12/10/2007, Bocas del Toro, Panama
AngelHeart is in Panama! Okay. That is a very simplified version of our trip from the Rio Dulce, Guatemala to Bocas del Toro, Isla Colon, Panama. I will fill in the gaps.
We left Catamarans Island Resort Marina on the Rio (N15° 39´ W88° 59´) on January 30, 2007 with our friends Sandy and Cheri on Namaste, saying goodbye to some really great friends that we now miss greatly. We made a short trip to Texan Bay - still on the Rio. Our friends, Mike and Sherrie on Gitane are building a marina there. While there, Paul dinghied to Livingston at the mouth of the Rio Dulce to check out of Guatemala. Raul, our agent and friend, made this very simple, as always, and got us on our way with little delay. The next morning, AngelHeart traveled past Livingston, out into Bahia Amatique and headed for Cabo Tres Puntas (N15° 54´ W88° 34´), Guatemala for an overnight anchorage. Next morning, we were out into the Caribbean Sea heading to Belize for our second visit to the beautiful cays and atolls. We checked in on February 1, 2007 at Big Creek near Placencia. We love Belize and Placencia (N16° 31´ W88° 23´) is one of our favorite stops. The annual June Lobsterfest is a really fun time. For the next month, we revisited Colson Cays, Water Cay, St. George's Cay and Caye Caulker with new stops at Rendezvous Cay and Lagoon Cay.
I flew back to the States for a visit and Paul, along with our good friend Kent Vesper of Orange Beach, AL sailed AngelHeart from Caye Caulker (N17° 44´ W88° 02´) to Turneffe Atoll (N17° 10´ W87° 53´) on March 11, 2007. Here they staged for the sail to the Bay Islands of Honduras on the 12th. Strong unpredicted winds producing rough seas accompanied them to Honduras but AngelHeart performed well. Arriving on the 13th of March, AngelHeart was at anchor in French Cay Harbor, Roatan, (N16° 21´ W86° 26´) while Paul and Kent traveled by taxi to Coxen Hole to take care of the checking-in duties.
With Kent back in AL and me back on board AngelHeart, Paul and I revisited a few of our favorite Roatan spots from our previous trip. We anchored in Jonesville Bight to say hello to Bob, Harry, Larry and Dwayne at Hole-in-the-Wall. The restaurant there does a fabulous seafood buffet on Sunday afternoons which attracts locals and tourists alike.
From Jonesville, we revisited Isla Barbareta on our way to Guanaja for staging our upcoming passages. We arrived in Guanaja at the El Bight anchorage (N16° 27´ W85° 52´) on May 1, 2007. It was our first trip to Guanaja, the eastern most island of the three large Bay Islands. (We visited Utila, the western most large island in February of 2006 and spent almost a month there.) The Bay Islands offer much of the same great snorkeling we saw in Belize. You just can't believe how clear ocean water can be until you've experience it! Our only other stop in Guanaja was to take a mooring ball at Josh's Cay (N16° 27´ W85° 49´), another place not to be missed! Graham's Place Resort on this tiny cay offers great food in the restaurant and an extremely helpful staff.
The prevailing easterlies gave us two choices for our first passage east. One was to wait until the wind was from another direction. This happens rarely and doesn't last very long. The other option was to wait for several days of very calm winds and motor. We chose the second as we were pushing to get further south out of the hurricane box. AngelHeart and Namaste left Guanaja May 8th through the reef at Half Moon Cut. We arrived in the Hobbies (N16° 01´ W83° 06´) - out islands of Honduras - on May 9, 2007. We only spent four days in the Hobbies - a beautiful area surrounded by spectacular reefs. Some friends of ours spent six weeks here snorkeling and fishing. But, as I said, we were pushing onward. AngelHeart and Namaste left the Hobbies on the 12th and arrived in the bay surrounded by Providencia and Santa Catalina Islands (N13° 20´ W81° 25´) on May 14, 2007. Although off the coast of Nicaragua, these islands belong to Colombia. Go figure! We were told on one occasion that it has to do with trading land for fishing rights. Another account was that these islands are Colombian as a result of war. I'm afraid I don't know the real story. One radio call to Mr. Bush and all our check-in procedures were taken care of. It was here that we caught up with friends Brenda and Gene on Queen Mary and Kay and Sonny on Valentina and were able to exchange stories of our adventures since leaving the Rio.
Although reluctant to leave this quiet paradise, we left Providencia with Namaste, Queen Mary and Valentina on May 18th for the much busier island of San Andres (N12° 34´ W81° 41´), also owned by Colombia. We met with our agent who took care of all the check-in procedures. Happily, we soon met Cecilia at Tanino's Marina, who is known for being so very helpful to cruisers arriving on the island. San Andres is like Miami compared to the sleepy islands we had been visiting. The numerous amenities here include an airport, from which we flew to Panama City for a short trip to the States.
Having returned from our stateside trip, AngelHeart joined Namaste and Island Lady - with Margie and Bob and their daughter Alexis onboard - and departed San Andres on June 2nd. We arrived in Bocas del Toro, Panama, (N09° 20´ W82° 14´) on June 4, 2007. On this passage, as well as our other passages to date, AngelHeart performed well and increased our appreciation of her - our floating apartment which takes us to far off places!
That brings us up to date, somewhat. We love Panama and Bocas del Toro. However, I will share that information in our next blog.
|
Comments [1]
11/27/2006, Rio Dulce, Guatemala
Hooray!! AngelHeart is back in the water. After 10 very busy days getting her bottom painted, lubricating everything in sight, adding electrical outlet in saloon and cockpit, putting in a "dock water" system, changing the raw water pump, and numerous other small, but significant tasks, we got her launched yesterday afternoon. We rented a cabin at Catamaran Island Hotel (our marina) and worked on the boat every day (except Thanksgiving and the following Friday). She looks bad, dry dock filth (dust, sanding residue from other boats, etc.) and the inside's a mess from moving everything to get to anything, but she's coming back together nicely.
We bought Island 44 paint from Wayward Wind as they had used it on their previous bottom job and it had lasted 5 years. We hope to have the same luck. Our boat's not as fast, so hopefully the ablative nature of the paint will last longer! ;o)
Today we're washing clothes (with the Admiral's new washing machine), connecting the ground plate to the SSB and putting all the stuff back where we got it.
It'll be a few days before we're shipshape again.
Back to work.
|
11/13/2006, Catamaran Island Resort and Marina
We are starting our BLOG today. To bring everyone up to speed, here's a brief list of what's happened since we moved on board AngelHeart in June 2002.
We moved AngelHeart to Deltaville, VA to learn how to live on board and how to sail this size boat. MM had no experience sailing and my experience was limited to Hobie Cats of 14' or less. The principals are the same, but the execution is different. For instance, you don't "fly a hull" on a 33' cat like you can on a Hobie. Well, maybe you can, but we try not to!
We left Deltaville to head for FL when the weather started to turn colder. We left too late and froze our buns off through NC, SC, GA and north FL. It even snowed on us in Vero Beach! But it was warmer than anywhere north of there. We sailed to the Bahamas twice and then back to FL. We ran across central FL through the Okeechobee waterway to Ft. Myers Beach. We rode out Francis, Ivan and Jeanne there and in December, sailed with Namaste and Vela Narcosis to Isla Mujeres, arriving on the 9th of December '04. In Feb. '05 we sailed with Miss Jody and Vela Narcosis to Ambergris Cay in Belize and spent 4 months there among the pristine waters and beautiful cays. in April, we sailed with Wayward Wind to Guatemala to establish a marina slip for the upcoming hurricane season. We then went back to Hunting Cay for a short visit with our Grandson, Cobi and then returned to Guatemala for the summer. Cobi spent a short while with us in Deltaville, and since then has spent about 6 weeks with us during the summers of '04, '05 and '06 in the Bahamas, Belize, Guatemala and the Bay Islands of Honduras. This past February '06, we motored to Utila in the Bay Islands of Honduras and spent almost 5 months there and in Roatan. In July '06, we returned to Rio Dulce to wait out the hurricane season (which thankfully hasn't been as bad as predicted).
So that's where we've been and where we are now. On Wednesday, AngelHeart will be hauled out of the river to have her bottom painted and some mechanical work done to the engine and drive system. When she's splashed again, well, we don't know exactly, but the plan (as much as one can plan in this life) is to sail back to the Bay Islands of Honduras and then in March, to Panama to see what's down there.
We will be adding pictures of where we've been and where we are as time goes on.
We hope that our adventures will be an inspiration to each of you who see this to turn your focus to the future and an active retirement. Your dream may not be a salboat in the Caribbean, but whatever it is, go for it, or as Larry the Cable Guy says "Git 'er done!"
As this is our first venture into a BLOG, we don't know what we are doing or how it will turn out, but then that's how we got into sailing, and that's turned out OK, so we have hope that this adventure will also.
Take care and watch this space for updates.
Captain Paul & Admiral Mary Margaret
|
