South Bound

Vessel Name: Hoku Kea
About: Capitan + random friends
Home Page: www.gonzocaptain.com
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15 March 2013 | Surf Blog
12 March 2013 | Lating America
04 March 2013 | Latin Countries
25 February 2012 | Central America
25 February 2012 | SJDS, Nicaragua
16 December 2011 | San Juan del Sur
23 September 2011 | El Salvador
Recent Blog Posts
15 March 2013 | Surf Blog

Asenne Surf and Gonzo

http://www.asennesurf.com/journal/asenne-presents-the-gonzo-captain-2277

12 March 2013 | Lating America

Funding of the book has started

Be part of the acknowledged pledgers!!!!!!!

04 March 2013 | Latin Countries

A book: "Gonzo Captain" Coming Out

Gonzo Captain

13 June 2012 | Panama

Sailing Backwards and Bending Over Before The Universe

5/1/12 – 6/1/12: Sailing Backwards and Bending Over Before The Universe: In these days it was hard to find a potato chip bag on my boat, but as my buddies from L.A. had been on it for a while this empty Lay’s bag was flying in the air peacefully in the cockpit at the cabin door while the vicious [...]

16 May 2012 | Panama

Perlas Decadence, The City and Darien Desolation

4/1/02 – 5/1/02: Perlas Cruising: The rocky and shallow waters of Perlas with 22 ft. tides makes it interesting navigationally. Only the tide creates a strong current (up to 3 knots) to different directions so an anticipation of direction and currents come in handy. Different rocks jump up from the [...]

25 February 2012 | Central America

Leaving Nicaragua with 1000 Ants and 24 Bottles of Rum

2/1/12 - 3/1/12: Last Nica Times and New Paradises: Last minute preparations were deck maintenance, varnish work and leather couches. Meanwhile my guys were doing this I and Jani toured Ometepe, Granada, Managua and Matagalpa. From the many things we did worth mentioning quickly here was a rock climbing [...]

Perlas Decadence, The City and Darien Desolation

16 May 2012 | Panama
Capitan
4/1/02 – 5/1/02: Perlas Cruising: The rocky and shallow waters of Perlas with 22 ft. tides makes it interesting navigationally. Only the tide creates a strong current (up to 3 knots) to different directions so an anticipation of direction and currents come in handy. Different rocks jump up from the water every six hours and anchoring becomes also a bit more of a calculation of depth, tides and chain.
Juho arrived excited about the planned trip to Perlas with two boats, mine and Ira’s, a Captain who I got to know in Nicaragua on the dry dock. We had planned to meet them the next day around 4pm at one of the 70 islands, Contadora, an only island where cell phones actually worked.
I had been amazingly sick for few days, out of energy and not knowing what’s up, but after digging in to boat’s antibiotic supplies and realizing it may be stomach originated I got much better in two days.
We met them and after cocktail hour we had a loose plan laid out; “let’s float around these islands and go where ever”.
We stopped in many beautiful islands and beaches from which the highlight may have been David’s Island. He had a particular liking on this small island that was not marked as an anchorage in the guides, but it had an atoll like figure from rock and a beach in the middle. We decided to have a bonfire at the sunset. A lot of times we also had jamming sessions with guitars, harmonicas and some more extraordinary keyboards with blow function. Other nights we had some Texas Hold’em tournament or some sightseeing around the islands with the dinghy.
On the daytime we were racing to the next destination. Even the other boat had more potential in theory having a longer waterline (Hardin 45) our Cheoy Lee 38 still was able to beat them slightly. With the diving: the water was not quite as clear as I was wishing, but Juho was excited.
It happened to be Semana Santa (eastern week), the biggest holiday week in latin countries so whenever we pulled in to a run down African American villages there was a circus going on; strange rhythms blasting at ear breaking levels, everybody was dressed up with colorful mix of some sort of anglo-afro-islander style including tiny little kids. Everybody older than 15 were drunk or semi-passed-out already at noonish. People dirty-dancing on the streets and small military patrols with machine guns raiding the local bars for people under aged or young 18 year old mothers who decided to bring their babys in a bar scene.
At Spiritus Santos we had a funny incident when Juho decided to go to sleep early and I was watching a movie at the other boat with the other guys. We heard from VHF at some point; “mayday mayday mayday” with a monotonic and rather calm voice. We decided to keep watching the movie as it couldn’t have been possible that real mayday could ever be verbalized with such a calm voice. We also got this radio silence that half an hour later got me returning to see my boat. It turned out to be 45 degree angle half on the beach and Juho was sitting there looking semi depressed. The radio had slipped to another channel and thus we lost the connection. Neither did he know what to do. I was amused and explained that the tide will be back on in half an hour. What had happened was that even the depth was fine where I anchored the current had flipped and moved us above a more shallow sandbar.

Panama Living: Panama was a strange city. It seemed to have a lot, but it was hard to find anything. There was no addresses. Everything was “close to that store and between there and here on the other side of something else”. Also the selection was limited e.g. the city did not have a propeller for Johnson outboard.
The cruisers had two anchorage areas right at the canal at a place called Amador. It was the beginning manmade jetty for the canal that had the most strangest histories. Some US president had given a command to dig inside a rock island in the end of the jetty a massive bomb proof cave where some secret documents were placed in late 40s or something. Also Nortega’s colorful life reflected a few monuments in the area. The canal administration did not have respect to ordinary cruisers as they are not bringing those millions in that they are after. The both sides of the anchorages did not have any more working showers, the other side had no water and the dinghy landing was a strange and most inconvenient installation of a floating dock and tiny plastic boat with two lines to cross over to the main dock. Despite of all these inconveniences this was the main cruising meeting point in Latin America and one of the biggest in the whole world so the colorful people and sharing of information was very interesting. Also the skyline of the city and beautiful Amador and nightlife of Casco Viejo compensated a lot of the above.

A Trip to Unknown: After my visitor had left I met a Hungarian sailor who turned out to be one of the characters hard to ever forget. He had sailed 36 thousand miles over the last eight years and only the last trip made was 12 thousand. He had spent a winter in Patagonia and also had tried to make a straight shot from Panama to Antartica. The latter trip got a drastic interruption when a fishing line snapped and sent the connection piece in the end directly in to his iris and ripped it half off. As he was 2000 miles southwest of Easter Island at this point, he sailed the next 3600 miles half blind just to try to find a doctor who can fix his eye.

As a backpacker charter veteran it was his idea how to collect a crew for our next trip to
go up the rivers of Darien Province. There are about 15 rivers of which the biggest goes 80 miles in the middle of Panama close by Columbian border. The area does not have any roads and indigenous people still live in the traditional way up there. It is also smugglers paradise as the jungle and the rivers give many places to hide right at the border. Till today Interamerican Highway’s ( Alaska to Patagonia ) only stretch that has been missing for decades is this stretch. One major reason has been that e.g. Lonely Planet was still quoting few years ago about this area: “low-intensity war zone where the paramilitaries and rebels move in big groups armed with rocket launchers, flamethrowers and machine guns”.

We took a taxi and went through couple of most popular hostels in town two days before take off leaving a note “sailing trip to darien, volunteer work needed” – in next 24 hours we round up our crew: 50+ years old New Caledonian sailor, Austrian backpacker, Dutch backpacker and Slovakian immigrant.

We stopped at Perlas to sleep over and continued the total of 75 mile trip to the river mouth next day. We had to time the entrance right due to the tides. The currents were extreme (up to 13 knots in some areas and times) and the approach on a lowering tide would be impossible. We made it perfectly sailing 9.5 knots in a light wind literally flying in with the tide and anchored close to a protected island after the first 5 rivers separating to the north just before the current was turning. The plan was to try to get to Yakiza, an old indian village up at the mountains. Everyday we had 6 hours to get up the river as the current would then change. In the dark it was slightly dangerous due to drift wood and fishing nets and may be some pirates so we decided to sleep the nights with the other boat and just do the 6 hours when the tide was right. In couple of days we got up the river Tuira about 23 miles away from Yakiza and decided to drop the hook at a little turn with a pretty cool island right at the s curve.
I had the New Caledonian and Austrian guy on the boat. They seemed to enjoy a lot of the ride, but also a lot of the rum. Francis was amazing chef and Stefan was trying to be one first time in his life. The both were fun and reliable. We did a little excursion in the jungle at the river turn taking the dinghy over to the shore. We found a little path and thought that may be there is a indian village. After about 1 mile walking, the jungle getting shadier and the monkeys getting louder and the mosquitos getting violent, Francis started panicking with his broken Spanish that he had left the dry beans cooking on the stove and maybe the water was running out and that it is possible that the boat will burn down. So I sent Francis and Daniel over back to the boat to take the dinghy with my 3.3 horse power outboard that happened to have a carborator problem so it really needed special moves to have it running.
I and Stefan continued until we decided that this road is going far away and there is no village close by. At the point when we returned to the shore, there was a situation going on. The two could not have started the motor, the current had taken off pretty strong and they ended up barely to Ira’s boat behind mine. Francis waking them up from their day dreams panicking about burning beans and motor problems and Ira having to fight with motor to get Francis back against the stream, motor shutting down every 20 seconds was an amusing scenery.
After all was good and the beans and the boat were saved everybody else but me went to sleep. Just when I was watching three different types of ants running around my I turned my head at an incredible scenery. The upper river that was continuing a mile up clean and smooth now seemed to be discontinuing. In moment I realized that the brown mass all across the river had created this illusion and that the brown mass was actually massive amount of drift wood (hundreds of tons) heading at an accelerating speed toward our boats with the current.
While thinking my options and getting my VHF radio to wake the other guys up on the other boat the first big tree had hit my anchor chain and popped up the anchor the boat heading straight at the other boat with the stream. While cranking up my engine I coughed up in the radio something like “I think my anchor is slipping” while turning RPMs high up and realizing that the solar panels on the back were about 3 feet away hitting the other boat. Ira ran out and they were pushing as the boat slowly slowed down leaving about an inch between the two and then squared away.
I decided not to go with the logs in order to avoid drive shaft or prop damages and try to stay where we are. I anchored on the backside of Papagayo little off sideways. In no time we got an island of logs stuck on the chain in front of the boat.
After looking at the log stream it was clear that another anchorage would be better as majority of them lined up on the outmost curve and straight at us. So I tried to get the anchor up, it was so stuck that it made me believe that there was a massive piece of wood on the bottom and that the chain did not even go all the way down but hanging of this piece of wood. Diving it free came in mind, but these crocodile infested waters with zero visibility and logs drifting at you at 5 knots did not sound too safe. It was also questionable whether to see and have strength so much that you could actually move the log.
Well we went to sleep. In the night the current had switched once again to a log fest and once I woke up in a silence instead of a constant crashes of heavy logs I knew that we were drifting again. The stuck anchor had freed itself with aid of hundreds of tons of wood stuck on the chain. The situation looked rather scary; we were drifting at 5 knots in the middle of giant drift wood and I had no idea where or if we were about to hit something. I radioed the other boat the status and they responded promptly that they thought we were pirates because we were totally in different location than earlier behind and island. After realizing that there was little to do, other than hope the best, I told the crew to go to get some rest and we would then deal with it in the morning.
The crew looked me like being crazy because they were panicking a bit and thought to do something.
After we woke up at 6am the current was switching again which meant that it was as slow as it could be and we were nicely anchored, just that I did not know where. The first problem to tackle was to get all these hundreds of tons of drift wood off the anchor. We tried everything including lifting the chain – no, going forward, backwards, jumping on this huge islands of 50 ft. times 30 ft. island of wood trying to lift it or push away. Finally backing and then immediately going forward to the current direction worked slowly and we got free. Even the anchor came up that surprised nearly everybody. Before when the anchor was stuck I thought of grinding the chain near to the water with a 110 V big grinder to minimize the lost chain, but now we saved everything.
We heard that the other boat people did not sleep at all pushing the logs away, but it seemed like they got more hits as they did not have the island of logs protecting them as we did.
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