log

Roatan to Key West... Not Quite

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:53:00 +0000

We left Roatan on Sunday, December 6th, with the intention of sailing directly to Key West. We had decent conditions, not great, but not bad, either. The wind was mostly around 10 to 15 knots and was just a little more north of east than I'd have liked it. The sea state was only about 4 feet with a northeast swell, but also a dying northerly swell that made for a little bumpier ride than usual. The forecast had called for the wind to come a little more southerly, perhaps east-southeast, which would have made for a pretty nice beam reach, but instead we had to pinch pretty close to the wind to maintain our desired heading. No worries, though, we were making anywhere from 6 to 8 knots and everything aboard was working well.

Unfortunately, Nancy was getting a little green around the gills. Because of the northerly component of the swell, we were pitching fore and aft a little, in addition to the beam to beam rolling caused by the northeasterly swell, and we were heeled over perhaps 20 degrees from wind pressure on the sails. Not really a very bad ride, but the combination of motions makes it difficult to move around the boat.

On Tuesday morning, the start of our third full day at sea, I had just gotten to sleep in the quarterberth when I heard a loud crash and woke up to find Nancy sprawled on the cabin sole (floor) next to the quarterberth. She had been in the galley, on the starboard side of the boat, when a wave slapped into the boat and caused it to roll more than usual to port, tossing her across the cabin and down into the quarterberth. She didn't have any broken bones, but somewhere along the way her back had taken a pretty good blow and was very sore.

Nancy had fallen in the head the day before and banged up her elbow and by this point I'd only had about 4 hours of sleep in better than 48 hours, so we decided to head for Puerto Morelos, which was only about 40 miles to the west. We arrived at Marina El Cid, just south of Puerto Morelos, a little after noon and tied up to a mooring ball. We have been here almost a week now and Nancy's back is starting to feel better.

As far as our plans, we are not sure yet. We are still planning to head on to Key West, but we may stay in Mexico for a month or two before continuing on. We are talking to Rob about coming down for a visit, if we can convince him to leave all that pretty snow in Kansas City and endure this balmy 80 - 90 degree tropical climate. It may be a hard sell, but we are hoping he will come for a visit in February and perhaps even sail back with us to Key West.

Stay tuned for further developments.

Marking Time in Roatan

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:40:00 +0000

Wow, it has been almost 9 months since my last log entry. The main reason I haven't made an entry in all that time is that we haven't done anything really new and exciting. After Rob's visit we went back to West End for a bit, then back to Coxen Hole, French Harbor, Calabash Bight to visit more with Ed and Julie on Free Radical, and then wound up in Port Royal. These are all harbors along the southern coast of Roatan. Our original plan was to cruise around the various harbors in Roatan for a couple of months and then head to the Rio Dulce in Guatemala, where we would sit out hurricane season. The Rio Dulce is where most cruisers in the Northwest Caribbean sit out hurricane season. It is located up the Rio Dulce river in the mountains of Guatemala and is very well protected from hurricanes. There are lots of marinas but they get pretty crowded with all the cruising boats during hurricane season. Many cruisers leave their boats there and fly back to the States and others stay on their boats. We had heard that there was quite a bit of crime directed at the cruisers in the Rio, most of it petty, but a growing amount of violent crime. After seeing what a great hurricane hole Calabash Bight would be, and factoring in the negative things we'd heard about Rio Dulce, we decided to sit out hurricane season in Roatan.

Roatan is the largest of the Bay Islands of Honduras. It is long and narrow, running more or less from the West Southwest to the East Northeast. There is one main, paved road running along the island linking the towns of West End, Coxen Hole, French Harbor, Jonesville and Oakridge. Just east of Oakridge, the paved road ends and there are various dirt roads leading to other settlements on the island. Port Royal (usually shown as "New Port Royal" on maps) is a very large and nice harbor just east of Calabash Bight. There is no town or village in Port Royal, but there are maybe a dozen private vacation homes, owned by wealthy Americans and Europeans. There are also two resorts, Mango Creek, a fishing resort, and Royal Playa, a dive resort, in Port Royal. As there are no roads to any of these properties, all access is by boat from Oakridge. The climate is tropical and houses require pretty constant maintenance, else they deteriorate quickly. Since most of the property owners only visit for a few weeks out of the year, they hire caretakers to live on the property year-round and keep it maintained. Our friends Ralph and Tiffany had taken on a caretaker's job in Port Royal, at the property known as Casa Gusto.

So, off we go to Port Royal, and there we stay throughout hurricane season. We had a list of projects we needed to do to the boat and Port Royal provided a very nice setting in which to do them. We replaced the propeller with a larger one, sized for the new engine we had installed back in Key Largo. We replaced all the screens in the hatches. We replaced all the hinges on the screens. We sanded and varnished all the exterior teak. We shined and waxed all the stainless. We scrubbed the hull numerous times. We stripped down and put a rebuild kit in the head. We did numerous other projects, large and small, all at a leisurely pace. The only drawback to doing projects in Port Royal is the ability to get supplies. To get from Port Royal to Oakridge, you have to go by boat outside the reef. In a good skiff or panga that can do 15 or 20 knots, it is only about a 15 minute trip. There is a hardware store in Oakridge that has a decent supply of stuff, but depending on what you need, you may have to go "down island," which means going to French Harbor or Coxen Hole. You can leave your dinghy or skiff at a waterfront bar called BJ's (more on BJ later) and from there you have to take a taxi or a bus. Taxis are expensive but fast, buses are cheap, but slow, take your pick. Of course if you can't find what you need on the island, which is quite frequently the case, you have to get it shipped in from the States. If you are in a hurry, you can have it flown in via RAS (Roatan Air Service), which can be quite expensive, and you'll have it about a week after it arrives at their Miami warehouse. If you aren't in a hurry, you can get it via DIP Shipping, which costs roughly one dollar a pound and you usually get it two to three weeks after it arrives at their Miami warehouse. If you used RAS, you have to go to French Harbor to pick your stuff up. DIP Shipping will deliver it to your door, unless you live in Port Royal, in which case they can't get to your door. They will deliver it to BJ's, though, which is about as convenient as it gets in Roatan. Needless to say, we made many "down island" runs and we now know where to find just about anything that can be found in Roatan.

More about BJ's. There is a waterfront bar in Oakridge called BJ's Backyard, or just BJ's for short. It is called BJ's because it is owned by a woman called BJ, though I've no idea what the BJ stands for. It is sort of a Roatan institution. BJ is a native of the island, although she has at times lived other places, including the Florida Keys. Several books have been written about Roatan and BJ is mentioned in all of them. BJ herself seems to be a sort of Roatan institution. BJ is 59 years old and her significant other is an 80 year old man named Carmen who is from the Pascagoula, Mississippi area (Gautier I think, to be precise). Carmen has lived in Roatan I think since the 70's, so he is an established local character as well. We have heard so many wild stories about BJ that we tended to discredit them, until just before we left Roatan, when another BJ story happened and now I pretty much believe all the other stories I've heard. One day we went into BJ's and Carmen was there alone. We asked where BJ was and he said "Oh, she's in the hospital under police guard." It seems that an attractive younger woman from Trujillo, on the mainland, was in BJ's one day having a beer. For whatever reason, she offered to buy a beer for Carmen. BJ seems to be quite territorial and definitely considers Carmen to be part of her territory, so she told the woman to leave her bar. The woman did not leave the bar, so BJ took a wire brush, like you use to scrub a BBQ grill, and hit her in the head with it (yes, with the bristle side, ouch). I assume that this put the woman in quite a foul temper, because instead of leaving the bar, she quite literally beat the crap out of BJ, and I don't mean in a hair-pulling, biting, cat-fight kind of way, I mean in a bare-knuckle, knockdown, drag out, fistfight kind of way. Now I assume that this put BJ in an even fouler temper than she was before, so she got her trusty .38 pistol and shot the woman in the leg. Both BJ and the woman from Trujillo are taken to the hospital in Coxen Hole, but the woman walks out of the emergency room before even seeing a doctor and hasn't been seen since. They kept BJ in the hospital for a couple of days. Since the woman didn't press charges, they let her go home instead of to jail and when we saw her next she definitely looked like she had been in a fight. This story is just to give you a taste of the colorful atmosphere in Roatan.

A couple of months before the end of our stay in Roatan, Ralph and Tiffany decided to take a trip to the States. Actually, Tiff was already there, visiting her mother, when Ralph got a call from a former client in New York, where he had a marine services business. The client wanted Ralph to come back and install a Webasto heating system in his boat and was willing to pay enough that it was hard to refuse. The only problem was that he couldn't leave Casa Gusto for two or three weeks with nobody to look after the place. That is how we got our first job in Roatan. Ralph hired us to look after Casa Gusto while he was gone and we moved ashore into the "casita," the caretaker's cottage next to the main house. It was a pretty easy job, Ralph had already taken care of most of the main problems, so all I really had to do was keep an eye on the battery bank (there is no electricity in Port Royal), keep an eye out for termites, and hunt for "wee-wee's." Wee-wee's are cutter ants and they can strip a tree completely bare of leaves in just a couple of nights (they are only active at night, so that is when you hunt them).

About the time Ralph was planning his trip to New York, Terry and Patrice, the owners of Mango Creek Resort, were planning a trip to Colorado, where Patrice is from. They had made arrangements with a couple who are friends of theirs to look after Mango Creek while they were gone. Unfortunately, their friends decided to back out, due to the political turmoil happening in Honduras. Now they needed somebody to look after Mango Creek for a month while they were in the States, starting just a couple of days after Ralph and Tiffany were due to get back from the States. That is how we got our second job in Roatan. There were no guests booked for the time that Terry and Patrice were gone, so we wouldn't have too much to do. Mainly we just had to live on the property (we stayed in one of the guest cabanas on the water), pick up the staff by boat on Monday mornings and drop them off on Friday afternoons, make regular "down island" trips for groceries, and handle any problems that might arise. The biggest problem that arose, however, was a personal problem. We got fat. Dalia is one of the cooks for Mango Creek and she prepared all our meals for us. She was trained by a chef from the U.S. and she is an excellent cook. Nancy helped create a recipe book for her of her favorite recipes, so of course, we had to try each and every thing in the recipe book, some of them more than once. I'm glad the job was only for one month, or else I would have had to buy new clothes. We actually quite enjoyed our time at Mango Creek. We watched movies every night on a big-screen TV. There is a real bristle dart board in the bar/restaurant, so I tossed lots of darts. One of the grocery stores in French Harbor sells Guinness, so I filled the fridge behind the bar with Guinness. Ralph would come over and we'd drink Guinness and toss darts. Mabel, Tai-tai, Randy, Perry, Manuel and Carlos, the rest of the Mango Creek staff, were very nice and we really enjoyed meeting and working with them. Take a look at the Mango Creek website, http://www.mangocreeklodge.com/, to see some pictures of the place. We were at Mango Creek over Thanksgiving, so we decided to get together with some of the other gringos in Port Royal and have Thanksgiving at Mango Creek. Ralph, Tiff and Max from Casa Gusto, Keith from Royal Playa, Kim and Joe from KiJo, along with their daughter and son-in-law, and Nancy and I had a very nice Thanksgiving dinner. Everybody brought a dish or two. Nancy cooked a Butterball turkey she found at the big grocery store in French Harbor and Dalia baked us some rolls.

By the time we finished up our tour of duty at Mango Creek, hurricane season was about over, so we started making plans to leave Honduras. We took the boat over to Calabash Bight for a couple of days to visit some more with Ed and Julie. Then it was back to Port Royal to say goodbye to Ralph, Tiff and Max. We had planned to leave on Saturday, December 5th, but Tiffany bribed us into staying one more day by making us a pecan pie. She had made the pumpkin and pecan pies for our Thanksgiving dinner and the pecan pie was really incredible (so was the pumpkin pie, but pecan is my favorite). She had found a recipe that didn't require Karo syrup, which is very non-standard, but I think I may actually like it better than the traditional recipe. Pecan pie is definitely worth staying an extra day for.

We really weren't too sure where we were going from Roatan until just a few days before we left. We toyed with the idea of going to Jamaica or the Cayman Islands, and then back to the States. We also considered going back to Mexico on the way back to the States. We knew we wanted to wind up back in the States for a while because we want to put some solar panels on the boat, get the boat hauled out and new anti-fouling paint put on the bottom, and various other projects that are much easier to do in the Land of Plenty. We just weren't sure what route to take to get back. We finally decided on a direct route without any stops. We would sail directly from Roatan to Key West and we left on Sunday, December 6th.

We enjoyed our time in Roatan. The climate is great and we made lots of friends. We got a lot of little boat projects done and did a lot of diving. The only thing we won't miss are the sand flies.

Rob's Roatan Rendezvous

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:43:00 +0000

We had about a week between the end of Sabrina and Tom's visit and Rob's arrival on 2/21. We spent the time in a leisurely manner, as is our accustomed style. Ralph and Nancy finished up the scuba lessons and Nancy is now a PADI certified Open Water Diver. We stayed put in West End, Roatan and on Saturday the 21st, we met Rob at the Pura Vida Restaurant. It had been a year and quite a few miles since we'd seen Rob and it was very good to see him again.

We introduced him to Salva Vida, the local Honduran beer, and also to Ralph, Tiffany and Max, who popped into the restaurant to visit. That evening we just sat on the boat and visited and introduced Rob to Flor de Caña, the local Honduran rum, which mixed very well in his Cuba Libre's. Rob and I went for our first dive Sunday morning just outside the reef at West End. The dive was an excellent one. We entered in 20 feet of water and swam through patch reef to the edge of the wall, where the reef drops off sharply to another slope at about 90 feet, and then drops sharply again to hundreds of feet deep. We followed the wall down to about 80 feet. We saw two hawksbill sea turtles on this dive, one of them quite large, along with lobsters and various kinds of reef fish such as french angelfish, parrotfish, blue tang, etc. Nancy and I had bought a digital camera with a waterproof case and I have started taking lots of pictures on our dives, so be sure to check out the Picture Gallery page. They aren't professional-quality underwater pictures, of course, but they are still quite interesting. We went ashore to get provisions in the afternoon and saw Ralph, Tiffany and Max on their way back from Port Royal, where they'd gone for a job interview as caretakers of some property. We invited them to dinner that evening and Rob fixed boiled shrimp, rice and beans, guacamole and pico de gallo.

Monday was a rainy day so we didn't go diving. Rob made some excellent shrimp scampi burritos with the boiled shrimp left over from the previous day. Tuesday morning the sun was out and we went diving. Ralph and Tiffany heard that they got the caretaking job, so we invited them over for dinner to celebrate. Rob made shrimp salad and pasta with your choice of putanesca sauce or clam sauce and Tiffany brought over a boat pie for desert.

Wednesday we motor-sailed to Parrot Tree Marina in Second Bight, just east of French Harbor. We spent the night in the marina in order to fill our water tanks and top the batteries off on shore power. Thursday we sailed to Calabash Bight to meet up with our friends Ed and Julie, whom we hadn't seen for about 3 years, since we visited them on Free Radical in St. Marten. It was very exciting to see them again and they invited us over to Spirit of Free Radical for dinner. They still have Free Radical, their monohull, and have since bought a catamaran they named Spirit of Free Radical, which they have been fixing up for most of the past year. They are pretty much finished and have done a wonderful job fixing it up.

Friday morning Rob got a tour of Free Radical and we went for a dive later in the morning. After the dive, Ed and Julie accompanied us into the town of Oak Ridge and showed us around. From Calabash Bight, you can dinghy through a canal into Fiddler's Bight, across Fiddler's Bight and through another canal into Oak Ridge Harbor, and then across the Harbor into the town of Oak Ridge itself. Rob bought some pork chops to grill and we invited Ed and Julie over to Stolen Child for dinner.

Saturday morning Rob and Nancy dinghied into Oak Ridge for the vegetable market and then Rob and I went diving in the afternoon. Rob fixed lobster tails, spanish rice and candied carrots for dinner Sunday morning we left Calabash and motor-sailed to Guanaja, the next island east of Roatan. We anchored just west of Bonacca. Guanaja is the easternmost of the Bay Islands. Christopher Columbus landed here on his fourth and final voyage to the New World in 1502. There are approximately 10,000 people living on Guanaja, 8,000 of which live in Bonacca. Bonacca is the capital of Guanaja and is a tiny cay less than 100 acres in size. All the houses and structures are two and three stories tall and many of them are built over the water on stilts. It is quite interesting to see, but quickly looses its appeal after a few hours. We spent a couple of days there and met up with some very interesting and colorful local characters, but were glad to leave on Tuesday and head to Graham's Cay, just a couple of miles away to the east.

Just as we were approaching Graham's Cay, we saw a cruise ship entering the harbor. We picked up a mooring ball just off Graham's Cay and watched as the cruise ship anchored near us and began ferrying crew, food and passengers ashore to Graham's Cay. Nancy found out later from one of the women from the cruise ship that it is actually owned by the passengers, who each buy a condominium-sized chunk of the ship. There were 107 owner-passengers aboard and I would assume that there were almost that many who were not aboard. Every year the owners get together and figure out where the ship is going for the year and many of them live aboard all year round. It sounds quite interesting, but I have to think the operating costs would be very high. We had dinner ashore and just relaxed in the cockpit that evening. I woke up at 1:00 in the morning, as I often do, and checked the boat over, paying particular attention to the mooring line. Everything looked fine and I went back to bed. About 5:30 I woke up when I heard an unfamiliar bump. I went topside to discover that we were no longer moored and had drifted almost ashore. This is what you call an "Oh, Sh*t!" moment. I fired up the engine and quickly motored us away from shore with no harm done, other than using up my monthly allotment of adrenaline. Apparently sometime between 1:00 and 5:30, some chop had built up in the harbor and caused the mooring line to chafe through, setting us adrift. I knew when we picked up the mooring that I should have put some chafe gear on the line. Just one of several reasons why I'd much rather anchor than pick up a mooring. We decided that we'd had enough of Guanaja and headed back to Roatan, arriving in French Cay Harbor about 15:00, Wednesday afternoon.

After we got anchored in French Cay Harbor, Rob and I took the scuba tanks to Coco View Resort to get them filled. We got the distinct impression from the lady who runs the place that she'd rather not be bothered with it, but said they'd do it if we had current hydrostatic testing stamps and visual inspection stickers. Our hydro stamps were good, but they were out of date for visual, so she turned us over to a guy named Doc, who said they could inspect them for $15 per tank. We needed them filled, so we said ok. Doc was nice enough to let us borrow a couple of their full tanks so we could dive the next morning.

Rob and I went for two dives on Thursday. In the morning, we went outside the entrance to French Harbor and dove the wreck of a freighter named Mr Bud, which is right on the edge of the wall in about 50 feet of water. Mr Bud is a rather small freighter and it hasn't been down long enough to have lots of interesting coral growing on it, but it was still a very interesting dive. We saw a stingray, a grouper and a very large sea slug, in addition to the usual reef fish. After the dive, we took the loaner tanks back to Coco View to swap for our tanks, but they weren't ready yet, so Doc let us borrow a couple more full tanks and we next dove the wall outside the entrance to Coco View. This was a pretty spectacular dive site. The mooring ball is in about 20 feet of water right at the edge of the wall, which descends vertically down to about 80 feet, where it descends more gradually for a while before taking another vertical plunge. There are lots of crevasses and overhangs and we saw some large crabs, lobsters and queen angelfish, among other reef fish. Rob fixed shrimp scampi burritos and spanish rice for dinner and I ate until I was ready to pop. The shrimp scampi he fixes is very good all by itself, but then he puts a tortilla in a frying pan with a little butter to crisp it a little on the outside and while it is in the pan, he puts cheese, onion, tomato, avocado, shrimp scampi and probably some other good stuff on the tortilla. Shake a little hot sauce on that and roll it up and eat it with some spanish rice and wash it down with an ice cold Salva Vida and life just doesn't get any better.

Friday we returned to Coco View and two of our four tanks were almost ready, so we waited around for them to be filled, then went to dive the Prince Albert wreck. Unfortunately, the wreck lies in the channel into Coco View and the visibility was very poor. There is also a crashed DC-3 airplane near the Prince Albert wreck and we came across the DC-3 before we made it to the Prince Albert. Since the visibility was so poor, we decided to abort the wreck dive and go back to the wall we had dove the previous day. We had another spectacular dive on the wall for Rob's last dive before flying back to real life on Saturday. We were just returning from the dive as Daydream was pulling into French Cay Harbor and I dove their anchor for them since I was already wet and had my gear handy. Friday evening we went into French Harbor and ate dinner at a nice restaurant named Romeo's. Saturday was another somber goodbye day. Rob got all packed up in the morning and caught a taxi for the airport a little after noon. I'm really glad we got certified for scuba and bought our equipment because I think it really added an extra dimension to Rob's visit. He hadn't been diving in years and really enjoyed it. I know that we really enjoyed having him aboard and are looking forward to his next visit. We are also hoping for more visitors while we are here, as this is an exceptional spot to visit and it is pretty easy to get flights in and out from most anywhere in the States.

Sabrina and Tom's Excellent Adventure

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:17:00 +0000

Saturday morning, February 7, we left Parrot Tree Marina and sailed back to French Harbor. I picked up our pack mules, I mean our guests, Tom and Sabrina at the Roatan airport in the afternoon. They had graciously brought us a lot of boat stuff we had ordered. There was so much stuff that one of their bags had started to come apart at the seams, so Tom had whipped out some duct tape he just happens to travel with and effected an emergency repair en route (this guy is a natural cruiser). Airport security in Roatan was about to inspect that particular bag when Sabrina cautioned him "be careful, that bag is about to explode." Fortunately, Roatan is a pretty laid-back kind of place and the security guy got a chuckle out of her choice of words. Not only did they bring us all the stuff we had ordered and the mail we'd had shipped to them, they packed a bunch of goodies for us, too, such as peanut M&M's, York peppermint patties, a Paddy O'Quigley's T-shirt, a couple of half-pint Guinness glasses, and lots of other great stuff from the Land of Plenty.

After getting them settled aboard, we went ashore for dinner and provisioning. We ate at a nice little restaurant and introduced them to Salva Vida, one of the local beers. There were only two tables in the restaurant and the other one was empty, but the food was great. After dinner, we stopped at a street-side stand selling fresh produce and got plenty of fresh fruit and veggies. They had these very large fruit objects they claimed were papayas. They were much bigger than papayas we had seen elsewhere, as big as a small watermelon. We bought one of the large fruit objects, some avocados, limes, a cantaloupe, some bananas and various other fresh things, then headed to the grocery store and got the rest of our provisions. After returning to Stolen Child and stowing the provisions, we dinghied over to Jupiter's Smile to visit with Jay and Barb. Jupiter's Smile is an Island Packet, which is one of the boats Tom and Sabrina are considering when they start cruising. We had a great visit with Jay and Barb. Sabrina and Tom have a Catalina 30 that they sail on Lake Perry in Kansas, and it turns out that the people they bought their Catalina from are good friends of Jay and Barb.

Sunday morning we carved up the large fruit object and Nancy made breakfast burritos for breakfast. The papaya was so large we only sliced half of it and I put out a call on the VHF to see if any of the other boats in French Harbor wanted the other half, which was promptly claimed by the folks on Pearl S. Buck. The weather was a little overcast and drizzly, but after breakfast we weighed anchor and set out for West End, Roatan. Practically all week before Sabrina and Tom arrived, the wind had been blowing 15 to 20 knots from the northeast and I was looking forward to a really good sail to West End. Unfortunately, and as so often happens, when we got out of French Harbor there was less than 5 knots of wind and we wound up motoring the whole way. We arrived at West End in the early afternoon and picked up a mooring. In West End they have put in a dozen or so moorings, which are basically permanent anchors, and attached a mooring ball, or float to them, so that boats don't have to set their own anchor and consequently dig up the turtle grass on the bottom. You simply drive the boat up to the mooring ball and pass your dock line through the mooring line hanging under the mooring ball. There is usually stiff competition for moorings in West End, but we managed to get the mooring closest to the reef so that we could snorkel directly from the boat out to the reef. A boat named "Watch And Sea" was moored close to us, with Ben aboard single-handing. We had been in radio contact with Ben off and on since southern Mexico, but we'd never met him in person, so he dinghied over for a few beers and stayed for the spaghetti dinner Nancy had made. Ben is really nice and it was good to finally meet him in person. He's an airline pilot who had taken a couple months of vacation and was now on his way back to the States and real life.

Monday morning dawned overcast and drizzly. I made pancakes for breakfast and by late morning the sky had cleared and we went ashore. West End is a very pleasant little village that is geared to scuba diving with more than a dozen dive shops. There is one street that runs parallel to the beach and isn't paved, but is packed sand. We had lunch at a restaurant on stilts over the harbor and then went back to the boat for some snorkeling on the reef. There was a school of squid in the water right next to the boat. At sunset we got out the sextant and Tom practiced taking sights on Venus and several stars.

Tuesday dawned clear and sunny. Nancy made breakfast burritos while Tom and I put on the sail cover (something I'm quite lazy about doing). After breakfast Tom and I rigged up the Stolen Child Super Duper Rope Swing. We rigged up the whisker pole (a telescoping aluminum pole for holding one corner of a sail in a certain position away from the boat) with the end out over the water just forward of the beam on the port side with a 3/4" dock line hanging from it. Next we lashed a 2x6 plank across the bow rail. You stand out on the end of the plank (walking the plank, so to speak) holding the rope hanging from the whisker pole and launch yourself out over the water. At the top of the rope's far swing, you let go and execute your fanciest dive or belly-flop, whichever the case may be, into the water. We're the only boat in Roatan with a Super Duper Rope Swing and I think Tom and Sabrina were duly impressed with the skill and determination we put into having fun. We went ashore in the afternoon for beers and a late lunch. Tuesday night we stayed up quite late debating politics, religion and philosophy. In other words, we drank a lot and talked a lot of trash.

Wednesday morning we saw the boat next to us, Beau Soleil, rigging its spinnaker for some spinnaker riding. What you do is turn your boat around at anchor, so that the anchor is attached to the stern instead of the bow, which makes your bow point downwind. Then you can fly the spinnaker (a big sail for downwind sailing) from the bow and someone can sit on a line tied between the two bottom corners of the sail. As the wind fills the sail, it will pick the person up out of the water and lift them pretty high, perhaps 20 feet or so. I went over and introduced myself to Mike and Karen and their son Falcon (so named because he was born in Malta). Falcon is about 20 years old and was on vacation visiting his folks. I invited him over to try out the rope swing and he came over later that morning to give it a try. Another boat moored near us, Aventur, was an Island Packet and the owners had heard that Sabrina and Tom were interested in Island Packets and had invited them over to see their boat. Sabrina and Tom dinghied over to take a look at Aventur in the early afternoon while we waited for Daydream to arrive from Utila. There weren't any moorings available when Daydream showed up, so I snorkeled over to hand-set their anchor for them when they arrived. After they got settled in, Ralph, Tiffany and Max came over and we had a nice reunion. I was glad they made it over in time to meet Tom and Sabrina and they invited them over to Daydream to, in Ralph's words, "take a look at a pretty boat." After dinner, Ralph came back over and we sat in the cockpit sipping rum and Kahlua until about 2:30 in the morning. I had learned how to tie Turks Head knots from a book I had aboard and I had tied some on my wheel to mark the center position of the rudder. Ralph liked them and I loaned him the book and he's now become a Turks Head fanatic. He taught Tom how to tie them and in the process, wound up tying Turks Heads on my furling lines and jib sheets. I think I still haven't found all the Turks heads he tied that night.

Thursday morning Tom made pancakes for breakfast and then it was time for them to pack up for their trip back to real life. We took them ashore around noon to catch a cab to the airport. Nobody broke down and cried, but it was a pretty somber farewell. Nancy and I really enjoyed having them aboard and hope it won't be too long before they visit again.

Hello Honduras

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 01:43:00 +0000

Friday, January 23, we left Northeast Sapodilla Cay bound for Laguna El Diamante, Honduras. We had very light but favorable wind most of the way and also a favorable current. Unfortunately, Daydream developed what appeared to be a transmission problem on the way. His engine would occasionally rev up as though the clutch plates were slipping. Since the wind was so light we were motor-sailing as we needed to make it through the entrance to the lagoon before dark. Due to Daydream's transmission problem, though, Ralph didn't want to run his engine until just before reaching the entrance, so we went ahead to make the entrance before dark and then stood by waiting to guide Daydream in with a spotlight in the dinghy when they arrived after dark. The entrance to El Diamante is very scenic. The Honduran coastline is low foothills leading to mountains in the distance. To enter El Diamante, you pass through a moderately narrow gap in the shoreline, with the forested hills rising perhaps 100 feet on either side. There is also a very large rock outcropping in the middle of the entrance, so the moderately narrow gap has now become decidedly narrow. It looks a little scary at first, particularly because the water is muddy and you can't see the bottom to watch out for submerged rocks, but it is really a quite easy entrance to navigate. Inside the lagoon you are in a large, very well-protected body of water surrounded by 100 foot hills, densely wooded with palms and tropical hardwoods. The bottom is quite muddy, which means the anchor holds really well, so you could ride out quite a strong blow in this lagoon. Daydream arrived about an hour after dark and I met them at the entrance in the dinghy, shining a spotlight on the rocks to either side of the channel. Tiffany was on the bow with a spotlight as well, so they made it in pretty easy and didn't have to push the transmission very hard. Ralph and Tiffany have helped us out so many times that it was nice to be able to help them a little.

Ralph had had problems with his transmission before, and just happened to have a spare transmission aboard. The spare had good internals, but the housing had a repaired crack and so was slightly questionable. Ralph decided to swap the internals, figuring it was either the plates or thrust washers that were the problem. Saturday he performed surgery on the transmission and it seemed a success, based on how the input and output shafts felt (smooth and easy spinning, but almost zero end-play or run-out). He used a liquid gasket material to seal the housing together, so we decided to stay another day and allow the sealant to cure before putting transmission fluid in and bolting it back on the engine. While he worked on the transmission, Nancy, Tiffany, Max and I went ashore and followed a short path through the mangroves and jungle to a neighboring bay to the east. The neighboring bay, Bahia Escondido, has a nice beach and we strolled the beach and found some very nice seashells. Nancy made some incredible dinner using pork tenderloin, jerk seasoning, and apricot marmelade. Another boat, 40 Mile, with Grant single-handing, arrived Sunday and was also bound for Utila. Sunday Ralph installed the repaired transmission and gave it a little test and it seemed to work fine.

Monday morning Daydream, 40 Mile and Stolen Child formed a little flotilla leaving El Diamante bound for Utila. The wind was again very light, but still favorable and we were able to average 5 knots motor-sailing. Unfortunately and unbelievably, Daydream started experiencing the same symptoms as before. Ralph and I were both scratching our heads. I knew that a fuel filter that is starting to get clogged up will cause the engine to surge in RPM, particularly when advancing the throttle, so I suggested he change his fuel filter, just to rule that out as a possibility. He changed out the filter and bingo, the problem disappeared. Ralph said I'm now his hero and he'll buy all my beer for the rest of my life. Well, that's not exactly what he said, but little kids may read this blog, so I won't print what he really said, and I'm sure that is what he really meant to say.

Isla Utila, Honduras is a really neat, kind of funky island. The entire economy of the island is based around scuba diving and they cater largely to the young backpacker-type of crowd. We checked in with the Port Captain and Immigration on Tuesday and began exploring the town, staying a week before moving on to Roatan. We found a really nice little restaurant, the Cafe Mariposa, and met the manager, Jeff. I had shrimp grilled in a coconut rum sauce on a bed of saffron rice that was incredibly good. Best of all, from 4:00 to 6:00 beers are 20 lempira, or roughly a buck a beer. The coffee is also excellent.

Thursday I helped Ralph move a mooring. Ralph used to be a diving instructor in Utila years ago and had sunk an old engine block in the bay to use as a mooring. He found the engine block and wanted to move it a little further out and reuse it as a mooring. He rounded up 3 plastic drums to use for flotation and while we were moving it we met Louis from the catamaran Simpatica, who came over to give us a hand. Friday Ralph and I went diving with the dive boat from Paradise Divers dive shop, where he used to work as an instructor. He had stopped by Thursday afternoon and helped them rebuild some of their dive gear, and said they needed some 2-inch nylon webbing to replace their weight belts, which he knew I had a supply of. They let us dive for free since he had helped repair their gear and I had given them a bunch of webbing. We dove a site on the north side of the island named Duppy Waters, which is a wall dive. The sea floor goes from about 30 feet to over 600 feet almost vertically. We descended the wall to about 140' and there was still no end in sight. There was an incredible amount of coral growing all up and down the wall, much more than we had seen on the wall in Belize we had dove. We also dove a site on the southeast of the island called Ted's Point that has some really neat spur and groove coral formations and also the wreck of a 40' sailboat. Sunday we went to Daydream for dinner and to say goodbye to Ralph and Tiffany as we were planning to leave for Roatan Monday. Another boat in the bay had caught more fish than they could eat and gave some fish steaks to Ralph and Tiff, which they shared with us for dinner.

We left Utila early Monday morning, February 2, bound for French Cay Harbor on the island of Roatan, Honduras. We arrived after a 9-hour motor-sail and anchored near Jupiter's Smile. We had met Jay and Barb aboard Jupiter's Smile on our way from Dry Tortugas to Isla Mujeres. We had really enjoyed their company in Isla Mujeres and it was really nice to see them again. We had them over for coffee Monday evening. Tuesday we went ashore to Eldon's, the grocery store in French Harbor. I can hardly contain my excitement as I write this, because at Eldon's, they not only had Little Debbie Nutty Bars, they had cases of Guinness Draught!!! That was several days ago as I write this, and I still have a huge ear-to-ear grin. I haven't had a Guinness since we left Key West, way back in April of 2008, but now I have a case of them in the fridge. I am also quite a fan of Little Debbie, which I have not found in Mexico or Belize, where the leading brand of snack food is Bimbo, and it should be obvious that a Bimbo just can't compare to a Little Debbie (no, I'm not making that name up, Bimbo makes most of the sandwich bread and snack foods around here).

Wednesday we went ashore with Jay and Barb and explored French Harbor, then in the evening went to happy hour at Coco View Resort and met folks from some of the other boats anchored in French Cay Harbor. Thursday morning (this morning as I write this entry) we waited for a squall to pass, then weighed anchor and got underway for the short trip to Parrot Tree Marina in Second Bight, Roatan. It only took us about an hour to get here and it would have been a great sail had we been going the other direction, but unfortunately we were heading into 15 to 20 knot northeast trade-winds. It was such a short trip we didn't bother putting up the main, we just motored out of French Harbor and then put out the jib and sailed as close to the wind as we could without backwinding the jib, then tacked onto starboard tack and entered Second Bight. On the way we crossed paths with Ben aboard Watch And Sea, who we had shared an anchorage with in Bahia de La Espiritu Santo, Mexico. We had only talked via the radio, not in person, and were hoping to meet him in Roatan. He was headed from Guanaja to French Harbor, and then to West End before heading north again. We are hoping to meet up with him in West End while Sabrina and Tom are aboard. We are also hoping Ralph, Tiffany and Max make it over to West End from Utila while we are there. We travelled in company with them for over a month and we've really missed them these last few days.

Tomorrow we will take advantage of our shore power hook-up here at the dock and do some heavy-duty cleaning on the boat before Sabrina and Tom arrive. They fly in Saturday and we are really looking forward to seeing them. We'll pick them up at the airport and get them aboard Saturday, then Sunday we plan to sail down to West End. The beaches, restaurants, snorkeling and diving are all supposed to be excellent at West End, and I think they will enjoy the sail down there. We've had several cold fronts blow through in the last week, bringing rainy, squally weather, but that is supposed to have all cleared up by this weekend and we should have excellent weather for their visit. My next log entry should be shortly after their visit.

Day Trippin' Through Belize

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:48:00 +0000

I have discovered a new delicacy. Like many great discoveries, it was pure serendipity. For Nancy's birthday, I had baked a cake. I used yellow cake mix and a chocolate icing. The icing was the Betty Crocker kind that comes in a can. After applying what I deemed to be the perfect thickness of icing to the cake, there was still some icing left over and I felt it would be a shame for it to go to waste, so I put it on Ritz crackers with some peanut butter. WOW! What a taste sensation. Everyone knows I have quite a sweet tooth and like to have desert after every meal. For simplicity's sake, I often put peanut butter on crackers and then add something sweet like jelly and that makes for a quick and easy desert. Nutella on crackers is also good. I actually prefer the Keebler's Club Crackers, but you can't find Keebler's down here. I don't know if perhaps they don't have any hollow trees down here, or maybe elves just don't like the tropical climate. Anyway, they do have Ritz crackers, which are almost as good. My favorite topping for the peanut butter and crackers is apple butter, but you can't find that down here either, so I've been using various kinds of jelly and marmalade. But now I've discovered the palate-pleasing combination of peanut butter and cake icing. I'm now on a can of vanilla icing and it is just as good as chocolate. Give it a try sometime and tell me what you think.

Well, to continue with our travelogue, we arrived in Cay Caulker, Belize, on Christmas Day after a very short and only slightly eventful trip. The water inside the reef in northern Belize is very shallow, less than 6 feet in many places, which is how much depth Stolen Child needs. Leaving San Pedro, both Stolen Child and Daydream bounced on the bottom a few times and each of us got stuck at least once, but not very bad. Ralph was able to motor off when he got stuck and we tied a 5 gallon jerry can of water to the boom and ran the boom out over the beam causing the boat to heel over just enough to allow us to motor off. Once we were a couple of miles south of San Pedro the depth stayed above 8 feet. Cay Caulker has a very protected and placid anchorage on the west side of the cay and we really enjoyed being there after the rocking and rolling we had done at the last couple of anchorages we were in. The town of Cay Caulker is much more laid-back and quiet than San Pedro, but we still found it to be rather busy for our tastes. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our stay there. Cay Caulker does not have any paved roads, the streets (both of them) are sand and dirt (or mud, depending on weather). There are no cars, but quite a few golf carts, and the beer is delivered to the various bars and restaurants by a tractor hauling the cases of beer on a wagon. We got a propane tank refilled and I found a local guy who gave me well water to replenish our water tanks. The locals don't drink the well water, they drink rain water they catch in cisterns. We carry 200 gallons of water on board but it had been about a month since we had topped off our water tanks and were down to about 120 gallons, so I got about 80 gallons from him. I used 5-gallon jerry cans to haul the water to the boat. Ralph loaned me his two jerry cans and with my two I could carry 20 gallons on each trip. Each trip took about 30 minutes to dinghy to his dock, tie the dinghy up and carry the jerry cans to his water spigot, fill 4 cans, carry them back to the dinghy, run the dinghy back to the boat, and empty the cans into our water tanks. After repeating that process 4 times I figured we had enough water for a while. The guy I got the water from was really nice. While I will filling the cans on one of the trips, he cut the top off a green coconut and gave it to me so I could drink the coconut milk in it. It was very refreshing.

We left Cay Caulker and went to Cay Chapel on Wednesday, December 31. It was another very short run and this time completely uneventful. There isn't much on Cay Chapel except a posh resort, a golf course and an airstrip. The day before, while still in Cay Caulker, some local fisherman had sold us some lobster and we'd put them in the fridge. After we got all anchored and settled in, Nancy and I swam over to Daydream and had a few Beers with Ralph and Tiffany, then went back to Stolen Child to get the lobsters, which Tiffany cooked in a pesto cream sauce with pasta. It was delicious. Ralph fixed up some coffee with Khalua and rum for an aperitif. I normally like my coffee completely unadulterated, but this was really good. Unfortunately, we drank all of his Khalua and at $40 a bottle in Belize we haven't yet replaced it. Thursday I worked on scraping the hull for a couple of hours, but other than that it was pretty much a lazy day.

We left Cay Chapel on Friday the 2nd and went to St. George's Cay. It was only a 3-hour trip including the time we spent stuck in the mud. Between Cay Chapel and St. George's, there is a narrow channel named, quite appropriately, Porto Stuck. We must have been just a little too far over to one side of the channel because we grounded and Daydream, who also draws 6 feet, was a little to starboard of us and didn't get stuck. We weren't stuck long before one of the ferry boats zoomed by and their wake lifted us just enough to get off and continue on. After we got to St. George's and settled in, Ralph, Tiffany and Max came over and Nancy cooked some lobster we had bought from some fishermen the day before, along with some saffron rice and black beans. Tiffany brought over some boat pie for desert. Boat pie is really good and really easy. You just crumble some cookies, crackers or whatever you have in the bottom of a pan, then mix lime juice and sweetened condensed milk and pour over the cookie crumbs and refrigerate it for a while. It looks and tastes almost like key lime pie. There isn't much on St. George's Cay except for private homes and a couple of resorts. We thought we'd go ashore and have dinner and a couple of drinks at the St. George's Resort restaurant. When we got there, though, they politely informed us that they only serve guests of the resort and cruiser's are not welcome in the bar or restaurant. Oh, well, back to the boat.

Sunday, January 4, we sailed to North Drowned Cay and anchored. North Drowned Cay is just under a mile from Belize City. We thought we might do a little provisioning in Belize City and perhaps see about spending a night at Cucumber Beach Marina, which is just south of Belize City, where we could top off our water and diesel and do some laundry. Monday we went into Belize City. We actually moved the boats and anchored just outside of Belize City, dinghied ashore, and then moved the boats back to North Drowned Cay. The anchorage at North Drowned Cay is not especially good, but it is much better than being anchored just off Belize City, where there is no protection from the north, east or south and very rolly. Anyway, we got plenty of groceries at the Bottom Dollar Grocery in Belize City, including grits, which we had not been able to find since we left the States and we'd long since run out.

We were able to get a couple of overnight slips at Cucumber Beach Marina on Tuesday, but in retrospect, I don't think it was worth the effort. It is a very nice marina and we topped off our water tanks and diesel and got our laundry done, but we got stuck entering and leaving the marina. The marina has a long breakwater channel leading into it and the depth is 8 feet or better for most of it, but there is a short stretch just at the mouth of the breakwater where the depth is about 5 feet. Remember that Stolen Child and Daydream both draw 6 feet. The shallow spot is soft mud, but since we replaced our engine, our prop has been undersized (we have been on the lookout for a new prop and hope to get one in Honduras). Daydream went in first and got stuck but was able to eventually power on through at full throttle. We went in and get stuck, but couldn't generate enough thrust with the prop to power off. Fortunately, a ferry boat was leaving about that time and kicked up enough wake as they passed that we were able to come free. One of the major disadvantages of marinas in general is bugs. Most of the time when you anchor, you are just far enough away from shore that you don't have any mosquitos, flies, or no-see-ums. You get really spoiled. In a marina you usually get attacked by every kind of flying and biting insect known. Needless to say, we were glad to leave the next day. After we took on fuel, I calculated that Stolen Child is using about 0.44 gallons of diesel per hour, which is very good. That is actually a little less than the old engine used and the new engine has about 65% more horsepower. I expect our fuel consumption will increase after we get a bigger prop, but I'm very pleased with this new engine. We also changed the oil, oil filter, secondary fuel filter and cleaned the raw water strainer while at the marina. Leaving the marina we waited for high tide, but still got stuck once again. The tidal range through Belize is usually less than a foot. This time a local boat was on its way into the marina and they pulled us off.

From the marina, we went to Robinson's Cay for an overnight anchorage, then sailed on to Bluefield Range on Thursday, January 9, and then continued on to Tobacco Range on Friday. Tobacco Range is a little group of islands, or cays, about a mile inside the reef that has a very well-protected anchorage in the middle of the islands. We had gotten up and underway early that morning, so we arrived a couple of hours ahead of Daydream. We were just poking around on the north side of the group of islands, checking depths and then started to proceed into the anchorage in the middle of the islands. The chart showed a channel that would allow 6 feet, but maybe we were not exactly in the channel, or perhaps it had shoaled up since the chart was printed. In any event, the depth came up to 6 feet almost as soon as we started into the anchorage, so we put the wheel over hard to starboard, thinking there was deeper water in that direction. Nope. We were almost turned around and heading back out when we went aground, and although we weren't going very fast, we were very solidly aground. We tried hanging a 5-gallon jerry can of water from the boom to heel the boat over a little and then running the jib out, but no luck. I took a halyard (rope) from the top of the mast and tried pulling the boat over with the dinghy, but no luck. By this time, a couple of Belizean fishermen had come over to see if they could help. The Belizeans were named Jaime and Wilson. We loaded the anchor in the dinghy and Jaime (Spanish for Jamie and pronounced "high-may") and Wilson carried the anchor out about 150 feet so we could winch the boat forward with the anchor windlass (this is called kedging). We were able to move the boat, but very slowly. Jaime and Wilson tried hanging off the boom, along with the water jug, but still we were stuck. We ran the anchor back out and started kedging some more when Daydream arrived. We tied a bunch of dock lines together and Jaime and Wilson took one end over to Daydream and Ralph set his anchor and tried using a combination of his windlass and engine to pull us off. We moved a little, but still we were stuck. Ralph repositioned Daydream closer to Stolen Child and we shortened our tow line, thinking perhaps there was too much stretch in the line, then Jaime and Wilson hung from the boom while Ralph and I gave our engines as much RPM as we were comfortable with. Slowly but surely we began moving inch by inch, then finally we came free. We were very grateful to Jaime and Wilson, as they had worked very hard for two or three hours to help us. Unfortunately, we were running low on both cash and beer, the two universal tokens of appreciation. I gave them all the cash we had, which was about $40 Belizean ($20 U.S.) and our last 6-pack of Sol (a very good brand of Mexican beer). They seemed very happy with that, but I would like to have done more for them.

Nancy and I have voted Ralph our personal hero. He's come through for us many, many times. Once, while we were on a road trip in Mexico and had left Stolen Child at the marina in Isla Mujeres, a storm had come through and Ralph, knowing we were gone, checked our docklines and moved our cockpit cushions where they wouldn't blow away. He's always doing thoughtful things like that and is ever willing to lend a hand with whatever you need. Oh, while I'm on the subject of Ralph and Daydream, I have to make a correction. I said in an earlier post that Daydream is 38 feet long, but she is actually 39' 10" long (Ralph seems to be really sensitive about size, hmm...).

After getting free from our grounding, we just anchored on the north side of Tobacco Range instead of trying to find a deep enough channel into the middle. The next morning we moved from Tobacco Range to Tobacco Cay, which is right on the reef. We anchored in 16 feet of crystal-clear water. We thought we'd do some snorkeling and/or diving there. Tobacco Cay is a small island with a couple of resorts on it. These are not ritzy resorts, though, and they were more than willing to serve us beer at the bar. I decided to have a little fun, so I rigged up the whisker pole (a telescoping aluminum pole used to hold one end of your jib sail out when sailing downwind) with the end at full extension high over the port beam. I had a dockline tied to the end and I would stand on the cabintop holding the line, swing out over the water, let go and land with a big splash. The second day we were there, Ralph and I took the dinghy out to the reef south of Tobacco Cay and snorkeled around a bit. We saw dozens of large sting rays sitting on the bottom and several spotted eagle rays swimming around. The reef was quite interesting and good for snorkeling, but there was a very strong current flowing out through the cut and a large surf breaking on the outside of the reef, so we decided not to try diving on the outside. It would probably be pretty good diving under calmer conditions.

Monday afternoon, January 12, we moved on to South Water Cay. Shortly after anchoring, we were sitting in the cockpit when we saw a Belizean fishing canoe approaching. I told Nancy that the fisherman looked just like Jaime, one of the guys who had helped us when we were stuck at Tobacco Range. He got closer and, sure enough, it was Jaime. I should explain about the Belizean fishermen. In Belize City, there is a fleet of small sailboats used for fishing. Each sailboat will carry 8 or so fishermen, each with his own canoe. The sailboat will go to a particular area and all the fishermen will get in their canoes and paddle out to different fishing spots. Each fisherman has a mask and fins and they free-dive for their catch of lobster, conch and fish. At noon and at the end of the day, they paddle back to the sailboat and the boat captain puts their catch on ice. At night they rig a tarp over the deck and some of the guys sleep under the tarp, some sleep in the cockpit, and some sleep in a below deck area in the bow. There is sometimes a cook aboard, as well as the captain and 8 fishermen, so they can sleep 10 people on a 24-foot boat. They stay out for 8 days and then return to Belize City. Anyway, we invited Jaime aboard and fixed him a cup of coffee. He'd finished fishing for the day and was waiting for the sailboat to come up this way and pick him up. We chat for probably an hour or better before the sailboat gets close. While diving for fish, Jaime had found the shell of a lobster, which they shed when the outgrow it (they crawl out of it and grow a bigger one). I've seen bits and pieces of them before, but it is rare to find a whole one and the one Jaime had was in perfect condition. He said he already had a couple of them at home and gave it to us for a decoration for the boat. Just as he was getting ready to leave, he said he had a fish for us, and he jumped down in his canoe and began cleaning a really large jack, which he gave to us. I'm starting to feel bad because I can't think of anything to give him in return. We're out of beer and money, and all I can think of is a ball cap, which seems really inadequate, but I give it to him anyway. He paddles off to his boat and I call Ralph on the radio and ask if he and Tiffany want to help us eat this fish. We take the fish over to Daydream because Ralph's grill is almost twice as large as ours and this is a large fish. Ralph grilled the fish and Tiffany cooked up a very tasty wild rice and mushroom side-dish to go with it. Ralph had a good supply of rum aboard and he suggested I take a bottle over to Jaime's boat, which had anchored near us. When I got to Jaime's boat with the rum, they invited me aboard to look it over. They make these boats by hand from Mahogany in Jaime's hometown of Sarteneja, Belize. This boat was very strongly and beautifully made. It was purely functional, with no amenities to speak of. There was a below-deck hold amidships with a large built-in insulated cooler to keep the fish on ice and a small area for cooking on a single-burner camping stove. There was another below-deck hold in the bow where some of the crew would sleep. While I was aboard, about 5 of the crew were down there watching a Bruce Lee movie on a portable DVD player. It was very interesting to see the boat and how they live and work aboard it. Jaime said they have races among the boats every Easter in Sarteneja and invited us to visit him there sometime. All in all, I have to say that running aground in the Tobacco Range was one of the most rewarding experiences we've had.

We sailed to Placencia on Thursday, 1/15, and anchored at the edge of a very large fleet of cruising and charter boats. A pretty strong norther blew through about 3:00 a.m. Friday morning and Ralph and I chatted on the VHF while watching for boats to drag in the gusty wind. We went ashore a few times through the weekend but pretty much just took it easy. The weather was overcast and drizzly for the most part as one front after another moved through. Monday Ralph, Tiffany and Max were going ashore and their dinghy motor drifted under the dock and the shift lever got broken off. There is a guy in Placencia who works on outboards, but he didn't have a shift lever for that particular outboard, so Ralph jury-rigged it to always be in forward gear. It is a 4 horsepower outboard, so it is pretty easy to start in gear. A large part of cruising is figuring out how to work around problems because it can be very difficult or impossible to get parts and supplies to actually fix them. Tuesday Ralph and I took our dinghy to Big Creek where there is a large industrial dock with a Customs office and a Port Captain. We cleared out of Belize with Customs and the Port Captain, then walked the two miles into the village of Independence to clear out with the Immigrations official. It was a beautiful day and the dinghy ride and walk were quite enjoyable. Wednesday morning we weighed anchor and went to the fuel dock to top off our water and diesel before heading out to Northeast Sapodilla Cay.

We got to Northeast Sapodilla Cay in the late afternoon on Wednesday. Thursday Ralph and I took the dinghy outside the reef to go for a dive. I had a handheld depth sounder, so we found the shelf where the bottom drops off from 30 feet deep to several hundred feet deep. We anchored the dinghy in 30 feet and then dove back out to the shelf. We dove down to 130 feet along the nearly vertical wall, then back up and onto the shelf. The patch reef along the shelf was pretty interesting and there were lots of brightly-colored fish swimming around. Ralph found a stainless steel propeller for a Volvo I/O drive. It was in excellent condition and had obviously not been down there more than a few days. It is worth a few hundred dollars, so hopefully he'll be able to sell it.

Northeast Sapodilla is our last stop in Belize and from there it's on to Honduras. We've spent almost a month cruising Belize and though we've enjoyed it, we're ready to leave. Some friends of ours from the Kansas City area are coming to visit us in Roatan, Honduras, and we are anxious to get there and see them. Sabrina and Tom are arriving early in February and Rob is arriving late in February and we are really looking forward to their visits. We plan to stop in Laguna El Diamante on the mainland of Honduras and in the island of Utila before arriving in Roatan. I'll probably post another log entry after we arrive in Roatan.

Adios Mexico, Hello Belize

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 12:25:00 +0000

Ralph and Tiffany and their daughter Max are some very good friends we made while in Isla Mujeres. They sail a custom built 38 footer named Daydream. They left Isla Mujeres shortly after we did and we decided to wait for them to catch up to us in Xcalac. We got to Xcalac on Friday, December 19 and they arrived on the following Sunday. We both cleared out of Mexico with the Port Captain Monday morning, but decided to wait until Tuesday morning to set sail for Belize.

After clearing out with the Port Captain, we went to the little grocery store to spend all our remaining pesos. The truck that sells fresh produce was there and we were able to stock up on some really nice tomatoes, potatoes, tangerines, avocados, cantaloupes, carrots, and various other fresh items, then bought a bunch of canned and dry goods from the store.

Ralph and I went snorkeling for dinner Monday afternoon. The snorkeling was fun, but the hunting was disappointing. We were out for more than 3 hours and only found 3 lobsters and a smallish flounder. Tiffany took our meager catch and made a really good seafood pasta with some kind of cream sauce.

Tuesday morning we woke up and got underway by 07:00. We had a very nice sail to San Pedro, Belize and made the 25 mile trip in just about 5 hours. The entrance through the reef into San Pedro harbor is a little tight, but wasn't really difficult. The difficulty came after entering and trying to anchor. Daydream went in first and ran aground looking for a good spot to drop their anchor. With Daydream sitting there showing us where not to go, we tried anchoring a little closer to shore, just behind a couple of other boats already at anchor. The anchor didn't seem to set very well and after letting out plenty of chain, we were bouncing on the bottom with every swell that went by. By this time Daydream had gotten unstuck and found a spot to try anchoring. Ralph dropped his anchor and set it, then put on his snorkel gear to see how it looked. By this time we had picked up our anchor and were moving to another spot, hoping for better holding and at least a foot deeper water. Ralph reported that there was only about 4 inches of sand on top of solid rock where he had dropped his anchor, but that he had found a patch of deeper sand and stayed in the water to direct us there so we could re-anchor. We got a much better set on the anchor and we have almost a foot of water under the keel, so we aren't bouncing on the bottom anymore. I then put on my snorkel gear to give Ralph a hand. We found a likely spot and I stayed in the water while Ralph drove Daydream up and dropped the hook. It bit and seemed to hold, but would only dig down about 8 inches, so I just picked it up manually and hauled it manually across the bottom to another spot that looked better. This time the anchor dug down and buried the flukes and the shank, so after almost 2 hours of work we were both anchored. It is a good thing we got the anchors set well, because that night a pretty fierce squall roared through with winds of 30 knots and gusting a little higher, but both boats rode it out without dragging.

After getting anchored, we rushed ashore to clear in with Customs and Immigration, only to find the Customs agent out of the office. The Immigration agent said she would definitely be back the next morning at 08:00 and that we had to proceed directly from Immigration to Customs, so he wouldn't check us in until the Customs agent was there, also. We went back to our boats for a windy and rolly night. in addition to a little swell that makes it over the reef, there are ferries and several dozen dive boats that run through the anchorage at full speed from all directions, so it sometimes feels like you are anchored inside a washing machine.

The next morning, Wednesday, we go ashore once again to clear into Belize. The Customs agent is there, but the Immigration agent hasn't arrived yet. The Customs agent won't clear us through Customs until after the Immigration agent has cleared us. After a while, the Customs agent says she is leaving and will be back in just a little while. Not long after she leaves, the Immigration agent shows up, but now the Customs agent is gone, so we're still unable to clear in. Finally the Customs agent returns, the Immigration agent is still there, and we are at last officially cleared into Belize.

On the way back to the boat, Nancy and I stop for lunch and we can't get over how noisy and full of traffic San Pedro is. There was a steady parade of cars, trucks, tractors and golf carts along the street in front of the restaurant. After eating, we went in search of rum and any other provisions we might need. We found a well-stocked grocery store, but they wanted the equivalent of $40 for a half-liter bottle of Bacardi Añejo. We paid $9 for the same bottle in Isla Mujeres. Needless to say, we did not buy the Bacardi, but instead bought a local rum that was only about $10 a bottle.

Given all the hassle anchoring, all the ferries and dive boats zooming through the anchorage, the crowds and traffic ashore, we have decided to cut our visit to San Pedro short and head for Cay Caulker tomorrow morning, which also happens to be Christmas Day (Merry Christmas from Belize, everyone). We've heard that Cay Caulker is very laid-back and relaxed, and there shouldn't be as much high-speed traffic in the anchorage there.

South From Isla Mujeres

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 12:23:00 +0000

We pulled into Xcalac (pronounced Ishkalak) Mexico at about 13:00 on Friday, December 19. This is our last stop in Mexico. Our next stop will be San Pedro, Belize. We have been in Mexico for 7 months and had no idea when we arrived here that we would be staying so long. That is one of the nice things about this mode of travel, there aren't any deadlines or timetables. We have visited various cities and towns, explored ancient Mayan ruins, swam in underground caverns, acquired rudimentary Spanish language skills, learned to SCUBA dive, met many interesting people and made some very good friends in the time we've spent here. I have posted details of most of our time in Mexico on the website but thought I'd provide a few details of our trip from Isla Mujeres to Xcalac.

We left Isla Mujeres on Thursday, November 20th and sailed to Puerto Morelos, just a short day-trip south from Isla Mujeres. We picked up a mooring ball at Marina El Cid and spent 5 days there. A mooring ball is just like being anchored, except you are using someone's permanent mooring instead of your anchor. Marina El Cid is a 45 minute walk from the town of Puerto Morelos, so we got lots of exercise walking to town and back while we were there. We really liked Puerto Morelos. It is a very sleepy little town that is quite authentic, but has just enough tourist traffic to have nice amenities. The main amenity is a used bookstore that has tons of English-language books. We bought about 20 pounds of books while we were there.

From Puerto Morelos, we went to Bahia de La Ascensión (Ascension Bay), which is a pretty large bay with a fishing village named Punta Allen. We spent 8 days here waiting for cold fronts to blow through. Ascension Bay is fairly popular for bonefish, permit, and various other kinds of fly fishing. Nearly all of the locals make their living either from fishing or as fishing guides for tourists. We became friends with a local named Alberto. He doesn't speak any English and as I have said, my Spanish is still very rudimentary, but we managed to communicate fairly well. He took us to a little restaurant where the locals go. I guess you would call it a restaurant, since they have two tables and you can buy prepared meals there. It is essentially an open-air palapa (thatch hut) that is the front room of a family house. The mother cooks and the two small daughters carry the food to the tables. We had breakfast both times we went there and it was incredibly good and incredibly substantial. The first time we had a breakfast dish called chilequiles and the other time we had huevos motuleños. They are both traditional breakfast dishes that I think are unique to the Yucatan area.

Our next stop was Bahia de La Espiritu Santo, where we spent 10 days, mainly waiting for more cold fronts to pass. Espiritu Santo is very much like Ascension Bay, but slightly smaller. The weather was a very frigid 70 degrees much of the time we were here, so we didn't get off the boat very much. I have heard about the weather you are having in the States right now, so I guess you are probably smirking about my "very frigid 70 degrees" assertion, but when you are acclimated to the tropics, 70 does indeed seem pretty chilly. There were a couple of days nice enough for us to go snorkeling on the reef and I managed to catch a lobster, which Nancy cooked up for dinner. Lobsters apparently don't like being caught and cooked, and do everything they can to avoid it, including scuttling under rocks and coral. What made it such a challenge for me is that I was snorkeling and didn't have on my SCUBA gear, so I could only stay underwater for about a minute at most. Lobsters are very obstinate and it seems to require just a little over a minute to convince them to jump on the end of a spear and stay there while I carry them back to the boat and Nancy's cooking pot. Anyway, all is well that ends in melted butter.

Next we sailed to Chinchorro Bank, which is a coral atoll several miles off the coast of Mexico. According to several books I've read, there are only 4 coral atolls in the Northern hemisphere, and Chinchorro is one of them (the other 3 are in Belize, where we are going next). Chinchorro is basically an underwater plateau, 26 miles long and about 9 miles wide, rimmed with coral. The ocean floor around Chinchorro is up to 1000 feet deep, but suddenly rises to just a few feet from the surface at Chinchorro. We only spent 3 days there but found it to be very fascinating and plan to spend more time at the atolls in Belize. We saw tons of starfish and queen conch crawling around the bottom when we snorkeled around the boat.

Other than the things I've mentioned, we have been busy with general housekeeping-type of chores like cooking and cleaning, various boat maintenance chores, and of course lots of sunset-watching and general relaxing. I have also been practicing celestial navigation and am getting moderately good with my sextant.

Preparing to Leave Isla Mujeres

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:20:00 +0000

We had been at the dock so long we had forgotten how nice it is to be at anchor. It is much more peaceful and there is almost always a nice breeze blowing down the hatches and through the boat. With this El Norte blowing, we have actually had the hatches closed for a couple of days because it got too cool (74 degrees, brrr).

Jim and Deb on the trawler M/V More Fun are going to follow us down to Puerto Morelos and spend a day or two with us down there, then they will come back up here to Isla Mujeres and we will continue on south. Ralph and Tiffany of S/V Day Dream are going to be leaving Isla Mujeres about a week behind us and will probably catch up with us in Belize. We plan to meet up with them for part of the journey through Belize, as they are also heading to Roatan, Honduras.

A couple of people have asked what our daily schedule is like. That is a difficult question to answer because each day can be so different from the one previous. Given that caveat, here is a "typical" day for us. I usually get up an hour or two before Nancy, most of the time an hour or so before sunrise (I like to watch the sunrise). I'll have a cup of coffee and make an entry in the ship's log for the previous day and then sit in the cockpit as the sun rises. After Nancy is up, we will spend a little time considering breakfast, and assuming we decide to cook something, we will do so, eat a leisurely breakfast and then do the dishes. We'll have another cup of coffee in the cockpit while considering what, if anything, we want to accomplish for the day. There are always various projects around the boat that need doing, but fortunately they are rarely urgent and so we can do them as the fancy strikes us. We will usually each tackle a job or two in the morning. Examples would be shining the stainless steel topside, waterproofing the bimini (the canvas top over the cockpit), planning out a route, cleaning the boat, installing a new gadget or repairing an old one, etc. Most days whatever we do is done by noon or early afternoon, and then we can go for a swim and consider what we want to do for the afternoon. Sometimes we go to town to get groceries or run other errands and have a late lunch/early dinner at a restaurant. Sometimes we go visiting other people and sometimes we just stay on the boat. If we stay on the boat we will usually fix an early dinner around 4:00 and be finished eating and doing the dishes in time to have a cup of coffee and watch the sunset. In the evenings we usually read, although I spend a lot of evenings studying up on things nautical or studying Spanish. Sometimes we watch a DVD movie on the laptop. That is what our days are like when we aren't running around sight-seeing or dealing with problems of a more urgent nature.

We have at least two or three stops in Mexico on our way south before we get to Belize, and then several stops in Belize before we get to Roatan. I'll try to make another log entry after we get to Belize, but it may not be until after we get to Roatan before I make another entry. I will, however, try to keep our position updated, so that you can see where we are using either http://www.pangolin.co.nz/yotreps/tracker.php?ident=KC0WTV or http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/winlink.cgi?call=KC0WTV. I will be sending out email updates every few days while we are moving. If you would like to get our email updates, but are not currently getting them, send us an email and we will add you to the distribution list.

Fair Winds,
Patrick and Nancy

Road Trip to Palenque

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 03:31:00 +0000

Wednesday, July 30, we left on a road trip to Palenque with LA and Susan, some friends of ours from S/V Genesis. The four of us ferried over to Cancun and rented a car, then drove to Campeche. The hotels in the historical downtown part of Campeche were full, so we wound up staying at one just outside of the historical district, but still within walking distance. In the very center of the city is a large square, dominated by a magnificent cathedral on the north side and flanked by colonial-era buildings. Campeche was founded by the Spanish in 1540 atop the already existing Mayan city of Ahk'iin Pech, of which little evidence remains (Ahk'iin Pech is reported to have had 3000 or more houses and various monuments before the arrival of the Spanish). We had a nice dinner at La Vieha de Los Arcos, overlooking the square. The following morning we had breakfast and toured around town taking pictures before heading on down the road to Villahermosa.

Campeche is on the Gulf, or western side of the Yucatan peninsula, so we took a road the followed the coast, passing through interesting towns and scenic waterfront along the way. One of the most memorable towns we passed through was Champoton. Once we passed through Ciudad Del Carmen the road left the coast and entered the state of Tabasco, of which Villahermosa is the capital. Villahermosa is a very large, modern and busy city. An interesting factiod is that Villahermosa was captured and occupied by U.S. forces after the Battle of Tabasco during the Mexican-American War. The main attraction for us at Villahermosa was the Parque La Venta, where there are many artifacts from the Olmec culture. The Olmec civilization is currently recognized as the oldest on the American continent, flourishing between 1400 and 400 B.C. Little is known about them, but there is evidence that they were using the magnetic compass prior to 1000 B.C. and there is evidence of a writing system dates to at least 900 B.C. Other evidence suggests the Olmec may have originated the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar and the concept of zero, and this was passed on to the Mayans, who are most often credited with their origination (this is still under a good bit of debate). The most well-known Olmec artifacts are the colossal stone heads, some of which are almost 11 feet tall and weigh more than 20 tons. Parque La Venta has several of these heads, as well as many other stone, jade and clay artifacts from the Olmec site called La Venta. The more delicate of the artifacts are displayed in the park's museum, but all of the larger stone artifacts are situated within an outdoor jungle area of the park. This was a very interesting stop.

From Villahermosa we travelled to San Cristobal de Las Casas, which is in the state of Chiapas. The city is in the mountains and has an elevation of 6890 feet above sea level. The region around San Cristobal has been occupied by ancestors of the present-day Tzotzil and Tzeltal peoples for thousands of years and the Spanish founded a settlement here in 1528, which grew to become the present city of San Cristobal de Las Casas. Our drive from Villahermosa to San Cristobal was very interesting, as we ascended from near sea level into the Sierra Madre de Chiapas mountains. The highest point in the Sierra Madre range is 13,845 feet, though I expect we never got much above 8000 feet on our route. This area of Mexico is basically alpine forest and closely resembles parts of the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. San Cristobal is a very pretty city with a population of around 140,000. It is a major tourism destination for Europeans and Mexicans, but doesn't seem to be too popular with Americans. LA and Susan weren't quite up to speed our first day there due to the altitude, so we spent an extra night. This was the first time I've been cold since we got to the Bahamas in January. At this altitude the days are pleasantly warm, but the nights are rather cool.

From San Cristobal we drove to Palenque, one of the most spectacular Mayan archeological sites in Mexico. There is a town named Palenque which is a few miles from the archeological site and several rustic resorts along the road to the ruins. We stayed at a very charming resort named the Maya Bell. On the way from San Cristobal the road dropped from 7000 feet to around 2000 feet and the mountainsides changed from alpine forest to rain forest jungle. It was a very spectacular drive and we stopped at some beautiful waterfalls named Agua Azul (blue water).

The Mayan site of Palenque was abandoned by the Maya for several centuries prior to the arrival of the Spanish. Archaeologists estimate that only about 5% of the site has been uncovered, but the part that has been uncovered is quite vast. There is a very large central area that contains the palace and major temples and there are trails leading off through the jungle to other temples and buildings that have yet to be excavated and reconstructed. I found the ruins out in the jungle to be the most fascinating. After we toured the ruins, we drove to the water falls at Misol-Ha, which are about 90 feet high. While we were at the resort, we saw a camping trailer pull in. It was pulled by a Dodge pickup with Alabama plates, so we stopped by for a chat. His name is Robert and his wife's name is Jeanie. He is originally from West Point, Mississippi and we spent quite a bit of time chatting. It was like a Mississippi ex-pat reunion since Nancy and I, as well as LA and Susan all hail from Mississippi.

We had originally planned to drive from Palenque across the southern part of the Yucatan to Chetumal, but Robert came to Palenque that way and said we would have more than 100 miles of road construction. We opted for plan B which was to return to Campeche for a night and then back to Cancun via the same road we had traveled on the way out. When we arrived back in Campeche there was a large stage set up next to the cathedral on the central square and crowds of people were listening to big-band jazz. One of the shopkeepers told me it was some kind of televised special. We had dinner at the Iguana Azul (Blue Lizard) and listened to the music on our way back to the hotel.

All in all, it was a very wonderful trip. We traveled through the states of Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Campeche, Tabasco and Chiapas. We really liked the diversity of scenery between the Caribbean coast, the Gulf coast, the alpine highlands and the rainforest lowlands. We have lots of pictures to put in the Picture Gallery page, so be sure to check them out. They should be posted within a couple of days from this log entry.

Claire, Ben and the Girls

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:57:00 +0000

Thursday, July 3, Claire, Ben, Kara and Abbi arrived in Cancun. Nancy and I met them at the airport and then took a bus to the ferry terminal, ferry to Isla Mujeres, and two taxis (6 people plus luggage for 4 people) to the hotel Claire and Ben had reserved, the Hotel Cristalmar. We ate dinner at the hotel, then Nancy and I went back to the boat as it was getting late and the travelers were tired.

First thing in the morning, Nancy and I hopped in the dinghy and met Claire and crew at the Cristalmar for breakfast. After breakfast we put Kara and Abbi in the dinghy and took them back to the boat for some snorkeling. Claire and Ben came to the boat later in the day. This was the first time the girls had ever snorkeled, so I wanted them to get used to the mask and fins right around the boat and in the marina pool before I took them out to the reef. They both did pretty well for the first time.

I took them snorkeling right around the boat three or four times over about 3 days and they practiced with the mask and fins in the pool quite a few times. Finally I felt they were ready to venture out to the reef. There is reef all up and down the coast of Isla Mujeres and beyond, but there is a pretty good section right outside the cut into the harbor. There is a pretty strong current in most places, but this particular spot lies in an eddy and the current is much less. There is a mooring ball you can tie the dinghy to and if you get out there before 9:30 or so in the morning you beat the tour boats and have the mooring ball and the reef all to yourself. I had taken the boys to this spot with Tom in his panga and they had really enjoyed it. When we got out there in the dinghy, I could tell the girls were a little nervous, but they were still willing to give it a try. They were truly amazed at the number and variety of reef fish swimming all around them. I don't know the names of all the different fish we saw, but there were some really large, brightly colored parrot fish, several different varieties of angel fish, groupers, hog fish, and tons of small brightly-colored fish of various descriptions.

There is a "dolphin discovery" in Isla Mujeres where you can swim with dolphins and Claire, Ben, Kara, Abbi and Nancy all went to it on Tuesday. I sat that one out and relaxed on the boat. Nancy took them to Tulum one day and the girls really enjoyed the ruins and the beach. Ben is an avid photographer and he had a good time shooting pictures of the ruins.

One logistical problem we had during their visit was that the Cristalmar is located south of the marina and on the other side of the lagoon. The marina is a pretty good hike from downtown Isla Mujeres so the Cristalmar is well out of hiking distance. The original plan was for Claire and Ben to rent a golf cart for the week. I was amazed when Ben found out that a golf cart rental is around $50 a day. You can rent a car in Cancun with unlimited mileage for $15 a day. Tom, the marina manager, graciously let Claire and Ben use his golf cart several times and that, along with a couple of judicious one-day rentals, worked out pretty well. In order to repay Tom for his kindness, Ben offered to fix a meal one evening at the marina, to which everyone at the marina readily agreed. Ben fixed jerk chicken with a really awesome grilled fruit sauce and grilled potatoes. I whipped up some guacamole. Susan (S/V Genesis) fixed some really good crab meat cheese balls. Tiffany (S/V Daydream) made some flan and a boat pie (I'll explain boat pie in another post). It was a very good meal and a great time was had by all.

Tom, his fiance Elizabeth, her son Francisco, LA, Susan and I had all gone up to Isla Contoy the previous week in Tom's panga and had a great time. Tom suggested we go again while Claire, Ben and the girls were here and so we did. The boat ride up to Contoy was uneventful and it only takes about an hour by panga. When we arrived at Contoy, Susan and Ben went off to take pictures, Tom and LA went off in the panga to do some fishing around Isla Blanca (a few miles from Contoy) and the rest of us hit the beach. Claire had never been snorkeling before, so she borrowed Nancy's gear and I took her out from the beach to where there are some coral heads and interesting fish to see. We saw a rather large spotted eagle ray that was really neat and a large, bright orange star fish, along with various reef fish. After I took Claire back, the girls wanted to go, so I took first Kara and then Abbi out, figuring that one at a time would be easier to keep track of than both at once. When I got back from taking Abbi out, Nancy was ready to go, so I went out with her. Kara and Abbi had a great time playing on the beach with Francisco for the rest of the time we were there. The trip back was a little more eventful. An isolated thunderstorm had blown through south of Contoy so the water was a little more choppy, and since we were now heading into the chop, we caught a lot of spray and everyone stayed pretty wet and salty on the trip back. We also caught the tail end of the rain associated with the thunderstorm, but it was hard to tell the difference between rain from above and spray from over the side. It will make for good, adventuresome story-telling back in Kansas for the girls, though.

The trip to Contoy was the last full day of their visit, so Nancy and I met them all at the ferry dock at 7:30 the next morning and saw them off on the journey back to Kansas. It was a good visit and I think a fine time was had by all. Now to get the boat cleaned up.

P.S. Susan has some good info and pictures of this trip on her website, www.wyattsailing.com. Look on the Travel Log page.

Cenotes and Ruins

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:24:00 +0000

Kevin and Renee were supposed to come for a visit after Lori and the boys, but work got in the way and Nancy and I found ourselves with some free time. I'm sure we could have found plenty of work to do on the boat that would have occupied our time, but we are retired and have to be very careful not to work too much. We decided we would see a little more of the Yucatan. LA and Susan Wyatt are a couple on another boat here at the marina, who also happen to be from Mississippi. Their boat is a Shannon 38 named Genesis and their web site is www.wyattsailing.com (you can check out Susan's version of this adventure on the Travel Log page). We had told them about the cenotes at Cuzama and they were interested in seeing them so Saturday, June 21, all four of us got on a bus to Merida. Naturally, we checked into the Luz en Yucatan hotel (we are now their favorite customers).

We kicked around town a little that night and the next morning after breakfast we began the trek to Cuzama. When Nancy and I had gone before, it was with the Spanish language school and one of the instructors drove us there in his van. This time we were on our own, so we had to find the correct bus station. There are several bus stations in Merida and where you are going and what kind of style you want to travel in determines which bus station you need. This particular bus station was not too hard to find, and we also found the open market on the way, which I had wanted to see. The open market is where the locals buy fresh produce, as well as many other things. Anyway, we made it to the bus station and got our tickets for the trip to Cuzama. We had a little time to kill, so we got some ice cream and watched a group of boy scouts and girl scouts play a game that looked kind of like a cross between basketball and soccer, except it is played with a flexible hoop about the size of a steering wheel. You can toss the hoop to your team members, but you can't move your feet while the hoop is in your hands. The object is to toss the hoop to your "goalie" at one end of the field of play and if the goalie can catch it by putting his or her arm through the hoop, without moving their feet, your team scores a point.

The bus took us into Cuzama proper, not to the railhead for the carts to the cenotes. We had to hire bicycle taxis pedaled by young boys to pedal us the couple of miles to the railhead. If you remember from my post on our previous trip to the cenotes, you get to the cenotes by way of a horse-drawn cart that rides on a very narrow-gage railroad, left over from the hacienda days.

Even though I knew what to expect, this being my second time to the cenotes, I have to say that I was just as impressed as I was the first time we went. I think LA and Susan had a good time as well. Note to self: next time you go to the cenotes, take a cooler of beer to drink on the buggy ride.

We had originally planned to leave the next day for whatever our next destination turned out to be, and Susan and LA were going to go back to Isla Mujeres. We were having such a good time in Merida, though, we all decided to stay another day. LA and I wanted to visit a cigar bar we had heard of and Nancy and Susan wanted to shop for some shirts. LA and I hailed a cab and found our way to Mercer Cigars (www.mercercigars.com). Drew, the owner, led us into the walk-in humidor and he and LA began discussing the finer points of cigars. I like the occasional good cigar, but am not knowledgeable enough to join in a discussion that goes beyond "what does it cost?" My ears perked up though, when I heard Drew mention something about taking a couple of cigars to the bar and having some "imported beers." I asked if "imported beers" would include Guinness Stout and he assured me that it did. I was quite excited by now and told LA "we might be here a while." Not only did they have Guinness, they also had a nice selection of single-malt scotches, and yes, Glenlivet was among the selection, as well as Balvenie (my two favorites). Three cigars, six Guinness, and two single-malts later (much later) we decided to call it a day and try to scrounge up some food. Somewhere about the third Guinness and the second cigar, we had the wisdom to call the ladies up and ask them to join us. They were finished shopping and though Nancy doesn't care for cigars, she likes Guinness as much as I do.

Drew suggested we go to a restaurant called Casa Catherwood (Frederick Catherwood was an English artist whose drawings of ancient Mayan ruins in the 1840's introduced the western world to the Mayan civilization). When we arrived at the restaurant we were met at the door by Luca, the chef and owner, who is from Italy. We had not had good Italian food for months, so this was quite a treat. To say that it was good is a dismal understatement, it was fantastic. Check out the menu at http://www.casa-catherwood.com/bistro.html. I had the Lasagna alla Bolognese and it was the best I've ever tasted. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

The next day, Susan and LA went back to Isla Mujeres and Nancy and I boarded a bus to check out more Mayan ruins. There are a string of ruins south of Merida on what is called the Puuc Route. "Puuc" is a word derived from the Mayan word for "hills" and is applied to an area of the Yucatan which is rather hilly, in contrast to most of the Yucatan which is quite flat. Anyway, you can catch a bus that travels the Puuc Route and stops in Xlapak (pronounced ish-la-pak), Labna, Sayil, Kabah and Uxmal (pronounced oosh-mal), and then returns to Merida. It is kind of a whirlwind tour of the ruins, but a very easy and cheap way to see lots of ruins. All of the ruins are quite impressive and except for Uxmal they can be briefly toured in about 30 minutes. The ruins at Uxmal are more extensive and spread over a larger area and you need at least a couple of hours to see them. The bus stops for 30 minutes at each of the sites except for Uxmal, where it stops for 3 hours, so there was just barely enough time to see most everything. The countryside along this route is very pretty as well.

The next day Nancy and I decided to go to Campeche, which is a coastal city on the Gulf side of the Yucatan peninsula, in the state of Campeche. The city of Campeche was founded in 1540 by the Spanish and was built on top of an existing Mayan city (as were many of the cities founded by the Spaniards). Campeche is a very beautiful city and has quite an interesting history. It was named as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of the beauty and quality of its architecture. It seems the city was under frequent attack from pirates, including Francis Drake, John Hawkins, Jean Lafitte, Henry Morgan, and various others. In 1686 the government decided to fortify the city by building a wall around the city with eight defensive bastions on the corners. Most of the wall is gone now, as the city expanded beyond its limits, but some sections remain and most of the bastions are still standing and now house museums. The hotel we stayed at cost $23 per night. It was not swanky, but it was clean, the rooms were well-lit and it was in the middle of downtown.

After a day touring Campeche, Nancy and I were kind of tired of sight-seeing, so the next day we caught a bus back to Cancun and returned to the boat to rest up before Claire, Ben and the girls' visit.

Lori and the Boys

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:04:00 +0000

Lori, Tre and Will arrived on June 7 for a visit. I think it was quite an experience for the boys. Tre is 9 and Will is 6 and it was their first trip out of the U.S. Everything they saw was a thrill for them. They saw their first coconuts growing from a palm tree, their first iguanas, first land crabs, first time snorkeling in the ocean. The weather was threatening thunderstorms for a few of the days they were here, so we spent several days hanging around the boat, but there was plenty to occupy them here. We still have the boat in Marina Paraiso and there is a pool they could swim in. Tom, who runs the marina, has a fiance named Elizabeth who has a 5 year old son named Francisco and Tre and Will had fun playing with Francisco. Even though Francisco only speaks Spanish they managed to communicate pretty well. There is a second-floor deck at one end of the pool and Tre and Will were jumping from it into the pool and having a blast.

There is reef all up and down the coast of Isla Mujeres and beyond, but there is a pretty good section right outside the cut into the harbor. There is a pretty strong current in most places, but this particular spot lies in an eddy and the current is much less. There is a mooring ball you can tie the dinghy to and if you get out there before 9:30 or so in the morning you beat the tour boats and have the mooring ball and the reef all to yourself. Tom took us out to the reef in his panga (a motor boat). They were truly amazed at the number and variety of reef fish swimming all around them. I don't know the names of all the different fish we saw, but there were some really large, brightly colored parrot fish, several different varieties of angel fish, groupers, hog fish, and tons of small brightly-colored fish of various descriptions.

We wanted the boys to see some Mayan ruins and a cenote, so one day we took them to Tulum, which is south of Cancun. The ruins at Tulum are right on the ocean and there is a beach at the ruins where you can swim in the ocean, so the boys had a good time touring the ruins and swimming on the beach. There are several cenotes around Tulum and I had heard the ones called "Dos Ojos" (two eyes in Spanish) were pretty good, so after touring the ruins we had lunch and caught a bus to the cenotes. The boys were so tired after the ruins and swimming on the beach that they really didn't want to go to the cenotes. Nancy and I knew, though, that once they saw the cenote, they would completely forget how tired they were. The bus let us off at the entrance to the dirt road leading to the cenotes. It is about a mile from this point to the actual cenotes and instead of walking, we hired a Mayan man and his son to drive us to the cenotes on their 4-wheelers. We bounced along this dirt path, 4 people on one 4-wheeler and 3 on the other, trying our best not to bounce off. Once we got to the first of the two cenotes and walked down the path to the entrance of the cavern, sure enough, the boys forgot about being tired. We spent about 15 minutes swimming in each of the two cenotes and by that time Nancy, Lori and I were worn out.

We really enjoyed Lori and the boys' visit and think they enjoyed it as well. We missed seeing Tim, but hopefully he'll be able to come for a visit next year.

Learning Spanish

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 04:24:00 +0000

I am long overdue for an update to the Ship's Log. We have been very busy having fun, and when we weren't busy having fun, we were busy being lazy. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. I'm going to try to get the log up to date in about 3 entries and will try to get them all posted this week. I have Internet access right now, so I will also try to embed pictures in the log entries and also upload some slide shows in the picture galleries page.

After Heddy and Jamie flew back to KC, Nancy and I returned to Merida for a week-long Spanish language class the week of May 26 through 30. There is a school in Merida that I learned of on the Internet named Central Idiomas Sureste, CIS for short, that offers immersion-style lessons in Spanish. You sign up for one or more weeks of 5-hour daily classes, and they will also put you up with a local Mexican family, where you can practice your Spanish outside of class. They put us up with a very nice Mexican lady named Senora Quintal. She lives just off the central square of the Santiago district of Merida, which put us about 10 blocks from the school and made for a nice walk to and from school each day. We needed the walk, because Senora Quintal is an excellent cook and kept us very well-fed while we were in her care.

The school itself was very interesting and very beneficial, but it was incredibly exhausting. By the end of the week Nancy and I were both worn out mentally. There was a group of college kids attending at the same time who were from Millsaps College in Mississippi. Nancy and I wound up in two different classes because I had been studying a little Spanish and Nancy was starting at the very beginning. There was one other person in Nancy's class and 4 other people in my class. We would meet for 3 hours in the morning for language instruction, break for 30 minutes for lunch, and then meet for 2 hours in the afternoon for cultural instruction, which was basically a discussion group (in Spanish of course) on subjects of local significance. I cannot recommend this school highly enough, but I would recommend against taking it for only a week if you are beginners as we were. After one week, you have more new knowledge than can be assimilated. I think an additional week or two would have been much better, but we didn't have the time to spare with more company on the way.

We enjoyed staying with Senora Quintal as much as we enjoyed the school. She is retired and has three grown children, so there was plenty of room in her house for us. She put us in a bedroom at the back of the house that has windows on 3 walls, so there is always a cross-breeze, which was very much appreciated since she doesn't have air conditioning. We also slept in hammocks, which are much cooler than regular beds. Nancy and I both became quite fond of sleeping in hammocks. These are traditional Mayan-style hammocks made of string and look very much like a large net. For breakfast she would serve us a heaping plate of fresh fruit and a breakfast sandwich, usually a croissant with ham and cheese inside. The fruit plate would have pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe, mango, mamey, papaya, and whatever else she had fresh. She would fix us a box lunch to take to school, and then a rather large dinner of traditional Yucatan dishes in the early evening.

On Thursday the school took a group of four of us on a field trip to the cenotes at Cuzama. The Yucatan peninsula is basically a limestone shelf and is relatively flat with no major rivers or streams above ground. There is, however, an extensive system of underground rivers flowing through the limestone. There are places where the ceiling of a cavern through which the underground river flows has collapsed and this underground pool is known as a cenote (pronounced say-no-tay, with accent on the second syllable). There are cenotes scattered all around the Yucatan and they were the main source of fresh water for the ancient Mayans. Because the water filters through all the limestone, it is incredibly clean and clear. The cenotes at Cuzama are very beautiful and very remote. In the old days before Mexican independence, wealthy landowners built huge haciendas in this area, and they installed a very light-gage rail system for moving workers, materials and produce around the hacienda. The rail system uses horse-drawn carts that ride on the rails. The Mayans provided all the slave labor to build the haciendas and the rail system, but now the landowners are gone and the local Mayans are left with the land and the rail system, which they use to haul tourists to and from the cenotes. After a two or three-mile ride on the rail buggy, you arrive at one of the cenotes and find a hole in the ground with a ladder sticking out of it. You climb down the ladder into an underground cave. After your eyes adjust to the dark, you see a pool of the clearest water you can imagine. The water is anywhere from 8 to 20 feet deep in the cenotes at Cuzama, but even in the dim light you can see the bottom in incredible detail. These cenotes are so spectacular they almost literally took my breath away when I first saw them.

We were so exhausted after class on Friday that we checked into a room at the Luz en Yucatan hotel for the weekend to rest up before returning to the boat.

Jamie and Heddy's Excellent Adventure

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:22:00 +0000

Nancy and I got the boat kinda-sorta cleaned up for Heddy and Jamie's visit. They arrived on 5/14. Nancy and I met them at the airport in Cancun, which is a very modern, very posh airport. After having lunch in Cancun, we took the ferry to Isla Mujeres and then the dinghy to the boat. Since there were 4 people plus luggage, we made the dinghy trip in two stages, first Nancy and the luggage, then I went back for Heddy and Jamie. I had warned Heddy and Jamie to wear clothes they wouldn't mind getting wet, and sure enough, they got wet. We had drinks on the boat and chatted a bit, then went to the Marina Paraiso for $1 beers. After a couple of beers, we went into town for dinner. Nancy, Heddy and Jamie walked and I followed along in the dinghy. We had dinner at one of the waterfront restaurants and it was very good, as has almost every meal we've had in Mexico. After dinner, I demonstrated to Heddy and Jamie how to sink a dinghy. I didn't really sink it, but that's only because it has these inflatable tubes on the outside of it. What happened is that I decided to see if the dinghy would handle 4 people. Here is some advice for anyone in the market for a dinghy. Get the biggest, heaviest dinghy your davits will handle. I bought the Walker Bay dinghy because it is small, light and rows really well. Most of the time you are anchored too far from shore, and it is too windy, to make rowing ashore practical. The Walker Bay that we bought is almost too small for me to row with Nancy sitting in it without bashing her with the oars, too. In retrospect, we should have gotten a hard-bottom dinghy, about 10 feet long, with inflatable tube sides, or a heavier, longer hard dinghy. Anyway, the Walker Bay is supposed to have a maximum capacity of 3 people and about 4 horsepower for the outboard engine. We had an 8 horsepower engine and I didn't want to shell out the bucks for a new engine, so I put the 8 hp on the Walker Bay. On this particular evening, I put 4 people in the dinghy. It was windy, so there was a fair bit of chop, as well. This was not a happy combination for the Walker Bay dinghy. Shortly after leaving the shore, we heard a loud crack. My first thought was that we had hit a piece of flotsam, with the propeller, but it still seemed to be working fine, so I figured there wasn't any harm done. We are taking on a fair bit of water because it is choppy and the dinghy is riding low in the water with 4 people aboard. About half-way to the boat, though, I decided that there was much more water in the dinghy than could be accounted for by the waves and spray sloshing in over the gunwales. Some quick and surreptitious investigation revealed that the transom where the outboard motor clamps on had cracked and that was the loud noise we had heard. I could see that the crack extended below the waterline and that was where much of the water was coming from. We have lifejackets aboard the dinghy and by then we were three-quarters of the way to the boat, so I didn't mention anything being amiss to the others. You don't want panic and chaos to infect the crew as it can lead to mutiny. Besides, the dinghy has these inflatable tubes on the side of it and the seats are filled with foam. I figured that even if it were completely filled with water, it would only sink to a few inches below the surface. I was more worried about the outboard motor. If the crack kept growing, the whole motor could fall off, taking half the transom with it. Outboard motors work really well when the bottom half is submerged, but they don't work at all when the entire motor is submerged. I made the rest of the trip at reduced throttle, one hand on the tiller and the other hand supporting the weight of the motor to keep the transom from cracking further. I also adopted a nonchalant demeanor that exuded an aura of "don't worry folks, this is just your typical dinghy ride." Nancy said later that she knew something was wrong because she had never seen water up to her knees in the dinghy before and it just didn't seem right. We made it back to the boat safe and sound and soggy and so ends Jamie and Heddy's first real adventure aboard Stolen Child.

Nancy and I had met and become friends with a couple on a boat named "Grumpy." Juan and Judy are their names and they are locals who live in Merida, the largest city on the Yucatan peninsula, and they had given us some information on Merida. It sounded like a good place to visit and there is a big festival beginning every Saturday evening that runs on into Sunday. We told Heddy and Jamie about it and we all decided to travel to Merida for the weekend to see the festival. I didn't want to leave the boat at anchor with us gone for more than a day, so Friday, May 16, we call up the Marina Pariso on the VHF radio and get a slip to tie the boat up to. With the boat secure, we travel by foot, ferry and bus to Merida. There are two options for the bus to Merida, first class and second class. The first class bus travels the highway between Cancun and Merida and doesn't stop along the way. It takes about 4 hours for the trip. The second class bus travels the back roads, stopping at every little village and town along the way, and takes about 7 hours. We want to see the countryside, so we take the second class bus. At many of the stops along the way, Mayan food vendors will get on the bus and sell fruits, enchiladas, sweet-breads and other snacks to the passengers. Most of these snacks are less than $1 and all the ones I tried (and I tried just about all of them) are very tasty. The countryside in this part of the Yucatan is very dry, having no large rivers or above-ground estuary system. Thus the flora is short and dense, and much of it is quite prickly. There are many varieties of cactus and a species of agave called henequen. Many of the trees have brightly colored flowers and the landscape can be quite beautiful. Many of the villages we passed through are very small, having a population of no more than perhaps 200 people. I think that most of the people who live in the smaller villages in the Yucatan are Maya, the indigenous people of the Yucatan who were here before the Spanish arrived in the early 16th century. They are a short, stocky people with very attractive and expressive facial features. They are, as a group, among the nicest and most polite people I have met anywhere.

Juan and Judy also recommended to us a hotel named Luz en Yucutan (The Light in Yucatan) and upon our arrival in Merida we found the hotel and they had rooms available so we checked in. The hotel was originally the nunnery for the St. Lucia cathedral which is next door, and was built in 1575. Merida itself was founded in 1542 by Francisco de Montejo on the site of a much more ancient Mayan city (called T'ho by the Maya) and is considered by many historians to be the oldest continually-occupied city in the Americas. It is home to nearly 1 million people and as with most large cities, it exhibits both grandeuer and grime in equal measure. There is also, however, an aura of ancient and yet still thriving culture in Merida that simply cannot be matched by very many cities in the Americas. Another lasting impression of Merida that I have is its tranquility. Yes, there is traffic and a lot of hustle and bustle, but even as they hustle and bustle, the people here seem quite relaxed and pleasant. One of the reasons I have always had an aversion to large cities is that a large portion of the people in cities seem to be sullen and angry. Try saying a simple "good morning" to ten people in most any city in the U.S. and you get an equal number of frowns or scowls in return as you do smiles, if you are even acknowledged at all. In Merida, though, at least in my experience so far, people are incredibly pleasant and friendly. Merida also has numerous parks and plazas and on any given day, you will probably find a festival being held in one of the plazas. The fascads of many of the buildings are quite grand, particularly those dating from the 18th century and earlier, but most of the buildings have very plain, or even somewhat dingy exteriors, but most conceal a very elegant and open interior. Most of the buildings I have been in or seen into, whether they are museums, hotels, restaurants or homes, have a central patio open to the sky, usually with a tile floor and trees, plants, bushes and shrubs. The hotel we stayed at was incredible. As I mentioned, the structure dates from the late 1500's. It has two central patios, one with a small pool, and there is a veranda above one of the patios with access to the second-floor rooms. There is bouganvilia, palms and various other plants and trees in the patio and except for high noon, it is always cool and shaded in the patio. The rooms themselves are more like small apartments with a small kitchen, a living room and a bedroom. Imagine my surprise when I found out the rooms were only about $50 to $60 per night. There are also two cold beers in the fridge when you arrive at your room, and there is a complementary bar for mixed drinks. Did I mention free coffee?

Once the festival begins on Saturday evening, several of the streets are closed to traffic and the restaurants set up tables in the street. Bandstands and vendor stalls are set up. There are groups playing traditional folk music as well as jazz, swing and modern pop. It is a great time and we really enjoyed ourselves. There are also roving vendors selling cuban cigars, Mayan hammocks and various other handcrafts. The Mayan women and girls wear very colorful and richly embroidered traditional dresses and the Mayan girls are sent around to sell colorful woven belts, bracelets and small purses. These little Mayan girls are so pretty, and they look so somber and serious, that you don't mind paying a dollar for a bracelet, just to watch them smile. We now have quite a few Mayan bracelets so don't be surprised if you get one for Christmas.

On the way back from Merida, we stopped in Chichen Itza. I won't go into great detail about Chichen Itza, except to say that it is incredible. You can find tons of information about Chichen Itza on the internet. I will, however, put a photo gallery on the website just for pictures we took at Chichen Itza as soon as I get them organized. We spent a few hours touring Chichen Itza, had lunch at a nearby town called Piste, and then caught a bus for Cancun. It was late when we got to Cancun and we caught the ferry to Isla Mujeres and had dinner at a beachfront restaurant before returning to the boat.

Tuesday, 5/20, we got permits to visit Isla Contoy. Isla Contoy is an island just a little north of Isla Mujeres and has been designated a marine and bird sanctuary and park. You have to purchase permits to visit. After we got our permits, we went to a hotel/restaurant named Bucaneros in downtown Isla Mujeres for a late lunch. They have tables out on the sidewalk and their food is very good. We had lunch and margaritas, and then more margaritas, then the strolling musicians started coming by and we had more margaritas, then we got to discussing politics and philosophy and had more margaritas, etc. We wound up staying at Bucaneros until quite late in the evening and I got more plastered than I've been in a very long time. Wednesday we got the boat ready and got underway for Isla Contoy. We got off to a late start, due to the fact that none of us were moving very fast after the previous evening's festivities, so we motor-sailed up to Contoy to make sure we would have plenty of daylight left to make it through the reef and get anchored. It was a pretty pleasant trip up and we were anchored off the northwest end of Contoy by the early evening. It was too late really to go ashore and we were tired, so we turned in early. The next morning we moved to an anchorage just outside the bay where the park ranger station is. They have mooring balls there for free and we tied up to one of them rather than anchor. We took the dinghy ashore and snorkeled and explored the island a little. There was a stingray up close to the beach, in water barely more than ankle-deep, and it would swim right up to you and brush your legs if you stood still. It was a pretty nice day and Heddy and Jamie got enough sun to turn a very interesting shade of pink.

Friday we headed back to Isla Mujeres and that was another adventure. I had heard the wind howling at better than 15 knots all night, so I figured it might be a little rough on the return trip. As I mentioned, Isla Contoy is north of Isla Mujeres. There is a reef that runs between Isla Contoy and Isla Mujeres and you can take one of two routes between the two islands. We went up to Isla Contoy on the outside route, which is east of, or outside the reef, in open water. According to the cruising guide, if your boat draws 4 feet or less, you can take the inside route, which is inside, or west of the reef, between the reef and the mainland of the Yucatan peninsula. Our boat has a draft of 6 feet, so we went up on the outside of the reef and planned to return the same way. We weighed anchor and motored north past the north end of Isla Contoy and then headed into open water. The wind was still blowing about 15 knots, maybe a little more, but it was blowing from the south-southeast, which is exactly the direction we needed to sail once we cleared the northern end of Contoy and made it into open water. Once we had cleared the lee of the island, the waves became quite large and we had to head directly into them. Our speed dropped to between 1 and 2 knots. When you head directly into waves of any size, all your momentum is lost plowing through them. You climb up the face of one wave and pick up a little speed going down the back side of it, only to come to a near standstill when the bow crashes into the trough between waves. In order to use the sails, we would have had to sail almost directly east, or even a little north of east, and then tack back to the southwest. I did some quick calculations and determined that if we kept motoring into the wind and waves, it would be early a.m. before we got to Isla Mujeres, and if we tacked back and forth using the sails, it would be quite late at night before we got back. It would also be pretty rough the entire way. We had two other options. We could go back and anchor in the shelter of Isla Contoy and call for a shallow draft power boat to come up and get Heddy and Jamie so they could make their flight on Saturday, or we could try to find a channel with at least 6 feet of depth on the inside route. The ride would be much smoother with the reef knocking off most of the waves, so even without the sails, we would be able to make better speed. Even though the cruising guide said we shouldn't attempt it, we decided to try the inside route. The charts I had gave the impression that the water was deep enough except for a few shifting sand bars. Jamie went up to the bow to watch for color changes in the water that would indicate sandbars and we began feeling our way back to Isla Mujeres. The ride inside the reef was much smoother than it was outside the reef, but it was still pretty choppy and the deepest water seemed to be closer to the reef, which made for several fairly tense hours at the helm. Jamie and Heddy got pretty good at spotting sandbars and we only touched bottom once, but with the waves we only bounced on and off, rather than digging in and getting stuck. We made it back with plenty of daylight to spare for our docking procedure and made a fairly smooth approach to the dock. We were all pretty worn out when we finished docking, but we had that warm glow of accomplishment from a challenge met and overcome. We enhanced that warm glow with some refreshing beverages over dinner in town and then returned to the boat and watched "Master and Commander" on DVD.

Saturday morning Heddy and Jamie got packed up for their return to KC. We all went to lunch in town and then they took the ferry to Cancun. Damn, just when they are getting good at handling lines and other sailorly stuff, they jump ship. Nancy and I enjoyed their visit immensely and I think they had a pretty good time too. We had a couple of small adventures, but nothing that should require counseling, so I think it was a pretty good vacation for them.

Hola de Mexico

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:59:00 +0000

We finally made it! Much later than we anticipated, but we're here at last. To catch you up, we left the Marquesas Keys and sailed to Dry Tortugas. We stayed at Dry Tortugas a day and toured Fort Jefferson, which was quite interesting. Did you know that the doctor who treated John Wilkes Booth after he shot President Lincoln was imprisoned there for several years because he aided the assassin, even though he didn't know Booth was an assassin? The fort is quite large and the Park Service has
a lot of interesting information available, so we spent a good part of the morning and early afternoon there. When we got back to the boat, I spent the rest of the afternoon scrubbing the hull and Nancy polished some of the stainless steel on deck. The hull was very bad. It was clean when we left Key Largo, so there must be something in the water at Key West that promotes extraordinary growth. I scrubbed until I was worn out and I didn't get all the way to the bottom of the keel. It is hard
work scrubbing the hull with just snorkel gear. Not only do you have to keep swimming toward the boat, because as you scrub against it you push yourself away, but you also have to keep swimming against your own buoyancy since you don't have weights on to keep you submerged. I managed to get probably 70 percent of it clean from the waterline down before I ran out of steam.

We got underway for Isla Mujeres about 07:30 on Monday, May 5 and arrived in Isla Mujeres Harbor last night (Wednesday, May 7) about 21:30. While we were en route, I spoke with a tanker on the VHF radio to make sure he saw us and wouldn't run us over. Another sailboat heard us talking and guessed that we were going to Isla Mujeres, so they called us on the radio and we buddied up for the rest of the trip. We would check in with each other on either the VHF or the SSB radio twice each day and exchange
position and weather info. The other boat is an Island Packet named Jupiter's Smile and is crewed by Jay and Barb from Colorado Springs. They had left Dry Tortugas the same morning we did. We were never in visual sight of each other, but never more than about 40 miles distant. We were trying like hell to make it here before dark, but the wind was just too light for much of the trip, and the Gulf Stream slowed us down too much when we hit it. I don't like to make night approaches to unfamiliar
harbors (or even familiar ones for that matter), but neither of us wanted to sail around in circles all night long and the approach looked pretty easy on the charts. It turned out that it was a pretty easy approach and was made even easier because Jay and another cruiser named Jack, on the trawler Bodacious, got on the radio as soon as they could see us and helped talk us in. Jupiter's Smile had arrived about an hour before we did and he and Jack were watching for us to arrive. The harbor here
is very nice and well protected and the holding seems to be very good. The water is incredibly clear. We anchored in about 17 feet of water and it was pitch black (no moon last night when we anchored) so I had an LED headlamp on to see what I was doing while anchoring and I could see the anchor almost all the way to the bottom just with the light from my headlamp.

This morning Jack and Jo invited us and Jay and Barb over to Bodacious for coffee and to give us tips on clearing into Mexico. Jo had also made some delicious banana apple nut bread. After coffee, we headed ashore with Jay and Barb to officially clear into Mexico. I had heard stories about how difficult the process can be, but it went pretty smoothly for us. The guy at the immigration office recommended a restaurant, La Lomita, for lunch, so after finishing clearing in, we went there and had
lunch. The food was excellent and our tab was about $15. That is so much better than the Bahamas where lunch for two costs about $30. Next we went to a bar for happy hour and drank a couple of $1 beers. Man, I like this place.

We'll spend the next few days learning our way around and getting ready for Jamie and Heddy's visit. They arrive next Wednesday and we're really looking forward to seeing them. I'll probably post another update just before they arrive.

Footnote To Last Entry

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Fri, 02 May 2008 21:53:00 +0000

After I posted the last entry, I reduced and plotted the sights I took last night. I took sights of Sirius, Capella and Mars. I tried reducing one of them last night after I took them, but got tired and went to bed before I finished. This morning I reduced all of them and plotted them and by the time I was done, I could reduce and plot a sight in about 30 minutes. That should improve further with practice. What I'm really excited about, though, is the position fix I obtained. This being my
first time, I didn't expect very good results. I figured if my plotted position was in the correct ocean, I would be happy. I was surprised to find that my plotted position was within 3 nautical miles of our GPS position. Three miles may sound like it is pretty far off, but I am pleased enough with it I thought I'd post a footnote to my earlier entry just to brag a little. Anyway, I thought it worth mention.

Update From Marquesas Keys

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:26:00 +0000

Today is our third day anchored off the west side of the Marquesas Keys. We were only going to spend the night here before continuing on to Dry Tortugas, but the wind has been blowing like crazy. It's been a pretty steady 18 to 20 knots from the east with gusts as high as 30 knots. That's actually pretty good wind for sailing, but I'm thinking I don't want to be anchored in Dry Tortugas in that much wind. Rob has mentioned that Dry Tortugas isn't a good anchorage in rough conditions. We looked
at the chart and there doesn't seem to be much protection from the east, so we have been waiting for the wind to abate a few knots before leaving here. This anchorage is still a little choppy with this much wind, but we have good holding and the Marquesas, which are small mangrove islands on a coral atoll, are directly east of us, so the waves don't have much room to build between the shore and our position.

We had a very nice sail from Key West to here. The wind was mostly around 15 knots from the north, becoming northeast as the day progressed. It was so nice to leave Key West. We both like Key West, but only for brief visits. While Nancy was in Nebraska visiting her mother, I stripped and varnished the cockpit coaming (the coaming is the built-up periphery of the cockpit, you could think of it as the backrest if you were sitting in the cockpit, ours is capped with teak). It was quite a bit of
work, but it looks so much better. The previous owner had used a type of varnish that was really muddy-looking and pretty much hid the grain of the teak. The stuff I used is much clearer and the wood grain shows up beautifully now. I still have a lot more topside teak to strip and varnish, but I'll do it in stages.

I started studying celestial navigation yesterday and I am duly impressed with the navigators of yore. First I had to adjust my sextant and I think I did a reasonably good job of it. There are two mirrors that have to be perfectly aligned with each other and the frame of the sextant. The book I'm using says when it is properly adjusted, the index error should be 2 minutes of arc or less. I think I got it within 1 minute of arc. I pre computed the position of a few bright stars and planets so
I could take some sights right after sunset. Shooting the stars was not too challenging, but I don't think my sights were very accurate, but I'm sure they'll improve over time with practice. What was the most challenging was reducing the sights and plotting the lines of position. I probably spent 30 or 40 minutes pre computing the positions, 15 or 20 minutes taking the sights, and about 4 hours trying to reduce and plot just one of the sights. After I have done a few, I should be able to get
that 4 hours down to about 15 minutes or less (I hope). Anyway, I only got one of the sights I took reduced last night, so I'm going to do the rest of them today.

We brought a lot of games aboard to keep us occupied when we aren't working on the boat, sailing, snorkeling, or sight-seeing. The last few evenings we have been playing Mah Jong, or I should say we have been figuring out how to play Mah Jong. We've really enjoyed it. We are hoping we'll meet some other cruisers who know how to play and can teach us the more subtle aspects of the game.

Our plan is to stay here at Marquesas at least through today and head to Dry Tortugas when the wind dies down to the 15 knot range, which we are hoping will be tomorrow. We plan to stay in Dry Tortugas for at least one day to visit the fort and maybe do a little snorkeling, and then head to Isla Mujeres, Mexico. It will take 2 or 3 days to get to Isla Mujeres, so we are hoping to be there by May 9th at the latest. Heddy and Jamie are going to visit us there and they arrive on the 14th. We want
to be there at least several days ahead of them.

Key West Again

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:42:00 +0000

We are anchored in Key West again. We arrived yesterday afternoon, having sailed from Newfound Harbor. I made my previous log entry from Rodriguez Key, and we motor-sailed from there to Marathon on Saturday, and then from Marathon to Newfound Harbor on Sunday. We haven't left the boat since leaving the dock at Key Largo last Friday. We had very pleasant sailing each day and the anchorages were nice and pleasant each night. Nancy helmed the boat all the way from Marathon to Newfound Harbor. She usually manages the helm and I manage the anchor while we get anchored and leave the anchorage, but this is the first time she has stayed at the helm both entering and leaving through the channels. She did a great job and is justifiably proud of herself. Newfound Harbor gave me some concerns entering and leaving, though. It seems to have shoaled up a little and we would probably not be able to get in and anchor, or get back out, at low tide. We left on the falling tide and bumped bottom a few times going from where we anchored to the channel. It is very pretty there, though, and if we are ever there again for more than just an overnight stop, it would be interesting to explore by dinghy. Key West is much as it was the last time we were here, even many of the boats in the anchorage are the same.

We ran the new engine pretty hard Saturday and Sunday. The wind was light and we wanted to give the engine a good workout anyway, so we just motor-sailed those days and the engine is working perfectly. Monday the wind picked up into the 10-15 knot range, so we shut the engine down and sailed down to Key West. The new mainsail worked fine, but it is a little different from the old main and I'll have to get used to it. It does let us sail probably 10 degrees closer to the wind than our old sail would. The wind generator is working like a champ. The wind today is about 15 knots, with gusts up to maybe 20, and the wind generator seems to be putting more amps into the batteries than we are using. I expect that in less than 15 knots we'll use more than the generator can produce, but on average, we should only have to run the engine every few days to let the alternator charge the batteries, and we'll probably run it more often because it also heats our hot water for showers.

Based on the current weather forecast, we will leave here Thursday and sail to Dry Tortugas. We will probably spend a couple of days in Dry Tortugas, snorkeling and exploring, and then head for Isla Mujeres. It should take about 3 days to get from Dry Tortugas to Isla Mujeres. If we can pick a good weather window, it should be a very pleasant sail and I'm looking forward to some more blue water sailing. I may not make another log entry until after we get to Isla Mujeres, so stay tuned.

Underway Again

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:23:00 +0000

Today we finally got underway again. We left the dock at Key Largo Harbor Marina around noon and motored out to Rodriguez Key, which is right next to Key Largo, and dropped the anchor. Tomorrow morning we will head to Marathon and anchor in Boot Key Harbor. We may stay there a couple of days waiting for a front to move through before continuing on to Key West, then Dry Tortugas, and on to Mexico.

It felt really good to finally be away from the dock, but we were very sad to say goodbye to John. He's become a really good friend during the time we were in Key Largo. We are hoping he will follow us to Isla Mujeres when he gets his trimaran "No Smoking" in the water. He has all the work pretty much done and is waiting on the Coast Guard to send him the documentation papers.

I finally installed the wind generator while we were in Key Largo and this is the first chance we've had to really see how it works. So far I'm impressed with how quiet it is (some wind generators are very noisy). Right now the gage says it is putting 3 to 4 amps into the batteries and the wind is only about 10 knots.

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:40:00 +0000

It has been over a month since my last log entry. I haven't made one since we arrived in Key Largo, mainly because there hasn't been much of general interest going on. and also because life has been pretty hectic getting the new engine installed and doing other maintenance chores on the boat. We made it to Key Largo with no problem from No Name Harbor and timed our arrival for high tide because the entrance to the Key Largo Canal is 5 feet and our draft is 6 feet. The canal itself is plenty deep, but there is a stretch just before you enter the canal that would be too shallow at low tide. Since we have been in Key Largo, we've not done much except work on the boat. We did take a road trip up to Mississippi for Dads 80th birthday and that was fun. We have also made a new friend. John is a guy who lives on a trimaran that is in the same marina we are in. We´ve been having cocktails in the evenings on either his boat or ours, or sometimes both. He makes a really awesome avocado sandwich, which I've added to my own repertoire. He is getting his trimaran ready for launching (it has been sitting on the hard for 3 years).

The engine install went pretty well. We replaced the 33 HP Yanmar with a 54 HP Yanmar. The new engine is actually a little bit smaller than the old one, giving me just a little more space in the engine compartment. We have also had a new main sail made and just put it on the boat this past weekend. I bought a wind generator a few months ago and we just installed it this past weekend. We also had our diesel tanks cleaned and the fuel "polished," which just means it was run through a 2 micron filter a bunch of times. I was pleasantly surprised with the condition of the tanks, which were in pretty good shape to start with. We developed a pinhole leak in one of our fresh water tanks. I think it is from one of the welds where the internal baffles are welded in. I was just barely able to see where it was leaking and reach it with one hand, so I sanded and cleaned where the pinhole was and smeared on some Marine-Tex sealant. We just refilled that tank and the leak is gone. Hopefully it will be a while before another develops, if ever. In short, we have been doing all kinds of boat-related projects while we've been in Key Largo.

We should be able to leave Key Largo within a week and we will head for Isla Mujeres, Mexico. We will almost certainly stop in Dry Tortugas on the way and may or may not stop in Marathon and/or Key West. Our target date for departure is Friday, 4/11, if the weather permits.

We have been live-aboard cruisers for 3 months now, and I thought I'd take some time to reflect on the lifestyle and our experiences so far. My ideas and opinions will probably change over time and it will be nice to look back at this in later years. More than one person has asked what I think of it so far, so I decided to post it as a log entry on the web instead of in my paper journal.

My first overall impression is that I really enjoy it and expect to continue to enjoy it for quite some time. I expected this life to be challenging, but I have been surprised so far with the frequency of the challenges. For a while there it seemed like we went from one adrenaline rush to the next, with no breather in between. I think that is because we are so new to this and some of the things that were challenging for us will become routine as time goes on. I am very pleased that so far we have been equal to each of the challenges we have faced.

My biggest frustration so far has been our dinghy. It is an inflatable, but I think it should be reclassified as a deflatable. I have to pump air into it about every other day. That is really the only thing I have found disagreeable about cruising and it is easily solved, either by finding the leaks and patching them, or getting a hard dinghy. I´m seriously considering the latter solution. This dinghy is going to have to be replaced eventually anyway, and a hard dinghy would row much better. I enjoy and prefer rowing to using the outboard whenever conditions permit. It would also be possible to get a sail kit for a hard dinghy and I think that would be fun as well.

I don't think we really know what cruising is like yet. We have a much better idea, but our first 3 months on the boat have been atypically hectic, I think (hope). I've had very little time to read anything except technical manuals and I expect that to change over the next few months, as I get more and more of the major maintenance chores done. There will always be periodic maintenance to be done, but there has been a lot of it all needing done at once. Once everything is pretty much ship-shape, I'll be able to plan out a maintenance schedule and won't have as many surprises.

Here are some thoughts on how cruising is different from shore life. Generally speaking, there ain't nobody to call when something goes wrong. At least not immediately. You'd better be prepared to deal with pretty much anything yourself. I find myself trying to anticipate all the things that could go wrong, and figuring out what I could do to either fix the problem, or bypass the problem. We have spent a lot of money on various spare parts since returning from the Bahamas for just this reason. We have a lot of spare line (rope) for when halyards, sheets or other lines break. We have spare hoses for water lines. We have rebuild kits for various pumps. We have a spare bilge pump. We have spare parts for the engine. We have a spare VHF radio and a spare GPS. Until we get used to this life and know better what to expect in the way of problems, it can lead to a heightened level of anxiety, especially when you are a few hundred miles from land and the weather is deteriorating. You ask yourself, what is going to break and do I have the tools, materials and skills to deal with it? Inevitably, something does break and you deal with it, which leads to an almost euphoric sense of accomplishment. I guess what I'm trying to express is that life afloat is much more intense, both the highs and the lows, than life ashore. I feel much more alive, aware, and "in the moment" than I did ashore. I am constantly aware of the weather and the wind. I am attuned to small noises and will come out of a deep sleep if a new noise occurs or a familiar noise changes in some way.

There are also many moments of overwhelming peace and beauty. Sailing along in a favorable wind and gentle seas, or anchored off a picturesque beach, I am often struck with an incredibly deep sense of awe and wonder. When I have such a moment, it is hard not to reflect on how much time I spent ashore, waking to the alarm, hurrying the morning coffee and breakfast, rushing slowly through traffic so I could sit in a sterile, windowless, artificial, air-conditioned cubicle, listening to people complain about life, work and the latest batch of software bugs. I think I would call what I feel now a wonderful sense of contentment. It is hard to describe, but the feeling is very pronounced. This is really what I was hoping for from the cruising life. Sure, I want to travel to exotic places and see lots of interesting things and meet lots of interesting people, but this sense of contentment is what it is all about for me.

Back in the States

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:22:00 +0000

Monday, 2/18, was a lazy day in Little Harbor. We just relaxed on the boat until 11:00 and then went ashore. Little Harbour is famous as the home of sculptor Randolph Johnston, who left "civilization" to pursue an artistic vision. He died at age 88 in 1982 and his son Pete carries on the tradition. We toured the sculpture gallery and the foundry, then walked over to the Atlantic side of the island and watched the waves crash ashore. We ate lunch at Pete's Pub and chatted a while over beers with Don, Tony and Kelly. Andrew had mentioned the night before that his VHF radio wasn't working. We had a spare one and we took it to him. We went back to the boat and read the rest of the day.

Tuesday we borrowed Jeeter's hand-held depth sounder and spent an hour or so sounding the depths in the entrance to Little Harbor. We wanted to leave on Wednesday and we really didn't want to run aground again. We went ashore and walked along the beach, picking up interesting pieces of coral and shells, then met up with everyone at Pete's Pub. Pete had just returned from an art show in Miami and I talked with him a while about boats. We gathered up some hermit crabs and had hermit crab races, but the crabs weren't really into it. I met a local guy named Fred who gave me some good pointers for leaving the harbor. Fred is a diver and has been doing a lot of cave diving. He's a very interesting guy. We spent quite a bit of time and money at Pete's Pub that evening, but eventually had to say our goodbyes and head back to the boat.

Wednesday dawned cloudy and rainy, but not too bad to leave. It is nearly the time of the full moon, so the tides are as high as they are going to be for another couple of weeks. We dropped the mooring and left the harbor at a little after 07:00 and anchored just south of Bridges Cay where we had a good view of the cut out into the Atlantic. It looked reasonably calm, so we listened to the weather on the Cruiser's Net and then got underway for Chub Cay. The weather turned out to be pretty good for the trip, although there was still a good bit of swell from the previous front that had just passed through. We forgot to put Nancy's seasickness patch on until just before we left, so it didn't have time to get into her system good and she wound up getting seasick and felt pretty bad for the whole trip. I saw two Blainsville's whales on the way to Chub Cay. They look like dolphins, but much larger. That night we watched the lunar eclipse. We were making such good time that we were in danger of arriving at Chub in the wee hours of the morning. We couldn't go fast enough to make a same-day arrival in good daylight, so I began trying to slow the boat down. Eventually I had the engine off and only a tiny piece of the jib out and we were still making almost 5 knots. I wound up moving one of our waypoints so that we would have farther to go, and we still had to circle outside the entrance to Chub for about an hour before the sun was up enough to feel comfortable entering. At 07:15 we were anchored at Chub Cay.

I had only had 4 hours of sleep in the last 48, so I crashed shortly after anchoring and slept for several hours. We were both so exhausted we didn't even bother going ashore at Chub. Friday morning we got underway once again and entered the Great Bahama Bank, bound for North Cat Cay. We had an absolutely beautiful day of sailing. I put out three fishing lines and trolled them behind. It was the first time I had used all the fancy fishing gear. It is going to take some practice to get the lines trolling at the right distance and separation, so they don't foul each other. We were going to anchor overnight on the Great Bahama Bank. I thought it would be pretty cool to anchor out in the middle of nowhere with no land in sight. We wanted to get anchored a couple of hours before sunset and that time was approaching when Nancy said something had pulled all the line off one of the reels. Sure enough, the reel set on the port side was out of line. This reel has about 400 yards of 80 lb test line on it, so I had a heck of a lot of line to reel back in. We were sailing at over 5 knots and I didn't want to stop or turn around, so I just started cranking on the reel. I figured out pretty quick that I would be several hours trying to get the line back in that way, so I had Nancy reel in the slack as I hand-lined in whatever was on the hook. I put on a brand new pair of fishing gloves with rubberized palms and began hauling in line. I didn't know what was on the hook, but it was big enough to create a lot of drag. I finally got it close enough to see that it was a fish and a decent sized one. I got it alongside and it wasn't too heavy that I could just haul it aboard with the fishing line and didn't have to get the gaff, but my, what sharp teeth it has. It was a barracuda, about 3 feet long and weighing maybe 30 pounds. I've heard that a lot of people eat barracuda, but the fishing book I have says they should be avoided due to ciguaterra toxin. Ciguaterra is a substance that is toxic to humans and is found in tiny reef critters called dinoflagellates. Small reef fish eat the dinoflagellates and the ciguaterra doesn't hurt the fish, but it builds up in their tissues. Bigger reef fish eat the little reef fish and barracuda eat the bigger reef fish and eventually the the concentration of ciguaterra can build up to levels that are harmful to humans. Based on this consideration, we decided to toss him back. I really wanted to grill some fresh fish steaks, but it was a lot of fun just catching him, the very first time we put out lines, no less. With all the excitement over we got ready and anchored for the night.

Saturday we got up and underway pretty early. It was another perfect day of sailing. We were cruising along on a beam reach making about 5 to 5.5 knots. Whenever you are sailing, and you have a fixed prop like ours, you have the option of letting it prop free-wheel (spin freely in the water with the transmission in neutral), or you can put the transmission in gear to prevent the prop from turning. We used to just let it spin, but ever since we had it resized it has created an annoying whine at certain speeds, so we have started sailing with the transmission in gear to prevent the whine. As we approached the anchorage at North Cat Cay, we started the engine, but forgot to take the transmission out of reverse. The engine started right up, but there were very bad noises coming from the engine compartment. I looked at the oil pressure gage and it read zero. We immediately shut the engine down and I looked in the engine compartment to see a whole lot of oil floating in the bilge. Fortunately North Cat Cay is a very easy place to anchor, so we tacked toward the anchorage, sailed up to the spot we wanted to anchor, dropped the sails, dropped the anchor, then took some very deep breaths. Now what? I had read somewhere that Towboat U.S. now has operations in the Bahamas, so I tried calling for them on the VHF radio. I got a towboat operator out of Key Biscayne, Florida, which is almost 60 miles from Cat Cay. That's not bad range for a VHF, but he said we were coming in very weak and he gave me his phone number so we could go ashore and find a phone to call from. We got in the dinghy to go ashore and the outboard engine began surging and trying to quit on us. Great, one more problem to deal with. We got the dinghy ashore by giving it only as much throttle as necessary to keep moving, found a phone and called Captain Cory of Biscayne Towing. He said the closest Towboat U.S. operator in the Bahamas was probably on Grand Bahama, which is actually further than Florida from Cat Cay. He said he could send a boat all the way to Cat Cay to tow us back, but it would be better if we could sail to the Florida coast and then call for a tow. We decided that was what we would do and told Capt. Cory we would contact him again the next day to let him know how we were doing. Sailing across the Gulf Stream to Florida without an engine is not a problem, but getting through the cut between North Cat Cay and Gun Cay without an engine will be more problematic. There are submerged rocks on one side of the cut and Gun Cay on the other, and sandbars elsewhere along the path of the cut. The cut is easy enough that we could sail out of it, except for wind and current considerations. The wind is currently out of the West, and predicted to continue from the West for at least a couple of days. We can't sail directly into the wind, and the cut isn't wide enough to tack back and forth through. There is also a tidal current we need to take into account. We inquired around the island about somebody with a boat that could tow us out, but the only guy with a boat capable was currently in Bimini and not expected back for a day or two. We headed back to the boat and I decided to get a good night's sleep and then evaluate the problem with the engine in the morning. In the meantime, we pumped the oil out of the bilge into gallon jugs.

Sunday morning, I began searching for where the oil had come out. I didn't see any obvious place, so my assumption was that the rear main seal had blown out when we started the engine while going 5 knots with the transmission in reverse. The oil we had collected from the bilge had separated from the water so we carefully removed the oil and put it back in the engine. There was somewhat less than a gallon of oil from the bilge and it took almost another quart to get the oil level to the top of the dipstick. I didn't see oil running back out of the engine and we had nothing to lose, so we started the engine. It started fine and sounded very normal. We let it run to charge the batteries and watched the oil pressure gage and temperature gage like hawks. We let it run for almost two hours with no problem and no obvious leaks. When we shut it down, the level on the dipstick was the same as before starting it. Now I'm stumped. When you find a gallon of oil in the bilge, you expect to find an obvious leak. If we had blown the rear main, I would see oil coming from the bell housing, but I don't. It doesn't seem to be leaking at all. My newly revised theory is that starting the engine with the transmission in gear created a lot of pressure in the engine that forced oil out of the dipstick tube, but no permanent damage was done. We decide to pick up anchor in the morning, motor around a bit to test the engine and if it works fine, we will motor out of the cut and sail across to No Name Harbor on Key Biscayne. We can call Capt. Cory if we feel we need help getting into harbor once we reach Florida. Next I tackled the dinghy engine. I figured the surging and cutting out was due to moisture condensing in the fuel tank. I had bought a special transom-mounted fuel filter and water separator just for this purpose, but hadn't gotten around to installing it yet. Once I got it installed I took the dinghy for a few spins around the boat and that little problem seemed to be solved, so we dinghied ashore to call Capt. Cory and update him on our status. When we got back to the boat I was ready for a little relaxation, so I swam and snorkeled around the boat for a while and Nancy read a book in the cockpit.

Monday morning we fired up the engine and got a weather report via the HAM radio while the engine warmed up. The weather looked very good for a Gulf Stream crossing and the engine seemed to be running fine, with no leaks. We picked up the anchor and motored around in a circle and still no problem, so we head for the cut. We made it out of the cut easily and hoisted the main sail and unfurled the jib and set a course for Key Biscayne. The wind was light and I wanted to run the heck out of the engine, so we left it in gear and motor-sailed all the way across. If it is going to break, I want it to do it while we are in open water, not when we are maneuvering into a harbor. we also want to keep our speed above 6 knots so we can make it into No Name Harbor before sunset and not have to sail around in circles waiting for sunrise. It was a very good crossing with seas about 3 feet or less and just enough wind to stay above 6 knots with help from the engine. We made it into No Name Harbor just before sunset and got anchored. No Name is a small harbor and it was packed with boats. We were lucky to find room to anchor.

Tuesday morning I called Customs and Border Protection to clear back into the U.S., then we went in search of their office at the Port of Miami. Once cleared in, we stopped at a grocery store on the way back to the boat and got a few provisions. There is a little restaurant at No Name Harbor so we ate lunch there. The food was very good, but the service would best be called lack of service. Tuesday night a really strong storm blew through and several boats started dragging. Our anchor didn't budge, but the boat in front of us dragged a little, so we had to keep an eye on that all night.

Wednesday I checked the engine before starting it to charge the batteries and found oil in the bilge again. Bummer. I checked the dipstick and we were quite a bit lower than the previous time I had checked it, so the oil came from the engine. Once again I cleaned the bilge out and this time the amount of oil was less than a quart, maybe about a pint. We went ahead and started the engine and I called Capt. Cory, the Towboat U.S. operator, to get in contact with the Yanmar mechanic he said he knew. Capt. Cory said he would have the mechanic call us and a little later I got a call from Gerd Wunderlich, with Port Engineers. He said he could come out that afternoon and take a look at the engine. He showed up about 14:30 and I dinghied ashore to pick him up. Gerd has been working on marine deisels and Yanmars in particular for over 20 years. He crawled all around the engine checking things out and said he thought the engine was basically sound, but needs a lot of o-rings and seals replaced. Gerd's shop is in Key Largo and said if we brought the boat to a marina in Key Largo, he'd be happy to work on it. He is going to send us a quote for the work that he thinks needs to be done and we also asked him for a quote to put a new, bigger engine in. This boat displaces 30,000 pounds and almost all the boats this size I have seen have a 50 HP or bigger engine. This engine is a 33 HP and is not big enough to drive the boat to hull speed in calm water. I have wished for a bigger engine since we bought the boat, but the expense kept me from doing it. 33 HP is obviously enough for almost all situations, but there could come a time when we find ourselves out in the middle of nowhere anchored off a nice pretty coral island and a sudden storm comes up and tries to blow us onto the reef. In that situation, you would want all the HP you could get in order to motor into the wind and stay off the reef. Once we get the quotes from Gerd, we'll decide whether to have this engine fixed or put a new one in. This engine is 23 or so years old and the newer ones are much smaller, quieter and more fuel efficient. The new Yanmar 55 HP engine is actually smaller than our 33 HP and uses about the same amount of fuel per hour. There are a lot of good arguments for a new engine. Thursday is supposed to be another cold and blustery day, so we'll probably stay put and then head down to Key Largo on Friday.

Entertainment Provided by Stolen Child

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:33:00 +0000

As I write this, it is 05:00 on Monday, 2/18. We are moored in Little Harbor and had quite an adventure getting in here, but more on that after I get the log current.

Thursday, Feb 14, we decided to head back to Hope Town for a couple of days. We have been sometimes too busy and sometimes too lazy to do laundry on the boat, so we had a good bit of laundry piled up and decided we'd much rather do it in Hope Town than in Marsh Harbor. The trip from Marsh Harbor to Hope Town is less than two hours and we needed to charge the batteries, so we just motored the whole way. We called ahead to reserve a mooring and there was a guy in a skiff waiting to show us which mooring was ours. The moorings are laid out in rows, so the harbor is kind of like a parking lot with rows of boats lined up. There was a boat that preceded us into the harbor and had turned down a row of boats prior to the row where our guide was leading us. The boats are quite close together and I was concentrating on not hitting the other boats already moored and following the guy in the skiff. All of a sudden, there is a sailboat appearing from behind the moored boat on my port bow (in front and to the left of me). He's moving from my left to my right and given our current speed and direction, we will both be attempting to occupy the exact same spot on the water at the exact same time. In other words, if one of us doesn't change course or speed very quickly, we're going to see which is sturdier, his beam or my bow. I already had the RPM's pretty low, so I didn't even bring it to idle, I just shifted the transmission from forward to reverse and gave it a hefty dose of throttle. I don't want to stop dead in the water for very long, though, because then the wind and current will drift me into the moored boats. I especially don't want to start moving backwards because many sailboats, and this one in particular, don't handle very well at all in reverse. Nancy and the guy in the skiff said the other boat never even looked our way and were probably blissfully oblivious of the whole thing. This all occurred in less than a minute and during the midst of it, I glanced to my right and there was a couple sitting on the foredeck of a moored boat watching the spectacle and their eyes were as wide as mine probably were. Anyway, I got Stolen Child stopped just long enough for the other boat to pass with probably 6 feet of clearance in front of our bow, and then underway again before we drifted into any moored boats. We got moored without any further drama. That evening we discussed and decided on our route back to Moss Point. We want to do our best to avoid all the bad weather and major shipping lanes we encountered on the way to the Bahamas.

Friday we took out the trash and did laundry at the laundromat behind the fuel dock at Lighthouse Marina. It was a beautiful day and we sat at a picnic table under the shade of a tree in a nice little garden area, reading while waiting for the laundry. We had a late lunch ashore and bought a few provisions in the afternoon and then got the boat ready to get underway the next morning.

Saturday morning we dropped our mooring and got to the fuel dock before they opened. We needed to top off our water and I decided to go ahead and fill the diesel tanks even though we haven't used much since filling up in Port Lucaya. We are heading down to Little Harbor and anchoring somewhere there as we plan to leave through the cut in the reef right next to Little Harbor. The wind is from the north and quite gusty, and expected to move more easterly overnight, so we decide to anchor on the west side of Lynard Cay, which is just a bit north of Little Harbor. We'll have a bare minimum of protection from the north and great protection from the east. There are already a couple of boats anchored there. We watched a movie that evening (Gangs of New York).

Sunday morning we slept late (until about 07:00), then sat around the cockpit reading until late morning when we dinghied ashore to the white sand beach we were anchored off of. The beach was very beautiful and we walked along it, picking up a few seashells. We also found a footpath to the Atlantic side of the cay and watched the waves crash on the rocks. We dinghied back to the boat and went swimming for a while, then showers, lunch and more reading. Our plan was to head out the cut the next morning and sail down to Chub Cay on the eastern edge of the Great Bahama Bank, then cross the bank westward to Cat Cay, then across the Gulf Stream. We heard on the weather that there is a cold front heading our way that will bring unfavorable weather through Wednesday, so we decide to postpone departure until after it has passed. I'd really like to get inside Little Harbor but the entrance is so shallow I'm not sure if high tide will be enough for our nearly 6 foot draft. On our way to the beach, we stopped at one of the other boats anchored with us (Nina Belle) and talked to Nina and Jeeter. They are going into Little Harbor and offer to radio us with the depth as they go in. We pick up our anchor and head for Little Harbor about 40 minutes behind Nina Belle, timing our arrival for about 20 minutes before absolute high tide. Kelly and Tony, a young couple on another boat (Myrtice) anchored with us goes in with Nina Belle and once in, launch their dinghy and using Jeeter's handheld depth sounder, check the depth of the channel and radio us that we might bump the bottom, but we should be able to get in. We decide to go for it and enter the channel. Everything is going fine until we are even with the last pair of channel markers, when we come to a very solid stop. I try to motor on past, but the boat is not budging. Jeeter and his two daughters come over in their dinghy and and I pass them a line tied to our spinnaker halyard. The idea is that they will pull on the halyard, which is attached to the top of the mast, and heel the boat over enough to allow us to motor on through the channel. Kelly and Tony push against the bow with their dinghy while Jeeter pulls the halyard with his. Unfortunately, we're stuck pretty good and the wind is opposing Jeeter's efforts to get the boat heeled over. Another couple of dinghies come out to help. Don is a single-hander and he is going to race back and forth in his dinghy, throwing up as much of a wake as possible to help float us off. Andrew and Bekka on the catamaran Stray Cat, along with Clay, another single-hander, come aboard Stolen Child and we swing the boom out over the port beam and they all climb out on the boom to help heel the boat over. Then a local guy named Larry comes out in a skiff with a 60 horsepower outboard and we pass him a line tied to the bow, which he pulls on with his boat. Finally, reluctantly, grudgingly, Stolen Child begins moving again. After moving only a few yards we are in water 10 feet deep and we grab a mooring ball. We're moored safe and sound and have provided great entertainment for all of Little Harbor. The only commercial establishment in Little Harbor is Pete's Pub and we invite everyone who helped us to meet us there and the drinks are on us. We launch our dinghy and head for Pete's Pub to repay everyone's kindness. We met up with most everyone who helped at Pete's and had a very nice evening. A couple of the locals told us that just last week a charter boat had run over the last two channel markers and drug them out of position. If not for that, we might have just touched, but wouldn't have gotten stuck aground. Nancy ordered a hamburger that came with cole slaw and the Bahamian staple, peas and rice. The burger was very good, but the slaw was incredible. It had chopped walnuts and crushed pineapple in it. I could have eaten a whole mixing bowl of it, but Nancy would only let me have a couple of bites. When we got back to the boat we decided this was one of the most enjoyable days we've had yet.

We will probably stay here until Wednesday, or whenever the cold front has blown through, and then head for Chub Cay. We will have to time our departure very carefully and make sure we compensate for the two channel markers which are out of position. There is a full moon on the 21st, which will bring higher than normal tides and that will help.

Stay tuned for more Bahama drama from Stolen Child.

Patrick

A Sad Farewell

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:50:00 +0000

Today Rob had to leave and return to cold, cold Kansas. We thoroughly enjoyed his stay aboard. I think the last log entry I posted was from Green Turtle Cay, but I can't remember for sure. I'll start from there in any case.

It was about 02:30 in the morning, Saturday, Feb 9, and very calm in the harbor. The sky was clear and there was an incredible panorama of stars above. We were anchored in Settlement Harbor on the island of Great Guana Cay. We left Green Turtle Cay on Friday morning, Feb 8, about 08:30. There is a sand bar stretching across the Sea of Abaco from Whale Cay on the Atlantic side to "Treasure Cay" on the Abaco side. Treasure Cay is not really a cay, but part of Abaco. Everyone calls it Treasure
Cay anyway. The sand bar restricts passage for boats drawing more than about 4 feet so to get from the northern part of the Sea of Abaco to the southern we had to go through the Whale Channel, which is a cut in the reef that leads out to the Atlantic on the northwestern side of Whale Cay, and re-enter via the Loggerhead Channel on the southeastern side of Whale Cay. This is very easy to do unless there exists what are known as "rage" conditions. Apparently when there is a heavy swell from the
east (such as a big storm out in the Atlantic would cause) the channels can get violently rough and choppy. Many boats and more than a few lives have been lost in the Whale over the years due to rage conditions, so there is a very nice fellow at Abaco Yacht Services who will tell you what the current conditions are if you call him on channel 16 on the VHF radio. He gave us the all clear, and we got underway. By the time we reached the Whale, there were about 5 other boats traveling with us. It
was an easy passage and we arrived at Settlement Harbor by noon.

Settlement Harbor is very pretty and picturesque, but too small for more than a couple of boats to anchor and still have room to swing around the anchor, so they have moorings you can hook to. A mooring is a permanent anchor (usually a large cement slab or sometimes an old engine block) with a buoy marking its position and there is a piece of rope called a pennant attached to the buoy with a loop in one end. You motor up to the buoy and use a boat hook to grab the pennant and pull it aboard. You
then pass a mooring line through the loop in the pennant and cleat it to your boat. It is very easy and the big advantage is that you don't have to have nearly as much scope (the amount of chain or line between the anchor and the boat) on a mooring and thus don't swing in a very big circle. I'm amazed at how close together the moorings are, but as long as all the boats swing in the same direction, they don't run into each other.

Once we were moored, we had sandwiches for lunch and then took the dinghy ashore. We went to this beach bar named Nipper's, which is a multi-level, multi-colored series of decks built on a dune overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. They have swimming pools on two levels of the decks and stairs leading down to the beach. The beach is very pretty and the reef is just off the beach. Rob and I went snorkeling on the reef while Nancy strolled along the beach. We snorkeled for about an hour and it was incredible.
We saw all kinds of fish and even saw a sea turtle. After snorkeling, we sat on one of the decks and had a few beers and just watched the ocean. We saw two guys carrying big net bags full of lobsters and decided we'd have dinner at Nipper's. They had rib-eye steaks or lobster for $20, along with salad, beans and rice, baked mac and cheese and steamed vegetables. You could choose your steak or lobster and the rib-eyes were simply huge, but then so were the lobsters. The locals all eat the steaks,
because they eat lobster all the time and steak is a real treat for them. Us tourists eat the lobster because we can get steak anytime back home, but freshly caught lobster is a real treat for us. Everybody is happy. The lobsters were very delicious and we were stuffed when we finished eating and tired from the snorkeling, so we headed back to the boat shortly after dark. We sat up in the cockpit reading for a little while, but we were all nodding off and wound up going to bed by about 21:00.

Later Saturday morning, we noticed the head wasn't flushing properly (a "head" is a nautical term for toilet). Fixing the head is perhaps the least pleasant job on the boat. It is very rewarding, though, because when the head doesn't work, everyone aboard gets very grumpy. If you can fix a marine head, you are an instant hero, so I got to be hero for a day. After demonstrating my plumbing prowess, we returned to shore and again went to the beach at Nipper's for more snorkeling. We snorkeled
a different part of the reef for a couple of hours and then climbed back up the stairs to Nipper's for a beer and lunch. If I haven't mentioned it before, there is a local Bahamian beer called Kalik, which is very tasty. After lunch we walked around and had a Guana Grabber at a beach bar named Grabber's. A Guana Grabber is a famous local drink made of 3 kinds of fruit juice and 3 kinds of rum. It was quite good and I think a few of them would really grab you and not let go for a while. It was
low tide when we got back to the boat and Stolen Child was hard aground. Fortunately the wind was not changing direction much so none of the other boats swung into us. A couple of hours later the tide had come back in and we were floating free again. Rob fixed fettucini Alfredo for dinner.

Early Sunday morning, Feb 10, a thunderstorm blew through the anchorage. It was just a little after low tide and Stolen Child was still aground, but the 25+ knot winds blew her free of the bottom and we were able to swing with the other boats. Later that morning we got underway for Hope Town, on Elbow Cay. Hope Town is where the famous red and white candy-striped lighthouse is. The entrance to Hope Town is narrow, circuitous and shallow, so we timed our arrival with the high tide and entered
the harbor without any drama. The harbor was packed with boats and we had to motor around a lot before we found an empty mooring. After mooring we went ashore for lunch and then strolled around. We walked all the way to the northern tip of the island and back and were pretty tired by the time we got back to the boat. Rob cooked pasta in a clam sauce for dinner that was delicious.

Monday we took our trash to the dumpster and went to tour the lighthouse. The lighthouse was built in 1863 and is still in operation today. Back in 1863 the locals were very opposed to its construction because many of them made their living salvaging the wrecks of ships that would run into the reef. Once the lighthouse was built, the salvaging industry dried up completely. We were able to climb to the top of the lighthouse and look at the mechanism. The rotating part of the light floats in a
vat of mercury for a very low-friction bearing. It has huge glass Fresnel lenses to focus the beam, which is generated by a small kerosene mantle, much like you find in a Coleman lantern. There are weights that the lighthouse keeper winds up to the top of the lighthouse and a clockwork mechanism that turns the light as the weights fall. It was very fascinating and the view from the lighthouse is awesome. After the lighthouse, we went to the Harbor Lodge, which has a patio overlooking the reef
and Nancy and I sat on the patio having drinks while Rob snorkeled on the reef. We went to Captain Jack's for lunch, then walked around town taking pictures for a while, then stopped at a coffee shop for coffee. Rob cooked burgers on the grill and some really good macaroni and cheese for dinner.

Tuesday morning we got underway for Marsh Harbor on Abaco Island. The weather forecast was for some bad weather to arrive later in the day, so we wanted to be safely anchored when it arrived. Marsh Harbor is well-protected but quite a bit larger than Hope Town harbor. There were quite a few boats, but still plenty of room for us to anchor. Right after we got anchored, it started storming and it stormed intermittently the rest of the day. During a break in the rain, we dinghied ashore and had
lunch at a place called Snappa's. This was the first food we had ashore that left us unimpressed. It wasn't bad, but nothing to rave about, either. We walked around town for a while and returned to the boat well before dark. I have to say that I don't really care for Marsh Harbor. It is very full of people and automobiles and strip malls. We hardly ever saw an automobile on any of the other islands, but of course the cays are much smaller than Abaco. On the cays, most everyone either walks
or drives a golf cart around. Marsh Harbor is the third largest town in the Bahamas and is in a busy growth phase. The good thing about Marsh Harbor is the airport and the availability of just about anything you need. It has supermarkets, hardware stores, liquor stores, banks, an airport, etc. The wind blew like crazy all night and I heard on the cruiser's net this morning that it topped 40 mph during the night. Our anchor held like a champ, though.

This morning (Wednesday, Feb 13) Rob packed up all his stuff and we dinghied ashore for breakfast. After breakfast we went to Buck-A-Book, a used book store located in an old shipping container. Every book is $1 and they also have DVD's for rent. All the money goes to the Abaco Wild Horses Foundation. We bought a few paperbacks and then it was time for Rob to catch a taxi to the airport. We really hated to see him leave and are looking forward to his next visit in some future locale. Nancy
and I are going to start planning our return trip to the States tomorrow. We want to make it a very leisurely trip with stops in as many places as possible.

So Many Islands, So Little Time

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 12:06:00 +0000

Well, I had to wake up at 04:00 to do it, but I finally have some free time to update the log. I'll start with our last day in Key West and work chronologically to the present.

Friday, Feb 1, we woke up early and Rob and I dinghied ashore and got his luggage out of the rental car and a few cases of beer he had picked up on the way to Key West. We got all of that ferried back to the boat, then we all went back ashore and Rob drove us to the clinic to get our Yellow Fever vaccination and he went to the grocery store to provision for the trip. Rob met us at the clinic after provisioning and we took the groceries to the dinghy. Nancy and I took the dinghy back to the boat
while Rob returned the rental car and caught a cab back to the fuel dock. After we got all the groceries stowed, Nancy and I pulled up the anchor and motored the boat to the fuel dock. There was a beautiful wooden 3-masted schooner at the fuel dock from either Wisconsin or Michigan, I forget which. We filled the diesel tanks, water tanks, and the gas can for the dinghy outboard and were underway for the Bahamas by 14:00. The weather forecasts called for 5 to 10 knots of wind from the east, slowly
shifting to the southeast and wave height of 2 to 4 feet. These are pretty mild conditions but the wind direction is not the best for us. We will be sailing east along the Florida Keys, then northeast across the Gulf Stream to the Northwest Providence Channel, then east-southeast through the Providence Channel, and finally north-northeast to Marsh Harbor. We will be sailing into the wind for much of the trip, and we may be going too much into the wind to use the sails for some of the trip. This
time of year, however, it is unusual to get winds from the west or southwest (optimal for this trip) for any length of time, and when you do, it is usually because a front is moving through and the wind will soon be shifting to the north, which you really don't want for crossing the Gulf Stream.

The trip around the Keys and across the Gulf Stream was fairly pleasant. There was, of course, a lot of tanker, freighter and cruise ship traffic to watch out for, but that was expected. What surprised us was the amount of traffic pouring out of the Providence Channel. There were times where we had more than a dozen contacts on the radar within a 12-mile radius and nearly always had 6 to 8. It was late Saturday night and early Sunday morning by this time, and we are guessing that all the cruise
ships end their cruises on Sunday, so they were all heading back to Miami, Port Canaveral, or wherever they were based out of. It looked literally like a parade of ships going by for a while. Rob and I both stayed up for this part of the trip. Rob would stay on deck and keep a visual lookout, and I was below plotting ships' positions on the chart using radar for range and relative bearing and Rob giving me magnetic bearing for the ones he had in sight. This way we were able to better figure out
the ships' courses and bearings and determine the risk of collision. Some of these ships are moving so fast that you don't have much time to figure out how close they are going to get and which evasive maneuver is going to be the correct one. Anyway, we got pretty good at our visual and radar tracking system and managed to avoid any nasty bumps in the night.

Unfortunately, once we turned into the Northwest Providence Channel, we were going directly into the wind and waves, which made for a fairly uncomfortable ride, even with the relatively benign conditions. Nancy was sleeping in the forward berth and the boat started pitching (moving in a see-saw fashion) with the bow rising 5 or 6 feet on the wave crests, then falling 5 or 6 feet into the wave troughs. She developed a headache and really didn't feel very well. We decided to tack back and forth
across the Providence Channel, to help ease the motion, but I could tell she felt pretty bad. We were getting pretty close to Freeport on the island of Grand Bahama, so we decided to find a place there to anchor or dock and clear in through Customs. There didn't seem to be any good anchorages, so we decided on Port Lucaya Marina and tied up there.

After we tied up at Port Lucaya, I had to fill out all the paperwork for Customs and Immigration. Only the captain can leave the boat until Customs has been cleared. It only took about an hour to clear Customs and then we went for a stroll around the waterfront and had dinner at a restaurant. Nancy and I had conch fritters and conch salad and Rob had a conch burger. We were pretty exhausted, so we just went back to the boat, had a couple of drinks in the cockpit and went to bed pretty early.
The next morning we got up and washed all the salt off the boat, checked the engine, adding a little oil and cleaning the strainer for the raw water intake. We went to breakfast at a waterfront cafe and Nancy had a lobster omelet that was delicious. After breakfast we got underway, stopping at the fuel dock to top off the diesel and water.

We decided that instead of sailing through the Providence Channel and then north to Marsh Harbor, we would sail west and then north around the west end of Grand Bahama and enter the Little Bahama Bank, then sail east across the bank and then south down the eastern side of Abaco to Marsh Harbor. The Little Bahama Bank is like a plateau under the water. The ocean around the bank is hundreds to thousands of feet deep, then the ocean floor rises almost vertically to only a few tens of feet on the bank.
There are small islands (cays, pronounced like keys) all over the bank where we could stop and anchor for the night and many of them have pretty beaches and good snorkeling. We had a very good sail from Port Lucaya to White Sand Ridge, where we entered the bank. We got to White Sand Ridge shortly after midnight and the entrance to the bank looked so easy on the chart we decided to go ahead and enter in the dark and proceed directly to Great Sale Cay where we would anchor for the next night.

The trip from White Sand Ridge to Great Sale Cay was pleasant and uneventful, but I have to mention the dinner Rob fixed while we were underway. It was a linguine pasta with putanesca sauce (I'm not sure of the spelling). The sauce has oregano, basil, anchovies, olives, capers, crushed tomatoes, and various other ingredients and it was awesome. We arrived at Great Sale Cay and dropped the anchor in 8 feet of crystal clear water. We went swimming and I got my first good look at the boat's hull
since hauling it out of the water when we first bought it. Whatever the previous owner had used for bottom paint was really good, because there was no growth of any kind on the hull. Rob and I dove down and looked at the anchor and were surprised at how quickly it sets. You could see where it had started out and that was only about 2 feet from where it was set. After swimming we took showers and relaxed in the cockpit. Rob is making these drinks called Cuba Libre. They have rum, Coke and lime
in them and they are very good. I rarely drink mixed drinks, but these things are habit forming. They go well with a Guinness, too. Rob fixed steaks marinated in cuban mojo sauce with beans and rice. It was again an incredible dinner.

Wednesday morning we got underway headed for Green Turtle Cay, but we figured it might be too close to dark before we got there for comfortable navigation close to shore, so we decided to stop overnight at Allens-Pensacola Cay. Allens-Pensacola used to be two islands, but a hurricane piled up sand between them, joining them into one cay. We got there fairly early and Rob swam to shore and went exploring. Nancy and I relaxed in the cockpit for a while, then launched the dinghy and went ashore.
We found Rob and Nancy and Rob walked over to the Atlantic side of the island while I just wandered around the beach on the anchorage side. Then it was back to the boat for another sumptuous feast, drinks and music. Rob fixed some of the best burgers I've ever eaten with spanish rice liberally doused with Cholula sauce. I call them fantail burgers (the fantail is the aft end of a boat or ship and that is where our barbeque is).

Thursday morning (this morning) we got underway and arrived at Green Turtle Cay about 13:00. We dropped anchor just off the town of New Plymouth and dinghied ashore. We ate lunch at a little restaurant and I had the fried conch and fried grouper special. It was indeed special. Nancy had a crawfish salad and conch fritters and Rob had a grouper sandwich and conch salad. New Plymouth is a very pretty, quaint little town that was founded in 1786 by loyalists from the States after the revolution.
It is not glitzy or touristy at all, which is why I liked it so much. The streets are narrow, the houses are small, and they are all painted pretty pastel colors. We just wandered around for a while and toured the local museum. We're back on the boat now and Rob is fixing jerk chicken with beans and rice for dinner.

There is more interesting stuff to tell, but I really want to get an update posted on the website, so I am going to wrap this up and get it sent off. I can use my HAM radio to send this text as an email to a certain email address, and it will show up as a log entry on our website. That way I can make an entry without having internet access, but I can't attach any pictures, so I'll just save all the pictures until I have internet access and create a gallery on the picture gallery page. Even though
we are having fun, we miss everyone and look forward to hearing from you. Send us an email at the kc0wtv address I sent you.