6/6/2013–Brunswick Ga

We got to our summer home; Brunswick Ga a couple of weeks ago.  It was good to tie up someplace without thinking we’ll have to cast off for another offshore passage the next day:

Please Mom, not another overnight:

It’s nice to be someplace where we are only a short bicycle ride from a major supermarket (Winn Dixie), but Sunny is not the right boat for the East Coast.  She’s too tall and too deep for any but the major entrances, and forget the inter-coastal waterway!

All is well here, though there is a big tropical storm; “Andrea” bearing down on us :-0  We just doubled up on our dock lines and fenders and are on good floating docks a couple of miles inland, so we should be fine (fingers crossed).  The brunt of the storm will hit here at 2am (of course).

Next week we are going back to California to celebrate the birthdays for both our mothers

Cheers,

Carolynn & Tom

5/6/2013–Key West then Marathon Florida

While we were in Isla, I (Carolynn) did a one day trip to Chichen Itza.  I’ll do a separate post on that as well as our trip from Guatemala to Mexico.

We left Isla Mujeres for the Dry Tortugas a couple of weeks ago. 

We were having an ok passage, motor-sailing in light winds with a strong current pushing us along.  Then at 4am the first night (why do bad things happen in the wee hours?), the engine temperature alarm started screaming.  I quickly shut the engine down, which rapidly got Tom up.  A quick trouble-shooting showed our alternator had committed suicide, taking all the belts and some other important looking pieces with it.  Tom started the sweating/swearing/clanking repair while I tweaked the sails, trying to keep us moving roughly in the right direction and as stable as possible.  After a couple of hours, Tom was able to work his “Macgyver” magic and we could restart the motor.  There were scary “tinking” noises and we were not making any juice for the batteries, but we were going forward.  We went into severe energy saving mode; no radar, internal lights, stopped charging the ipad’s  :-0

We pulled into the Dry Tortugas after about 52 hours, for the last 12 hours we had everything on our nose, wind and current, but still a decently fast passage.  We decided to anchor in a small bay away from Fort Jefferson to avoid the crowds. 

We were the only boat and had lots of room.  A few hours later we see a seaplane leaving the fort and taxiing (semi-flying) very fast toward us.  He went past our port side (pretty close), stopped and turned around behind us, then took off into the sky past our starboard side. 

Now we have been buzzed at anchor by big powerboats, pangas, dingys and lots of jet ski’s, but this was the first time we’ve been buzzed by an airplane!  We double checked our charts and this is a designated anchorage so we were legal. The pilot was probably just giving the passengers a close-up view of our beautiful boat

I wish we had the time and inclination to go ashore and explore the fort but we needed to get to civilization and get things fixed.  The next morning, since we were still in severe energy saving mode, we pulled the anchor up manually!  Thankfully our windlass has a manual function so we can use a winch handle and slowly crank it, no hauling the chain up by hand, but it’s still a lot of work!  At the last step, using the “kedging” function, I screwed up!  I was turning the anchor at the roller when I accidently hit the mechanical switch.  The winch handle spun around and smacked my leg really hard; OUCH!!  Nothing broken but that’s the biggest boat bite I have every gotten (the picture doesn’t do it much justice). 

Oh well, we pounded into the wind from the Dry Tortugas to Key West and pulled into a marina.  A couple of days here is as expensive as a whole month at Mario’s in Guatemala!  Over the next week, we ordered some parts and Tom was able to get us back and running, making power underway and no more scary tinking noises!  We were in the middle of tourist-ville, lots of fun people watching but pretty noisy.  We didn’t really do much except work on the boat, a provision run to Winn Dixie (wow! look at everything available!), and a few walks around the old town. 

Once everything was fixed and we had a weather window, we went to Marathon.  Tomorrow we’ll do an overnight to Fort Lauderdale.

Cheers,

Carolynn & Tom

4/19/2013–Isla Mujeres

Sorry it’s been so long since an update, lots going on.  I’ll start with the condensed version then add details and pictures later. 

In the last entry we had just gotten to Isla Mujeres.  Very soon after we arrived I got terrible news about my brother and we quickly got the boat tied to pilings in a marina so she would be safe with just Tom on board and I headed to California.  Luckily I got back in time to tearfully say good bye, I’m tearing up even now.  I stayed about a month, helping my mother distribute Chuck’s stuff, clean the apartment and arrange the memorial. 

Back in Isla, we were going to take off right away for Florida, but a group of our friends from Guatemala showed up so we delayed to get caught up and party.  We’re getting underway this weekend.  We’ll be checking out today and leave Saturday or Sunday (April 20th or 21st) for either the Dry Tortugas or Key West.   Sorry this post is such a downer, I’ll put together a better one with pictures when we get Florida.

2/16/2013 - Isla Mujeres, Mexico

Yesterday we made it to Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Took a few hours to check in and once legal, went back to the boat and slept a long time... When we got up this morning, the cold front that had been predicted had started to hit and the north wind was picking up. Right now we have about 25-30 knots in the anchorage, hopefully it's close to max. We've been watching boats drag all around, luckily caught before any damage was done. We're well hooked but not getting off the boat until probably Monday. Then we'll start to explore :-)

Cheers,
Carolynn & Tom

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We're in Mexico

A quick update, we have gone from Guatemala to Mexico, with only a few stops on the outside of Belize. We would have liked to explore Belize further but our boat has an almost 7 foot draft and most places we can't get into. We made the decision to try to get to Isla Mujeres, Mexico pretty quickly. We just came off an overnight passage from hell! We left Long Cay (Belize) with the idea of an overnight to Cayo Norte (farthest southern atoll of Mexico) but misjudged the current and the wind. We only had a tiny scrap of jib out but had 25 knots from the south-east and couldn't keep it much below 8 knots! We blew by Cayo Norte at around 2am. Unfortunately it was not one of the better passages; we had 6-8 foot beam seas, anything that could possible be dislodged went flying, Tom broke his little toe and I have a head cold. Our exhaust system started pouring water into the bilge and one of our bilge pumps stopped working (it worked fine when tested at the dock a couple of weeks ago). But we made it safe and only a little battered into Espirto Santo. This is a big bay on the mainland of Mexico with no civilization other than a tiny Mayan village on it. We're planning on another overnight to Isla Mujeres this afternoon. Why is it we do this again :-)

We'll stay in Isla Mujeres for at least a few weeks (months?), licking our wounds and finding the best street tacos.

Cheers,
Carolynn, Tom & Ginger (who says she is abandoning ship at the first opportunity)

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2/6/13 - Back in the ocean

We escaped the river :-) We hit the bar at the Rio Dulce entrance going about 6 1/2 knots, slowed into the 2's at the worst of it, but made it over unassisted. We did have "Hector" following along side us in a big fishing boat to give us a tug if we stopped, but we were able to power through. The bottom of our keel is quite clean. We'll slowly move north/East up the outside of Belize, reaching Isla Mujeres Mexico in a couple of weeks. It's good to be moving again!

Cheers,
Carolynn & Tom

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2/2/2013 - Rio Dulce, Guatemala

A week or so ago we went to Belize for a 3 1/2 day scuba trip.  The trip was through Reef Conservational International, a non-profit organization based out in the Sapodilla cays.  We have been signed up for this trip for months and were excited to blow bubbles again.  The trip started with collectivo van ride to Puerto Barrios.  Collectivo vans are 15 passenger vans that they regularly stuff over 30 passengers in; people are sitting on each other, standing hunched over, hanging out the door, and sometimes even sitting on the top luggage rack:

It's a cheap way to travel though.  Luckily for us, it was a Sunday so the van wasn't too crowded and we each got our own seat.  After checking out of Guatemala immigration, we bought tickets for the water ferry over to Belize's Punta Gorda.  Calling it a ferry is a little grandiose, it's really just a launch with padded seats and a big motor.  They also carry goods between Guatemala and Belize, making it one of the world's smallest international cargo ships:

An hour ride later, we got to Punta Gorda, found a taxi (not easy in a little town on a Sunday), and went out to our B&B for the night.

The next morning we went back into town where we met our group for the week.  I felt a little old; except for one other woman in her 50's, the rest of the group were all 20 something's.  As it turned out, our 30+ years of diving experience made up for their youth and vigor and we were able to keep up with the "kids" :-).

Reef CI is located on a tiny island on the outer barrier reef, about 25 miles from the mainland of Belize.  The entire island is about the size of a football field.  There are several buildings, a few sleeping huts, a dock, and lots of palm trees:

The accommodations are "rustic", but everything is provided and a nice taste of the islands.

After dropping our bags and a quick lunch, we headed out for the first of many dives.   Here's Tom in his Zen diving mode:

The coral around the islands was very healthy but the fish population has been impacted by the invasion of the Lionfish.

Lionfish are strikingly beautiful but voracious eaters with no local predators,  and strip the reef of juvenile native species of fish and crustaceans wherever they have spread.  The Caribbean diving and marine scientific community is very concerned about their impact.  Every dive we went on a couple of people would take down spear guns and "get" as many lionfish as they can, but I am afraid it's too little.  We can only hope that some native species evolves (quickly) to realize how tasty these are and starts to control the population.

It was pretty much eat/sleep/dive for the 3 1/2 days!  Reef CI does a lot of monitoring the reef for specific species that gauge the health of the reef.  We learned about a few new species, like these Flamingo Tongues:

It was soon time to head back to Sunny.  We were very tired but had a great time.

The plan is to cast off our dock lines tomorrow (Feb 4th) then leave the Rio on Thursday with the high tide.  As it looks right now we'll probably have to be "tipped" to get over the bar.  We're both very nervous about that, hopefully we'll be able to plow through the mud like we did when we got in, but this isn't as high a tide :-(  Everyone on Thursday late afternoon cross your fingers for luck.

Cheers,

Carolynn & Tom