All's well that ends well

We have all made it safely home from the Carib and Central America!

I suppose that this will be the last update until next season. Future plans are somewhat uncertain but the boat is moored up a river in Guatemala and I am excited to sail it again next winter. Thoughts of western Cuba!
George flew home a couple of weeks ago and Mel and I spent the last 2 1/2 weeks backpacking through Guatemala and eventually up towards Cancun for our flight home.
We visited some beautiful places over the last couple weeks and had a great time scratching the surface of what GTML has to offer.
Here are some photos from the last few weeks
-Jamie

and the photos link

https://picasaweb.google.com/georgedermer/UploadedMay6thBelizeToRioDulceGtl?authkey=Gv1sRgCMDWioHAp6b1pgE#

Fronteras, Guatemala. May 5th, 2011

Apparently the last time that I wrote an update there was no notification email and all the aunties in England got concerned. Been awol for while but hopefully this time it works.

We are now safely at a marina in Guatemala’s Rio Dulce. This is our first time at a dock in over 3 months. We are going to leave the boat here for the season and we will be heading home shortly. We made it! 

A lot has happened down here (and in the world) in the past month; here is a bit of an update from our last month of travel.

We sailed the coast of Belize for a couple of weeks. We made our way north to Caye Caulker which is a great barefoot settlement to spend a week lounging around. There was great snorkeling, diving, roof top yoga, beach bars, etc. George took the water taxi to Belize City to meet Rhea (who finally made it down here) and they traveled inland to San Ignacio to see some ruins and Tikal.

Melanie flew down here to meet me for a much deserved vacation after completing her Master’s degree in Toronto. She arrived in Belize City the same day as Rhea and found the water taxi to meet me at Caye Caulker.

George and Rhea returned to the boat a few days later and we started to island hop back down south. Then Mel got sick and our adventure took a little detour...

Mel fell quite ill and we needed to seek out the nearest hospital, and that meant the not so glamorous Garifuna town of Dangriga, Belize. She spent a total of 5 days in the hospital there with a mix of great care and comedic circumstances. Because she was in a female ward I was not allowed to stay overnight at the hospital which meant finding my way across town to the hostel every night, an adventure in and of itself. By the end of it all she had been treated quite well, was given antibiotics for the road, and the bill was only $16!

In the meantime George and Rhea had been sailing the boat south to Placencia where Rhea would fly home and we would eventually clear out of Belize.

Last week we sailed overnight from Belize down to Guatemala and were unexpectedly met by a lighting storm. Although the most frightening weather conditions for a boat; there was only sheet lighting up high between the clouds and no frightening forks coming down to the water.

Coming up through the river gorge was magnificent; it is so much grander than we had anticipated. We met up with our RVYC friends on Appleseeds and made the journey together. We photographed each other as we motored up the winding river, we will have to exchange glam shots over email at some point.

Fronteras/Rio Dulce Town is a busy little junction as it lies on the primary highway between GTML city and northern Guatemala. There is much to see and do in this area and I am glad that I’ll be back here next season. Mel and I went horseback riding through a rubber tree plantation and yesterday for George’s birthday we went to an incredible hot spring waterfall. The water was too hot to stand under but it met the cool river water rushing over the rocks.

Boat jobs are almost finished and we will be leaving here within the next couple of days. George flies home in one week but Mel and I are going to spend a couple of extra weeks seeing south west Guatemala and then heading north through Tikal and eventually flying home from Cancun in late May.

 Jamie

Honduran Bay Islands

 Bay Islands, Honduras: Guanaja, Roatan, and Utila

We have spent the past two+ weeks in Honduras visiting the 3 Bay Islands. The sail from San Andrés took us about 4 days but luckily there was a 16 hour overnight stop in the middle at the Vivario Cays. There we were able to anchor, eat, and sleep. The Vivario’s are a little reef 50 miles offshore where we found one fishing boat and traded a couple beers for the biggest lobster I have ever seen.  Other than that the sail was uneventful in a good way with a steady breeze and relatively smooth conditions for the entire passage.

Guanaja is the quietest of these islands with very few tourist but we had one loud night there with some Germans who owned a bar which had a full set up of musical equipment for those passing through. There was a hilarious jam session that went into the early hours of the morning. The resident dolphin found us and swam by a few times a day. She likes hanging around the boats but swims away if you jump in the water to play with her.

Roatan is the biggest island and is a popular cruise-ship port. We worked our way down the island with stops at a few bays along the way. We avoided the big towns of Coxen Hole and French Harbour where all the cruise ships unload their passengers for a 4 hour walk about. We reached the West End Marine Park and it all looked so beautiful that Kostya and I signed up to do our open water diving course there. I’m really glad that we did the course. It was a great way to spend a few days and, although I don’t have much to compare it to, the diving was amazing with fish, rays, turtles, and walls and caves of corals. We even saw a hammerhead shark swim right over our heads on the last day. Judging from the excitement of our instructor and the jealousy of everyone else on shore this was obviously a rare occurrence. Roatan is a great place to go on vacation if you are a diver with 30 shops to choose from and about 100 named dive sites within a 15 minute boat ride of the one sandy beach road. If you don’t like diving, eating, and drinking then there isn’t too much here for you.

The same can be said for Utila. We arrived here a couple days ago and it seems to offer much the same as Roatan but it caters to a younger backpacker crowd. This means slightly cheaper diving, eating, and drinking but not much else. We found our way to the infamous ‘tree-bar’ and it was such an amazing place that I went back there in the day to take heaps of photos. This bar was started by a former art teacher who has been here building it for over 25 years. The architecture confuses and astounds you with no symmetry and millions of pieces of plain old stuff.

Kostya began a long bus ride back to his car in Southern Mex (Pacific side) two days ago. He is great crew and fun to have along but he is no better at fishing than I am, not that he could be any worse..

I went out for a couple dives this morning which were fun and then on the way back the boat stopped because we spotted a whale shark! A bunch of us grabbed masks and jumped in. I got the best look at him and even a shot of him on video. I think that I’ve got some beginners luck when it comes to rare sights when diving.

We are going to head to Southern Belize within the next few days. It will be about an 18 hr sail to Placencia to check-in. Then we will spend a week or more working our way north inside the reef.

Jamie

https://picasaweb.google.com/georgedermer/UploadApril1st?authkey=Gv1sRgCPC3rI25sfyxfA# 

San Andres - All of the lights

We made it to San Andres last Sunday.
We sailed faster than expected from eastern Panama and made the crossing in about 45 hours. The first 24 were a little rougher than we hoped but the seas flattened out on the second day to make for a smooth ride across the south west Caribbean. Rather than enter the channel in the dark we delayed 2 hours until first light to safely navigate the 5 miles into the anchorage.
This place is a really great little island to spend a week or two. It is a tourist destination for Colombians; a good description would be that it is their Hawaii. It certainly caters to the Colombian vacation lifestyle with lots of loud music and cheap food and drinks. I never thought that I could get sick of hearing Bob Marley tunes but they play the same 4 songs all day! There are all sorts of Hotels offering the full range of tourist activities such as jet ski rentals, scuba trips to the reef, party boat cruises, you name it, etc. Vendors sell coconut drinks on the beach and tacky little souvenirs on every corner. There are lots of stores for us to provision for the upcoming leg of the journey. Apparently the island was built into a resort in the 70's and 80's with cartel drug-money. Pablo Escobar invested by building many hotels on the island including one that is by far the largest building for hundreds of miles. The hotels land were later seized and the area became a government owned and controlled tourist destination (if i have my facts straight).
San Andres could get old pretty quickly but it is nice to be in civilization again. It's strange to think that we just spent 4 weeks in Kuna Yala without seeing a car, or a paved road.
I spent my birthday with George and our Dad as we treated ourselves to a rental car (gas powered golf cart with a bigger engine). There are not too many cars around as about %85 of vehicles on the road are scooters or small motorbikes and roughly %10 golf carts. We were able to see the entire island in 4 hours with stops along the way at some historic sites and churches.

The other big news down here is our crew change. Our Dad flew home yesterday to get back to semi retired life in Vancouver. He was here for 7 full weeks and he seemed to love it all. Like the rest of us he didn't cough or sneeze once during his time in the sun, further convincing himself that he should be living back in Aus. It was really helpful to have him here for all the the little boat jobs that we have been doing in the mornings. My buddy Kostya is arriving later today and he is going to spend a couple weeks with us as we head north to Guanaja and Roatan. He was already in southern Mexico so he jumped at the chance to get a quick flight across here to join us for the longest sail of the season.

We are looking at a departure from here by mid-week, weather permitting. The next sail is about 450 miles (north, then west around the 'shoulder' of Central America) to the Bay Islands off the north coast of Honduras. As this is the one place where piracy is a real concern our course will keep us far away from the mainland and we'll sail at night with all of our lights turned off and radar on.

I've haven't taken too many photos of San Andres and I'm not sure how to upload them without our laptop here at an internet cafe so pictures will have to wait.
smooth sailing,
Jamie

Kuna Yala - San Blas Islands

 Photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/georgedermer/LateFeb2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCOWjtqPqoLewnQE#
Friday Feb 18^th, 2011

We’ve now been in the San Blas Islands for almost two weeks. I have seen and learned so much about this beautiful area. It’s an amazing way of life down here. There is nowhere else in the Caribbean that has remained undeveloped and pristine as Kuna Yala. The same now as hundreds of year’s ago. Here comes a brief history lesson:

The Kuna Indians fought hard for their land and they have not been under Panamanian rule since 1925.  They have successfully governed themselves since then living independently within Panama. With the exception of one island village that we visited (with a power generator, coca cola, and modern clothing) they have not given up their traditional way of life, save for a few cell phones. They don’t eat anything that doesn’t grow naturally on this land; they are happy to sell you a fish for a dollar; and best of all they don’t work for money but for their community. Everything is shared and there are no jails or police, just chiefs on each island and 3 main chiefs for the whole region. They are quite inspirational in a minimalistic way; they take only what they need and waste nothing. After selling you a fish and filleting it for you (with your knife), they keep the backbone as future bait and the head to make fish soup for their family. Until recently their currency was coconuts (it’s forbidden to take a coconut from the ground of even a deserted island because somebody’s family owns it) but recently they have switched to $1 bills so that they can buy more medical supplies, etc from the mainland. The people are all so kind and polite to cruisers.

What makes this place magical is that there is zero commercialization or development anywhere. The Kuna see no long term good coming from resort development, mining, etc on their land. There is one road in to the area but only Kunas are allowed to use it. This means that the only people here and the natives and sailors. It’s a cruiser’s paradise behind the shelter of the reefs. Some tourists manage to get here and are welcome to stay in guest houses on the populated islands which are located near the mainland.

We listen to the radio nets in the morning and the weekly boat count reckons there are 150 boats in the area this time of year. We’ve come to realize that about 30-50 of the yachts (primarily the ones that operate the nets and chat on the radio with each other all day long) are living here for 6 months a year in a kind of floating retirement community, and they all seem to love it. Others are like us and are just cruising through; some headed West to the Canal and others staying as long as a season. We’ve met numerous cruisers who have been travelling for years only to profess that this is as perfect a location as anywhere is the world.

It’s so beautiful down here and our Dad is having such a great time that we have all convinced our Mom to come down for a one week visit. Delaying our plans by a week or so but what the heck, as our Dad said “when you get to a certain age and there is a ‘0’ in your next birthday…” She is here with us until March 1^st.

Friday Feb 25^th, 2011

We’ve been having a good week thus far. Our mom arrived a few days ago; she has been taking it easy and we’ve taken her to some of our favourite little spots. We have had a few engine and boat issues but nothing that should prevent us from leaving Panama next week. It’s all par for the course with a 30 year old boat -everything was in working (or almost working) condition but certainly not new. We’ve been through more than a full can of wd-40 lubricating pretty much anything that can or should move, rotate, spin, swivel, pump, etc.

Today was quite the scene as we were blessed to witness the one Kuna holiday of the year: the anniversary of the Revolution celebrating their independence. There was a long re-enactment of beatings, more beatings and then a bit more beating and finally a victory followed by celebrations!

About 10-12 foreigners were on the island of 1000 inhabitants and we were all welcome to join in with the festivities. It felt like something out of a National Geographic magazine and it was certainly an experience that we won’t soon forget. It was such a historic and genuine ritual. It was obvious that this was not a show for tourists (as there was only a small handful) but rather their own ceremony for themselves to celebrate their heritage. Especially great was when everybody gathered in the central hut received a piece of candy and a single cigarette, we never learned the significance of this particular tradition. I tried to respectfully take a few photos and short video clips.

Hopefully we figure out how to upload a couple videos on here. Solar powered internet access isn’t the quickest but we’ll try our best.

Our mother takes off on Tuesday morning and after that date we will wait for a weather window to head north. Hopefully we’ll be on our way by next weekend. San Andrés, a small Colombian tourist island, lies 255 miles to the NW and it is our next destination.

Enjoy the photos link,

Jamie

Maiden voyage, Colon to the San Blas:

https://picasaweb.google.com/georgedermer/UploadFeb08?authkey=Gv1sRgCLPQl_C0oqTCHA&feat=directlink 

With the exception of our sea trial and test sail from a week prior, our maiden voyage with Paraquina was a 20 mile N-Eastward beat up the coast to Portobello. What seemed like a rough day was just a typical afternoon in the trade winds down here. 20 knot winds and 6 foot swells pounded into us the entire leg but Paraquina stood strong under reefed main and jib. We stayed in Portobello for a few days and the small town of 3-4000 really introduced us to the lifestyle down here out of the big cities. With loud music and lively people everywhere it was the busiest little town that I have ever visited. Even the public buses (colourfully painted and decorated inside and out like a mix of Pimp-my-ride meets reasonably good graffiti meets Disney and comic book characters) blasted Latin-Carib dance music all day long which although fun at first can make for a long ride.

Portobello seems like other towns down here but it’s not; it has a long written history as the strongest Spanish port from the 16^th to 18^th centuries. There was a time when 1/3 of the world’s gold passed through the Customs House here. It’s also the place where Sir Frances Drake stole tones of Spanish gold and the where he was eventually fed to the sharks. It is said that there are 10-20 billion dollars worth of gold sunk off of the coast here in numerous wrecks from numerous battles. Nowadays there are remains from 3 separate forts protecting the bay. We visited each and were impressed by workmanship (and huge canons!).

-Portobello to Isla Linton, although only 10 miles, was another tough slog to windward with 20+ kts and 8-10 ft swells on the bow all morning. We reached the popular anchorage and took the dinghy ashore to find fuel! We filled up our outboard gas and Diesel and also set a new record for cheap cold beers: 3 for $1 at a little bar on the main (paved) road through town.

The next big sail was 50 miles to windward from Isla Grande to the San Blas Islands or Kuna Yala as the local Indians call it. We sailed on Saturday from sunrise to sunset with the wind-vane doing most of the driving. The highlight of the day was when a few dolphins found us and swam along side the boat for a minute; I managed one great photo of them.

-San Blas / Kuna Yala. We just made it hear and first impressions are stunning. This is a beautiful stretch of 100 miles containing over 350 islands. Our tentative plan is to visit many different islands groups within this archipelago over the next few weeks and then head North. We happened to arrive at the one anchorage that contains the only island within about 100 miles with internet access. They have a tv and satellite that are new this season. Although many cruisers are than less thrilled with the idea, it meant that we got to watch the Superbowl on a 100 metre long island in a straw hut.

Many more stories and photo’s to come of this place, so much to see here.

Jamie