I'm continuing to bring blog posts up to date with this one, chronicling our passage from Bahia Ballena to Golfito and the day and half spent there.
Golfito is about 150 nm southeast of Bahia Ballena. We raised anchor at 0530 so that we would arrive in Golfito before noon to give us time to purchase fuel and some chain and a padlock to serve as a temporary solution to our broken sliding door lock.
It was raining when we departed but started to clear up around 0700 and didn't rain the rest of the trip. Unfortunately, there was very little wind and when there was any, it was at too tight an angle ahead of us, so we had to run the engines the whole way. There were a couple of hours when we were able to grab a bit of the wind with the jib to take a little load of the motor to save fuel.
I rarely get seasick and hadn't since sailing down the Baja coast almost a year ago, but I guess four months of living on land had its effects. I felt pretty green around the gills until early afternoon, but then rapidly improved. Hopefully that's it for another year. Renee also got seasick, a bit worse and for longer than I. Hopefully she's "cured" now, too.
In the afternoon, two pretty little land birds landed on the boat, holding tight to the mainsheet with their little feet. I don't know why they were so far from land, as we were a good ten miles or more offshore. What became apparent, however, was that they were not able to fly back. Every time they tried, a flock of vicious sea birds would chase them mercilessly until they returned to take refuge on the boat. They finally gave up, exhausted, and decided to sail with us. They tried to find places to get out of the cool, damp air, including flying into the salon and roosting on the nav station and setee. I was fine with having birds inside the boat, but Renee was less enthused. The birds weren't really comfortable with being in a small enclosed space with humans coming in and out anyway, so potential conflict among the crew regarding animal accommodations was avoided. Eventually, one bird huddled in a narrow gap between the battery locker and cabin bulkhead, the other just hun
kered down on the sole of the cockpit, looking quite cold and miserable. I felt sorry for it, so made it a little nest in a cardboard box. I felt better, but the bird didn't like the box at first, but eventually exhaustion got the better of it and it settled down.
Renee, the two birds and I sailed through the night uneventfully. The stars shown bright and beautiful between the clouds in the sky. It was peaceful and Renee and I eased into the rhythm of our night watch schedule, 3 hours on, 3 hours off, from dusk to dawn.
The rising of the sun got the birds energized. The one in the box decided to take off and try to fly to land. Give the distance we were from land and the bird's physical condition, I doubt it made it. But who knows? The other bird left its gap and sat morosely on the stern seat, not moving much, tired, cold and hungry. We later found it dead in another narrow gap. Sad, but nature's way.
We arrived at the fuel dock in Golfito at 1100 and filled the tanks with diesel. It was an somewhat inauspicious and unsettling arrival as the police were examining the body of a murder victim in the mangroves next to the fuel dock. We didn't stay long.
We anchored in front of a place called Land & Sea, a small "clubhouse" run by Tim (Sea) and Katie (Land) that caters to cruisers and land travelers visiting Golfito. They have a dinghy dock, cold $2 beer, WIFI and lots of local knowledge. All for $8/day. Katie gave us the scoop on the grocery stores (we realized we skimped on provisions and needed to supplement) and the hardware store. Renee took off shopping while I took care of "business" over the Internet, paying bills and other necessary administrative tasks.
We had to keep a very low profile while in Golfito, as we had officially checked out of Costa Rica and the boat isn't officially allowed to re-enter for 90 days. We figured if anyone asked we would say we made an unplanned stop due to mechanical problems. We were illegal aliens with a unpermitted boat.
Before launching the dinghy to get to shore, I drove a wooden bung into the drain hole to replace the stolen plug. It fit really tightly and seemed like it would keep water out. It didn't. When we returned to Intermezzo after a lousy dinner, the winch strained again to hoist the dinghy. I pulled out the bung and a good quantity of water streamed out. So much for the bung idea. We needed to fix this problem and Golfito has the last well-stocked hardware store we might see for a couple weeks or more. So, rather than leave that evening as we had planned, so as to avoid potential problems with the authorities, we decided to stay the night and go back to the hardware store in the morning to buy parts to make a new plug.
We bought our parts the next morning and headed back to the boat. Our next destination, Isla Parida in Panama, is a 75 nm sail from Golfito, about 15 hours. So as to not arrive in the dark, we couldn't leave Golfito any earlier than about 2 pm.
We had a few hours to kill and the anchorage was calm so I decided to try climbing the mast again. Oh, what a difference no swell makes! I made it to the top of the mast with no problem. I tackled the wind sensor first. Sealant had failed and was letting moisture get to the plug connector, so I took it apart, cleaned it and put it together again with new sealant. Next, replacing the anchor light bulb with an LED. No luck; the fixture housing was frozen and I couldn't budge it to open it up, even using a strap wrench. Not sure what I'm going to do about that; maybe an oil filter wrench of the right size will do the trick. Next time. Finally, I set to changing out the main halyard. Unfortunately, I screwed up with the line Renee and I were using to haul things up and down from my perch at the top of the mast and got it all tangled up in the rigging. The sky was clouding up rapidly and I could hear thunder in the distance. I didn't have time to untangle the haul line and replace
the halyard without risking getting zapped, giving the police another dead body to examine and becoming an entry into that "Darwin" book of stories about people doing stupid things that kill them. So down I climbed; one hit, two outs. The mast repair saga will continue.
We departed Golfito at 1400 as the thunderstorm was building above us and rain was beginning to fall. I'm writing this from Isla Parida, so obviously we made it. But not without sighting a UFO (Unidentified Floating Object) and another more startling surprise in the night. Stay tuned for the next installment...
Friday, October 7, 2016
Thursday, October 6, 2016
Boat Maintenance and the Art of Zen
It's Wednesday evening and we're sailing from Golfito, Costa Rica to Isla Parida, Panama. I haven't written a blog post for a few days because I have been feeling, shall we say, "challenged" by things wrong on the boat. I'm going to start getting up to date with posts on this passage.
We stayed in Bahia Ballena to get as many repairs done as we could, especially the wind instrument at the top of the mast. To make my climb up efficient, I figured on also replacing the anchor light bulb with an LED and replacing the main halyard while I was up here. We got everything ready and I started climbing the mast with our ATN mast climbing rig, basically a bosun's chair and foot straps attached to ascenders. You move the foot ascender up, stand up to take weight off the chair, slide the chair ascender up, sit down, move the foot ascender up, etc....climbing up a static line alongside the mast like an inch worm.
Well, the swells in the anchorage didn't seem at all significant while standing on the boat, but as I went up the mast, trigonometry worked against me, amplifying the rolling motion of the boat and swinging me violently from side to side unless I held on to something. Tough going. By the time I was half way up, I was having a really hard time operating the ascenders while at the same time stopping myself from bashing into the rigging. I looked up to the top of the mast and realized that it was going to be impossible to work on the delicate wind sensor, unscrew the masthead light fixture and fiddle with the halyard all at the very top. I decided to abort the mission and started to descend. Going down was even harder than going up as the swells had increased.
I felt pretty frustrated from my failure to get the work done at the top of the mast, but I had plenty of things to do back at sea level. When I used the main head that morning, it failed to perform its job properly. So I recommissioned the guest head in the port hull. Like the main head, the guest hadn't liked sitting unused for four months and its joker valve, which prevents wastewater from flowing back into the toilet, wasn't doing its job properly, either. And the watermaker was still leaking from the carbon filter housing. Plus when I dug into the locker below the aft port berth, I found a small puddle of fresh water at the bottom, source unknown. Oh, yeah, and earlier that morning we determined that the broken lock on the sliding door is not repairable without spare parts from its Italian manufacturer. So, I set to work repairing the two toilets, while brainstorming on how to stop the leak from the watermaker. Investigating the puddle in the locker could wait, as could
figuring out how to procure the spare parts for the door lock. The toilet repairs went smoothly and were successful, for which I was grateful and rewarded myself with a cold beer, after thoroughly washing my hands. At least the day wasn't a complete loss.
We had a surprise visitor first thing in the morning while we were contemplating the day's repair work. When I got up in the morning, I looked over the two other boats in the anchorage. The lines of one of them looked familiar and I remarked, "That looks like George's boat", while thinking that there was no chance of that being true. George is the heavy drinker I had befriended back in Bahia del Sol, El Salvador way back in April. No way could he now be in the small Bahia Ballena anchorage in Costa Rica at the same time we were. Well, I thought wrong. Along came George puttering up to Intermezzo in his dinghy. We greeted each other with smiles of amazement, although George seemed less amazed than we were. After 25 years of sailing all over the world, I guess this has happened once or twice to him in the past. I myself was astounded. And happy to see him. He is a very friendly, helpful and mellow guy.
After we caught up on each others' comings and goings since April, George invited us over to his boat, Thalina, in the evening for a homemade pizza dinner, accompanied by "rum and yellow shit", plus whatever we wanted to bring. We told George we would bring salad and beer, the latter a hedge against the risk of rum and yellow shit not going so well with pizza.
When evening came and it was time to head over to George's for dinner, I went to unlock and lower the dinghy . After my mast climbing failure and working on the boat all day, I was more than a little peeved to discover that the padlock securing the dinghy to its davits had frozen up. We tried penetrating oil, banging it with a hammer, spinning the combination wheels, but no luck as the our scheduled six o'clock departure for dinner on Thalina came and went. I had purchased the best quality padlock I could find in Mexico and so it was immune to sawing with a hacksaw and the hasp too thick for my small bolt cutters. I could have got the evil angle grinder out and fired up, but that would take a lot of digging around and setting up. So I regretfully cut the swaged loop of the expensive stainless steel security cable with the hacksaw, feeling at about my wits' end with respect to dealing with the boat.
The cable cut, we lowered the dinghy. At this point I wouldn't have been surprised if it didn't immediately sink, but it didn't. So, for sure I figured that the outboard wouldn't start and, if it did, it would immediately catch fire, but it did and didn't. My spirits lightened from pitch black to a murky gloom and the prospect of having a stiff rum and yellow shit when we arrived at Thalina seemed far more attractive than it did earlier in the day.
We motored over to George's and apologized for being so late, explaining our troubles. George, who has lived on a boat for 25 years accepted it all as a normal day afloat and said he was glad we were late because his yeast hadn't proofed and the pizza dough still needed a little time to rise. This delay seemed to afford the opportunity for him to have had one or two additional rums and yellow shits. I looked at the concoction he was drinking and decided I'd start with a beer.
George baked two pizzas and they were delicious, one topped with sliced hot dog (which I would normally find disgusting), the other with tuna (which I would always find delicious). The rum and yellow shit (lemon Tang, it turns out) was drinkable and I somehow downed two of them. Certainly not the healthiest of meals, but very enjoyable and we enjoyed George's friendship and company in Thalina's comfortable, well-travelled salon.
When it came time to go, we bid George goodnight and returned to Intermezzo. When I went to raise the dinghy back up on its davits, the winch seemed to really strain lifting it. As the dinghy slowly rose out of the water, I saw a stream of water shooting out the hole that drains the interstitial space between the dinghy's hull and floor. Not good, the extra weight of the water causing the strain on the winch. It turns out that somebody pinched (British English for "stole") the drain plug over the summer while Intermezzo was resting at Puerto Azul. Add another thing to fix to the list. Fuck.
I really struggled with keeping an even mental keel through the day, often not very successfully. I tried to breathe through my frustrations and disappointments, tried to just accept them as they are, tried to accept that I have little control over things, tried to keep perspective that all this was happening on nice boat in a beautiful place, that many, many people have much bigger problems than a missing dingy plug. When I was successful, I felt reasonably calm and able to face the challenges. When I wasn't, I felt angry, snapped at Renee and wanted to throw in the towel on sailing completely. I was not at my best this day and was not a pleasant person to be around for myself or Renee.
The next morning I received a text message from a good friend with words of encouragement which helped start me off with a better frame of mind than the day before. The swell in the anchorage seemed less than yesterday's, so we decided to attempt the masttop repairs again. My second attempt at climbing the mast started off better, but by the time I was up to the spreaders, the swell had increased and the boat had swung on its anchor so that it was beam on to the waves. I started being thrown from side to side again, but persevered and climbed upwards another ten feet or so, continually using one hand to stabilize myself. Looking up at the top of the mast, I realized that there would be nothing to hang onto up there and that, again, making repairs would be impossible. So I inch-wormed my way back down to the deck, another wasted effort climbing in the hot tropical sun.
I maintained better spirits through the rest of the day as Renee and I tried to stop the watermaker from leaking (but only slowed it down) and tackled other items on the to do list. We were leaving Bahia Ballena early the next morning to sail for Golfito, so I went to bed early, not in a good mood, but not as feeling as despondent as I did the night before.
Enough for now. It's early Thursday morning, we're now in Panamanian waters and approaching Isla Parida under sail in peaceful conditions. Time to enjoy the moment.
I'll cover our passage to Golfito in the next blog post.
We stayed in Bahia Ballena to get as many repairs done as we could, especially the wind instrument at the top of the mast. To make my climb up efficient, I figured on also replacing the anchor light bulb with an LED and replacing the main halyard while I was up here. We got everything ready and I started climbing the mast with our ATN mast climbing rig, basically a bosun's chair and foot straps attached to ascenders. You move the foot ascender up, stand up to take weight off the chair, slide the chair ascender up, sit down, move the foot ascender up, etc....climbing up a static line alongside the mast like an inch worm.
Well, the swells in the anchorage didn't seem at all significant while standing on the boat, but as I went up the mast, trigonometry worked against me, amplifying the rolling motion of the boat and swinging me violently from side to side unless I held on to something. Tough going. By the time I was half way up, I was having a really hard time operating the ascenders while at the same time stopping myself from bashing into the rigging. I looked up to the top of the mast and realized that it was going to be impossible to work on the delicate wind sensor, unscrew the masthead light fixture and fiddle with the halyard all at the very top. I decided to abort the mission and started to descend. Going down was even harder than going up as the swells had increased.
I felt pretty frustrated from my failure to get the work done at the top of the mast, but I had plenty of things to do back at sea level. When I used the main head that morning, it failed to perform its job properly. So I recommissioned the guest head in the port hull. Like the main head, the guest hadn't liked sitting unused for four months and its joker valve, which prevents wastewater from flowing back into the toilet, wasn't doing its job properly, either. And the watermaker was still leaking from the carbon filter housing. Plus when I dug into the locker below the aft port berth, I found a small puddle of fresh water at the bottom, source unknown. Oh, yeah, and earlier that morning we determined that the broken lock on the sliding door is not repairable without spare parts from its Italian manufacturer. So, I set to work repairing the two toilets, while brainstorming on how to stop the leak from the watermaker. Investigating the puddle in the locker could wait, as could
figuring out how to procure the spare parts for the door lock. The toilet repairs went smoothly and were successful, for which I was grateful and rewarded myself with a cold beer, after thoroughly washing my hands. At least the day wasn't a complete loss.
We had a surprise visitor first thing in the morning while we were contemplating the day's repair work. When I got up in the morning, I looked over the two other boats in the anchorage. The lines of one of them looked familiar and I remarked, "That looks like George's boat", while thinking that there was no chance of that being true. George is the heavy drinker I had befriended back in Bahia del Sol, El Salvador way back in April. No way could he now be in the small Bahia Ballena anchorage in Costa Rica at the same time we were. Well, I thought wrong. Along came George puttering up to Intermezzo in his dinghy. We greeted each other with smiles of amazement, although George seemed less amazed than we were. After 25 years of sailing all over the world, I guess this has happened once or twice to him in the past. I myself was astounded. And happy to see him. He is a very friendly, helpful and mellow guy.
After we caught up on each others' comings and goings since April, George invited us over to his boat, Thalina, in the evening for a homemade pizza dinner, accompanied by "rum and yellow shit", plus whatever we wanted to bring. We told George we would bring salad and beer, the latter a hedge against the risk of rum and yellow shit not going so well with pizza.
When evening came and it was time to head over to George's for dinner, I went to unlock and lower the dinghy . After my mast climbing failure and working on the boat all day, I was more than a little peeved to discover that the padlock securing the dinghy to its davits had frozen up. We tried penetrating oil, banging it with a hammer, spinning the combination wheels, but no luck as the our scheduled six o'clock departure for dinner on Thalina came and went. I had purchased the best quality padlock I could find in Mexico and so it was immune to sawing with a hacksaw and the hasp too thick for my small bolt cutters. I could have got the evil angle grinder out and fired up, but that would take a lot of digging around and setting up. So I regretfully cut the swaged loop of the expensive stainless steel security cable with the hacksaw, feeling at about my wits' end with respect to dealing with the boat.
The cable cut, we lowered the dinghy. At this point I wouldn't have been surprised if it didn't immediately sink, but it didn't. So, for sure I figured that the outboard wouldn't start and, if it did, it would immediately catch fire, but it did and didn't. My spirits lightened from pitch black to a murky gloom and the prospect of having a stiff rum and yellow shit when we arrived at Thalina seemed far more attractive than it did earlier in the day.
We motored over to George's and apologized for being so late, explaining our troubles. George, who has lived on a boat for 25 years accepted it all as a normal day afloat and said he was glad we were late because his yeast hadn't proofed and the pizza dough still needed a little time to rise. This delay seemed to afford the opportunity for him to have had one or two additional rums and yellow shits. I looked at the concoction he was drinking and decided I'd start with a beer.
George baked two pizzas and they were delicious, one topped with sliced hot dog (which I would normally find disgusting), the other with tuna (which I would always find delicious). The rum and yellow shit (lemon Tang, it turns out) was drinkable and I somehow downed two of them. Certainly not the healthiest of meals, but very enjoyable and we enjoyed George's friendship and company in Thalina's comfortable, well-travelled salon.
When it came time to go, we bid George goodnight and returned to Intermezzo. When I went to raise the dinghy back up on its davits, the winch seemed to really strain lifting it. As the dinghy slowly rose out of the water, I saw a stream of water shooting out the hole that drains the interstitial space between the dinghy's hull and floor. Not good, the extra weight of the water causing the strain on the winch. It turns out that somebody pinched (British English for "stole") the drain plug over the summer while Intermezzo was resting at Puerto Azul. Add another thing to fix to the list. Fuck.
I really struggled with keeping an even mental keel through the day, often not very successfully. I tried to breathe through my frustrations and disappointments, tried to just accept them as they are, tried to accept that I have little control over things, tried to keep perspective that all this was happening on nice boat in a beautiful place, that many, many people have much bigger problems than a missing dingy plug. When I was successful, I felt reasonably calm and able to face the challenges. When I wasn't, I felt angry, snapped at Renee and wanted to throw in the towel on sailing completely. I was not at my best this day and was not a pleasant person to be around for myself or Renee.
The next morning I received a text message from a good friend with words of encouragement which helped start me off with a better frame of mind than the day before. The swell in the anchorage seemed less than yesterday's, so we decided to attempt the masttop repairs again. My second attempt at climbing the mast started off better, but by the time I was up to the spreaders, the swell had increased and the boat had swung on its anchor so that it was beam on to the waves. I started being thrown from side to side again, but persevered and climbed upwards another ten feet or so, continually using one hand to stabilize myself. Looking up at the top of the mast, I realized that there would be nothing to hang onto up there and that, again, making repairs would be impossible. So I inch-wormed my way back down to the deck, another wasted effort climbing in the hot tropical sun.
I maintained better spirits through the rest of the day as Renee and I tried to stop the watermaker from leaking (but only slowed it down) and tackled other items on the to do list. We were leaving Bahia Ballena early the next morning to sail for Golfito, so I went to bed early, not in a good mood, but not as feeling as despondent as I did the night before.
Enough for now. It's early Thursday morning, we're now in Panamanian waters and approaching Isla Parida under sail in peaceful conditions. Time to enjoy the moment.
I'll cover our passage to Golfito in the next blog post.
Saturday, October 1, 2016
Bahia Ballena: Sailing, Lightning and Repairs
Intermezzo left Puntarenas this afternoon and sailed to Bahia Ballena near the entrance to the Golfo de Nicoya. We received a warm send off from the dock by the marina guys after a busy morning returning the rental car, cashing in my Costa Rica colones for US dollars, closing out the marina account and getting the boat ready for sailing. It felt really good to feel Intermezzo moving through the water and to leave the dirty waters of the the Puntarenas estuary. Puerto Azul is a good value marina with really friendly and service-oriented staff, but Puntarenas wouldn't be on my Top 10 list of places to visit in Costa Rica
As it seems more often than not, the wind was blowing right from the direction we wanted to sail at 10-15 knots. We left the dock later than planned, so we couldn't afford the time it would take to tack upwind the 25 nm to Bahia Ballena, but I decided to hoist the sails anyway, just for fun. We sailed for little while, but then had to turn the engines on and motor sail in order to get anchored before dark (which we didn't).
Thunderclouds were building above the land around us all afternoon. Around 3 pm the clouds had massed, lightning was flashing, rain was falling and the whole mess was moving towards us. It all caught up with us and we had to manage the 20-30 knots winds in the rain, which definitely cools one off quickly. I ended up in light foul weather gear with a thin fleece shirt on underneath, hard to believe after a week of sweltering in just shorts.
Most impressive though was the lightning. This coast, from here south to Panama, has one of the highest frequencies of lightning strikes in the world. That was evident this afternoon as we watched bolt after bolt of lightning hit the sea and surrounding land. These vertical bolts were in addition to the many horizontal bolts of cloud-to-cloud lightning in the sky. Fortunately, all the sea strikes were quite a distance away from us; it would have been pretty scary if they were striking close to the boat. I can see why my insurance deductible is doubled for damage caused by lightning. While still a statistically remote possibility, the chance of getting hit by lightning here seems to be many times greater than normal.
The efficacy of lightning protection systems for boats is highly debatable, but the current conclusion from some reputable experts is that they don't really make a difference and if you are going to get hit, you are going to get hit. So we take some basic precautions just in case during lightning storms, like avoiding touching metal, staying inside the cabin or at least under the hardtop outside and using the oven as a Faraday cage to protect our portable electronics.
Unfortunately, our wind instrument (displays wind direction and speed) started displaying erratic and erroneous information during today's sail. It seems like a bad connection between the display and sensor at the top of the mast. We can sail without this instrument, but it is easier and safer to sail a catamaran "by the numbers" rather than by feel. Unlike monohulls which heel over and provide physical feedback when you sail, the stable, level platform of a catamaran can lull you into being over canvased, which puts a lot of stress on the mast and rigging. I really want to try and fix this instrument if I can.
So, we'll stay anchored here in Bahia Ballena tomorrow to see if we can fix the wind instrument and get a bunch of other items on the prep and repair list taking care of, like un-pickling the watermaker, replacing incandescent navigation light bulbs with power-saving LEDs, pump up the slightly flaccid dinghy, check the engines over, fix the sliding door lock and replace the terribly twisted main halyard with a nice new one. We have a lot of miles to sail coming up and I'd like everything to be ship-shape before we depart.
It is nice to be sailing again but, honestly, having to repair things are that were working fine when I left in June after just six hours of sailing is a bit discouraging. Especially when one of those items is 63 feet in the air.
Oh well, I just need to accept that it's all just part of the experience and the way the universe unfolded beyond my control today.
As it seems more often than not, the wind was blowing right from the direction we wanted to sail at 10-15 knots. We left the dock later than planned, so we couldn't afford the time it would take to tack upwind the 25 nm to Bahia Ballena, but I decided to hoist the sails anyway, just for fun. We sailed for little while, but then had to turn the engines on and motor sail in order to get anchored before dark (which we didn't).
Thunderclouds were building above the land around us all afternoon. Around 3 pm the clouds had massed, lightning was flashing, rain was falling and the whole mess was moving towards us. It all caught up with us and we had to manage the 20-30 knots winds in the rain, which definitely cools one off quickly. I ended up in light foul weather gear with a thin fleece shirt on underneath, hard to believe after a week of sweltering in just shorts.
Most impressive though was the lightning. This coast, from here south to Panama, has one of the highest frequencies of lightning strikes in the world. That was evident this afternoon as we watched bolt after bolt of lightning hit the sea and surrounding land. These vertical bolts were in addition to the many horizontal bolts of cloud-to-cloud lightning in the sky. Fortunately, all the sea strikes were quite a distance away from us; it would have been pretty scary if they were striking close to the boat. I can see why my insurance deductible is doubled for damage caused by lightning. While still a statistically remote possibility, the chance of getting hit by lightning here seems to be many times greater than normal.
The efficacy of lightning protection systems for boats is highly debatable, but the current conclusion from some reputable experts is that they don't really make a difference and if you are going to get hit, you are going to get hit. So we take some basic precautions just in case during lightning storms, like avoiding touching metal, staying inside the cabin or at least under the hardtop outside and using the oven as a Faraday cage to protect our portable electronics.
Unfortunately, our wind instrument (displays wind direction and speed) started displaying erratic and erroneous information during today's sail. It seems like a bad connection between the display and sensor at the top of the mast. We can sail without this instrument, but it is easier and safer to sail a catamaran "by the numbers" rather than by feel. Unlike monohulls which heel over and provide physical feedback when you sail, the stable, level platform of a catamaran can lull you into being over canvased, which puts a lot of stress on the mast and rigging. I really want to try and fix this instrument if I can.
So, we'll stay anchored here in Bahia Ballena tomorrow to see if we can fix the wind instrument and get a bunch of other items on the prep and repair list taking care of, like un-pickling the watermaker, replacing incandescent navigation light bulbs with power-saving LEDs, pump up the slightly flaccid dinghy, check the engines over, fix the sliding door lock and replace the terribly twisted main halyard with a nice new one. We have a lot of miles to sail coming up and I'd like everything to be ship-shape before we depart.
It is nice to be sailing again but, honestly, having to repair things are that were working fine when I left in June after just six hours of sailing is a bit discouraging. Especially when one of those items is 63 feet in the air.
Oh well, I just need to accept that it's all just part of the experience and the way the universe unfolded beyond my control today.
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Puntarenas: The R Is On Her Way
Renee (aka "The R") is on her way to rejoin Intermezzo after a long six-month hiatus. She left the boat in El Salvador in the beginning of April to take care of her mom. Things are stable enough that she can resume her sailing adventure, but will need to stay in closer touch while she's on the boat and we'll be breaking The Voyage in to chunks so that she can return home periodically to check on things. I'm looking forward to having her back on the boat, sailing together again, and the culinary benefits of her fish-catching prowess.
I'm renting a car to pick her up from the airport in San Jose around noon. Our first order of business is to go food shopping. We'll be sailing in some fairly remote waters, so will need to stock up for about three weeks worth of meals. I'm sure we'll be able to find the basics along the way, so we'll be mostly loading up on harder to find goods like cheese, frozen fruits and veggies (for smoothies), quality canned goods and cereals, soy milk and other healthy foods, wine (and other "healthy" beverages), chocolate and other "delicacies".
I have been doing some passage planning, but Renee and I need to review options to finalize our itinerary. For sure, we will be clearing out of Costa Rica on Friday and leaving the marina and then anchor in Bahia Ballena for the first night, a short 20 mile sail to get our sea legs back. Then my preference would be to head directly to Isla Partida in northern Panama, a two day sail of approximately 200 nm. Renee's not sure she's ready to a multi-day passage right away, so we may break the journey up with a couple of (technically illegal) stops along the Cost Rica coast.
The boat is ready for Renee's arrival, mold free, squeaky clean and smelling good. There are still quite a few things on my boat to-do list, as always, but these can be handled while underway.
I'm definitely more than ready to get out of the marina and back to sailing in open coastal waters. Intermezzo and I have been in marinas or estuaries since March, save for the several day passages along the coast between El Salvador and here. I don't expect that we will tied up to land again until we get to Balboa at the Pacific entry of the Panama Canal to re-provision in three weeks or so. I'm looking forward to life back "on the hook" in some remote and pretty anchorages.
I'm renting a car to pick her up from the airport in San Jose around noon. Our first order of business is to go food shopping. We'll be sailing in some fairly remote waters, so will need to stock up for about three weeks worth of meals. I'm sure we'll be able to find the basics along the way, so we'll be mostly loading up on harder to find goods like cheese, frozen fruits and veggies (for smoothies), quality canned goods and cereals, soy milk and other healthy foods, wine (and other "healthy" beverages), chocolate and other "delicacies".
I have been doing some passage planning, but Renee and I need to review options to finalize our itinerary. For sure, we will be clearing out of Costa Rica on Friday and leaving the marina and then anchor in Bahia Ballena for the first night, a short 20 mile sail to get our sea legs back. Then my preference would be to head directly to Isla Partida in northern Panama, a two day sail of approximately 200 nm. Renee's not sure she's ready to a multi-day passage right away, so we may break the journey up with a couple of (technically illegal) stops along the Cost Rica coast.
The boat is ready for Renee's arrival, mold free, squeaky clean and smelling good. There are still quite a few things on my boat to-do list, as always, but these can be handled while underway.
I'm definitely more than ready to get out of the marina and back to sailing in open coastal waters. Intermezzo and I have been in marinas or estuaries since March, save for the several day passages along the coast between El Salvador and here. I don't expect that we will tied up to land again until we get to Balboa at the Pacific entry of the Panama Canal to re-provision in three weeks or so. I'm looking forward to life back "on the hook" in some remote and pretty anchorages.
Monday, September 26, 2016
Puntarenas: On Top of Mold, Joker Valves, Rain But No Mosquitos
I made significant progress on mold remediation today.
The forward port cabin has always been inexplicably more damp than any other space inside the boat. We shipped a good amount of water into that cabin through an open hatch once at sea due to miscommunication between captain and crew. Maybe the cabin just never dried out completely and formed its own microclimate, like a terrarium. In any case, more dampness means more mold and there was a big patch around the portlight, the pleated fabric blind was thoroughly speckled, and one of our vinyl bean bag chairs had large patches of the nasty black spots.
I wiped down the interior with a 10% bleach solution and did the same to the bean bag chair and saturated the fabric blind. I got all the spots off the cabin's interior surfaces, most of the spots off the chair and the blind looks almost spot free. Better yet, the boat no longer smells moldy. I still need to clean the aft port cabin which still doesn't smell good when I go in there, but overall the boat smells much, much better. Boats often take on a distinctive "boat smell" as they get older, a phenomenon I really wanted to prevent, or at least delay, happening to Intermezzo. I was worried that the mold might have meant the end of having a fresh smelling boat. I don't think that's going to happen though; I feel I'm on top of the mold situation now.
I also repaired the electric head (toilet) in the starboard hull. The joker valves (there are two on this head) failed and wastewater would slowly flow back into the bowl under gravity from the hose leading up to the holding tank. Fortunately I had cleaned the toilet and hose thoroughly before I left in June and hadn't used the head since arriving. So it wasn't a messy job, but it did take a little while as I had to completely disconnect all the hoses and remove the toilet from its mounting to get to the valves. Last time I did this operation was almost a year ago in Bahia de Tortugas due to an errant olive pit, which was a bit more messy. Once I got access to them, changing the valves took only a few minutes. I put everything back together again and the head now works great. Considering the condition of the old joker valves, I figure I'm going to have to do this every year from now on.
It's rainy season in Central America. Here in Puntarenas, the day starts off sunny and warms quickly, evaporating the moisture from the previous day's rain. About midday thunderclouds start building above the surrounding hills. By 2:00 p.m., the sky gets increasingly cloudy, a breeze starts to blow and you hear thunder in the distance. Over the next hour or so, the sky gets darker, lightning starts to flash, sometimes with big bolts and cracking thunder, and then down comes the rain. It rains for a few hours and then stops, leaving the air feeling cool and refreshing. There hasn't been any rain at night, which I believe is typical.
Interestingly, I have hardly seen any mosquitos. I had thought that they would be worse during rainy season, but there were a lot more when I was here in May. I'm not sure why that's the case, but I'm grateful that it's so. I really don't need any screens on the boat, but I use them at night as a precaution against Zika, dengue, and chinungunya, all of which occur in Costa Rica.
Tomorrow I should finish the bulk of the mold remediation and can start preparing the boat for departure.
The forward port cabin has always been inexplicably more damp than any other space inside the boat. We shipped a good amount of water into that cabin through an open hatch once at sea due to miscommunication between captain and crew. Maybe the cabin just never dried out completely and formed its own microclimate, like a terrarium. In any case, more dampness means more mold and there was a big patch around the portlight, the pleated fabric blind was thoroughly speckled, and one of our vinyl bean bag chairs had large patches of the nasty black spots.
I wiped down the interior with a 10% bleach solution and did the same to the bean bag chair and saturated the fabric blind. I got all the spots off the cabin's interior surfaces, most of the spots off the chair and the blind looks almost spot free. Better yet, the boat no longer smells moldy. I still need to clean the aft port cabin which still doesn't smell good when I go in there, but overall the boat smells much, much better. Boats often take on a distinctive "boat smell" as they get older, a phenomenon I really wanted to prevent, or at least delay, happening to Intermezzo. I was worried that the mold might have meant the end of having a fresh smelling boat. I don't think that's going to happen though; I feel I'm on top of the mold situation now.
I also repaired the electric head (toilet) in the starboard hull. The joker valves (there are two on this head) failed and wastewater would slowly flow back into the bowl under gravity from the hose leading up to the holding tank. Fortunately I had cleaned the toilet and hose thoroughly before I left in June and hadn't used the head since arriving. So it wasn't a messy job, but it did take a little while as I had to completely disconnect all the hoses and remove the toilet from its mounting to get to the valves. Last time I did this operation was almost a year ago in Bahia de Tortugas due to an errant olive pit, which was a bit more messy. Once I got access to them, changing the valves took only a few minutes. I put everything back together again and the head now works great. Considering the condition of the old joker valves, I figure I'm going to have to do this every year from now on.
It's rainy season in Central America. Here in Puntarenas, the day starts off sunny and warms quickly, evaporating the moisture from the previous day's rain. About midday thunderclouds start building above the surrounding hills. By 2:00 p.m., the sky gets increasingly cloudy, a breeze starts to blow and you hear thunder in the distance. Over the next hour or so, the sky gets darker, lightning starts to flash, sometimes with big bolts and cracking thunder, and then down comes the rain. It rains for a few hours and then stops, leaving the air feeling cool and refreshing. There hasn't been any rain at night, which I believe is typical.
Interestingly, I have hardly seen any mosquitos. I had thought that they would be worse during rainy season, but there were a lot more when I was here in May. I'm not sure why that's the case, but I'm grateful that it's so. I really don't need any screens on the boat, but I use them at night as a precaution against Zika, dengue, and chinungunya, all of which occur in Costa Rica.
Tomorrow I should finish the bulk of the mold remediation and can start preparing the boat for departure.
Sunday, September 25, 2016
Puntarenas: Celebrity Boat Mold Remediation
My red-eye flight to Costa Rica went smoothly and I, somewhat amazingly, got through immigration and customs, caught a cab to the bus terminal and was on a bus to Puntarenas in less than an hour after I got off the plane. I was a bit thirsty, hungry and tired by the time I got to Puerto Azul, but no complaints.
Three marina guys were busy finishing washing Intermezzo when I arrived. The exterior looked great. The real question though was, what was it like inside? I had “pickled” the interior before I left in June by wiping it down with vinegar and leaving open containers of vinegar to acidify the atmosphere in an attempt to prevent mold from growing. I had left the boat pretty much sealed up to try and keep mold spores out. I was pretty apprehensive about this approach and had nightmares of the inside of the boat being coated with mold, like a cheese that’s been in the fridge for too long.
Well, the pickling seemed to have worked pretty well. When I opened the sliding door to the salon, I was greeted by a moist, stuffy odor that didn’t seem too bad after four months. The salon looks pretty much mold-free. Down below, I saw a few spots of mold on the inside of the hull and the pleated fabric blinds are badly mottled with mold spots. Thankfully, almost all of our clothes are free of mold. The worst of the mold is on some shoes, our vinyl bean bag chairs, some life jackets and a couple of pillows, in addition to the aforementioned blinds. It is all quite manageable, far from the nightmare situation I was worried about.
I decided to stay in a hotel room for the first night rather than sleep in a slightly moldy boat. I’m glad I did because as I’ve spent more time on board today, the mold odor is worse than I originally noticed. I’m not having any allergic or toxic reactions, so it must not be the nasty, unhealthy type of mold. It’s just normal boat mold, the type that strengthens one’s constitution and immune system.
I was feeling a bit down and lonely last night and this morning. I think I was having flashbacks to when I was here in May, spending long days by myself in sweltering heat getting the boat ready so I could leave. Now I’m spending long days by myself in (slightly less) sweltering heat getting the boat ready so that we can sail again. There have been a couple of times when it has felt like I never left! After wallowing in self pity for a while, I realized that I was paying too much attention to my negative thoughts rather than just being in the present and doing what needs to be done. So, I adjusted my attitude accordingly, made a list, got off my ass, started getting things done and consequently felt a lot better.
I took the bus into town to pick up some groceries and cleaning supplies. I don’t really like the town of Puntarenas. It’s unattractive and sort of gritty. The town runs along a narrow peninsula. The north shore is a muddy estuary. The south shore is a brown sand beach with the Golfo Nicoya’s water breaking on the shore, most often cloudy. It is definitely a working town with a lot of small stores and restaurants, a busy commercial fishing wharf and a central market. Along the south shore there is a well-worn malecon and some nicer tourist restaurants. A cruise ship was in port today so there were quite a few gringo tourists wandering about and a bunch of temporary souvenir stands set up near the pier. Normally, the tourists are all Ticos (Costa Ricans). While I don’t like the town, I give it credit for being real and authentic rather than gussied up and too touristy like many seafront towns.
When I returned to the boat, I set to wiping down interior of the starboard hull to get rid of mold and try to improve the odor so that I can sleep there tonight. I removed the fabric blinds and wiped them down with a mild bleach solution which killed the mold and did a fairly good job in getting rid of the mold spots. I cleaned the moldy shoes with vinegar, which worked really well. The starboard hull is now fit for human habitation, but there is still a pretty earthy smell coming from the port hull. I’ll attack that tomorrow.
I spoke with a couple of the marina guys this afternoon. My Spanish seems to actually be a bit better than when I left. I think I’m more relaxed speaking it for some reason; maybe my summer meditation/yoga “therapy” has something to do with that. I was told that Intermezzo is the favorite boat in the marina and that many visitors from the adjacent hotel come onto the dock to have their picture taken in front of the boat. Apparently Intermezzo has been featured in dozens of peoples’ vacation pictures, in addition to being filmed for a Costa Rican television travel show.
I’m living on a celebrity boat. Good thing Intermezzo’s fans don’t know about the smelly mold in the port hull. I’ll make sure it’s all gone by tomorrow to avoid a tabloid scandal.
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| Moldy shoes |
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| Church in Puntarenas, one of the few attractive buildings |
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| Cruise ship visiting Puntarenas |
Friday, September 23, 2016
Heading Back to Costa Rica
After a summer back in the USA, I'm heading back to Costa Rica to rejoin Intermezzo in Puntarenas and prepare to resume The Voyage.
This summer was a memorable one. Renee's mom and aunt worked through their respective health issues and are in pretty good, stable shape, thank goodness. They are now excitedly planning their move to a very nice senior community this winter. Sadly, my two beloved goats, Lola and Daphne, both passed away. At least I was home to say goodbye and lay them to rest in a pretty spot on the ranch. My relationships with loved ones morphed and shifted as relationships do when people undergo changes in their lives as I and they have. I put time into my meditation and yoga practices and benefited mightily from both. I’m grateful to have ended the summer feeling pretty good about my life and in great physical shape. I owe many thanks to those who helped me through this eventful summer.
I’ll briefly recap last season’s sailing adventure new readers of this blog and to refresh the memories of my loyal followers. Renee and I departed Petaluma, California on October 5 last year and sailed down the California coast to join the Baja Ha-Ha. We sailed the Ha-Ha to Cabo with Jeanne as crew and then enjoyed cruising the Sea of Cortez until the beginning of December. We then crossed over to mainland Mexico and made our way to Puerto Vallarta where Renee left the boat to attend the birth of the first grandchild. Renee returned in January and we resumed our journey south with crew Marc and Marci joining us as far as Manzanillo. We continued double-handed to Puerto Chiapas where we cleared out of Mexico after enjoying some land adventures in Colima, Michoacan and Chiapas and conquering the notorious Golfo de Tehuantepec without incident. We sailed south to El Salvador had done a bit of exploring when on April 3 we received news that Renee’s mom had suffered a fall and was in the hospital. Renee hurried home to take care of her mom and I stayed behind to get some work done on the engines, saildrives and props while I waited to see if Renee would be coming back. She didn’t and I ended up sailing single-handed to Nicaragua where I spent most of the month touring the country by car. Hannah joined me in May to bring Intermezzo to Costa Rica where I got the boat ready to rest for the summer in Puntarenas and then flew back to the US on June 1.
So now we’re resuming The Voyage, but our plans have changed. I think. Our original plan was to transit the Panama canal and make our way to New York by spring via the Cayman Islands, Cuba, the Bahamas and the Intercostal Waterway. That trip would involve quite a lot of sailing and put us a long way from home. That would pose a problem as Renee needs to be in closer touch with her mom and aunt and reasonably accessible should they need assistance. On top of that, after cruising the Sea of Cortez, I am pretty sure I would like to base Intermezzo there. It would be a long sail back from New York! So we’ve changed our plans so that we can break the sailing into chunks and make it easier to return to California when we want or need to. We’ll continue south to cruise the Pacific coast of Panama in October, then turn the boat around and start making our way back to Baja. We plan on getting to Puerto Chiapas and clearing into Mexico by mid-November, where we’ll haul Intermezzo out for bottom painting and leave her “on the hard” until January. We’ll come home for the holidays and then figure out when, how and with whom the journey north will continue with the goal of reaching the Sea of Cortez by the end of February or beginning of March.
Or, who knows, the sailing adventure bug might bite and we (or maybe just I) will go through the canal and into the Caribbean?
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