Seaya Seattle

We had a great time seeing family and friends here in Seattle. There's no doubt we ate the WTM's weight in food during this past month. There are so many good places to eat: South Indian, Vietnamese, Thai, Mediterranean, Ethiopian, Italian... I think I'm making myself hungry.

Anyway it was great being here again seeing everyone and trying to stay warm in the 45F nights. However we're off to the next leg of our trip and headed East to Idaho, Yellow Stone, and the Tetons.

We are going to miss everyone. Thanks for all the good times and good food! Don't forget you're welcome to come see us too.

Who doesn't like videos of forests, lakes, glaciers and snow?

I know it has been a while. But there is just so much good stuff to sort through, edit and post. Life has been very busy seeing friends and family. You'll have to forgive me if these videos are a bit rough. I slapped them together with duct tape and swear words. Unfortunately I still haven't had time to go through all the Yosemite and Tahoe material, which creates a large 3 week gap in this little on-line show. Nonetheless, I will try to bring part of our trip to life for you.

On our trip north from Tahoe we went to Lassen. While we only spent 4 days there, it was magical place with volcanoes, hydrothermal vents and TONS of snow.


After hiking Lassen we spent a night at Crater Lake, which was like a refugee camp. The snow covered campground had Fourth of July hopefuls screaming at each other, swatting large mosquitoes, draining mud from their sites with sticks, shivering inside their cars and trying to heat food over flames that had the life sucked out of them by the cold. We of course were warm and dry in the WTM.


We worked our way up the coast to the Olympic National Rain Forest. Exploring the southern end of the park is something we had never done and the trails, rivers, and mountains were breathtaking. And I mean that in the cheesy sense of the word as well as tough to climb in places. Our photos don't do it justice. This video shows some of the sites along the way.


Last but not least: Mount Baker. Skiing is the only time I've been in this park, and we both thought it would be a good time to see more and take Sherrell's mom with us. She did great hiking around and again we saw lots of snow and ice. This time we even had classic lightening squalls complete with tropical style downpours.


I hope you enjoy the videos. I hope perl jam, foo fighters and underground don't mind me using some of their tunes either....

I will post some stuff from Tahoe and Yosemite, but even I don't know when that will happen.

Our updates are oh so slow.

Internet access in the US is a little harder to find on a regular basis because everyone has it in their house.... Anyway let's recap.

Tahoe was a blast. Then we spent 4 days in Lassen National park. We tried to get to the summit, but the road was still closed. There was probably 20' of snow still up there in many places. We hiked up the road to where the road crews were still clearing the peak. It was an amazing place with some FANTASTIC volcanoes. This park had everything and we were entranced. So we decided to check out the other parts of the park: Devil's Kitchen full of hydrothermal vents, Boiling Springs Lake, a HUGE volcanic cinder cone, "Fantastic Lava Fields", and on and on.

After hiking there we went to Crater Lake where the lake was fogged in, the campsites were still under 2 feet of snow and the private company running the camp ground in the public park (a bad idea) was charging $26/night almost double the norm. It probably costs a lot to rename the crapper a "Comfort Station".

From there we went to hike at WATSON FALLS, which was beautiful NW-style hiking. Green mosses and ferns and waterfalls dominated the trail. And from there we visited our friends in Salem and Tualitan where we did more hiking, beer tasting and watched the Timbers play soccer. Did I mention vegan donuts?

So where are we now? Well we are on the Oregon coast where we camped at Cape Lookout and toured the area around Tillamook including Sand Lake a bizarre place.

Now we are on the road to Long Beach and the Olympic Forest. We literally have 10,000 pictures from our trip but no time to post them right now...sorry! Stay tuned.

Leaving Tahoe

Our sailing friends on Desiderata gave us their luxury cabin for a week while they traveled and all we had to do was play with their cat. Not a bad deal because their cool cabin is about a block from the lake and is surrounded by monster trees. They gave us some good hiking tips and let us use their bikes.

The only downside is at times the temperature is in the low 30's! We've been trying to get used to actually being cold, but the freezing part is asking too much. We did a lot of hiking and a friend from when we used to work at moto came to visit too. One of the hikes we did together had a great panoramic view of Tahoe.


We also hiked through some snow fields, but that alien substance was a bit too cold for our tropical blood.


After enjoying "our" vacation home we hung out for a few more days to visit with everyone and we did some more hikes. One of them was up to a nice lake where even Hopper went swimming.




We also got watch some fun baseball games, went out for dinner and spent a lot of time swapping stories because we haven't seen them for almost two years. While we are still stuck in cruising mode, they have adapted well to modern life again and are having a great time living next to the lake, skiing all winter and hiking the forests in the summer. We even went to the beach together like old times, just no surfing and the water felt refrigerated. Despite their best antics they couldn't sucker us into that ice water.


Now it's time to say goodbye (yet again) and hit the road. We are headed towards a place called Lassen National Park (most of which is still closed due to snow) to see what we can find there.

Trip Through Yosemite

Three days in Yosemite was not nearly enough time. The waterfalls pouring over sheer granite cliffs reminded us of the fjords in Alaska and Northern Canada. There was so much snow that the upper campsites were all closed and Half Dome still didn't have cables installed for climbing.

Because of the limited number of campsites, and the fact that we didn't have reservations, we had to play the daily game of getting on the waitlist at 8am (which meant being in line by 7am)and returning by 3pm for the site assignment. This limited us to about 5 hours of hiking each day, but we always managed to get a site.

The Yosemite Valley is run a bit like Disneyland with lots of crowds and people who don't seem to know how to enjoy the wilderness with their cell phones, mp3 players and all the park services (swimming pool, restaurants, stores, tram rides, etc.) This aside the scenery is fantastic and it is impossible to take a bad photo.

Here's a slide show of our 3 day trip of some of the cool places we hiked/drove.

And a couple of videos:

Calling Dr. Baicy STAT

My sister Kate has been in school for over two decades. I can't fathom how she did it. Her accomplishment is even more impressive because she completed the college portion all on scholarships. Family members from all over the country as well as from Singapore and Mexico, drove or flew to LA to share in the celebration.

On June 4th, Dr. Kate Baicy, MD PhD graduated from UCLA Med School with a concurrent PhD in Neuroscience. Oh, and we had the additional celebration of her marriage to Michael Tapper, who has been with her since the early days of grad school. They had a simple and private ceremony in Hawaii on May 14th.

For Kate, this is just one break in a long and difficult road. At the end of this week, she will be moving to New York where she will begin the intensive underpaid work as a Resident at NYU, in Obstetrics/Gynecology. She will be working at Bellevue Hospital where she will work a required 80 hours a week for 4 years, in a stressful environment with someone watching and critiquing her every move.

What really brought us to this day was not Kate's graduation but Kate. In her humble and quiet way was hidden a powerful mind and spirit. There were so many ways things could have gone wrong for her, when it was easier to give up, to do something else, to just quit. However she found something she loved and in the process she began to discover herself and her own abilities.

Patients will be lucky to have Dr. Kate Baicy with her string of alphebetic letters behind her name on their side. Lucky not because she has a fancy degree from a highly respected medical school, but because of who she is. She cares, listens and understands, then puts her mind and soul into helping and learning.

She will be working as an OB/GYN in both private and public environments for NYU, the hospital's affiliate university. Bellevue Hospital is the oldest, and one of the largest public hospitals in the country, with a private hospital attached. Kate will see cases from all over the world and learn how to cope with a huge spectrum of problems ranging from language barriers to rare illnesses. Bellevue is also the home of the US's very first maternity ward, so Kate will be at the start of it all.


While I was absent from much of her life, I am so happy we could be here and share this day with her. Enough about that...photos!


Kate and her new husband Michael!


An extremely rare collector's item: Kate's Family together! (our dad John, brother Eric, husband Michael, (Kate), her mom Sandy and brother Andrew)




And finally all the siblings together (Eric, Kate, John, Yazmeen, Andrew):

In LA after AZ and Joshua Tree Park

We spent about a week with our friends Robert and Liz and their family in Phoenix. Where they had the pleasure of helping us after we broke down about a mile from there house! Hopefully the new fuel pump and filter will fix the problem as the old pump was the wrong size and I don't think the fuel filter was ever changed.

Anyway I think we mananged to successfully lower the properity values of most of the neighborhood before we left.

On our way to LA we decided to stop at the Joshua Tree National Park. And we were glad we did. There were very few people there and we felt like the massive park was all ours. We spent the night at Jumbo Rock campground. There were massive boulders around and just us, the animals and our wild kitties. (Can you see the WTM?)



The desert park was in full bloom with lots of flowers and bright colors. I don't know how we got so lucky. There are also several oasises deep in the desert with lots of animals and no one around. If we had more time we probably would have done some of the longer hikes, but we got to see a good portion of the park.

WTM breaks down but we found the wave cave

We left Huatulco and found a nice beach town called Zipolite. Within yards of the beach we parked our beast and took the cat for a walk. It was a beautiful place with powderlike sand. We spent a quiet night there and an early morning fixing stuff on the RV.

Our goal was to make it to another beach on the other side of Acapulco. But after leaving the town of Santiago Pinotepa Nacional our engine acted up. We noticed a relay had been clicking on and off about every 5 seconds and I tried to locate it, but with no luck. Outside of town in the middle of nowhere the engine died.

Totally dead, no spark, no go. Fortuantely this didn´t happen on a blind curve. I was able to coast to the only pull-out for miles. I still couldn´t find the problem so we let it cool off and it started fine. So we turned around to buy some parts to jumper in a relay. After getting the parts we went to get some cash but the ATM machine ATE my card!! The bank couldn´t do anything until the next morning. So after watching the military raid a hotel and block off the street, then getting kicked out of a Pemex (mexican gas station which normally lets people park overnight) by a rude old dude, we finally found another Pemex whose guard even offered to keep an eye on us during the night. We waited most of the next day to get our card back only to discover it was EXPIRED. It would have been nice if the machine had at least told us why it kept our card.

On the way past Acapulco the engine clicking wouldn´t stop. Fearing another engine failure on a blind curve in the middle of nowhere, we sucked it up and skipped the bypass and plunged headlong into the road nightmare that is downtown Acapulco. Acapulco has become the slum town of Mexico. There is no other way to say it. We found a little RV park that was totally run down but was right near all the auto repair places. The next day we found this guy in an dusty lot and a small cinder block room with "Electrico" on the side. Not holding out much hope, we pulled in.

The owner wanted to buy our RV, but his mechanic and I ignored him as we poured over the engine, which refused to reproduce the problem. At one point I got so fed up I started moving and pulling things randomly until a large spark shot out of something and the CLICK of the ignition coil relay caused me to excitedly shout "Eso es la sonida!" We traced it to a bad diode that was shorting to ground and killing the power to the ignition relay. I was shocked when the mechanic reappeared 10 seconds later from behind the concrete hovel with a brand new version of this chassis mounted toyota diode. $22 later we were back on the road and better than new.

Our next stop was Playa Linda which is a spot we surfed 3 years ago with some other boats just outside of Ixtapa. It was so quiet and relaxing parked next to the surf. We slept hard knowing the WTM was running well again.


The next day we wound our way up the coast to a funky little RV park/restaurant/mini-store on the beach. We were the only ones there.... Jordan went bonko in the bushes and ended up covered in stickers.

So today we decided to go a short ways to Maruata. Wow is it beautiful. We are parked right by the main beach (i.e. free) with fantasic sand, clear water, cliffs and reefs all around.





Then we discovered the WAVE CAVE. We´ve probably seen thousands of caves and cliffs and blowholes, but the wave cave is cooler. From this hole in the wall comes spouting rushing waves. It creates its own little beach. See for yourself:

Cat in Training Photos

Tonight is our first night on the WTM. We are still moving piles of stuff around trying to sort it all out, but so far so good. We plugged into an AC outlet to hopfully get the fridge kickstarted....

Jordan is getting better at walking on her leash as you can see in the photos.


But she still hates it when it is time to go back home...

WTM and Cat-In-Training

Our short list of things to "fix" on the RV turned into about 3 weeks worth of work. We found some sections of dry rot and had to remove several areas of the inside roof and replace two roof vents. This took a lot of time but the job was cheap and easy. Now the inside looks really good with new paint and roof fixtures. We also added a solar panel to keep the White-Trash-Machine green. And we put in an invertor for using AC power.

We also went through all the equipment and got everything working, from the fridge to the water heater. We even added a water filter so Sherrell can have her good tasting water.

Now we are about 90% moved on board the WTM. But what about the cats? Well Jordan has been learning the fine art of walking on a leash. She loves the outdoors so much that we have been trying to get her used to the idea of being outside but not being able to "go bonko". She is really good at maneuvoring on the boat with her harness and tether, but walking with her has been a real learning experience. Sometimes she gets wrapped up on things and panics, sometimes she sees other cats and gets feisty and sometimes she just has to be dragged back home. All in all she is doing pretty good and should be ready for the parks and the city. She is quite a crowd pleaser as everyone is interested in a cat on a leash. Jezebel on the other hand doesn't like change so we'll just have to see how she does...

Our plan is to spend a couple of days actually living on the WTM while "putting the boat away" for the summer. After 7 years this will be the first time we've left SARANA alone for more than a month. Fortunately, there are several people here to keep an eye on it for us. So we should be checking out the surf spots by next week and slowly working our way north along Mexico's coast.

White Trash Summer

I'm sure you're wondering why we've been so silient. We decided to tie up in Huatulco, Mexico this summer and go see our friends and family in the US. To do this properly (i.e. bring the cats) we needed wheels.

In addition to prepping Sarana to be alone, we have been researching RV's. Yes a full-on beater white trash machines (read: cheap). We found a class of 21' RV's that get about 16mpg (outstanding when it comes to RV's I'm told). So after scouting the internet ads we opted for me to fly to Phoenix, Arizona where there was the largest collection of these RV's. And as an added bonus I was able to crash at Sherrell's childhood friend's house and they even had an extra car for me to drive in my quest.

Well, I found it. And not only did I find our 6 wheeled (it has dual rear tires) WTM (white trash machine), I fixed it up, loaded it with Mirror Pond Ale, and drove it over 1500 miles from Arizona to Huatulco (not far from Guatemala). I crossed 12,000' mountain passes near snow covered 18,000' peaks in Mexico City. I crossed the desert, the forest, lakes, rivers, more mountains, more cities in an endless blur to return to Sherrell and our cats.

FIVE days of day-time driving and that has to be a speed record. I didn't have a single serious break down. In fact during my rest stops I spent time fixing things inside. The only problem was a $100 in bribes to some crooked cops near Mexico City and about 37 toll booths. (I took the paid roads because they are big beautiful smooth roads with emergency service phones and plenty of help if I broke down). It was a spectacular little trip to bring our WTM to Mexico.

The pictures make it look bigger than it is. This is a toyota mini-truck with a box on the back. In the box is a propane stove, a electric/gas fridge, bathroom, shower, sink, water heater, and of course the bed. It's smaller than our boat, but what the hell? This thing was built in 1986 and has retro all over it. One thing for sure is RV's and boats are worlds apart when it comes to quality. RV's are junk.

But we are fixing this one up. The engine and drive train are in great shape with only 80k miles. There are some issues with the hatches and the ceiling, but we've found materials here in Mexico and are starting to fix them. One hatch blew off when I crossed the area near the Tehuantepec. Ironic isn't it? The Tehuantepec is a nasty gulf to cross in a sailboat and here the RV is what takes the damage.

Got a parking spot for us?!

Tsunami Video

You might have missed the little 8.8 earthquake and the media obsession with the tsunami hitting Hawaii, but other parts of the world experienced that little wave. Here in Huatulco in the southern part of Mexico we had a little surprise too.

We are in a small canal off the side of the marina (I call this area "The Cheap Seats") where there is no water or power, but the price is right! This smaller area was more dramatically effected than the main marina. I measured a 4'9" height change in about 90 seconds. Fortuantely these aren't true tsunami style waves, but are just smaller waves that cause large current surges.

In the smaller basin where the fishermen are near town there had some serious problems. The narrow entrance just pumped waves inside like a shotgun. Several pangas were sunk. There was a cruise ship on the dock that immediately departed for deep water.

Fortunately for us all we experienced was the rushing current and the elevator ride up and down about 15 times so far today. I shot a boring little video that shows some of the current draining out of the marina...remember this water is normally at a dead standstill.

Bahia Santa Cruz in Huatulco

The passage across the Tehuantepec went better then we could have ever planned. The killer part was after we crossed the gulf. That part was supposed to be easy; no one told the ocean. The waves were whipped up in a wild frenzy like some kind of fake scene out of Hollywood. I've never seen anything quite like it. There was practically no wind, yet here were these 6 foot tall brick wall waves slapping us every 4-5 seconds from random directions. The current was still pushing us fast so we were slamming into to these beasts and flying out the back side.

Imagine rocketing up at 30 degrees then plummeting down the back at 30 degrees. Repeat 1000 times every few seconds for 10 hours. It was truly mind-boggling. I don't know what caused these conditions or how it was physically possible for us to hit these waves so hard and have the boat continue to move at 5 knots or more. Normally when we slam into waves this hard we end up crawling at 1-2 knots or even going briefly backwards after the impact.

Somehow we charged onward. Dunking the bow over and over. Rocking and rolling violently and only rarely after a brutal series of slamming waves would we loose speed down to 4 knots. All those random waves and no wind? Insanity. Sometimes they would calm down almost instantly and we'd think relief! Only to turn on more violently 30 minutes later. I thought that the ocean was playing some kind of sick joke on us.

The good news was we arrived about 15 hours ahead of our best guess. The bad news was we could only eat crackers, were unable to sleep during our off-watch times and arrived in the pitch black night. Since we've been in here 3 or 4 times before and there are lots of lights for guiding cruise ships into this little bay, we chanced a night entrance between cliffs and rocks. Despite exhaustion we kept it together and anchored safely at about 3am this morning.

It is nice to have the Tehuantepec behind us and be back in this fun anchorage. There are actually other cruising boats around and tomorrow we get to do about 30 pounds of laundry and find some TAMALES DE ELOTE!

{GMST}15|45.176|N|96|07.679|W|Tamales de elote|Bahia Santa Cruz{GEND}

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Greetings from the middle of the Tehauntepec

After waiting an eternal 13 days an opening in the nasty gulf of Tehauntepec finally appeared! This little gulf is probably the nastiest stretch of water that I have ever known. I'll spare you all the boring details, let's just say that this place sucks.

Our luck has really turned for the good, however. Since leaving Puerto Chiapas, Mexico we have had tremendous force of nature pushing us for the past 36 hours. Some sort of mystery current has been our benevolent benefactor moving our boat with an unseen hand at 20% to 30% faster than we can normally go. If all goes well it will cut 12 hours off of our projected crossing time!

So here on the start of day 2 we are a bit groggy. There were a lot of shrimp boats out working the shoals, but we never had any problems or had to alter course much. The winds have been against us, but light. Right now we have been moving at 6.6 knots (we normally max out about 5 without that current push) and the wind is SW at 10 knots. We have to turn SW against the wind of course later this evening, but we are trying to time things so that when we need to turn the thermal (day time) SW winds will start to die down. What all this means is we've been motoring. Motoring because of headwinds and motoring to avoid more headwinds. At least our Tehuantepec weather window is gorgeously long lasting a full 24 hours longer than we need. Due to the mellow conditions we are taking the 16 degree short-cut which chops off a few miles and reduces the amount of time we will have to head SW against the wind...fellow sailors don't try this at home; stick to one foot on the beach.

{GMST}16|03.1|N|94|43.75|W|Almost hugging the beach|TPec{GEND}

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Chorizo-Dr Pepper-Haas-Heaven

Today I cooked up some soy chorizo with black beans, pico de gallo and haas avocados to make the worlds most delicious burritos.

It probably sounds crazy, but here's the skinny. Mexico has a lot of good soy products. They make some excellent soy chorizo and outside of Costa Rica/Panama Haas avocados are hard to find. There are several different varieties of avocados, but haas is what many of us gringos are used to. Now, to be honest, Nicaragua has some of the worlds finest tomatoes (and rum) but some combinations like soy chorizo and haas avocado with a fresh pico del gallo (chopped tomatoes, onion, celantro, lime juice) can not be beat.

And Dr. Pepper, as bizarre as it sounds is one of my favorite drinks. But this random blend of raisins (I think) and sugar isn't a big hit outside the US. But occasionally places in Mexico carry Dr. Pepper. Now I'm in some kind of coma induced chorizo-dr pepper-avacado-mezcal stupor.

And while we are still waiting for the Tehuantepec winds to stop blowing for a few days in a row so we can travel north, at least we are enjoying ourselves!

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Photos from Nicaragua

We finally found internet! So here are some photos from our time in Corinto which was a great place to hang out with the boat.

We were surrounded by mangroves and volcanoes. That cloud on top of the volcano, isn´t a cloud; that is smoke and ash! Sometimes you can hear a rumble.

Ivan and his family were friendly and helpful. We let the kids take a turn at trying to row PUFF around the estuary. The navigator took them straight across the water and hard onto the mud. We had to go out in Ivan´s boat and pull them out of the muck.

We took several day trips to see some of the famous areas and parks around northern Nicaragua. We even splurged one day and rented a car to see the highlands.

This photo is from the cathedral in Leon. It seems you can´t take a photo anywhere without a volcano or another church in the background.

One of our side trips took us up to the private forest reserve run by a coffee plantation Selva Negra. They are hard core conservationists with all shade grown coffee and they have even developed a new way to capture the waste from coffee processing and reusing it...something no one had done before. They have a small lodge with private chalets. The most amazing of the building is the little chapel which has been carefully designed and watered so that it is covered with plants. It looks like a living building and it is truly amazing.

Here´s a picture of Sherrell looking out the window of the chapel. Notice the roof and walls?

And the chalets are on the edge of their private reserve where we hiked several trails and listened to the howler monkeys.

Culture Shock

We arrived in Puerto Chiapas (used to be Puerto Madero) thinking we would be in the middle of nowhere, stuck in a commercial port, paying high commercial prices to clear in. Turns out we were wrong. Despite having been here before, we didn't see much of the area. The port captain let us sneak in and out without clearing our papers. This time however we had to go to immigration because we are international arrivals. In the past they used to charge private boats high commercial rates to clear in.

Immigration has recently changed it's policy about charging private boats, so now there is a separate fee which is much more reasonable. We paid only $48 for two people. (The port captain also charged $20). The total to clear in was about $70.... While expensive we were expecting a ridiculous $180-$200.

We were told immigration is in a nearby "town" called Tapachula. Turns out this town has over 500,000 people! It's huge and it has everything. We gazed in awe of the 10-plex cinema, the mall, the US-sized Wall-Mart, the Sam's Club, Office Depot and many other stores and restaurants. Who knew? We didn't.

Our minds were reeling in panic as we walked in the stadium-sized Wall-Mart and were overwhelmed by the billions of products. Billions and billions, in fact.

Shopping and selection are really just a bonus. We are anchored in the ONLY nice spot in the commercial harbor next to the estuary and large dock. We have a ton of birds all around us and fish swimming all around the boat. The other basin with the fuel dock and the shrimp boats is equivalent to floating in a large unflushed toilet ringed by a 1/2" thick layer of animal fat. I physically felt ill when I went over there for fuel in the dinghy. I still get shivers just thinking about it.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Piss poor passage

Here we are working very hard to move forward, yet the depressing fact is with the wind and the current against us: if we did absolutely nothing, we could almost go faster backwards. Apply that frightening thought to 84 hours of a passage and you will probably understand how we feel-frustrated.

Anyway despite the head-winds and nasty current we often made it above 3.0 knots and we survived the short (yet painful) 350 mile passage without going insane, despite the large amount of fuel we used, the ringing in our heads and the beating we took.

It's good to be in Mexico. I heard a weather forecast from the port captain over the vhf radio...it's like being in a first world country with a marine weather service. The Tehauntepec is supposed to blow hard starting tomorrow, so the fact that we need to rest and repair some things won't matter because we have to wait for a weather window anyway.

{GMST}14|42.75|N|92|24.2|W|Ah, sleep!|Day 4-Mexico{GEND}

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

So much happening in route to Mexico

After some slaving, we finished another update to our guidebook (Part 1) with some serious updates including new city maps and more information for those of you who are never satisfied. Go update your copy today. www.sailsarana.com/guide/Login.php

We had a great time in Corinto thanks to Ivan and his staff. They watched our boat while we toured the forests, volcanos and cities of Northern Nicaragua. Corinto is a great place to stop in northern Nicaragua and much cheaper and centrally located than Marina Puesta del Sol. Anyway, we had planned to post some photos of all the cool things there during our 3 week say, but you lose. Perhaps we'll get some posted when we get to mexico.

Yes, Mexico. That's where we are headed to right now at this very moment. However there is a nasty 1.0-1.5 knot current that has been slowing us down for 30 hours now. We also have had headwinds and some sloppy seas. However I can't complain now because the last 8 hours have been favorable (except the current) and I have high hopes that tonight things will stay mellow.

Right now we are off El Salvador, where we avoided stopping because it would probably add a week or two to our schedule...too bad too because it's a great place. Anyway only about 44 hours more to go.... Lots of turtles and dolphins out here today with deep blue water.

{GMST}12|09.0|N|89|10.0|W|5knt headwind 1knt adverse current|Day 2{GEND}

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Satanic Winds Part 2

We heard from our friend on PAPAGAYO in San Juan del Sur and it sounds like we missed all the fun. With wind gusts clocking to 80 knots, boats broke moorings and drug anchor. The wind pushed these boats out to sea where the waves were tremendous!

One boat had the roller furling sail open and shred, then the mooring broke and this 68 foot boat tried to power its way back against the wind and waves but could not even get their bow pointed into the wind. The navy offered to take them off the boat, but they refused to abandon the boat. A large fishing boat came to the rescue, but it took them almost all day to tow them against the weather back into the anchorage.

The following photo was taken two days AFTER the worst winds had calmed down enough that our friend could get his camera on deck. These two boats are fighting to stay tied to the large white sea buoy (in front of the Ketch with shreded sails). This buoy is about 3/4 mile from the beach but look at how the waves have built up! It is also a buoy normally used by ships, but both of these boats drug and were desperately tieing to anything that wasn´t moving.

Looks like we made it out just in time, eventhough our passage was rough we got north fast enough to avoid the brunt of the hurricane force winds!

Satanic Wind

The gap winds toyed with us. The computer models showed 20 to 25 knots for leaving southern Nicaragua and heading north. However the NOAA forecasters kept making references to a cold front up in Mexico that would make "fresh breezes" and "strong breezes" in the gap wind areas. While I trust the forecasters over the computer models, I wasn't sure if fresh and strong were 20-25. Turns out the models lied.

We departed San Juan del Sur with about 20 knots and started sailing north along the coast. The gap winds blow NE to ENE allowing for a nice sail if you're heading NW like us. They also come right off the shore so the waves don't build up if you stay close to land. The key is you have to STAY close to land in marginally charted waters. The problem was the wind built to about 35 knots and stayed there. Dust was blowing onto us off the shore and we were getting sprayed with salt water. All still good on board as we were doing about 6 knots with only about 1/2 of one sail up. Then it started to get gusty...really gusty! Winds were hitting the 40's and starting to really heal us onto our rail (which is hard on our fat boat). We reduced sail down to about 1/8 of its size to stay in control, but we were still hitting over 7 knots!

The fine line here is we had to stay in control enough to keep close to the shore. If something happed and we got pushed away from the protective land, we would end up in open water in terrible seas with no real way to fight our way back to land against those winds.

Then to top it off we started getting even stronger gusts in the 50's! With almost no sail out we were putting the rail in the water during those gusts! Fortunately we have a good guidebook (haha) and sought refuge in a nearby anchorage which had good protection and great holding. We spent the night there, but we only managed 25 miles that day and we were pretty nervous about getting pasted the next day because we still had 80 miles to Corinto.

Fortunately for us the wind was more normal running 20-25 and we trucked north the next day without seeing anything over 30 knots. We eventually sailed out of the gap wind funnel zone and the wind even died for while forcing us to motor some.

We arrived at the entrance to Corinto at 2:30 am and since it is a well marked commercial port with good charts, we decided to attempt the entrance. The channel was pretty easy and only one buoy was missing and one was lit the wrong color, but it was all good. We anchored, checked in and then met Ivan who took us up the estuary to his hidden spot. It is super calm here and we have some work to do on the boat before heading out again. More about this place with smoking volcanoes later....

{GMST}12|31.579|N|87|11.970|W|Calm and quiet estuary|Paso Caballos Corinto{GEND}

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com