The Adventures of Ginny and Steve!

Caicara del Orinoco, Venezuela

2012-01-26T08:19:00.000-08:00

Dear friends and family,

Our story picks up with our arrival in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela on December 14. The manager of the municipal marina was aghast when she saw that the officials in Punto Fijo had not given us a permiso de estadia, or cruising permit. We could be arrested, our boat confiscated! She urged us to leave immediately for Curacao, a Dutch island 100 miles to the north and the nearest foreign country. To continue with our plans we must then clear back into Venezuela at Puerto La Cruz, where they know how to issue that permit, then return to Puerto Cabello. In other words, we should travel an extra 550 miles, with impossibly long passages, at the wrong time of year, because someone to whom we paid $270 had failed to give us a certain paper! A slimy customs agent then appeared, saying that something might be worked out but it would take months and be very expensive.

Dazed, we sat in a covered seating area where the local sport fishermen socialize. A birthday party for one of them was just starting. They fired up a barbeque and filled coolers with ice and Polar beer. When they realized who we were they voiced admiration and showered us with drinks and food. As in Punto Fijo, the generosity of the people ameliorated the greed and incompetence of the government. One of the attendees, an employee at the Port Captain´s office, said he would help us get the cruising permit.

In the meantime we were stuck in a hellacious marina. The breakwater was insufficient to block the swell, so boats and floating docks surged violently. Neighboring vessels broke loose, became battering rams. We fixed the breakage, bought new docking lines. When the ramp from the dock to the breakwater broke loose a fellow boater donated an old dingy for use as a bridge. The water was polluted with spilled gas and oil. Dogs and seabirds tore through bags of garbage stockpiled along the breakwater. The water system was usually off. The restrooms were unspeakable. All this municipal incompetence had to be squared with the omnipresent billboard propaganda wherein the mayor touted his many fine achievements, with fetching smiles and dynamic gestures. Like the President, he always wears a red shirt.

Puerto Cabello itself seemed to be shredded into different time periods. We were in the historic port district, where the buildings were tall and graceful with finely molded facades, but dilapidated, often in total ruin. Further away the buildings were squatter but in better repair, their residents present, sitting on the curb in front of their old common-wall homes or in one of the little plazas with a statue in the center. There were no drainage facilities, so even slight rains spread puddles across the streets. The architecture along the highway was modern but relatively deserted.There were no other foreign tourists, but temporadistas thronged the downtown beach and public waterfront. The term refers to Venezuelans come to enjoy themselves during the Christmas holidays. For three weeks many businesses were closed, endless beer was consumed, and music blasted day and night from numerous food-and-drink stalls.

We were in the epicenter, with the beach on one side and a sort of carnival strip on the other. We had only to visit a neighboring yacht to join in their party of the moment or exit the marina gates to watch the rides and games of skill and chance. We were grateful for the security post that separated us from the drunken masses, though it couldn’t protect us from the amplified, screaming carnies.

Puerto Cabello wasn’t all bad! The coffee was sold on the streets steaming hot. Fresh fruit and vegetables abounded in the open market. We discovered cachapas, a delicious pancake made from fresh corn. The beer was cheap. The Venezuelans customarily do not finish the last inch or so, giving birth to a new kind of bum, the “beer bum!” He hangs around the liquor store where they sell cups of beer through the bars. When the patrons reach that last inch he holds out his mug and they pour it in. On a weekend afternoon the “beer bum” is cheerful indeed. Except on one evening, when youths engaged in a bottle-throwing fight, we felt secure in our constant wanderings of the hot, dirty streets. Ginny didn´t even carry her “bashing stick.”

The laptop broke so we ordered a new one and other necessities from the States, hoping they would arrive safely. At internet places we worked on new magazine articles and facebooked with friends. Christmas and New Years passed. We got dental work done, bought new shoes, and three times took the hour and a half bus ride to Valencia to see the movie “Tin Tin,” but the showing was always sold out or cancelled. For much of cruising is simply pursuing normal life functions in unfamiliar circumstances, therefore inefficiently and with much frustration! With the frugality that comes naturally to us we walked a lot, compared prices, and avoided taxis.

In performing maintenance on our esteemed Honda 2-horse motor, which at the expense of only fifteen gallons of gas had taken us a thousand miles to windward, we found that she now emitted a horrible screech while running. We took her to a mechanic who allowed us to watch while he took it apart. Saltwater had entered where it was unwelcome. A rusty bearing was the culprit. Fortunately, it was a standard automotive part, easily replaced.

After three weeks of intermittent groveling at the capitania and another $220 contribution to the government (or to corrupt officials, one never knows which), we got our cruising permit. Our next hurdle was easier. Steve had already gone by bus to a town called El Baul and determined that the Rio Cojedes was navigable. Now we found a transporter willing to take us there for the equivalent of $330. To our great joy he pulled us out of the water onto a trailer.

On January 13, 2012 we sat with him in the cab of the truck as he towed Thurston through Valencia. He educated us on national politics, and lamented the ruin and crime rampant in this once-prosperous country. The hills fell behind as we entered the Llanos, the great plains of northern South America. The highway abounded with police and military checkpoints, at which vendors sold coffee. The many potholes also provide entrepreneurial opportunities. From a distance would be seen two or three teenagers with shovels and a little flag, filling or pretending to fill a hole. As we slowed down they dropped their tools and ran alongside with a jar, yelling for tips.

At the town of El Baul our driver backed the trailer into a small river. Thurston was afloat again, now in muddy fresh water. We found a purveyor of purified water in bulk and filled our tanks. Then we pushed off into the moderate current. The banks were tall and thick with willows. The land was farms and forest. When it got dark we tied to a branch on the bank and settled in. The evening was cool, a welcome departure from the hot city nights. A praying mantis alighted on the tiller, facing forward, his little hands at chest height, and rocked sideways back and forth, steady as a metronome. The eyes of a nearby alligator reflected red in our headlamps.

On the second day the Rio Cojedes joined the larger Rio Portuguese. On the fourth day the latter joined the far larger Rio Apure. All flowed southeast gathering frequent tributaries. Steve would begin rowing at sunrise. Ginny would relax a little longer. Lounging in the cabin while underway is a new treat, of which one must take advantage! After a couple hours the east wind got too strong so we motored at low throttle, appreciating the assist from the current. Howler monkeys picked fruits in the tall riverside trees. Smaller, non-howler monkeys sipped from the river and retreated into the foliage on our approach. Alligators slipped into the water. The trees and brush were thick with a bird that resembled a chicken or a pheasant except that it had a mohawk crest and its call was similar to that of a crow. There were kingfishers, pink flamingos, cormorants, cranes, scarlet macaws, emerald parakeets, and numerous other birds for which we lacked names.

But the most dramatic advent was that of the pink dolphins. Steve was used to them from his time on the Meta and Orinoco, but not Ginny. To her they looked prehistoric: blue-grey on top and pink on bottom, with pink and violet blending on their sides, and pronounced bulbs on their foreheads. They were playful like ocean dolphins but slower. Sometimes they breached just enough for a quick breath, other times they leapt clear of the water. They splashed this way and that with their tails. When swimming slowly on the surface they looked like alligators because only a subtle profile showed. As long as we rowed or motored at low speed as many as ten dolphins followed us, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind.

We frequently passed houses on the river bank, some primitive, some substantial. The people were slender with dark skin and black hair. They stood staring as we passed. The men wore cowboy hats or baseball caps. Some emitted a sharp yelp of greeting. The women were rarely to be seen. There were horses, cattle, pigs, chickens. Their boats were of sheet steel, long and thin like a canoe. In the towns people rode mules, horses, and Chinese motorcycles. The air smelled strongly of the local white cheese, an incentive to move on.

After three days we reached San Fernando, capital of the state of Apure. Under a tall bridge men were shoveling sand from steel canoes onto land and from there into trucks for transport. Further down thirty or forty boats were parked gunwale-to-gunwale, sterns riverward, bows on a steep beach littered with stranded water hyacinth. There was much hubbub of loading and unloading, coming and going. We landed among them and explored this metropolis of the plains. We soon located internet shops wherein we worked on keeping our U.S. internet purchases moving toward us. We had a new sail cover made and bought batteries. In a lovely plaza we found a government bookstore where intellectuals gathered. A poet/sculptor offered to get our writings into print if we translated them into Spanish. A historian told of us Simon Bolivar´s doings in Apure during the wars of independence. The store had a selection of Venezuelan literature, nearly free due to a program designed to boost literacy and revolutionary awareness. Steve selected several novels. He also took advantage of the government subsidy on gasoline. He caught a ride on a motorcycle taxi to a gas station where for 1.85 bolivares he filled up our six-gallon gas tank. That works out to less than $0.04 per gallon! No wonder the boats always run with their motors wide open.

After three days San Fernando de Apure had given us all we needed so we continued downriver. It was hot and windy from the wrong direction. The river meandered a lot - for each straight-line mile we traveled 1.6 miles. But compared to the sea the travelling was easy! We averaged forty river miles per day. On January 21 mountains became visible to the southeast: the edge of the Llanos. A gap opened and the Rio Apure, which had seemed so huge, emptied into the Orinoco, a mile or two wide counting the islands in its braided course. Its blue-brown surface surged with upwelling currents. The land was drier now, more barren. The summer had started, and vast areas of sandy bottom were exposed, like deserts with blowing sand. We need to stay close to civilization until our package comes so we followed the Orinoco downstream a few miles to Caicara, a small city on the south bank where Steve spent three weeks in 1992. The friendly personnel at the little naval base are allowing us to keep our boat next to theirs for security. Later we hope to follow the Orinoco upstream to Brazil. We don´t have a good map yet but Ginny is researching how to make a GPS-readable chart using Google Earth.

We close with a homey detail that will put you right aboard with us. The awning is up. We have just eaten dinner. Steve reclines cleaning his teeth in “the throne,” butt on a cushion on the cockpit floor, back to aft bulkhead, facing forward. Ginny, resting from her culinary labors and fullness of belly, lays in bed, head on pillows, heels propped up on the companionway ledge, reading a book on our cell phone (since Steve sat on her Kindle). Steve pastes both toothbrushes, puts Ginny´s between two toes, says, “Toe-jam telegram!” and passes the brush from his toes to Ginny´s toes. She is now obliged to clean her teeth. Otherwise she might not get around to it.

More new photos in our Venezuela album.

December 24, 2011 - Puerto Cabello Venezuela, Mass email

2011-12-23T13:03:00.001-08:00

Dear friends and family,

Happy Holidays! Ourgift to you is an email so long you can spend all year reading it, plus over100 photos in the following albums:
https://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/Colombia
http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/Venezuela

We last wrote to you from Sapzurro, a coastal village onthe Panama/Colombia border, on the flank of the road-less, rainforest spinethat joins Central and South America. Since then we have traveled hard to getas far east as possible before the stronger dry season winds arrive in Decemberor January. According to the pilot charts, Colombia has the biggest waves inthe Caribbean. And according to sailor legend the 400 miles between Cartagenaand Aruba is one of the worst passages in the world. Refuges are few and thewind would be contrary. Needless to say we approached this coast somberly.

From Sapzurro we motored east across the entrance to theGulf of Uraba. We lacked a mental picture of the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Theland was low, rising to assorted hills, relatively dry. Roads and buildings werefew, but the vegetation looked to have been modified by ancient clearings and cattlehusbandry.

The first night we sheltered in a huge mangrove lagoon, amaze of little islands and a haven for one of the largest populations ofnoseeums we have ever encountered. Our second refuge was behind a man-madebreakwater in the town of Arboletes.The beach was crowded with kids playing soccer and men drinking beer under thatchedroofs. The town on top of the bluff provided produce, bread, and internetservice. No one paid us any attention. In each of the following days we arrivedat a different set of low offshore islets. Rainstorms engulfed us: squalls ofwind, then lightning and torrential rain, then clear sky again as we emerged onthe other side. We learned quickly that our new raingear is as useless as theold. After six intense days we entered Cartagena’s vast outer harbor, a placeof shipping and industry. From there we passed into the inner, historic harbor.

In colonial times Cartagenawas the principal port for ships arriving from Spain. To protect it the Spaniardsbuilt fortifications like what we had seen in Portobelo, but much moreextensive. The Walled City retains hundreds of blocks of picturesquelydilapidated architecture, well appreciated by tourists. We anchored among thesailboats in the Inner Harbor, but there were too many wakes, so we moved to a placewhere local passenger boats were parked. For six bucks a day we got calmerwater, security, and the convenience of being able to (sort of) wade to shore. Wewere sometimes woken in the dead of night by men paddling past in canoes whilevigorously flailing the water with long poles, presumably scaring fish intonets.

Affluent neighborhoods abut the WalledCity, but the bulk of modern Cartagena lays furtherinland. Here dust and vehicles choked the streets. Chaotic markets stretchedblock upon block. Music and hawking spiels blared from speakers. The days werethe hottest yet. We walked the shady side of streets and detained our breathingto avoid fumes and stink. Garbage lay in heaps. From one pile Ginny selected a heftystick forty inches long. When new it had been lathed to achieve a decorativeshape, perhaps as a spindle in a staircase. When the staircase was demolishedthe spindle was discarded. It fit Ginny’s hand nicely, so she carried it as aclub. In good neighborhoods she tucked it unobtrusively behind her backpack. Inbad ones she spun it like a baton. Steve did not discourage her, having beenmugged in Cartagena before. On the contrary, while Ginny menaced with hercudgel Steve’s right hand was likely to be toying with his folding knife. We’rehard-asses!

One day, while we were walking in a wealthy neighborhoodadjoining the yacht anchorage, we passed a beggarly man carrying a big dufflebag full of junk. As he passed he grumbled, “Esoes mi palo!” (That’s my stick!”) He made no attempt to retake it. As he recededdown the sidewalk we harkened back to the pile from which Ginny had picked up thestick. In retrospect it did seem to have been tended, as if articles of not-quite-zerovalue were placed there intentionally. We surmised that the junk man lacks ajunk yard, so he leaves articles here and there, lets people know they are his,and receives a few coins through the honor system. Sorry junk man! We didn’tknow!

Our stay in Cartagenacoincided with the city’s 200^th Independence Day anniversary. Forseveral days there were Marti Gras-like parades: tiger women, men in whitetuxedos with pink hairdos. Boys covered with paint or grease threatened to smearthemselves on passersby unless they donated a small coin. Change in hand we enjoyedthe costumes and marching bands but mostly stuck to our errands and went to bedearly. For much of cruising’s hard work occurs in ports, figuring things out,tramping from place to place.

We wished we could get transport to the Putumayo River,which flows into the Amazon. But it was way off on the Ecuadorian border, whereguerrilla warfare persists. Then we noticed that Puerto Cabello, Venezuela is only seventy miles from a tributary of theRio Apure, which flows into the Orinoco. If wecould get to the confluence of the Apure and the Orinoco we could either turnleft and come out the mouth of the Orinoco, as Steve did in 1991, or turnright, ascend the Orinoco, and take the Brazo Casiquiares to the Rio Negro,thence the Amazon. It is one of few places in the world where, due to a freakconnection in their respective headwaters, one can navigate up one river anddown another without portaging. Puerto Cabellowas still 750 nautical miles away, but it was closer than Trinidad,which would otherwise be the end to our windward beat.

Paperwork was a worry. Colombia requires that each time aboat, however small, enters a port having a Port Captain it must retain ashipping agent. The agent obtains entry and clearance documents for asubstantial fee. As our friends say, “It´s a racket!” So we decided to bypassBarranquilla and Santa Marta, though they were on our way. And Venezuela has no ports of entry along our routeuntil Puerto Cabello.So we got a clearance for Puerto Cabello, though it would take us weeks to get there. Inthe meantime we would have legally left Colombiaand not yet arrived in Venezuela.Whenever we went ashore we could be violating immigration laws.

We left on November 12^th, our 4^thEscapiversary! The trade winds soon kicked in. We rarely sailed anymore. Wemotored past the gargantuan, hyacinth-choked mouth of the Rio Magdalena to asmall town near Santa Marta. Here we got out and pulled the boat by hand into aknee-deep stream. A huge rain had just passed, so the current was swift. We hadpulled Thurston a hundred yards upthe right bank when suddenly the water level shot up and roller-coaster wavesformed in the middle of the stream! We dug our anchors in to bank to avoidbeing swept away in the flash flood. The waves reared up tall and closelyspaced, debris floating by at eye-blink speed. Suddenly the waves collapsed intoa roaring brown foam. The process repeated itself over and over: waves growingto five feet in height, collapsing, and reforming. This furious rhythm slowly diedduring the night, until cricket chirps dominated. In the morning the flood wasover. Egrets fished at the stream mouth. Thurstonlay high and dry on the sand. Some fishermen woke us asking if we were stillalive. When we responded in theaffirmative they helped us push Thurstonback into the water.

After Santa Martathe winds became stronger, the waves bigger. Sometimes even at full throttle wemade only three knots. The propeller kept lifting out of the water, the motorstopping, but always restarting. It madeus nervous, especially since the strong winds make putting up the mastsdifficult and the shoreline was often rocky. So, we lowered the motor mount fourinches. That stopped the cavitation, but it may have contributed to a closecall when, after a hard day, we investigated a river mouth to see if we couldenter it. While motoring back and forth studying the breakers Steve strayed tooclose. A wave broke over the lowered motor, drowning it! We quickly threw outthe anchor, but in the minute or two it took for it to catch Thurston drifted further in. Waves kept fillingthe cockpit. The motor wouldn’t start. Deep shit. Steve quickly donned hisswimming gear and swam in through the surf, maybe two hundred yards.

Inside the river mouth fishermen were tinkering with netsand motors. A dirt road led into the town of Dibulla. Steve bluntly offered fifteendollars to whoever would tow Thurstonin. A skipper gathered up gas and crew while Steve nervously peered seaward. Fromwhere he stood Thurston and his wifewere invisible much of the time, hidden in wave troughs. Meanwhile Ginny heldon tight, but had prepared to abandon ship. The tall swells were breaking righton her. Some of them caught Thurston onher side, tipping one gunwale underwater while foam burst over the raisedgunwale. Finally the skipper motored to Thurston,pulled her anchor aboard, and used the anchor line to tow Thurston. Coming through the mouth the towboat broached (turnedsideways to a wave striking from astern) but apparently this was normal. Thurston was soon safe on a tranquilriver. The sun set, the wind died. The mouth was calm when we left at sunrise.

As we traveled northeast around the Guajira Peninsulathe dominant plant became a tall, scraggly cactus. The dominant insect was agreen grasshopper with red legs, so big that on first sight Steve thought itwas a green bird with dangling red tailfeathers! In stick-and-mud houses ashoreor in wooden fishing smacks at sea the Guajiro Indians were quiet, undemonstrative.Wrecked ships dotted desert coasts on which boats cannot land, therefore thereare no people: orange-tan cliffs and beaches with booming surf.

Our final night in Colombia we spent in PuertoEstrella, a bay sufficiently protected from the northeast swell to anchor safelybut not comfortably. We bought gas from a woman who sold it in soft-drinkcontainers from her house. Local gas comes illegally from Venezuela by mule. Followinglocal practice we anchored Thurston bow-onto the swells and ran a stern line to a dead tree on shore. The surge caused aconstant jerking forward and backward. The best defense was to lay flat on ourbacks in bed and wait for sunrise.

When it finally came we motored twenty-five miles out toLos Monjes, an archipelago belonging to Venezuela. The islands are little morethan scattered pinnacles of rock except for the largest two, which areside-by-side. To create a base the Venezuelan Navy had leveled some pads anddumped the spoils between the two islands until they became one. No navalvessels were present but the barracks were full of sailors. We tied to amooring rope. An ensign searched Thurston,chiding us for not carrying certain safety items for which we had no room. Theyeven wanted to know if we had semaphore flags! Released, we hiked to thelighthouse and swam in the deep, crystalline water.

Again the wind decreased at night, so we left early for theParaguana Peninsula, forty-eight miles away. The paired peninsulas, Guajira andParaguana, were our principle obstacle on the way to Puerto Cabello. Much ofthe day no land was visible. Then we saw a faint blue mountain, then low hills.In the early afternoon we located Punta Macolla, where a half-dozen woodenboats huddled behind a small point, jostling in the swells. On the beach was acrude fishing camp. Beyond stretched flat desert.

To get around this second cape we left at 3:00 AM again. Ourluck didn’t hold. An hour into the passage we hit a storm. The east wind pickedup until salt spray blinded us and Thurston’sbow kept turning to one side or the other. We cowered over the compass, bracingagainst the belly-flops, hoping to break through to the other side of the storm.Then the fuel ran out. We refilled the tank, then Steve pulled the startercord. Nothing! Water had gotten into the tank or the air intake. We deployedthe sea anchor to control drift while troubleshooting the engine. Nothingworked. We needed to sail back to Punta Macolla. Working together we raised themasts, Steve lifting, Ginny wrestling the base of the mast into its hole. Weunfurled a bit of sail and were soon back at the fishing camp with the sunrising.

Steve unbolted the motor and carried it into the camp,which consisted of a few plywood shacks and some tables made of broken-downappliances. The fishermen, swarthy men in their thirties and forties, drainedthe carburetor and changed the gas in the tank. They soon had it running likenew, no charge. They encouraged us to wait a few days before trying the capeagain, so we decided to sail south into the Gulf of Venezuela, where there are baysand towns.

Thirty miles south we found a small city. We were directedto the Club Nautico Cardon, a yachtclub with a dock and dry storage for power cruisers. We moored among several tall,white sport-fishing boats. This being our formal entry, government officerssearched Thurston again. The waterwas like a mill pond until a series of vertical waves suddenly rolled in, poundingThurston against a steel piling! Two navalofficers, caught while performing their search, fled in panic. Search over! Wecouldn’t bring ourselves to look at the damage.

A weekend-long fishing tournament was getting underway.More boats arrived. Excited crews prepped their engines and hauled beer and iceaboard. Merry-makers thronged the beach at the base of the dock. We relocated Thurston, bow to waves, stern to beach.She was safe now, but she jerked violently with each surge. Electronic Latinrap music blasted at all hours from multiple sources. We were depressed anduncomfortable.

When the tournament ended the club members helped us. Theyhauled Thurston out, set her on aconcrete slab among other boats, and gave us a power yacht to live in while we conductedrepairs. After two weeks of sun, salt, and motion we craved the comfort. We hada hose, a power outlet, and we even found a weird, but functional shower stallin an otherwise broken back bathroom. We ate well and regained weight. TheVenezuelans, respectful of our nautical spirit, were eager to lend a hand, atool, or supplies. A shopping mall was a 25-minute walk away. Downtown PuntoFijo was a little further. There, on the black market, we exchanged dollars andColombian pesos for Venezuelan bolivares. Venezuelan society seemed to be aboisterous free economy weighted down by an egalitarian but inefficient layerof Hugo Chavez socialism. Many of the Club Nautico members were critical of thegovernment, but discreet. They talked politics with us just enough to revealbitterness, fatalism.

The repairs took ten days. The port gunwale was badlybroken at the leeboard pivot. The side deck had a split two feet long. Werolled Thurston over, gouged outdisintegrated fiberglass, applied new glass and epoxy in a series of lay-ups,and replaced broken wooden parts. We restored her integrity and water-tightnessand reduced her cosmetic scars to an acceptable level.

On December 3 we ruefully paid $270 for papers allowing usto sail to Puerto Cabello. How could they possibly charge so much? On the plusside, the Club Nautico charged nothing! We had used up our epoxy resin on thehull repair, so we went twenty miles out of our way to Aruba, where it could bebought.
The further north one goes in this area, the stronger thewind. Sure enough, we got down to six reefs in the main and four in the mizzen duringthe passage, which is about as reefed as she gets. We passed through a coralreef and followed a coastwise channel lined with cactus and palm trees. Toavoid paying the Venezuelan entry fees again, or anger the Venezuelanauthorities (scarier), we did not officially enter Aruba. We hid in a mangroveinlet and walked to a boating goods store, then took a bus downtown to get moreUS cash for use in Venezuela. Two cruise ships were in port. Tourists crowdedthe jewelry stores and casinos. The bathrooms were clean and functional! Arubais one of the Dutch Antilles. The multi-ethnic people spoke English, Spanish,and Dutch, but mostly Papimiento, a mixture of all the above.

At 2 AM on our second night in Aruba, while we wereanchored in a cove at the southeast tip, an Aruban coast guard boat pulledalongside. “Why haven´t you passed Immigration?” they asked. Before we couldanswer a mooring line got tangled in their propeller. They couldn´t get it out.Steve put on his trunks and mask, dove in, and sawed through the thick rope.Happy to be free they let us go.

The following day, as we finally rounded the ParaguanaPeninsula, Steve sang the following song, the tune of which should be obvious:
Venezuela here wecome, right back where we started from
You’re friendly, but deadly, we like it that way
Charged us too much money, but we‘re gonna stay, I tell ya
Venezuela here we come, because Aruba can’t be done
We are sailing into the sun
Venezuela here we come!

Ginny showed no pleasure in this, but she was equally gladto reach Adicora, a town with lovely old Spanish-Dutch buildings and calm waterthanks to a protective reef. We next attained La Vela, on the mainland. Sinceleaving Punto Fijo we had mostly sailed because our course was northeast, thensoutheast. From La Vela, however, we had to motor straight into the easterliesagain.
Starting in the pre-dawn we droned through long days. Thecoast was endless, empty of people, covered with low shrubbery, green becausethe rainy season wasn’t over yet. We overnighted in Aguide and Chichiriviche,then crossed the still and seemingly endless Gulfo Triste to Puerto Cabello. Wehad problems - a broken lazarette hatch, a broken shear pin, ignition problems,etc. - but on December 14 we limped into Puerto Cabello, our goal for so long.

Since leaving Bocas del Toro we had travelled 1,500nautical miles, far more per day than in previous phases. It was into the wind,but we had the motor, and the motivation. We had learned the importance ofavoiding winds over twenty knots and waves capable of drowning the motor.Within these constraints, the motorized Sea Pearl is efficient, reliable, andfun. We love the challenge of doing much with little means.
We are now getting a certain extremely difficult permit.Then we hope to transport Thurston tothe Rio Portuguesa, which connects with the Apure, Orinoco, Casiquiare, Negro,and Amazon rivers. If possible, our next country will be Brazil.

Take care - we love you all.
Steve and Ginny

Sapzurro, Colombia Mass Email

2011-10-26T15:52:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and family,

We last wrote to you from Bocas del Toro, Panama,where we rejoined Thurston after four months in the States.

For the first couple days we stayed inside the muggy inland sea we had brieflyexplored in our shakedown cruise. Then we sailed offshore to a big, rockyisland called Escudo de Veraguas. A scattering of shy or merely disinterested indigenousfamilies live there. As we anchored at dusk the wind picked up from the southand rocked us around all night.

The coastline after that offered little protection other than small rivermouths. Fortunately, the swells were small so we could enter anything with afoot of depth. The Isthmus of Panama isnarrow, tall, and heavily forested. Most of the villages have no communicationwith the outside world except by coastal boat. We stayed at a place calledCalovebora a couple days. It had two stores and a school. From the villagevarious small trails radiated out to coastal landholdings where the people haderected fences to keep cattle from falling off the seaside cliffs.

Our next stop was the Rio Belen, where Columbushad to abandon a ship on one of his voyages. We rowed upstream two miles beforesettling for the night. We came to native community consisting of six primitivehouses spread over some cleared hills. They had cattle, pigs, chickens, anddogs. They kept their dugouts in a little tributary ravine. With theirpermission we parked there also. The many curious children took advantage ofthe ravine’s steep banks and climbing trees to perch themselves overhead andcomment upon our every move. They gave us plantains to eat, and a strange wildfruit that is like a large bean with a woody husk. The edible part is a sugary whitefur around the hard black “peas”. We shared our cookies, and that’s a big dealfor us!

We also explored the Rio Chagres, a wild river with no sign of man along thebanks. Six miles up we reached Gatun Dam, where the river’s flow is impounded topower the locks in the Panama Canal. From thefoot of the dam we walked up to the edge of man-made Lake Gatun. To our left were the upper Gatun locks. The lake was fullof Atlantic-bound ships waiting to go through. The sea on the Caribbeanside was full of anchored ships waiting to transit to the Pacific.

We sailed past the Panama Canal entrance toPortobelo, a day’s travel away. Portobelo is the harbor in which the Spaniardsused to load their treasure fleets with silver and gold. The ancient fortsstill stand, their cupola-capped sentry booths intact, cannons still protrudingfrom the embrasures. The town is small but boasts the cathedral in which standsthe statue of the Black Christ, which many worship. Thirty-odd sailboats fromall over the world lay at anchor.

We stayed for six days getting things done, including a trip to Panama City. There ittook us hours to find a certain upholsterer to repair our awning. The buseswere crowded and slow due to traffic congestion. Hating taxis we got off in thegeneral area and looked on foot, but there were no street signs or addressnumbers. When we finally found the place indicated on the web site it turnedout that they had moved six years before! A good Samaritan phoned theupholsterer, who came and picked us up. We three drove all over gathering thecorrect cloth, thread, and needle. His shop was a converted house, very messy,in a residential area. At 9:00 PM he finished the repair, cleared off a coupleof couches for us sleep on, showed us how to lock the door, and left. In themorning, before anyone showed up for work, we walked to a nearby bus stop andstarted the grueling return to our boat.

Panamais 400 nautical miles west-to-east. Portobelo was the halfway point. From thereto Colombiawe passed through the San Blas Islands, land of the Kuna Indians. The coastlineremained mountainous and roadless. Some of the islands were hilly, othersmangrove-y. The sonorous howling of monkeys was never far distant. Birds mademany strange cries. The Kunas maintain a traditional lifestyle. Many of thewomen still dress in their colorful traditional garb. Their homes are of stickand thatch, their boats are motorless dugouts. They live in dense villages, notin scattered homes. In one bay we passed six small, low isles, all entirely urbanized,like a Kuna Venice.

We mostly slept undetected in out-of-the-way places, but one evening wepulled into a small river mouth a half mile from a village. All the males ofthe village immediately ran over to us. They spoke excitedly in Kuna amongthemselves, Spanish with us. One said we had violated their law by entering themouth. If we didn’t pay a fine of $50 the policianacional would be called. (Panamauses U.S.currency.) “No, a hundred dollars!” cried another. Finally the Autoridad Maxima arrived, the oldest man in the village. He was a small, slenderman with smooth, honey-colored skin and cataract-covered eyes. He wore fadedbrown slacks and an old Tyrolean hat with a little feather. Perhaps due to nearblindness it took him a while to get his bearings. Finally he rendered hisverdict. “One hundred fifty dollars!” Everyone laughed, for the people werejolly as well as mildly hostile.

Steve, after various defenses, hit on a proposal. “Okay, we will leave atonce and sleep in front of your village. Whoever wants to can come with us soyou know we won’t escape. In the morning the policia nacional can come and sort it out.”

This suggestion seemed to disappoint them, perhaps because they were moreinterested in money than getting the police involved. However, a ride in thisstrange and wonderful boat was not to be scoffed at, so five, including the Autoridad Maxima, climbed aboard. Thelatter sat on a side deck tapping this and that to see what it was made of. Theothers laughed and chattered. Steve rowed to the village where we anchored bowto shore, stern to sea. Fortunately there was only a mild surge. Steve wadedashore and interacted with the massed villagers. Fines were no longermentioned. The schoolteacher taught Steve the Kuna word for “alright:” “Neuti.”

“Neuti?” Steve asked the people tohis left. “Neuti?” he asked to hisright. “Neuti,” they said, the womensmiling shyly. They wore bright, hand-crafted clothing with leggings likestacked beads. We retired and left early in the morning before many were up, atthe advice of a village elder.

The wind was from the south. It came over the mountains in eddies and gusts,always too much wind or not enough. We now saw a new species of coastalfreighter: clunky wooden double-enders that come from Colombia. Afriendly mass of porpoises led us to a towering green mountain which tapered toa point called Cabo Tiburon. We had reached Colombia! Just past the cape was a steep-sidedcove with a village called Sapzurro catering to Colombian tourists.

The civil war is over; Colombiais safer now. The snorkeling and hiking are great! When walking the path fromthe anchorage to the village we have to be careful not to step on crabs or hugefrogs. The stars are bright at night. We have been here three days. Soon wewill sail across the opening to the Gulfof Uraba and continue to Cartagena.

The new outboard motor is working well. We are glad wedidn’t get one at first because it allowed us to develop our sailing skills andwork out bugs in the rowing station. But starting in Honduras we had felt the lack,because we increasingly encountered headwinds and a lack of harbors. Thurston rocks a lot in waves, so youcan’t just stop in the ocean and go to sleep! From here we face about 1500miles of upwind sailing, so in Bocas del Toro we installed the Honda 2HP. It hasbeen a challenge to find places to stow the gas tank, oil, funnel, etc. Ginnyis averse to the smell of gas so we have to wash with soap and wipe withvinegar everything that come into contact with gas.

We always sail on fair winds (3/4 of the time so far). Werow if there is no wind (1/8 of the time). We motor straight into headwinds(1/8 of the time). When we get to where we can sail to our destination withouttacking we kill the engine. We also have the option of motoring up rivers,which is fascinating. The motor has boosted our confidence. We choosedestinations that are further away, knowing that headwinds won’t thwart us. Wefeel like we are cheating, but it is fun to cover more ground.

When Steve was promoting ThreeYears in a 12-Foot Boat he was once guest in a radio talk show in which theother guest had just written a book about extreme outdoor challenges. Histhesis was that due to modern technology the only remaining challenges arethose in which the adventurer purposely makes it harder on himself, such as byclimbing without oxygen or sailing in a ridiculously small boat. Steveprotested that his situation was different. In his home life he is a minimalistand an ecologist. He doesn’t burn fossil fuels very much or live in a bighouse. He just carried that philosophy over into his adventuring. The motivefor doing something “the hard way” may be environmental or spiritual, notvanity.

We both honor the nature we are sailing through. We’re sorrywe have to start the motor now and then, and we feel like “wussies.” But we arehaving a great time!

Enjoy some new pictures at https://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/BackinPanama#
Take care - we love you all.
Steve and Ginny

Bocas del Toro, Panama - mass email

2011-10-01T15:26:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and family,

We last wrote to you from Stone Mountain, Georgiaat the end of our summer sojourn in the States. On September 7 we flew from Atlanta to Miami, then Panama City. For two dayswe rode buses, taxis, and boats getting ourselves and our seven items ofluggage back to Bocas del Toro, where Thurston awaited us. She lay onland in a marina and was in good shape. We installed the new motor mount, 2 HPoutboard motor, gas tank, sails, and scuppers to drain the side decks. We alsopainted and fixed various components.

It’s hot and buggy here, but we defend ourselves with an array of creams,cloths, and coils. To get to town we either paddle our inflatable kayak, take awater taxi, or walk around an intervening bay along the mangroves. There thesmell of briny ammonia is powerful, a product of decomposing vegetation.

For four days we cruised the nearby islands while trying the newinstallations. The winds were light so we quickly got in the ten hours of motortime specified prior to performing break-in maintenance. We navigated a complexpattern of low islands and hilly peninsulas, narrow passages and open sounds. Ourfavorite nocturnal tie-up was in a small river with a forest to one side and afield populated by Brahman cattle on the other. It rained all night, and thefreshwater streaming over and under us smelled clean after so much salt.

Wecircumnavigated Isla Cristobal, and on Isla Bastimentos finally saw sloths!One, presumably the mother, was 50 feet away in a tree. The baby was only sixfeet away with its back to us. They have long, coarse fur (an entire ecosystemwithin it!) and don’t move much. Ginny says they must be hyper-intelligentbecause they have so much time to think. An acquaintance here who once pickedup a baby (they “walk” on land sometimes!) and looked into its eyes feltotherwise. Steve isn’t taking sides, even though the sloth is Ginny’s totem. He thinks the connection is that they both excelat leisure, but he’s missing the point completely!

We have now debriefed from our shakedown cruise and are leaving in themorning. Our sailing permit says our next port of call is Portobelo, on the farside of the Panama Canal, but we will stop insmall bays and rivers along the way. Further east still lie the San Blas Islandsand the coasts of Colombiaand Venezuela.After a five-month intermission we are ready to resume our voyage.

Enjoy some new pictures at https://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/BackinPanama#

Take care - we love you all.

Love,
Steve and Ginny

September 6, 2011 Mass email - Stone Mtn, GA

2011-09-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and family,

We last wrote to you from Bremerton,having returned to Washingtonfor the summer. Since then we’ve done a lot of driving and a lot of boringerrands to get ready for the remainder of our voyage. We stayed at Steve’s parent’shouse, worked on our properties in Pacific and Snohomish, visited, and gatheredequipment needed to continue the voyage. After attending Steve’s high schoolreunion we drove south to Ginny’s mom’s and grandma’s house in Los Angeles and spent a week with them. Onthe way we also visited a half-sister and aunt of Ginny, whom she hadn‘t seensince she was little.

We then drove swiftly across southern California,Arizona, New Mexico,Texas (it took three scorching days to crossthis giant!), Louisiana, Mississippi,Alabama, and Florida. What a hot trip! We took a weekinstead of our usual month, camping each night. Our favorite spot was a nationalwildlife area just east of Las Cruces, New Mexico. We parked amongcactus on a high desert in the foothills of the Organ Mountains.The air was hot and still, the stars bright and close.

At the Sea Pearl factory near Tampa we picked up our boat trailer, newsails, and boat parts. Then we returned to Larry and Karen’s place in StoneMountain, near Atlanta.From Washington to Georgia our Isuzu pickup averaged32 miles per gallon! We will leave the P’up and boat trailer here. Tomorrow wefly from Atlanta to Miami,then to Panama City.There we will pick up our new 2hp outboard motor and take buses and boats backto Bocas del Toro, where Thurstonawaits.

Once we have installed various new equipment we plan to saileast along the coasts of Panama,Colombia, and Venezuela. FromTrinidad we will sail north through the Antilles and Bahamasto Georgia, completing ourcircumnavigation of the Caribbean.

Enjoy some new pictures at https://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/RoadTripUSA#

Take care - we love you all.

Love,

Steve and Ginny

July 6, 2011 Mass Email - Bremerton, WA

2011-07-06T16:26:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and family,

When we last wrote we had just returned to the U.S. for the summer. You may not find these domestic travels as interesting as our foreign ones, but at least you’ll know we’re still alive.

We had bought return-trip tickets for a four-month sojourn in the U.S. It seems like a long time, but we have a lot of ground to cover. After picking up our Isuzu pickup truck with a canopy over the back we spent a few days with fellow small-boat enthusiasts at Cedar Key, Florida, then with Larry and Karen at their home in Stone Mountain, Georgia. That’s where we had modified Thurston in preparation for the voyage. We next drove to St. Louis, where we stayed with Lena, Jesse and Ginny’s adopted niece Violet for a few days.

We drove west through Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska, dropping our canoe into a lake here, a stream there. (We had left it at Larry’s and were returning it home.) In Livingston County, Missouri, we went for a walk in the woods and came back with our legs covered in ticks. At a mental institution in St. Joseph we toured the Museum of Psychiatry! Near Denver we visited Ginny’s friends Stephen & Stephanie and their very snuggly pitbulls. Then we drove through range after range of forgotten mountains in Wyoming and Montana. At dusk we would follow a dusty road off the highway into the sage brush or pines until we found a nice place to camp. Sometimes we made fires. We followed the route of Lewis and Clark through the Bitterroots and across Lolo Pass. Near Orofino, Idaho, we visited fellow-sailor Steve P., whom we had met in Honduras. In Spokane Steve’s Uncle Dean put us up for a night. Then we were home!

What is home, however? Steve’s house in Pacific is occupied by renters. We have performed a lot of deferred maintenance there and stowed or retrieved various possessions. But we have been sleeping either in our truck or in spare rooms with various friends and relatives, mainly Mom and Dad Ladd in Bremerton, in the house Steve grew up in. George’s heart isn’t very good anymore but he enjoys life as much as ever. You should hear some of his WWII war stories! We are getting little things done, like renewing our drivers licenses and going to the dentist, and gathering equipment we will need back at the boat. But we also are hanging out a lot with our loved ones.

We are now half-way through our mid-voyage interlude. In August we will drive back to Georgia. In September we will fly back to our boat. We now plan to proceed east along the coasts of Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and Trinidad, then north through the Antilles and Bahamas to Georgia. We will probably return home in 2013, having completed a counter-clockwise circumnavigation of the Caribbean Sea. Maybe then we will be ready to settle down!

That’s it for now!

There are new photos in the album at https://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/RoadTripUSA#

Love,
Steve and Ginny

Cedar Key... Florida?

2011-05-08T16:21:00.000-07:00

5/8/11

Dear friends and family,

When we last wrote we were up a creek in Bluefields, Nicaragua. Mandingo and Skinny Man were squabbling over the $5 per day we were paying to stay there. Steve talked to them about sharing, and harmony was restored. We caught up on the articles we are writing for Small Craft Advisor magazine, and on March 31 got a permit from the Port Captain to continue south.

We sailed down a coast sprinkled with tall, rocky islands to Monkey Bay, a calm cove with a sandy beach. Here we found twenty or so rustic, elevated dwellings interspersed with trees from which hung nests like long, droopy sacks. Black birds with bright yellow tails inhabited these nests, in a bird community parallel to the human community. At one of the houses we found 27-year-old heavyweight boxer Evans Quinn, whom we had met in Bluefields. Evans was on a break between fights in such locales as Germany, Australia, and the U:S. He was hospitable to the point of inviting Steve to become his manager. “We’ll make millions when I become world champion,” he said. Steve declined, but graciously taught Evans a few moves (ha!). See the picture of Steve and Evans sparring.

Our next stop was Rio Maiz, which issues from a vast jungle wilderness. Its mouth contained a village and army post. The soldiers, being from the interior, spoke only Spanish. The locals spoke Creole English and subsisted by fishing and by cultivating small plots in the forest. When the local kids weren’t splashing in the river they were standing around Thurston with their torsos poking under our awning, watching us like we were their television set. Like many towns there was no electricity or running water. There were also no streets, but the palm-lined beach provided an endless promenade. The sand was dark grey and soft as powder.

The wind picked up overnight, so we stayed a second day. Our next refuge would be the Rio San Juan at the border with Costa Rica. We would need to stop there to get Nicaraguan exit stamps in our passports. Our chart showed a complicated pattern of mouths, channels, and lagoons in that delta. Google Earth’s satellite image, which we had saved onto our laptop in Bluefields, showed a different layout. Our acquaintances in Rio Maiz could only tell us that the San Juan mouth was more dangerous than the Rio Maiz, and that after entering we should turn right to reach the town.

Thus informed we accepted a tow out the mouth, which was much rougher now. We sailed to where the Rio San Juan’s mouth should have been per the GPS but saw no opening. We found a mouth a half mile further south and anchored outside the surf. Steve swam in. He found a small river which, upon reaching the shore, turned left, parallel to the beach. A sand spit separated the river from the ocean for 200 yards, then tapered to nothing as fresh water mixed with salt. The breakers were six feet tall. A squall came. Ginny, thrashing at anchor, waited anxiously. When Steve returned we decided to proceed to Costa Rica without exit stamps. We weighed anchor and sailed to a Nicaraguan military boat anchored a mile offshore to ask them about the bar of the Rio Colorado, ten miles south. Steve contacted them with our handheld VHF. A rough translation follows.

“Small sailboat to military boat.”

“Wait, let me connect you.”

Another voice: “Did you want to enter the mouth?”

“Yes, but it looks too dangerous.”

“A boat can tow you. It won’t be dangerous.”

“How much will it cost?”

“Nothing. It will be free.”

Steve conferred with Ginny. “Okay, we will take a tow.”

“A white launch will arrive soon.”

Ten minutes later a panga with two men arrived. We passed them our longest, heaviest line. They towed us not to the river mouth we had found, but to where the mouth was supposed to have been. There was no indication of an opening, just a steady line of surf and beach. Yet they were still towing us at high speed! At the last instant they cut throttle, veered left, and shot up over a breaker. The man in the bow flew six feet into the air then land heavily in the bottom of the boat. The motorman, throttling back up, swerved right then left again. We followed 200 feet behind. Suddenly a river mouth appeared! It was like the one Steve had swum to in that the river at its end ran parallel to the coast, separated from the ocean by a sand spit. The sand spit had blended in with the beach behind.

The river turned inland, widened, and teed into a linear lagoon. We turned right and stopped on the left bank at a facility with a dock. A short, white-skinned, grey-haired man stood smiling on the sandy bank.

“Was it you I talked to on the VHF?” asked Steve.

“Yes, welcome. My name is Gustavo.”

“Is this a military installation? Do you want to see our papers?”

“Oh no. This business belongs to Eden Pastora. We keep the river dredged.”

“I’ve heard that name . . .”

“Eden Pastora was Comandante Uno on the Sandinista side when Somoza was overthrown in 1970s. He then became a Contra leader against the Sandinistas in the 1980s. But now he is back in the Sandinista government.”

“Did you fight too?” asked Steve.

“Yes, I was a Somozista during the insurgency, then a Contra. I trained in Texas and Georgia. The CIA gave me weapons. In fact, I led the attack on this town, or the previous town, actually. After we burned Greytown the residents fled to Costa Rica, and when they returned they rebuilt here, four miles away.”

Eden Pastora’s installation lay at the entrance to San Juan del Norte, which we now explored. It consisted of an extensive grid of concrete walkways, often elevated due to the marshy terrain. The walkways accessed tidy new homes and government buildings. In the center was a cobble-paved street without cars (there being no roads into the town.) A baseball tournament was beginning. Rival teams were arriving by boat from surrounding communities. Each team wore a distinctive, colorful uniform.

At the tourist office we studied documents and maps regarding the Rio San Juan’s strange history. It drains Lago Nicaragua, the huge lake that occupies the center of this country. The river has always been key to the country’s trade and development. The Spanish founded San Juan del Norte in 1539 in a natural harbor at the river’s mouth and built forts along the river. In the 1700s various pirates, British soldiers, and Miskito Indians invaded. In the 1800s it was part of the Miskito Kingdom. In 1848 the British re-named San Juan del Norte “Greytown” for the governor of Jamaica. In 1849 it became the eastern terminus of a transport company owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt that carried travelers from the Atlantic to the Pacific side of Central America on their way to the California Gold Rush. They started building a trans-isthmus canal parallel to the river but the Panama Canal ended up getting built instead. In 1854 the U.S. Navy sloop Cyane bombarded and burned the town, supposedly in retaliation against actions against American citizens. In 1855 American soldier-of-fortune William Walker declared himself President of Nicaragua. After a series of wars in which Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica helped repel the invader, Walker died before a firing squad.

Around 1855 the river shifted most of its flow to a secondary mouth, the Rio Colorado, in Costa Rica. The San Juan mouth silted in. Greytown Harbor became a lake. Nicaragua no longer controlled a navigable route to the Atlantic. The mouth Steve had investigated by swimming was that of the Rio San Juan. It connects with the Rio Indio, whose mouth we had entered and on whose lagoon the new town sits. This whole issue is a source of a lot of bitterness for Nicaraguans. They blame Costa Rica for silting the river and stealing land on the border.

We went with Gustavo to see what remains of Greytown. A launch took us though narrow, hyacinth-clogged channels to a landing where men were unloading sand from a boat with shovels and buckets. Sentries allowed into the camp of an army battalion which had chosen to locate on the old town site. They were building a new airstrip. Next to the area being leveled for the runway were four cemeteries: British, Catholic, Masonic (Italians, Germans, and Eastern Europeans), and American. Most had died in the 1800s. Antique bottles and iron artifacts had been piled in heaps.

Gustavo was nostalgic yet secretive. “This is my first time back since the battle,” he whispered. “I don’t tell the people here about my involvement. We killed a hundred of them. We attacked from that direction,” he said pointing east.

We stopped beside a set of brick foundation posts. A sign said this had been the Catholic church. “That’s funny, we didn’t burn the church,” he said. But it too was now gone.

After three days we got our exit papers and arranged for a tow back out the mouth. The panga skipper towed us to the point of no return. He circled twice while studying the breakers. They were six feet tall. After a moment’s contemplation he powered seaward. Thurston slammed into the first breaker. Foam cascaded over the bow, drenching us. We crested another and another until we reached open sea, then we retrieved our line. We were alone again.

The swell was so high we decided not to try any of the mouths on the way to Puerto Limon, Costa Rica, seventy nautical miles away. We used a light, contrary wind to gain sea room. Rain hit. The wind picked up, ultimately requiring eight rotations of the main mast and six of the mizzen. Each reefing was a battle with flailing sails. The waves became precarious. Then the wind died. We rolled the sails back out in reverse sequence. We were becalmed yet the sea remained too disturbed to row. We sat for hours wishing we had stayed in port. After dark another squall hit. Clipped in now, we passed through the same stages of reef, de-reef, and doldrums in an endless cold downpour. Our worn-out rain gear no longer kept us dry. At 10:00 PM we deployed the sea anchor and went to bed.

We rowed most of the following day. The sea became glassy smooth but for the swells which lifted and dropped us ever few seconds. We took turns rowing to prevent blisters, broke for lunch, greased the oarlocks. A second night arrived. The sky was overcast but the lights of Limon were now visible. They slowly became distinguishable as ships, docks, and buildings. At 10:00 PM we rounded a point and tied to a buoy, exhausted and grateful. We were in Costa Rica! It was April 8.

In the morning we combed the waterfront until we found the port captain and the immigration and customs officials. A Holland America cruise ship was in port. Spanish and Creole English intermingled in the busy streets. The currency was called colones, of which 500 equaled a dollar!

We searched a small river at the head of the harbor for a more permanent mooring. Everyone told us to stay away from Cienegitas, the barrio on the banks of this mangrove estuary, but it was the only protected water near downtown. The houses on the banks were rotting and crooked. Techno-reggae blared from speakers. Vultures thrust their scaly heads into piles of garbage. We found a compound containing a house and boat yard. The owner agreed to let us stay for $5 per day. It took us three days to dry our gear. To get downtown we had to walk through dangerous slums, but the fruit and vegetable stands were well-stocked, allowing Steve to gorge on mangos!

On our forth day in Limon we took a bus to a place called Moin. There were no houses about, just a school and some docks. We had just crossed a bridge over a canal when we felt people tugging at our daypacks. Three teenage boys were robbing us! One held a long knife, the others held rocks. They toppled Steve and took his wallet and pack. Ginny fought back, screaming in rage, but her pack was soon wrested away also. They fled into the woods. We picked up makeshift weapons and foolishly followed, yelling. The brush emitted sounds of their escape then we heard splashes and saw them swimming across the river. Twenty yards in we found our gear. They had taken the $150 from Steve’s wallet and the digital camera and cell phone from our packs, but had left our passports and Ginny’s precious glasses. She had blood trickling down her face from a fingernail scratch received in the scuffle. We remembered that they were wet and barefoot, and that while walking over the bridge we had seen boys swimming in the canal. They must have promptly climbed the bank and snuck up behind us, their bare feet helping to muffle their footsteps.

Unwilling to let this ruin our stay in Costa Rica, we left Thurston at a safer boat yard next door to the Port Captain’s house and took a bus to San Jose. We relaxed in an air-conditioned room and explored this cosmopolitan capital which bursted with pastry shops. We stayed five days in San Jose and two days in nearby Cartago, a smaller town from which we took hikes in the mountains. Here, evidently, we were nearly robbed again. We were walking down a country road when a taxi cab stopped. Pointing to a car that had pulled over a hundred yards ahead, he said, “Those men are going to assault you! Get in, I won’t charge you anything. I saw one of them getting a gun ready, like this.” He made the motion of the slide being pulled back on a semi-auto pistol. We accepted a ride to our hotel, amazed at our vulnerability to robbery in this country. We decided we stood out too much, so we dyed Steve’s hair black and bought Ginny a tighter pair of pants to better blend in with the sexy styling of Costa Rican women. Being crime victims has made us younger!

We returned to Limon, spent a full day clearing out of Costa Rica, and on April 26 sailed the sixty miles to Bocas del Toro, Panama, a tourist town set within a vast archipelago. The sheltered waters were a treat after months of scanty refuge. The islands are a mix of mangrove and low hills resonant with howler monkeys. The town is a yacht haven. Many American boats had come via the Panama Canal or were going there. We saw people we’d met in Rio Dulce and the Bay Islands.

We had been considering returning to the States for the summer. Now Steve’s dad developed a heart problem. That clinched it. We pulled Thurston out of the water at a Bocas del Toro marina and bought round-trip tickets for a four-month stay in the U.S.

It took two days to travel by boat and bus to Panama City. On May 3 we flew to Miami. We drove a rental car to the Fort Meyers area, where we had stored our Isuzu truck, then drove north to the annual Cedar Key Small Boat Meet. Here we have met up with Larry Whited, Karen Prescott, and other friends from when we were working on Thurston. Next we drive back to Washington, with stops along the way.

It’s fun to be on the road again in our little truck. How nice America is! Clean, free bathrooms with hot water, soap, paper towels! Water fountains with refrigerated water! And Steve is enamored by the fact that one is always near a Wal-Mart, with its overwhelming selection of things we haven’t been able to find for so long and don’t really need anyway. Ginny still hates Wal-Mart, though she’s perfectly content to sleep in their parking lot when necessary.

That’s it for now!

There are more photos in the Nicaragua album:
https://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/Nicaragua#

And a new album with the rest:
https://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/CostaRicaPanamaUSRoadTrip

Love,

Steve and Ginny

2011-03-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and family,

You will recall that a little over a month ago we sailed from the Bay Islands back to the Honduras mainland. The passage was difficult. From Palacios, on the Rio Sico, we traveled by four-wheeler back to La Ceiba for a week, where we had our sails repaired, had a new sea anchor made, and gathered supplies. Our last email was from that time.

Our 120 days worth of visa was nearly expired and we had another 140 windward miles to go to get around Cabo Gracias a Dios. On February 28, 2011 we sailed out the mouth and east along the flat, uninhabited coast to Brus Lagoon. We crossed the mouth on a tailwind, surfing small waves, and landed on a beach next to a fishing camp made of tarps. The next day was harder, the wind being on the nose. Palm trees lined the low beach. We reached the mouth of the Rio Patuca at sunset. In the dimming light we saw sand bars and breaking waves. Fortunately several pangas (small motor launches) were working their nets nearby. One towed us across for five dollars worth of lempiras.

The river was brown, the foliage dark green. On the right bank was a town of wooden shacks. The people don’t seem to paint often, but when they do they use bright colors! Boardwalks spanned a couple of creeks bisecting the town. We pulled up in front of an open plot with a big cross in the middle. Many of the townspeople were gathered there, staring. A middle-aged man introduced himself as their elected leader. “We are indigenous people here,” he said, though he and many others appeared to have more African blood. “We speak Miskito language and Spanish too.” The man warned us that the town has no police or navy, the implication was clear as we were on a major river coming out of notorious drug trafficking territory. He ordered three men to watch over us during the night then left.

The lead watchman asked if we would give them a little something in the morning since they had to watch our boat. When Steve asked how much, the man replied “Whatever you feel is right,” There’s a phrase that always sends warning bells! Fevered discussion must have ensued during the night because at dawn he waded out to the boat. He cleared his throat and took a nervous yet respectful stance, “That will be one hundred dollars, please.” Steve gave him 200 lempiras and a lecture clearing up the common Central American misconception that $100 is not a lot of money to a gringo. Steve paid some more for a tow out the mouth, and we happily parted the dubious town of Patuca.

It was forty-five miles to the next refuge, the Barra de la Caratasca, inside which opening is the district capital, Puerto Lempira. Assuming we wouldn’t make it before dark we angled away from the coast to have adequate offing while we drifted until morning. But the wind had a favorable northern component. We became optimistic and angled for the opening. We arrived at dusk. It was a wide mouth with shipwrecks on both sides. We sailed to the back side of sandbar, still a quarter mile from land, and dropped the anchor. A campfire kindled on the other side of the mouth. We waded to the sand and scampered about a while, delighted to have found a spot so fresh and open, like being in open sea but with a magic circle of stillness around us. During the night the tide covered the sand, and hundreds of terns sang and whirled about, unmindful of the water that was ankle-deep to them.

In the morning we entered the lagoon. We passed by the Naval post for their inspection as a crowd of spotlessly dressed sailors were carrying two of their fellows on their shoulders to the end of the dock. They threw them in with many laughs. “Initiates,” the lieutenant said.

Puerto Lempira was eight miles away. The Laguna de Caratasca opened up on our right, no land visible on that horizon. The town had a long, broken dock and an extensive grid of dirt streets. Small freighters were unloading barrels of fuel into the water where they were rafted and pulled to shore. We anchored within wading distance and began our chores. We got laundry done, bought drinking water, and secured a clearance. Our next port would be Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua.

That night, while we lay at anchor in a lagoon behind the town, shooting started. Ginny looked out the window and saw red sparks flying through the air. For hours a battle raged somewhere nearby: machine guns, semi-auto fire, shotguns and grenades. “Must be army exercises,” said Steve as he fell back asleep. Ginny laid awake hoping our bodies were close enough to the water line not to be hit by stray bullets. In the morning shop-keepers complained that rival drug mafias had fought during the night, leaving three dead. The army and police had stayed out of it. This underscored what we had heard so often: that La Mosquitia is a major drug transshipment zone.

We had planned to follow the coast, but the Navy guys said to stay far offshore. Fortunately an intermittent arc of reefs and cayes wraps around Cabo Gracias a Dios, 140 miles long, forty miles offshore on average. We would follow it. The northwestern-most were the Cayos Vivorillos, thirty-five miles northeast of Barra de la Caratasca.

We spent a second night behind the beautiful sand spit. An hour before light we started sailing out the mouth, following our GPS route to avoid breakers. The wind died. Before we could deploy the oars a current carried us into the breakers on the northwest side of the bar. The bow shot up with each wave, foam splashed over the bow. Adrenalin gave Steve assistance as he pulled us out of danger.

The sun came up as Honduras receded behind us. For seven hours we rowed, sometimes with a little help from the sails. We traded off. The rower quickly became hot and tired. The person steering had to tug the awkward steering lines from an uncomfortable position just forward of the mizzen mast. Finally the breeze shifted and gathered force. We put the oars down and trimmed the sheets. Maybe we would make it.

“There, trees, eight miles away!” A current pulled us west, obliging us to pinch further right, into the wind. A ruined cement block building lay on the west corner of the island. We rounded that corner. Our tiny island and several others formed a crescent-shaped chain. Each was a low pile of coral cobbles overgrown with broad-leaf plants. Around the old building were huge stacks of wooden lobster traps. Two yachts lay at anchor in the calm water within the crescent. We anchored in rocks and welcomed the flies buzzing over from the traps. A deep sleep after the first of many exhausting days to come.

On March 7 we continued to the next island, called Cocorocuma on the chart, Kashikumy by the fishermen we found there. It would have been a peaceful spot if not for the noise of a generator they ran for the sole purpose of watching porno movies! It was only twenty miles from Vivorillos, but the wind and current were opposed, so it took eleven hours. The next day we reached Logwood Caye, which must have been washed away in a hurricane because only a drying coral reef remained. We anchored in ten feet beside the reef and were fortunate that the wind and waves were light that night.

March 9 was similar: a long crossing in hopes of an island to hide behind. Alas, Ëdinburgh Caye has also sunk beneath the waves. But enough daylight remained that we might reach Cayo Muerto. By this time we had followed the islands far enough that the bearings between them were southward, a fast beam reach. But the sun was sinking. We saw no land at eight miles away, nor at four. A sail off the port bow distracted us, then another, and another. What were other sailboats doing here? We forced ourselves to ignore them. Cayo Muerto, if it existed, might have coral around it.

Ginny spied a couple of stranded trees. We circled them. There was no island, no coral, just a shoal of eel grass several acres in extent. We didn’t mind that Cayo Muerto is dead, as its name implies, because it would be excellent for anchoring behind it.

In the morning a fleet of sailboats approached, the same we had seen the evening before. One drew up onto the shoal. It was a wooden double-ender, about thirty-six feet long, with a crew of fourteen young men and a couple boys. It had a short gnarly tree trunk mast, a gaffed mainsail, and a jib on a long boom. There was no deck or floor, just wooden thwarts and sloshing bilges. “Water, please,” they said, holding up a half empty gallon jug. We gave them two liters. Others came and likewise begged but our generosity had run out. They were nice but they made us nervous. We didn’t know anything about Nicaragua yet except the vague warnings we had been hearing for months.

We continued south between large mangrove islands. The weather was mild we decided to continue into the night then sleep adrift off Puerto Cabezas. At 10:00 PM, when ten miles from the mainland, we dropped the sails and paid out our new sea anchor, a large truncated cone made of canvas. It worked fine, but the weather deteriorated. Heavy rain came, twenty knots of wind, horrible motion. A norther had arrived. Sleep was impossible. A wave crashed through a side window, soaking the blanket. The GPS showed us to be drifting one way then another, indicating erratic currents.

After an endless night we sailed the final stretch to Puerto Cabezas. It was March 11. The town sat on a bluff. It had no harbor, just a long, exposed dock. A dozen boats were moored to its lee side with anchors astern to hold them steady. We followed suit. We climbed onto the dock. Steve had walked on a couple of the islands, but it was Ginny’s first step on land since Puerto Lempira. Naval personnel half heartedly searched Thurston, then a taxi took us to the immigration offices on the other end of town.

A serious official in a crisp white shirt with blue shoulder boards sat us down and perused our passports. “We have a problem,” he said. “You have already exceeded your ninety days allowance in the four countries of Central America. We can’t allow you into Nicaragua.” We had heard that Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador had agreed to limit tourist stays to ninety days within the four countries as a whole, but that it wasn’t being enforced. The Honduran officials had never mentioned it. We were legal as far as they were concerned, but this official discoursed on the seriousness of our situation for over an hour. We were violation! We could be arrested!

“But you can’t just send us back out to sea!” Steve protested. “We need food and water, and places to anchor at night until we reach Costa Rica!”. Finally he broached an alternative. They could allow us one month, but we would have to pay a fine of twenty cordobas each (about a dollar) for every day we had spent or would spend within the four countries minus the ninety days that should have been our maximum. The total, together with other papers, would cost $330. We had no choice, so we paid.

We couldn’t stand the thought of sleeping aboard tied to the dock because of the waves. Just getting on and off the boat was harrowing. It was hard to keep the bow from smashing into the dock when you pulled it close, and jumping aboard was like leaping off a fence onto a bucking bronco. So we found a ridiculously cheap hotel. Nothing worked and there was no lock on the door. There seemed to be no real restaurant in town, just bathroom-less comedores. But there were internet places and markets. We stayed two days. Late each night Steve took a taxi to check on Thurston. In walking down the dock he passed a long line of black plastic bundles. They proved to be crewmembers for the fishing smacks tied to the dock, the same kind of sailboat we had seen at Cayo Muerto. They had to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice, so they camped there in the open until the captain should order them aboard. When it rained they rolled up in a sheet of plastic. These wiry mestizo and Miskito fishermen were friendly to us as we loaded our provisions aboard on the morning of March 13.

We had researched the upcoming hideouts. Our zarpe was for Bluefields, the only other city on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. We easily made it that first day to the mouth of the Huahua. The water was brown, salty, tidal. The following day we reached Prinzapolka, where two small rivers join before flowing into the sea. The village was full of inquisitive Miskito-speaking children. All the wooden houses were accessed by a single U-shaped concrete walkway. The next town, La Barra del Rio Grande, also consisted of a single walkway, in this case straight, more open and spread out. The surrounding land was swamp. The residents strode the walkway in the evenings to socialize with their neighbors. They spoke Creole English, like in Belize, and listened to Country Western music. Brahma cattle wandered contentedly. The current and wind defied our exit in the morning so we treated ourselves to another day

The current was still contrary in the morning, so we paid for a tow out the mouth. We sailed that day to the Cayos Perlas, a cluster of islands ten miles offshore. We anchored in a lagoon behind Cayo Tungawarra, called Sandfly Cay in Creole. The island seemed uninhabited except for a young couple who were caretaking a fishing camp, the shark and lobster seasons being currently closed. They visited us in their canoe to beg food. Their employers had left them without adequate provisions, and they weren’t used to being away from Bluefields.

We knew from the book we’d read that Bluefields doesn’t have blue fields. It was named for Blauvelts, a Dutch settler in the time of English dominance. It was forty-four miles away. We covered it in eight hours. How wonderful to sail off the wind again! The first sign was a bleep on the horizon that grew to become a tall promontory at the end of a peninsula. This was El Bluff (silly name!). The city itself, we knew, is inside the lagoon, but we thought there might be a naval post we should report to. El Bluff housed a decrepit shipyard, a fleet of mothballed shrimp boats, a barge, and a couple of military craft. We pulled up to a passenger dock. Steve asked where he might find the naval post and was led to a building full of sailors in blue camouflage.

“I have a zarpe for Bluefields and am stopping to report in,” he said.

A short, officious man took charge. “This is El Bluff,” he said. “This capitania de puerto is separate. I’ll have to make you a new zarpe for Bluefields.”

Steve knew what that meant. “No way,” he protested. “I’ve already paid $25 for a zarpe to Bluefields. I just stopped to inquire.”

“You’ve come ashore. You’re under my jurisdiction now. You need a new zarpe.”

Steve snatched his zarpe from his hand and turned back toward the dock. “Give me an armed guard and search the boat if you want, but I’m not buying a new zarpe.”

The port captain was aghast. “Calm down,” he said. “Show me some respect!” But he called someone on his cell phone and ended up doing as Steve had suggested. He documented the search, had Steve sign this new waste of paper, and grumpily withdrew. We likewise departed as quickly as possible, unimpressed by El Bluff.

Bluefields was four miles away on the mainland side of a lagoon. The shore was studded with wrecks and pilings. The docks were busy and dangerous due to chop. We followed the shore to a small bay at the south end of town, where a maze of shacks on stilts extended out into the water. Garbage floated about. Large wooden canoes plied the chocolaty water. We delved deeper and found a creek. We laid the masts on deck and crouched to get under a bridge. The creek narrowed and meandered. Steve paddled, Ginny steered. Soon we were in hilly countryside. We came to a grassy bend where fiberglass launches had been pulled up for repair and painting. A house of corrugated steel sat on a nearby knoll.

We arranged to pay a little to the property owner, tied to a couple of trees and set up the awning. The bridge we had squeezed under was only fifteen minutes away on foot. Beyond that lay a small city with dirty paved streets sloping down to a waterfront from which the pedestrian is walled off by buildings. One of these was the public market, a smoke-smeared cavern full of ghastly yet sometimes intriguing sights and smells. Dogs and filthy children ran under foot, flies obscured the air. The cooks were grizzled women with headwraps, long dresses, and tired grins. Stall-keepers minded piles of yucca, pineapples, and shrimps. We ate lunch at a crude bench in the market and started doing research at an internet place.

Each day Steve gave the owner, Mandingo another 100-cordova ($5) bill. On day four another inhabitant of the boat yard, a skinny mestizo often seen whacking the grass with a machete approached. “I’m the caretaker here, not Mandingo,” he said. “Why is he getting the money, not me?”

“I thought Mandingo was the owner.” said Steve.

“Mandingo doesn’t even live here! My brother is the owner. I live in that shack! I’m the caretaker!”

“Can’t you work it out among yourselves?” Steve asked, but the guy seemed loath to approach Mandingo.

After lurking around the boat all the next day Skinny Man hurried up to Steve when we emerged, in obvious anguish. “I watch this place! You should pay me!”

“How should I know who to pay? I need to talk to your brother!”

“That’s him right there.” Skinny Man timidly indicated a chubby fellow sitting under a tree next to Mandingo.

Steve walked over. “Hello, I understand you own this place?”

“Welcome my friend! No, I don’t actually own this place, but I represent the owner. Can I help you?”

“There seems to be some confusion as to who I should pay the hundred cordovas per day to,” said Steve. “I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

“Tranquilo, that is not your problem. Let them work it out!”

“Yes, don’t worry. I will share it with him,” Mandingo assured, in the manner of a deviant school boy.

“Okay, great. But if you guys don’t mind, today I’ll give the money to the other guy.” Steve walked over and gave Skinny Man the bill. He smiled feebly.

If more transpires in this exciting drama we will inform you. In the meantime we have been asking ourselves some long-deferred questions. We’re not too worried about making it to Costa Rica or Panama. Those places are pretty close now. But where do we go after that? We’ve sailed ourselves into the leeward corner of the Caribbean Sea. We can’t very easily go east to Venezuela. Thurston is too small to sail west across the Pacific. Winds and currents don’t allow sailing north along the Pacific coast of Central America. It’s too soon to return the way we’ve come.

That leaves continuing south. Steve descended the Orinoco River during his three-year voyage. How about the Amazon this time? But to reach the headwaters we would have to transport Thurston across the Andes via Colombia, Ecuador, or Peru. After researching this we have concluded that a Colombian transit wouldn’t work at this time because the Colombian portion of the Amazon basin, which lies along their border with Ecuador, is the scene of a complex armed conflict involving narco-trafficking guerrillas, the government forces of the two countries, and 100,000 refugees. But Ecuador or Peru might work.

The next question is when? As Steve found in 1991, it’s foolish to sail south along the Pacific coast of Panama and Colombia during the rainy season, which will start in May. That region has the highest rainfall in the world, thirteen times as much as Seattle! The wind and current would be against us too. If we wait six months it will be the dry season again and the winds will be better. With all this time to kill maybe we should go home for the summer? But nothing is sure yet.

That’s it for now!

Love,
Steve and Ginny

New Photos in Honduras and Nicaragua albums:
https://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/Honduras#
https://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/Nicaragua#

2/23/11 Mass Email: Palacios, Rio Sico, Honduras

2011-02-23T10:47:00.000-08:00

Dear friends and family,

We last wrote you January 7, 2011 as we were about to leave La Ceiba. It was thirty miles from there to Roatan, largest of the Bay Islands. We had fine weather and a near-reaching wind. Our destination appeared and grew as we so like them to appear and grow on a wide crossing. By 2:00 P.M we were off the southwest tip of the island: ample green hills snug within an all-encompassing reef which forms a vertical wall only a hundred yards from the beach. We soon found a pass to a small cove where we tied to a piling. Steve donned mask and flippers. Sure enough, it sloped down through the cut into clear blue depths. The fish and corals were similar to those in Belize. Perfect wave protection and great snorkeling in the same spot!

We walked into Coxen Hole, the largest town. Continuous sidewalks! No litter! The people spoke English and Spanish equally. Traffic was light on the single coast-wise road, which in town was supplemented by a street running inland up a valley. The next town up was French Harbor, where we stayed several days in one of the many coves that serrate the coast, so different from the mainland’s smooth shoreline.

As we continued along Roatan’s forty-mile length the wind was on our nose. For once it didn’t matter because we could stop in any cove we chose. Curious as to the angle to the wind that Thurston was averaging, we analyzed our GPS track. The tacking angle made good was 120 degrees: sixty degrees to either side of windward. What this means is that when we want to go somewhere in the direction the wind is coming from, we have to travel twice as far to get there! We rowed part of the way via a canal paralleling the coast. It had been dug through mangrove, and was so narrow the tree canopy was closed overhead.

On January 15, 2011 we sailed from Roatan’s eastern tip through a ten-mile gap to the next major island, Guanaja. Two patterns of swells were running, one from the north, the other from southwest. Whenever the crests of the two patterns coincided the result was a strangely tall wave. To ride one of these up was to feel a quick acceleration and enjoy a brief good view. Coinciding troughs produced a momentary descent into a watery hole. The north breeze we’d been using died. Heavy rain clouds to the south indicated a cold front. A fierce southwest wind sprung up. We donned our safety harnesses and rotated the main mast eight times, the mizzen mast five times, reducing sail area by two thirds. Still we flew over that grotesquely uneven plain the color of polished steel, steel wool, and dirty wool. It was scary and unexpected, but we soon reached the shelter of Guanaja. Later we learned the area we passed is called “The Bogue” and is notorious for tumultuous seas.

The island of Guanaja is mountainous and undeveloped with the exception of a low off-lying caye covered with buildings, the outermost ones on pilings. This is the central oddity of Guanaja: that the tall main island is relatively untouched while six thousand people crowd into what they call “the Caye” or “el Cayo” in a population density equal to that of Hong Kong.

We continued a mile further to a small bight where half a dozen sailboats lay at anchor. We had heard much about Guanaja and looked forward to seeing familiar faces. Sure enough, as we sailed past a tall, stately bar-restaurant at the foot of the bight a cheer went up. We entered a small boat basin and were greeted by Texans Carl and Iris, friends from Isla Mujeres, and Karl (German) and Mary (Peruvian), whom we knew from the La Ceiba Shipyard. Owner Hansito also welcomed us, as did managers Claus and Annette, a fun-loving, hard-working couple who uprooted their family from Germany 15 years ago. They invited us to stay in the boat basin and use the covered barbecue area and water faucet. They, and Hans Pico, who owned an adjoining farm and waterfront bar, were from Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany. “The only tourists in Guanaja are the people on sailboats,” said Gar, an amiable Alaskan with a ring in his ear and a bandanna tied tightly around his head. “So the locals treat us great!” Gar had anchored there eleven years ago and never left. At one time or another all the expatriates unburdened themselves to us regarding their traumas during Hurricane Mitch, in 1998, when 180-knot winds plastered the island for two days, killing the forests and ripping up many of the houses. For years afterward everyone worked together to rebuild, forming deep bonds among themselves and with the locals. It was a tranquil island. The sunsets from Hansito’s bar were exquisite, with a light screen of tropical landscaping in the foreground, the island’s lush hills to the right, and the Caye in the middle, beside the sun.

Our new awning needed more work, so we rowed to the Caye to see a seamster. We tied up in a bedlam of broken boats and collapsed piers. There were no streets, only a maze of crooked concrete walkways accessing the dilapidated two-story homes that occupied every square foot of available space. The radial walkways tapered as they neared their dead ends at the island’s edge. Another house entry would appear as we turned, and turned again, until we found ourselves at the weather-stained entry to some final building on stilts. A network of narrow canals provided drainage and canoe parking. Private scenes presented themselves in doorways and tiny courts but the people didn’t seem to mind us. It was Thursday, the day the weekly supply ship comes. The public dock was piled with building supplies and consumer goods. Exuberant young men were carting boxes to the many dark shops, and shoppers were carrying bags of purchases to their homes, or to their boats, for many were from outlying communities.

One scorching day we tipped Thurston over on purpose, fully loaded this time, and found that she won’t turn all the way upside down and is easily righted by removing a mast or two. While in Guanaja we made more repairs and improvements to Thurston, went on hikes, and went sailing and picnicking with new friends.. Boats came and went. The days passed. The wind was generally from the ESE, no good for us. We summed up our financial records. Traveling aboard Thurston throughout calendar year 2010 had cost us $17,000. Affordable, but still too much, maybe we shouldn’t spend so much on cookies!

There was a birthday party for Annette. A fellow German played the accordion, Claus played bass, an islander played drums. They played American rock classics well into the night. We drank dark hefeweisen at the bar and listened to impassioned stories from Hans Pico. A former professional motorcycle racer and fisherman, now a farmer, father, and restaurateur, Hans has long tangles of straw-colored hair and a booming bass voice that seems to clash with his nurturing spirit. He tends horses, cattle, parrots, pigeons, chickens, ducks, dogs, and extensive gardens. His eighteen-year-old son, Hannes, cooks the world’s best pizzas for the customers in an outdoor, wood-fired oven. Having spent time on the Moskito Coast Hans advised us to follow certain interconnecting canals, to ask for certain people he knew, and to have the Indians make us bows and arrows from certain woods. In his shop he drilled holes in stainless steel for us and helped with a new aluminum GPS holder.

We liked Guanaja best of all the places we’d been. If we had found it later in our travels we may have settled down for good. A new cold front was forecast with north and northeast winds which would allow us to sail east so on February 14 we decided to leave at midnight for the mouth of the Rio Sico, sixty-five nautical miles ESE, on the far side of Cabo Camaron. We nervously slept a few hours. Then our alarm went off. Annette, still up, gave us loaf of home-made bread and a bottle of wine as a parting gift. Hans and Hannes brought a basket of oranges and dried mangoes from their farm. Hans’ dog Bobby whined and jumped around; even he didn’t want us to go! As we sailed off they blasted “Wish you were here” as a final goodbye. It was the friends we made in Guanaja which made us fall in love with it.

It was calm in the lee of the island’s mountains. We rowed into the harbor. The wind slowly began to reach us. We sailed around the reef and out to sea, steering 110 degrees, close-hauled. The moon shone for a couple hours, then set. Patches of stars shone here and there. The sea built as we left the island’s protection. Rain squalls hit. We reefed once, twice, a third time. It was a rougher, wetter passage than we had anticipated. Ginny couldn’t keep her eyes open, nor could she sleep. She curled on deck, cold, wet, nauseous.

By daybreak no land was visible. We had left at midnight hoping to arrive off the Rio Sico at noon. But the wind veered to east, then southeast, then died for two hours. It sprung up from the north again, only to repeat the sequence. We realized we could not make it before dark. We sat shivering in the pouring rain, wet through. Other fronts during our time in Guanaja had merely backed the wind to northeast. This was a full-fledged cold front more typical of early winter. Distant mountains were occasionally distinguishable from the heavy cloud banks.

When the sun went down the full moon was already at its zenith. It alternately shone and was hidden by black, fast-moving clouds. The sky was a fearful drama. A fifteen-knot north wind was blowing. By 8:30 PM we were twelve miles off the mouth of the Rio Sico.. Considering this adequate sea room we dropped sails and deployed the sea anchor. This checked our drift to .75 knots. We stripped off our wet raingear, put it in a plastic bag, and climbed into the cabin. Things were getting wet from condensation and a mysterious leak. We cuddled and warmed up as best we could, rocking with the waves.

Steve slept but Ginny kept her eye on the GPS. Around midnight our drift speed had increased to two knots. Steve got up to investigate. Our sea anchor had split open, so we dropped the regular anchor and fifty feet of rode to reduce our drift again. By the time the sun came up we were five miles off shore in a current with confused seas. An unpleasant sail brought us to the mouths of the Rio Sico, all of which were blocked by breaking waves.

A lobster dive boat was anchored a half mile outside one of the middle mouths. It was of a type familiar on this coast: about sixty feet long with canoes and bunks for a score of scuba-divers whose job is to find lobsters. The skipper said all the river mouths along the Moskito Coast were likely the same due to the norther. The owner lived in Palacios, the town inside this mouth. He would be coming and going because he was readying the Miss Kaidy, as she was named, for another trip out to the reefs around Cabo Gracias a Dios. We anchored nearby and slept until the wind and waves picked up too much. A wave washed over the boat. Steve stayed in the cockpit after that because Thurston is only capsize-proof if the hatch and all windows are shut tight and someone is outside ready to help her right.

At 1:30 Miss Kaidy ‘s owner came in a twenty-five-foot launch with twin 200-horse Yamaha outboards and five people aboard. With such power they could navigate the bar. They picked us up, their boat bouncing like crazy next to ours. Steve fell in the water trying to get in and Ginny smashed her knee. But we were relieved nonetheless. The launch collected some red snappers and lobster tails from the Miss Kaidy, then returned to the bar, riding in fast between breaking waves, overtaking some of them, picking an S-shaped course to stay in deep water. It was so easy for them. Once inside the bar they took us to a hotel where we were treated to many flea bites.

The village of Palacios is a single dirt track with docks on one side and houses and small shops on the other. Inland lay small fields and forests. We ate dinner on the covered porch of a house while it stormed. We worried about Thurston. We were afraid she’d end up on a beach smashed to bits and ransacked for all our meager possessions.

The next morning the launch took us back out to Thurston. She was still there! The tie on the mizzen sail had broken loose and the sail had flogged all night, ripping it and causing the battens to be lost. It was still too rough to tow her in so they took us back to town. Throughout the day Spanish- and Mosquito-speaking crew members assembled by the dock pertaining to Miss Kaidy. Some got so drunk they had to be lowered onto the launch like sacks of potatoes. One wanted to fight another, claiming he had said something improper to his woman. The others held them apart and laughed. That night the Miss Kaidy left. Thurston was out there by herself.

We made a deal with the owner and the following morning two of his employees took Steve out to tow Thurston in through the greatly lessened breakers. We moored bow-on-land at the naval post and spent the day restoring order. A gallon of fresh water had gathered in Thurston’s bilge, which is a lot for us. We haven’t yet figured out from where it all came. Things in the bins had stayed dry but slosh had reached various books, bedding, and clothing. We removed and dried out everything. Fortunately the navy guys didn’t seem to mind us taking over their base. Reasons were accumulating for us to return to La Ceiba: we needed a sea anchor, sail repairs, cash, etc. So we removed the sails, packed up, and arranged for someone to pick us up in the morning at our hotel.

The latter bears description. It is built of crudely assembled planks in a U-shape. The base of the U is over the river bank and the arms of the U are over the water. The whole building sits on pilings that shake whenever a wake hits them. It has ten small rooms opening onto a covered porch, also U-shaped, on the river side. An opening through the base of the U gives access to the porch. It has one semi-functional bathroom, no electricity, no sign, no office or reception. Nobody much cares what happens to it. The owner, who lives across the street, charged us the equivalent of $5 per night. Our room, on the left arm of the U, had a door that couldn’t be closed all the way on the porch side and a big window on the other. Late in our second night there someone tried to enter our room. Ginny yelled, “Hey!” and sat up. The person mumbled apologetically and walked away. He was probably just looking for a place to sleep.

It was starting to get light at 5:30 when someone called out to us from a boat below our room. We dropped from the porch into the boat. They picked up other passengers then crossed the estuary to a site where people and gear were being loaded into Japanese four-wheel-drive pickup trucks. We were placed in back of a Toyota Hilux along with three other adults, a child, a baby and much luggage. This is apparently the only way to get to civilization.

We proceeded along a track beside the beach. The sand was like brown sugar. The sea was brown close-by, blue-green further out. Where the track had been washed away we drove on the beach itself in spurts timed to avoid being hit by waves. The sea was broad and peaceful, the norther was finished. The land was level with hills behind, the vegetation was palms, sea grapes, and such.

We soon came to a minor river mouth. Via a pair of planks we drove up onto a ferry consisting of plastic drums with a plank frame around them. A launch with an outboard motor moved the ferry to the other side. This was the first of five river crossings. The ferries were all alike except that two required no motor, those estuaries having no current. In these cases the ferrymen pulled us across with a rope. The half dozen or so cars kept the ferries busy pulling to and fro. At one river we saw two young men herd four long-horned cattle across. The first man starting swimming while pulling the lead cow with a rope. The second man swam behind yelling and trying to hit the cow with a stick. The other beasts wandered off. Halfway across the lead cow turned around. The lead man was now towed back to where he had started. They cursed their cattle and whipped them some more, then tried again. The cattle milled in the water and wanted to return but the men, only their bobbing heads visible to us, splashed and slapped them in the right direction until they found land under their hooves and hauled themselves stupidly onto shore.

We changed cars twice for reasons unclear to us, we passengers being as little in control as were the cows. To avoid pain we kept shifting positions to the limited extent allowed us. When it started raining they pulled a tarp over us. The wind caused it to mold to our torsos and faces as we faced forward above the level of the cab. We rued not being able to see where we were going until Ginny noticed that there were tiny holes in the tarp. By placing the hole exactly over a pupil we could see ahead as if through a tiny tube! When a water drop plugged the hole we would tap the tarp to clear it.

In La Ceiba we took a cheap hotel room and started our chores. Sail and sea anchor repair, dentist, miscellaneous purchases and a visit to the hospital. A cut on Steve’s right index finger had became badly infected, but is healing nicely now. We took the weekend to visit Berti, the accordionist we met at Annette’s party, at his beautiful farm/bar/restaurant/hostel outside La Ceiba, then returned to the city for completion of our boring tasks. Thursday morning we plan to take the long trip back to Palacios and hopefully we’ll be exploring the lagoons by the weekend. Our Honduras visa will expire on the 5^th and by then we’ll have to be on the way to Nicaragua.

That’s it for now.

Love always,
Steve and Ginny

P.S.
See the new pictures in our current photo album: http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/Honduras#

Also, check out the Mar/Apr issue of Small Craft Advisor for the third in our series of articles! You can subscribe here: http://www.smallcraftadvisor.com or view the electronic issue.

January 7, 2011 Mass Email - La Ceiba, Honduras

2010-12-24T13:05:00.000-08:00

Dear friends and family,

We last wrote you from Lago Izabal, Guatemala. We haven’t gone far, but two months have lapsed. So here’s an update.

We sailed back to Livingston, where we cleared out of Guatemala. Then we began coasting along Honduras, which has very few harbors. The distance to the next is often too great to reach in a day and there is much uncertainty due to fickle winds and heavy swells which may or may not block entry into the various river mouths. On November 4, 2010 we entered the Rio Motagua, wilderness boundary between Guatemala and Honduras. Surf was breaking on the sand bars at the river mouth, but we found a channel deep enough for the swells to pass without toppling. Halfway in we jumped out to walk the boat through, the waves knocked us around trying to release Thurston from our grasp. Once inside we hid in a swampy side channel and slept among tall grasses growing in the water, near a tree in which white storks were roosting. Crabs, crickets, and cockroaches climbed aboard from the surrounding vegetation, requiring many minor evictions.

The next day we cut across a large bight toward Puerto Cortes. The wind slowly built up to 38 knots, as we later learned from the port authority. We had never experienced this much wind, and were a bit frightened. We rolled our sails until each was the smallest possible triangle, and still we shot through the bounding seas at over six knots. When we reached Puerto Cortes our worries weren’t over because it is unprotected in a west wind. We anchored near shore while deciding what to do. We decided an inlet visible to us was passable, but we were now unable to pull the anchor in against the wind. Waves were breaking over the bow and we were quite uncomfortable;. Finally Steve strained at the oars while Ginny pulled the line. Inch by inch we moved forward until the line was almost vertical, then Ginny tied off. The anchor had buried itself firmly into the bottom, but after ten minutes the lifting waves broke it loose. We sailed into the inlet, removed our masts, and rowed into a tiny creek within the naval base that occupies a portion of the harbor. We were so happy to be safe and comfortable! The naval personnel allowed us to leave our boat there for two days while we cleared into Honduras and waited for the storm to blow over. But they wouldn’t let us sleep aboard, so we sojourned at a $10-a-night hotel while the corrugated steel of nearby roofs rattled in the gale.

The next harbor was Laguna Diamante, in a remote national park thirty miles east of Puerto Cortes. The coast is generally low but here a sharp spur of mountain juts out into the ocean. Midway along this knife-like ridge was a fifty-yard-wide gap with seas breaking heavily on both sides. We shot through this opening and found ourselves in a large, calm lagoon bounded by the reverse slope of the ridge on one side and by flat mangrove on the other sides. There was no sign of people except an unoccupied thatched hut. We rested tranquilly and hiked the trails and beaches.

The next day the wind was still blowing hard through the opening, the seas still crashing heavily on the rocks to either side. This is one case where a motor would be nice! We sailed gingerly back out through the opening, straight into the wind, in series of short, nerve-wracking tacks. Then sailed around that mountainous cape to the town of Tela. A heavy swell was still running so it wasn’t possible to enter the little creek that debouches there. To get a good night’s sleep we anchored outside the surf and swam into town with a waterproof duffle bag containing clothes and necessities. Then we wandered the streets in our swimsuits, snorkels still wagging on the sides of our heads, and found a cheap hotel and an internet café. At the latter we studied again, via Google Earth, the many stream mouths which may or may not be safe to enter, depending on the swell.

Unfortunately there would be no sure thing before La Ceiba, forty miles away. The island of Utila was closer so we decided to go there first. The wind died yet the sea remained rough, a difficult condition in which to row. Then a favorable though constantly shifting wind sprang up. Night and heavy rain squalls closed around us before we could see the island. We sailed blind, watching our compass with our headlamps, studying the GPS. The rain found its way past our foul weather gear, and Ginny became cold. Finally we started seeing lights. They grew and clarified until around 10 PM we entered Utila’s harbor, turned right, and found protected shallow water within wading distance of land.

Utila is the westernmost of the Bay Islands, famous for their coral reef diving and unique social blend. Like Belize, the islands were settled by Englishmen. Their descendants still speak English, as do most of the tourists. The accents range from lilting Caribbean to flat American. Many Spanish and Garifuna-speaking Hondurans have also moved here, attracted by the tourism and fishing industries. The island has one town, occupying the foreshore of the half-moon bay in which we were anchored. The town is shaped like a new moon, slender and curved, because beyond a narrow strip of land the interior consists of mangrove swamps and steep hills. We stayed here five days, resting from our travails at sea. The weather remained cool and rainy. We explored the island’s rough dirt roads on foot, and snorkeled a coral wall with Captain John, a retired Bostonian sea captain who reminded us of a serious Mr. Bean.

Several problems with Thurston having come up, we asked Captain John where we might conduct some boat work. He recommended the La Ceiba Shipyard. So there we went, an easy twenty mile crossing. The mainland was a wall of steep, lushly forested mountains with a narrow plain facing the sea. The town sits at the mouth of a small river, but the harbor is a mile further to the east. We entered through a pair of jetties. Inside was a small anchorage and a complex of docks thronged by steel fishing boats. From this central body of water radiate several quickly-tapering mangrove creeks. The La Ceiba Shipyard occupies a peninsula between two such channels. We moored to one of their docks for a week, then had the shipyard workers move Thurston into their yard with their Travelift.

La Ceiba, population 130,000, grew up as headquarters for the Standard Fruit Company, and is the gateway via ferry to the Bay Islands. We went into town every two or three days by walking a mile-long dirt road then catching a bus which costs only 5 ½ lempiras, about $.30. The downtown is a large grid of busy streets with unremarkable architecture, a neglected central plaza with trees and the busts of heroes, and a crowded market district. In the coming seven weeks we walked all over it in search of things needed to advance our voyage. Here the pedestrian must take care because the sidewalks are discontinuous and encumbered with vendor stands and hazards such as utility vaults with missing lids. There are far too many taxis and they all honk at you far too much in hope that you will want a ride! Being stubborn penny-pinchers we cut a wide swath of crestfallen taxi drivers. We got to know the local hardware stores, supermarkets, and ATMs. After some disappointments we settled on a favorite restaurant, the Cobel, which efficiently serves the typical fare of meat, rice, beans, and fried plantains.

The shipyard has an office, chandlery, restrooms, and repair shops. On its flat gravel surface sit perhaps thirty commercial and recreational boats. Some are under repair, some in storage, some abandoned. Most activity centers around the big steel shrimpers and lobster boats. Welding torches are forever sparking and crackling, and much bottom paint is applied with rollers on long handles, for the boats are quite tall up on their blocks. The sailboats and power yachts sit further in back, where less work occurs. During our stay several American and Europe crews came and went, or returned from abroad to retrieve their problematic investments. For a shipyard is but a concentration of boating woes: Each vessel is a unique expression of its past and current owners’ dreams, all frustrated or at least postponed by dry rot, collision damage, mechanical failures, and defunct electrical systems. We made some friends, particularly Hal, who had bought a beautiful wooden pilot cutter from its distressed owner and lives aboard at the dock, and Mark, whose large, powerful catamaran was undergoing maintenance.

For us it was the usual story. We’d thought our last stint of boat work had earned us much uninterrupted sailing time. Alas, more deficiencies had surfaced. And the haul-out, by making Thurston easier to work on, induced us to undertake more jobs than we would have otherwise. Materials availability and shipping connections were good here, too.

Some debugging of the work we’d done in Georgia still remained and Thurston’s bottom required maintenance. Hundreds of tiny gel coat blisters had appeared, indicating water penetration. There were gashes from hitting rocks, and the bottom paint was worn off where we had grounded on beaches. We replaced our cushions and our awning too.

Finally, with help from Ginny’s mom we acquired new equipment. We bought things over the internet and had them shipped to Lois’ house in Los Angeles. She consolidated them and had them shipped to us in La Ceiba. Thus we obtained an inflatable kayak (our inflatable dinghy was too bulky), a single-sideband radio receiver for weather forecasts, charts of the coast from Honduras to Colombia, headlamps, shoes, and a backup handheld GPS. Mom Lois also included little gifts and decorations to enliven our Christmas, for we spent that holiday, as well as Thanksgiving and New Year’s, in our camp at the shipyard.

We called it Camp Drip. The bottom work required that we turn Thurston over, so we had to sleep in our tent, and the frequent rains necessitated shelter. So we moved Thurston under a huge, dilapidated catamaran. Here, on the gravel between the twin hulls, we had room for boat, tent, one makeshift table for cooking, another for chemicals, a pair of saw-horses, chunks of wood for sitting, and buckets for catching drips, the structure overhead being perforated with drain holes. (It was also so low that Steve had to walk around with his head cocked to one side.) Puddles formed during the rains and dissipated afterward. We learned where we could set things and where we couldn’t, where to walk and sit without getting showered. The roof dripped even when it wasn’t raining because the central portion of the catamaran had filled with water, the drains having partly clogged. We had a leaky swimming pool over our heads! One day Steve climbed up and poked the holes clear. It took a day for all the water to drain!

We gave an old radio to our daytime security guard. He reciprocated by bringing us fruit from a nearby tree. The size of large radishes and similarly colored but with a pit inside, they taste a bit like sour apples. José was an open and innocent young man, reverently friendly, with a cherubic face and bright eyes: Though the radio we’d given him can tune in stations from all around the world he was interested only in the local evangelist channel. He sang along to the Christian songs.

On Christmas Eve a small, white, long-haired dog showed up at Camp Drip. At first he was leery, but soon he adopted us. Initially depressed-seeming, under our care and feeding he flowered. Now rather than cowering he cheerfully trotted to and fro, following us everywhere and was eager to play, for he was quite young. Not wanting to name him, exactly, we called him Little Dawg. He slept outside our tent and barked at approaching strangers. It was hard to leave him, but we found him a good home with a fenced yard where he can run and play, free of the usual Honduran dog’s three foot leash.

Our work was done. On the night of January 6, 2011, five of us from the shipyard dinghyed across the channel to the more populous west side of the harbor. Here, among a cluster of shacks, was a sort of tiki bar / restaurant. Our friend Hal had provided the only decoration to date, a collection of country and signal flags that had come with his boat. Mark contributed a string of lights in the form of colorful little palm trees. Julio, the owner and often the only worker, was jubilant. We had come here many times. We had seen him wrestle a dead-beat into the street when he refused to leave, and cook fine meals with little means. He was a small, lithe man with bronze skin, a dramatic manner, and tousled graying hair. This night he played ballenato and meringue music on his stereo, and showed us how they dance such styles, simpering and grinning his funny V-shaped grin, lips slightly pursed. Three of us didn’t get what we had ordered, but the food and Salva Vida beer was all great and we didn’t care. Tomorrow we leave.

See the rest of our new pictures in our current photo album: http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/Honduras# and a few new ones in the prior Guatemala album: http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/Guatemalaaa!#

Also, check out the Jan/Feb issue of Small Craft Advisor for the second in our series of articles! You can subscribe here: http://www.smallcraftadvisor.com or view the electronic issue.

Hope you all have the most amazing Uncle Bill/Lena Fantastic/David Bowie birthday weekend ever, celebrate it like you never have before!

Love,
Ginny & Steve

October 30, 2010 Rio Dulce mass email

2010-10-30T12:12:00.000-07:00

Sorry we haven't done any blog updates in so long! Please accept this excessively long mass email as our apology:

10/30/10

Lago Izabal, Guatemala

Dear friends and family,

While cruising this huge freshwater lake in Guatemala we realized it’s been two months since we emailed you about our travels. So here’s an update.

You’ll recall that we got married on Caye Caulker then spent two weeks at Turneffe and Lighthouse Reefs, the atolls furthest out. Then we sailed to Belize City where those awful boys threw rocks at us from the bridge. From there we navigated south through Belize’s southern waters.

First some basic geography. The coast runs north and south. The land is flat and mangrove-edged. Lying immediately offshore is a shallow open channel five to ten miles wide. Then there is band of similar width containing dozens of small, flat islands. Many are only mangrove trees rising from water, not real land. These islands terminate at the barrier reef, which is a band of dead and/or living coral, beyond which is the deep Caribbean Sea. The sharp coral heads rise right up to the surface and the ocean swells break on them. It is possible to exit the reef only at certain passes.

We are most interested in the area near the barrier reef because the water is more clear there, for better snorkeling. So we travelled south through the islands, sometimes coming right up to the barrier reef and swimming in the passes. These are the supreme dive spots because they have lots of sea life and grand underwater scenery.

We can carry enough food and water for only two weeks, and the fruit and vegetables give out much sooner since we don’t have refrigeration. So we returned to the mainland at three places to reprovision.. The first place was Dangriga, also known as Stann Creek for the creek which debouches there.

We last wrote you from Dangriga on August 20. The place is relaxed and funky, but it has some of the same aggressiveness you find in Belize City. For example, one day we were walking to the library when an elderly Creole man raised his arms to us in an embracing gesture and proclaimed, “My brethren! I have coconuts for you!” We told him no thanks, nonetheless he scurried around gathering up machete and coconuts while expressing great love for us and chasing us down the street. We entered the library, ready to do some research or other. As we were sitting down he grandly entered with an opened coconut and held it in front of Steve’s face, saying, “Take it, take it!” Steve’s resistance faltered. It did smell good. He took a sip of the cool, faintly sweet coco water. “I’m sorry, no food or drink in the library,” said the librarians. With some foreboding, Steve went out to the porch, finished the coconut, and offered the man fifty Belizean cents. “Two dollah U.S.! Two dollah U.S!” The vendor screamed, no longer fraternal. Steve refused to pay any more and went back inside. The guy remained outside, ranting against us for some time. We bring this up because Dangriga seems to be the southern limit of the hard hustle zone. Nobody has hassled us that like since!

Getting out the mouth of Stann Creek was tough. There was a strong onshore wind. The mouth is too narrow to tack out with our sails, so we kept the masts down to lessen wind resistance and rowed over the bar. It was hard to make any progress; the boat kept wanting to turn sideways to the waves. We anchored to keep from being blown back onshore while raising the masts. The sea was rough. A wave broke over the boat, filling the cockpit. Steve stood with his legs wide apart on the foredeck. Ginny got low and gripped his belt from behind, forming a tripod. Steve hoisted the mast vertically in a series of upward shifts and dropped it into its socket. We repeated with the mizzen. Then we sailed hard into the wind until we reached the chain of islands.

The islands from Dangriga to Placencia were somewhat familiar to us from our time in Belize two years ago. Among the many islands we visited was Wee Wee Caye where Paul and Mary Shave (who we had met two years prior) operate a marine research center. Unlike other island developers they have retained the fringe of mangrove trees and use boardwalks to connect the docks with the buildings in the center of the island. Because of this it is possibly the nicest inhabited island in the area. At the time of our visit there was a group of researchers from Boston University who were investigating the dispersal patterns of reef fish larvae.

Belize’s southern waters differ from its northern waters in that they are deeper, often around sixty feet, but contain numerous, steep-sided near-islands (underwater hills). Their flat tops are within a few feet of the surface so they appear as shoals. The locals call them faros. Our theory is that the islands are merely faros which are slightly above rather than slightly below sea level, and that all are of coral origin. In effect, each is a tiny atoll. The southern waters are also different in that live coral is found around many of the islands and faros, not just out at the barrier reef.

The winds died, as they sometimes do in late summer. We spent days rowing in excruciating heat with the tarp up to block the sun. Steve’s itchy bumps, which we later realized was heat rash, got worse. We reached the barrier reef at the Silk Cayes, and snorkeled our usual one to two hours per day. Then park rangers told us we were in a marine reserve and would have to pay daily fees, so we left.

Next we restocked at the mainland village of Placencia, where we made friends with an amiable couple who allowed us use of their dock and took us to a Town Council meeting. Turns out council meetings are mind-numbingly boring wherever you go! After three days we went back out and followed the islands to their conclusion. We sailed to Ranguana Caye, on the barrier reef, and south along it to its southern terminus at the Sapodilla Cayes, which is a widely dispersed group twenty miles from the mainland. These are real islands with sand and coconut trees, not just swamp, which is refreshing! The winds were light, and it was hot twenty-four hours a day. For weeks the temperature was in the 90s by day, and in the 80s by night with no breeze to cool our sweat-drenched bodies.

How to anchor at night was a quandary. We needed shelter because Thurston rocks uncomfortably in even small waves. The islands, often no larger than a football field, provide wave protection from only one direction. In the night the wind usually changed direction, and there were often violent thunderstorms. The boat would rock and we would roll around like ragdolls in our 3’ x 8’ bed (Ginny with her head forward, Steve with his head aft, our legs overlapping).

The bugs further complicated our anchoring. We wanted to sleep with the bow nudged right onto the sand to get the most protection from the island, but that put us closer to the mosquitoes. Even anchored several hundred yards away they would find us, meaning more time in the cabin, which is protected by a mosquito net but which is hotter than the cockpit. On Carey Caye we anchored on a seemingly bug-free shore. Then the nightly lightening storm hit. When the rain stopped the no-see-ums came out. They are small enough to crawl through the mosquito net, so we had to keep mosquito coils (aka poison incense) burning. Rocking, heat, or insects often kept us awake at night, making this the grouchiest leg of our tour so far..

Punta Gorda was our final stop. Our ninety days worth of visa in Belize were nearly over. PG is an orderly little place, at the end of the paved road that runs south through Belize. The Mayans in the surrounding villages grow cocoa beans. We saw sacks full of them in a little warehouse which Steve weaseled us into by the magic words “My wife wants to see some chocolate!” We were offered a handful of the germinated, dried beans. They are the size of a thumb, with the texture of a date the taste of raw chocolate. They sell their entire output to Cadbury’s, so next time you eat a delicious Caramello think of us pawing your chocolate beans thousands of miles away!

The Mayans are capable of mayhem as well. At a Catholic revival meeting in the town square we heard references to “the lost children.” We found the story in the local paper. Five days before a Mayan brother and sister, both under ten, had been sent into town to sell limes and had never been seen again. A woman purporting to have soothsaying powers said the American couple with the center for the rescue of endangered crocodiles a few miles from town had fed them to their crocodiles!. A busload of armed villagers hurried to the croc farm. No one was around, but they found limes! So their burned the place down and slaughtered crocodiles. The woman had subsequently been arrested for “pretending to be a fortune-teller.”

We completed the tedious exit procedures and rowed south across Bahia Amatrique seventeen miles to Livingston, Guatemala. The sun glared on the flat sea as we took turns rowing. The blue mountains of Honduras and Guatemala grew closer. We rounded a headland and entered a wide, tropical river mouth, on the right side of which is Livingston, a town which is only accessible by boat.

Livingston is steep and lush. The waterfront a jumble of docks and buildings. We tied to iron bars jutting out from an abandoned factory and completed our paperwork for a ninety-day visa. The cultural mix is Latinos (Spanish speakers), Mayans, and Garifunas, (blacks with their own language.) The restaurants were cheaper than in Belize, typically something like 20 quetzales, or $2.50 US, for a poor man’s meal of egg or a bit of beef with beans, rice, and maybe some sweet plantain. The women wash their clothes in a charming municipal facility that consists of a roofed, ankle-deep pool with a double row of concrete scrubbing surfaces. Here the ladies enjoy coolness and each others’ company while doing their laundry, without polluting the river (or their wash) which is how it is normally done.

Livingston is at the mouth of the Rio Dulce, a name we’d being hearing about since our exploratory trip through Belize in 2008. Though not generally well-known, it is famous among yachtsmen as a hurricane hole and good place to store boats. Most of the boaters we’d met since leaving the States had been here or were going here. It is a short river. About seven miles separate it from El Golfete, the first lake. Then there’s another couple miles of river, about which is Lago Izabal, a lake twenty miles long and ten miles wide.

It took a day to sail and row up to El Golfete, straining against the current. The river flows through a deep, winding canyon with sheer, forest-draped walls. We passed boys in dugout canoes tugging hand lines. Upon reaching El Golfete the shoreline became a low, swampy forest. The next day we continued to the section of river between El Golfete and Lago Izabal. Here a highway crosses the river via a long bridge. The town of Rio Dulce is on the right, or northwest side.

We walked the town. It is small yet crowded: one long narrow street packed with ramshackle stores, cattle trucks, motorbikes, and Mayan women in traditional garb selling street food. One has to squeeze through all this to make any headway. Meanwhile one’s nose it accosted by dust, diesel exhaust, and the smell of many braziers cooking chicken and other street food. At the end of town the highway continues north through the vast forests of eastern Guatemala, eventually reaching Flores and the ruins of Tikal. In the other direction the highway connects to Honduras and the higher, more populous regions of Guatemala.

The mainly North American and European yachts in the Rio Dulce are housed at a dozen or so marinas between El Golfete and Lago Izabal. Most of their owners leave them in storage there, some live aboard. We tried saving money by staying at a public dock under the bridge, but someone stole our anchor, chain, and 200 feet of good nylon braid.

Needing better security, we opted for La Joya del Rio Marina, on the southeast side of the bridge. It consists of rough plank docks and a large common area consisting of a roofed, wooden deck, wall-less except for bathrooms, kitchen, and a few shops and cubby holes. The place had once been a hotel, restaurant, and bar in addition to a marina. It is built entirely over water, the surrounding land being forested swamp. The family who runs the marina, the dozen or so live-aboards and the Guatemalans who work for the marina or hired themselves out for boat maintenance form a small community which was quick to welcome us. Steve set up a mosquito net over a chair in the common area and often had the place to himself for reading after dinner. Though the others got to town via their dinghys, we got there by wading through a swamp, crossing a field, cutting through a school yard, and walking across the half-mile long bridge. It was always a contrast to go from the semi-deserted marina to the over-crowded, noisy town.

The marina was a good place to get things done. We found a new anchor and related gear. We re-varnished and painted, including some new green enamel accents. The rowing seat broke, so we made a new one out of epoxy, fiberglass, and aluminum plate. The mosquito net that covers the cabin door tore. We made one of those too. We’ve lived aboard for ten months, and our boat work has slowly shifted from de-bugging to maintenance and minor improvements.

Steve decided to ship his accordion home and buy a guitar. The accordion was too hard to get in and out of its storage place and there was no comfortable position to play it onboard. He’d never played the guitar but didn’t mind learning. So we took a bus to Guatemala City. It took almost six hours yet cost only $7.50 each. We stayed at a good $14-a-night hotel in the historic district and walked and bussed all over the city checking shipping agencies and music stores. We also got new binoculars, T-shirts, and shoes.

We enjoyed Guatemala City. The weather was refreshingly cool. There is fine old architecture around the Plaza Mayor, which is like a smaller version of Mexico City’s Socalo. Vendors crowd the many market districts. There is a vast auto repair district, a jewelry district, even an extensive bridal gown district, with storefront after storefront of mannequins wearing gaudy nuptial clothing. It was so cheap we treated ourselves by going out to movies and drinking beer in a Chinese restaurant that doubles as a low-class sports bar. We were there a week, and felt we got to know the city fairly well.

Back at Rio Dulce we finished up some boat projects, then cruised Lago Izabal for ten days. There was little wind, so we rowed west along the north shore of the lake to the town of El Estor. Forested mountains ring the lake, yet the banks are often low and wet. We camped in little coves and creeks, and explored the mouths of the Rio Polochic, where howler monkeys were visible, and certainly audible, in the big trees along the swampy banks. We visited a Mayan village where the people live in plank-and-thatch houses. Everyone was at the soccer field by the church, where a match was underway. The players wore standard team uniforms. The women wore full, shoulder-strap blouses and long skirts of intricate hand-woven fabric. The disproportionately numerous toddlers wore nothing at all!

Now we’ve wrapped that up and are ready to proceed toward Honduras, whose coast runs for about four hundred miles east into the prevailing trade winds. In anticipation we shopped for motors and were even delivered a motor mount as a wedding present from Marine Concepts (the manufacturer of Sea Pearl boats!) Our emotional and mental block against the hassles of a motor has yet to crumble however, so we’ve spent a lot of time studying the maps to determine the longest distance we may have to go in a day. Turns out for the first half of the country at least there are plenty of little river mouths we can duck into for the night. So, we’ll continue on as we are! We look forward to exploring Honduras and the Bay Islands and plan to leave here on Monday, our four month anniversary and 12 days before our three year escapiversary!

There are lots of new pictures in our current photo album: http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/Guatemalaaa# plus some you haven’t seen yet in the prior Belize album: http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/BelizeFinally# (starting with “mangrove madness.”)

Also, check out the Nov/Dec issue of Small Craft Advisor for the first in our series of articles! You can subscribe here: http://www.smallcraftadvisor.com or view the electronic issue.

Hope you’re all doing splendidly and sorry about the length of this update. We sort of promise to try and do them more often with less length!

Love,

Ginny & Steve

August 20, 2010: Dangriga mass email

2010-08-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

You last heard from us just after we’d arrived in Belize two months ago. We’re about half way down the Belize coast now. Much has happened.

We visited our Oregonian friends in Corozal, in a big bay on the Mexican border. Then we sailed back out to the cayes (Belizean for islands, pronounced “keys”). We got to Caye Caulker four days in advance of our wedding and started preparing. We parked our boat on a shallow shore at the south end of the island, where our people had reserved small rental houses. We slept aboard except for when Tropical Storm Alex hit. That night we took the precaution of staying in a cheap bungalow. High winds blew all night and the sea level rose. Coconut tree branches broke off and flew around. In the morning all was peaceful again.

Ginny’s friends Lena, Jesse, and baby Violet Fantastic arrived first. They had flown to Belize City the day of Alex and had to hole up there. The next day they came to Caye Caulker by “water taxi.” Then Steve’s cousin Kristy and her husband Dave came and occupied a second house. Ginny’s mom Lois came, then her sister Carley from Seattle. They moved into a cabin. Steve’s mom, dad, and sister (Bonnie, George, and Susan) stayed in a house on the same property with nice gardens around it. Finally Steve’s brother Mike and nephews Brian and Kaare arrived. They slept here and there in hammocks. Everyone was within a block of each other. All had come from the Puget Sound area except the Fantastics came from St. Louis and Lois came from Los Angeles. We had many delicious dinners together. Some explored Mayan ruins, others went snorkeling or sailing.

On July 1 we had the wedding outside in the garden by the main house. The ceremony consisted of short performances on the themes of Exploration, Euphoria, Insanity, Love, and Marriage. Lena and Jesse juggled, Kaare hacky-sacked, Kristy sang, George and Steve played accordion, and Lois was Master of Ceremonies. Carley, an ordained minister, put on an episcopal robe and tied our knot. Ginny and Steve took care of paperwork to make it legal. We’re married! It’s fun and has at least doubled the number of obnoxious nicknames Ginny has for Steve (Hubs, Hubster, Hubasauraus, Hubs-o-rama, etc.)

Everyone stayed about 10 days. With each departure we reluctantly went to the water taxi landing or the airstrip again to see them off. Then it was just Steve and Ginny again.

We stayed at Caye Caulker another couple weeks repairing and modifying the boat (our honeymoon!). For example, we made a sun cover for dinghy, mounted our handheld GPS where we could see when we’re sailing, and painted the cabin top white so it wouldn’t get so hot inside. Then we provisioned for a major side trip: Turneffe Reef and Lighthouse Reef.

We first decided to cruise in the Caribbean when we drove to Belize and found that we needed a boat to get to the outer islands, where the snorkeling is best. The outermost islands are at Turneffe Reef and Lighthouse Reef. They’re hard to get to without a motor because you have to sail into the prevailing east wind.

A hard day’s sail took us beyond the horizon to Turneffe Reef, a thirty-mile-long galaxy of mangrove islands and lagoons encased in an oval-shaped barrier reef. Like Chinchorro, Lighthouse, and Glover Reefs, it is an atoll. We worked our way up to the west side of the atoll, swimming in the clear water over the coral heads and anchoring in protected waters at night. When storms hit we holed up for two days on the northernmost caye, quite alone.

From here we sailed another twenty miles east to Lighthouse Reef. We anchored off an island at the south end and swam along the vertical wall that hems the reef there. It appears to go straight down for hundreds of feet! Then we sailed up to the Blue Hole, a cenote (collapsed limestone cave) in the middle of the reef.which can be seen from outerspace. Unlike cenotes on land, this one is entirely submerged, but its rim is only a couple feet under water. We waited until no other boats were around, then entered through a little cut and tied to a buoy. Without oxygen tanks we couldn’t plumb its stalagmited depths, but we swam the hole’s perfectly round circumference, and dove deep enough to note that its rim, at about forty feet, curls back in a sharp overhang. The hole is an aperture in the roof of a flooded cavern over 400 feet deep!

Most of the people we saw at the reefs were lobster divers. They use gaff-rigged wooden sloops built in the village of Sarteneja, near Corozal. Each Sarteneja boat packs in ten or so young men. Each diver has a tiny dugout canoe. He paddles to a rock under which he thinks lobster might be hiding then ties a line from the canoe around his waist and dives in. Spanish is their first language but most speak English too. We anchored alongside Sarteneja boats for several nights and enjoyed their company. They especially congregate at Sandbore Caye, at the northern tip of Lighthouse Reef. The place had almost no bugs and great reefs around it: massive corals of all kinds piled together, dead and living, in mind-boggling formations. We rated Sandbore Caye among the highest of the places we’ve stayed. It also has a permanent population: two elderly brothers named Young, caretakers for the great lighthouse which gives the reef its name.

Lighthouse Reef is similar to Chinchorro Bank in that it is mostly shallow water with a few small islands. In addition to the barrier reef all around, the enclosed lagoon contains hundreds of “patch reefs.” As at Chinchorro the patch reefs grow from a typical depth of twenty feet. But whereas the Chinchorro patches have plenty of water over them, those inside Lighthouse Reef grow to within inches of the surface. This makes them hazardous. Thurston draws less than a foot, but that’s enough for those rocks to scratch her. Once we sailed up onto a patch reef, got stuck, and had to fend ourselves off. We learned to only navigate such areas when the sun is high and the sky clear, in which case they show up as a chocolate brown surrounded by turquoise.

After a week on Lighthouse Reef we sailed back to Turneffe Reef, appreciating now a major distinction. Turneffe is different from Chinchorro and Lighthouse in that its interior consists mostly of mangrove and soft-bottom, non-coralized lagoons. We got around via these shallow, inter-connected waterways. But all three atolls are alike in that their eastern barriers are broad, shallow reefs with occasional exposed rock. The swimming is best where the barrier is pierced by a cut, allowing one to access the depths within the cut and to seaward. The three are also alike in that their western barriers are usually about ten feet deep, so you can swim or boat over them at will, and, once you reach the edge the bottom drops off steeply! The great wall dives seem to be on the west sides. Visibility was usually a respectable sixty or seventy feet. We saw the usual large rays, turtles, sharks, etc. and many smaller organisms, sometimes strange to us. Imagine, for example, a large, bright orange “caterpillar” (probably a sea slug) that crawls about on the coral looking for things to eat. Or little fishes with clear bodies and yellow heads that pop up out of holes then go back in, tail first! We cruised to the south tip of Turneffe Reef then up its west coast and back across the big water to the nearshore islands and mainland. We needed to provision again.

On August 10 we sailed into the narrow harbor in downtown Belize City. The city is built around Haulover Creek, one of the mouths of the Belize River. Here, just downstream of the famous Swing Bridge, so named because it is designed to swing open horizontally, a hundred or so poles have been driven into the river bottom. The Sartenja boats tie bow and stern to these poles. We tied up where there was a vacancy and pumped up the dinghy. Thus began four days in that much-maligned metropolis of 70,000 souls, by far Belize’s largest city.

There is something Old World about Belize City. The streets are narrow and laid out in conformance with a system of concrete drainage canals. The buildings are faintly Victorian. But Belize City is dilapidated in a way one would associate more with Haiti than with Europe.

We were in its mostly bustling quarter. The sea men and roughest characters congregated by the Swing Bridge. Beggars hit on us. Every few paces another fellow would fall in alongside us with exuberant declarations of brotherhood. We tried to be friendly and firm in the right mixture. But most only wanted money. We didn’t want guides or drugs or people to watch our boat. We just wanted to run around, explore and tick off chores in preparation for our next foray into the islands.

We ran into a fellow sailor named Kirk, from Texas. We’d been bumping into him on and off since Puerto Aventuras. His sailboat and ours seem to be the only cruisers still on this coast now that it’s hurricane season. Unfortunately, he’d run aground outside the city. It took him two weeks and help from a tug to finally get off. Then the Belizean authorities charged him with “not reporting a maritime incident” and similar far-fetched crimes. The potential fines are enormous! We regret to say that Kirk remains hostage to the legal system. He is staying at the Radisson Hotel, so his suffering is more spiritual and financial than physical. If you pray, please pray for Kirk! He’s a good guy.

Our last day at the Swing Bridge was marred by young hoodlums, possibly the same kids who had been sneaking aboard and pawing through our stuff while we were gone. On this occasion they were by the bridge looking for mischief while we sat peacefully on our boat. They said naughty words. Upon getting a reaction from Steve, they started pelting him with fish guts and rocks! We hid inside the cabin until they drifted off. Fleeing the wrath of a ten-year-old boy, how humiliating! But what else could we do? Will somebody please beat them up for us?

From Belize City our pattern will be three loops out to the barrier reef, then south along it from island to island, then back to a mainland town for provisions. The provisioning towns will be Dangriga (where we now are), Placencia, and Punta Gorda. We have less than three weeks of visa left for Belize, so we need to make progress toward Guatemala.

Steve is battling an itchy rash on his back and arms. Ginny suffers from the heat. Belize is a silly place to be in August! But mourn us not. We’re in fine trim from all our swimming, walking, and rowing, and in excellent basic health. Enjoy the pictures, and keep some adventure in your lives.

(photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/BelizeFinally)

Steve and Ginny, Dangriga (Stann Creek), Belize, 8/20/10

July 17, 2010 - Caye Caulker

2010-07-17T11:54:00.000-07:00

Well we really got married. Hopefully this doesn't mean we'll have to start acting grown up or responsible. We had a somewhat unique ceremony here on Caye Caulker in the yard of Hummingbird Hideaway, the property our parents rented for their stay on the island. The owner was really nice and helped us out with everything.

The ceremony was split into 5 acts, each representing a stage on the path to marriage. We asked our friends and family to participate, doing whatever they felt like to make the ceremony more interesting. Steve's cousin Kristy did Act 1: Exploration. She made a wonderful speech which made everyone teary eyed. Ginny's mom Lois did Act 2: Euphoria. She had us all blowing bubbles and popping fire crackers. Act 3 was Insanity. Ginny's friends, the Fantastics, contact juggled and eyeball juggled. Steve's nephew made everyone hackysack which was probably pretty funny to watch. Act 4 was Love. Steve's father sang some beautiful love songs, accompanied by Kristy for two of them. Act 5, Marriage, was the best one! Ginny's sister orated. Afterward we made our own little speech then bicycled off with clanging cans behind to another house where we had a feast of delicious breakfast foods.

It was definitely the best wedding which has ever occurred in all of time.

Twelve of our family and friends were able to attend. Way more than we ever expected! Everyone stayed about a week and we ran around a lot trying to get in as much time with everyone as possible. They left too soon! Now we've spent the last week or so on our honeymoon, also known as "boat work time"! Lots of little repairs and improvements needed, as per usual.

A couple days ago we were trying to sail to San Pedro in almost no wind to renew our visas when we saw someone waving from an anchored sailboat. A friend we had met in Mexico! He was motoring to Belize City and we decided to join him and do our paperwork there. How different it is to be on a 35 foot boat with a keel! It was a great trip, but we all got over confident near the city and stopped watching out for shallows. We ran aground and could not get off! A couple miles from the city we were able to dinghy in and get all our chores done, but when we took the water taxi back to Caye Caulker we felt terrible to see he was still stuck. Hopefully he's free by now.

We're back in Caye Caulker, with a couple more items on the "to do" list, then we plan on checking out the atolls. So much left to see in Belize!

More photos may be found in our Current Photo Album.

June 23, 2010 - Corozal, Belize

2010-06-22T09:19:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

Last time you heard from us we had just checked into customs in Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Isla Mujeres is a slender, three-mile-long touristy island with nice beaches. After Cuba the stores seemed to burst with fruits, juices, and cookies! Internet was everywhere. The main road running the length of the island buzzed with cheerful locals on scooters, wearing colorful plastic helmets, but it also carried countless golf carts loaded with sunburned North Americans in beach attire.

Isla Mujeres is also a yachting center. Twenty or so cruising sailboats remained in the harbor and in the connecting lagoon, but they were thinning out. Every morning the cruisers conferred by VHF, just like in Marathon. Each day more sailed north to Texas or Florida or south to Rio Dulce, Guatemala. Finally they canceled the net due to lack of participation. We tried tying to pilings where we could wade ashore but ended up anchored in the harbor for better breeze and privacy. Our neighbors at anchor became friends. We learned where to buy supplies and get things made out of metal. It was a good place for more boat work. We replaced the second of our flexible solar panels with a hefty 20 watt panel which provides more power than we know what to do with. We also made a new tiller tamer and spent an inordinate amount of time ordering replacement items on the internet for our parents to bring down to our wedding.

We had finally escaped winter. The 90-degree heat was bearable only due to the constant trade winds. We wore light-colored clothes and Keens sandals. Our tarp kept out sun as well as rain. We no longer needed a cover over us at night. Isla Mujeres is across the bay from Cancun, so it was an easy sail for us to return to our old hangouts in Puerto Juarez and see our friends Mark and Javier. We spent about three weeks in the Isla Mujeres/Cancun area, then began our descent South.

We started by sailing through the large mangrove lagoon that lies behind the hotel zone. We came out south of the hotels, behind the coral reef. The following days we sailed south, sometimes in front of the reef, sometimes behind it. There are gaps in the reef, but in a larger sense it is continuous. The beach was endlessly lovely. The forest behind was flat and bug-infested. Houses and tourist facilities dominated the coast but miles of undeveloped shoreline still remained.

In Puerto Morelos we spent a night at anchor in the lee of a wrecked ferry hoping for extra shelter from the waves, the reef being a highly imperfect breakwater. It didn´t help much. At another place we pitched our tent on the beach to avoid the bouncy anchorage, and stayed three days refinishing our oars. We passed the a mega-tourism center of Playa del Carmen without stopping and continued along a coast of rough, low rock with sandy bays. We slept in reef-protected coves and snorkeled amid surf-spumed coral and erosion-sculpted limestone. Mangroves often fringed the shore, their cloven roots dipping into the water like sharp, slimy fingers. In one cove Steve found the mouth of a subterranean river: cold, blurry water that filtered up through a bed of sharp rocks to lie in a layer over the heavier salt water.

Needing supplies, we entered Puerto Aventuras, a tourist resort the size of a city, with thousands of rooms and a large marina. The locals servicing the complex made up a large community in their own right; their homes and stores were on the other side of the coastal highway. We tied to a dock across from pens where tourists were paying to “swim” with dolfins and mannatees, but we never paid anything because the dockmaster´s office was closed. We got our supplies from the cheaper stores across the highway. In our wanderings Ginny found a baby great-tailed grackle (a sort of crow with a raucous whistle) in the street being batted about by a pair of cats. She brought it to the boat, made it a nest in the cabin, and fed it sugar-water from an eyedropper.

At Tulum we sailed up to the beautiful Mayan ruins, on a cliff overlooking the sea. The central tower was once a lighthouse marking an entrance through the reef; we entered where the Mayans once entered with their trading canoes. We had spent a lot of time in Tulum in 2008 when we toured the Yucatan by truck and canoe. Then we camped in our truck. This time we tried sleeping aboard. The water was too rough. So we pitched our tent on top of a wooded sand dune and waded through surf whenever we needed something from the boat. Our neighbors, also in a tent in the woods, were a lovely young Mexican couple. They were supporting themselves, barely, as street musicians. Steve got out his accordion and shared music with them. Tulum was the last sizeable town before we crossed into Belize, so we provisioned and used internet shops.
We went to a veterinarion, who advised Ginny to feed the baby grackle bananas and apples! Sadly, “Grax” did not survive her traumas. Ginny buried her in the upper beach and Steve drew a heart in the sand over her resting place.

After a week in Tulum we continued down a less-populated part of the coast. At a river mouth we took down our masts and rowed under a bridge to reach a series of lagoons that run parallel to the coast. We navigated these calmer waterways for a change in mood. We were told thehy were filled with crocodiles! Narrow, winding passages connected the several lagoons, the last of which widened to become Bahia de la Ascension, a vast bay with reefs and islands at its mouth. At the northern entrance to the bay, at the end of a long dirt road, was the town of Punta Allen. We stayed three days, to get a metal part fixed and to spent time with a couple travelers, a Swiss named Chris and an American guy named Goyo. Goyo we had met a couple weeks earlier, he was “Walking for Peace” along the coast, camping with his dog and spreading the word of a simpler, spiritually aware lifestyle.

After exploring the eastern reaches of Bahia de la Ascension a bit we sailed into open sea for the transit to the next big bay. This was our roughest day to date. We reefed way down and for the first time found it prudent to leave the drain plug out of Thurston’s stern. The waves broke in with such frequency and volume that we couldn’t bail fast enough, so we removed the plug and let the water around our feet find its equalibrium. We bashed away on a near reach and were glad to anchor in the next mammoth bay, Bahia del Espiritu Santo.
Our anchorage this night was typical of many along these shallow coasts, and was possible only due to Thurston’s mere six inches of draft. The reef broke up the big waves, but considerable fragmented wave energy got through. The lagoon behind the reef was four feet deep, The distance to the beach was sufficient for new waves to supplement the residual waves. But the lagoon shoaled evenly, the last hundred yards being under eighteen inches deep with a bottom of eel grass. The shallowness kept toppling the little waves until none were left where we anchored, in less than a foot of water. There is virtually no tide here so we never grounded out. Thus we enjoyed a still night though the trade wind blew directly onshore. We walked for miles along the unoccupied beach, opened coconuts for their water, and visited a couple of tiny fishing villages.
After Bahia del Espiritu Santo we followed a straight coastline, sometimes inside the reef, sometimes outside. Inside was calmer and we could stop whenever we wanted. The downside is that coral heads barely reaching the surface can appear anywhere inside the lagoon. We kept a constant lookout and often swerved at the last second. Once we had to get out and walk the boat through a labyrinth, careful not to touch the living coral.

We reached Mahahual, another town we had visited two years before. It stands by itself, a southerly outpost of the touristic Costa Maya. The last time we were here Mahahual was recovering from a hurricane. This time the cruise ship pier had been rebuilt and the “malecon” (seaside pedestrian thoroughfare) had been finished. While we walked the malecon the hucksters at the restaurants and artesan shops bonbarded us with invitations and attempts at shallow friendship; is it polite to simply ignore them? But the water was really clear! From Mahahual south the visibility was usually at least 40 feet. We saw turtles, nurse sharks, and barracuda most times we snorkelled, not to mention the countless colorful little reef fish which hang out, each over their own little niche in the coral rock. We renewed our acquaintance with familiar species and happily noted new ones. We rarely knew their names, but we remembered their faces.

The last time we were in Mahahual we heard about a massive offshore atoll called Chinchorro Bank, seven miles wide and twenty-three miles long. The problem is it lays eighteen miles to windward. To reach it, and similar atolls in Belize, could be the Mount Everest of our current voyage. They say these are the only atolls in the Western Hemisphere. What does such a place look like? And how crystalline and teeming with life must the water be? Finally we would find out! Knowing it may be prohibited to go there we didn’t inquire about permits or tell anyone our plans. The bank lay east, and our boat is mediocre to windward. Also, a branch of the Gulf Stream flows north at two knots through the deep straight between Mahahual and Banco Chinchorro.

We wanted to get there for Steve’s birthday on June 11th, so we got underway early on the 10th despite the east wind and started bashing into the waves. All day we were soaked and seemingly getting nowhere. After nine hours and only about 18 miles later the water finally changed from deep blue to shallow green. After two more hours we anchored in the lee of Cayo Centro, a mangrove island a half mile wide and two miles long in the center of the bank. How good the stillness felt!

In the morning we found ourselves in the midst of a vast marine wilderness. We swam along the mangrove shore past an unoccupied fishing village on stilts, and later sailed out to the the rough, eastern edge of the atoll. A strong current setting west across the reef complicated this swim, but we also explored several of the hundreds of the coral clusters scattered over the interior of the bank. Each was a little almost-island rising from a depth of perhaps twenty feet nearly to the surface. We sighted all the standard reef denizens, and some new ones.

We saw only a few fishing launches and Navy boats until the fourth day, when a Comision Nacional de Areas Naturales Protegidas (National Commission of Natural Protected Areas) official approached us to say we were in a biosphere reserve. We’d have to leave in the morning and refrain from further swimming! We complied with the first request but not the latter. The next morning; as we sailed back across the west dropoff, we couldn’t resist seeing what it was like. Quite different from the east side, where waves break, the western edge was calm and scenic, with a floor dropping from ten feet rapidly into great depths. Coral rocks with a high coverage of live coral studded the sandy flanks. Visibility was seventy feet!
We returned to the mainland and followed it to Xcalak, the tiny port of entry near the Belize border. Here, on June 16, we got our clearance and said goodbye to eight lovely weeks in Mexico.

To Ginny the five miles to Belize was excruciating. At one point a Mexican Navy boat came racing towards the side of the boat, but turned off.

We entered Boca Bacalar Chico and made our way wiggling west through the mangrove channels, we got lost down dead ends and sometimes had to paddle. Ginny kissed the first mangrove we crashed into on the Belizian side. So good to be back! We entered San Pedro harbor near sundown and anchored in some slimy weeds across from the fishing boats on shore. In the morning we made our way to immigration. We were early and the officer kept saying “oh man, you guys, it’s so early. Oh man. What, have you been waiting here since six? Oh man, it’s really early you guys.” Our first Belizian faux pas. The customs guy wouldn’t even come out to our boat, he said it was too early to get wet. They both said “Welcome to Belize”. That’s all we wanted to hear!

We enjoyed a couple days in the bustling city of San Pedro. The golf carts run wild in the streets, driven by tourists holding drinks and Belizians with noise makers celebrating soccer games. After learning our Oregonian friends who have a home in Corozal would be leaving for the states in a few days we decided to sail to Corozal to say hi before they left. We had a beautiful, relaxing, mind numbingly slow sail and met up with them a day and a half later. This is where we write you from today. Our time in Corozal has been peaceful, despite all the rushing around we’ve been doing trying to get our marriage papers done.

Oh yeah, did we mention we are getting married? We’ve set the date for July 1st and some of our favorite people are coming down to celebrate with us in Caye Caulker. It’s going to be excellent! Last minute attendees are welcome, especially if you are willing to play love songs on the spoons.

As you know we are very non-materialistic people who also happen to be quite short on space so if you want to give us a wedding present we request one of the following:

Adopt an Elephant in our name: http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/fostering.asp
If you know one of the people who came down for our wedding donate some money towards their expenses.
Imagine we are normal people who want normal things, decide what you want to get us, then take whatever amount of money you would have put into that item and spend it on some activity or gift for yourself which will bring you real joy. A trip to the aquarium to see the seahorses or even just an ice cream cone. Then imagine we are the ones who gave you the item or experience. Your gift to us will be the opportunity to make you happy! So, if you choose this one be sure to tell us about it.

We have posted new pictures in our Mexico album and a few in our new Belize album. After the wedding we’ll update the blog with more pictures, though we won’t send out another mass email for a month or so. In other news, Steve's articles should have begun to appear in Small Craft Advisor so check them out if you get the chance.

May 27, 2010

2010-05-27T18:31:00.000-07:00

We´re in Tulum now! Our old home.
We spent a some weeks here on the beach a couple years ago and now we´re doing the same. The first night in the anchorage it was too rough and we had to find a place to pitch the tent. There is now only one place you can get away with free camping on the beach and we´ve found it. I guess it´s a skill we have. Spent the past few days swimming the reef, mourning the loss of our sweet bird Grax (Ginny rescued a baby grackler from cats, she didn´t survive the boat life long :( ) and provisioning for the last 150 miles or so before Belize. The rest of this trip through Mexico will be mostly through deserted beaches and mangrove lagoons. There is a lot of reef to explore and we are looking forward to going very slowly through it all.
There are 30 or so new pictures in our current photo album for your enjoyment. http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/ThurstonInMexico#

May 9, 2010

2010-05-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

We have been back in Isla Mujeres for a few days now after spending a week in the Puerto Juarez/Cancun area. For the first time we reached a place we had been before and had the luxury of seeing old friends.

We anchored just off "Playa del niño" and waded to shore. This is the first beach we ever saw on our trip into Cancun two years ago (turns out there aren't many public beaches despite how many there are for tourists) and the same beach upon which we met Mark and Javier. While in Puerto Juarez we made sure to spend a lot of time hanging out with them and their awesome pets.

Besides hanging out, gorging on delicious Mexican food, and marveling at the plethora of products and services available in this rather affluent part of Mexico, we have also been accomplishing some things.

Steve has been writing articles for "Small Craft Advisory", a small boater's magazine which you may be able to find in your local book store or West Marine. So far he has written three, and will continue to write them as we expand our travels. Presumably there will be one per month starting in a month or two. Also, we settled on a time and place for our hobo wedding. July 1st in Caye Caulker, Belize. Some of our favorite people in the world will be coming and we are getting very excited to see them! Lastly, We bought a fancy new solar panel and since being back in Isla Mujeres have installed a whole new electrical system. Thanks to our awesome neighbors here in the harbor we didn't even screw it up! Now we have more juice for working on our photos, writing to-do lists and watching cartoons. All the most important activities.

Soon we plan to return to Cancun to hang out a little more before going off on our lonely way South. There are 23 new pictures up in the album "Thurston in Mexico". Enjoy!

April 25, 2010 - Isla Mujeres

2010-04-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

April 25, 2010

Dear friends and family,

You last heard from us in Marathon, Florida on March 10. We had gotten our boat into good enough shape so we no longer felt it necessary to return to Larry Whited`s house to work out bugs. To continue southward meant going to Cuba.

The U.S. has a trade and travel embargo against that island nation and we were afraid of getting in trouble for violating it. But we read that if you go there for professional reasons, such as journalism, you are eligible to go under General License. I have already published one book about my travels and we are writing up this journey too. So we figure we`d be legal but we wanted to keep a low profile anyway so we didn´t announce our intentions. And since the authorities keep a close watch over the waters between Florida and Cuba we decided to go to the Bahamas first, then Cuba.

As in my 1993 crossing the best-situated stopover is tiny Sal Cay, which is on the edge of a vast shallow bank, quite separate from the rest of the Bahamas. We sailed out of Marathon and out into the Straits of Florida at 6:00 PM. It was soon totally dark, no moon or stars. The motion was disconcerting flying blind like that. We seemed to be going much faster and more precariously than if we could see. Also we had the Gulf Stream to worry about.

Our goal lay to the SE but the current flows NE. From our actual track per our GPS, the current seems to have been flowing about as fast as we were sailing. We steered south to counteract the current, which was a mistake. It cut our speed way down. We should have cut straight across. Time went by incredibly slowly. We yearned for dawn!

When finally we could see, the ocean around us was empty, with conflicting patterns of slow swells. There was no wind so Steve rowed. The wind returned, faster and faster. Around noon we escaped the current´s clutches and entered Sal Cay Bank, flying through a broken perimeter of sharp, tall rocks against which the sea bashed. Dead Man Rocks! Inside the water was about 30 feet deep. Sal Cay lay 25 miles across this torquoise bank. We sailed all afternoon and arrived before dark. Night landfalls are dangerous! Sal Cay is still a remote, lovely island. We didn`t go ashore because we weren´t cleared to enter the Bahamas, but it was nice to sleep at anchor in calm of the island`s lee, at least it was nice until 3:00am when the wind changed.

We still had half the distance to go. Cuba lay another 40 miles south, then we had to travel 35 miles west along the coast before we could enter at a legal location, the resort town of Varadero. We left at noon. As it got dark we saw a Cuban lighthouse beacon probing out over the sea. We turned west, keeping miles away from land, afraid to violate their territorial waters prematurely.

Another endless night. At 10 PM the wind suddenly increased alarmingly. We reefed both main- and mizzen-sail until each was a small triangle. As Thurston rolled and pitched we braced ourselves and again wished we had stars to steer by. Then land lights started appearing. Varadero became visible: ten miles of beach lined with tourist hotels. At dawn we turned landward and entered a narrow channel with surf crashing on either side. We tied up at a small marina. Safe!

For two hours we underwent formalities with a variety of officials, then we were free to wander. The marina is temporary home to ten or so yachts, mostly Canadian. We immediately connected with our fellow sailors and starting learning the ropes in Cuba. Everything is strange! There are two currency systems, one for buying some things, the other for buying other things. Some things are ridiculously cheap, like ice cream cones on the street, if you can find them. Other things are expensive, like international phone calls for $2.50 per minute. Most things, however, you just can`t find, like writing paper or building materials. Or maybe you can with vast effort and connections, because a lot happens on the black market. This is a communist country. With certain exceptions it`s illegal to run a business, own a car, or have a foreigner stay at your house. Cubans aren´t allowed to visit the boats in the marina. One of the Canadians has been married to a Cuban woman for seven years but still he can´t stay at her apartment because she doesn´t have a license to lodge foreigners!

Still, the Cubans are wonderful people. We enjoyed exploring the hotel zone and the adjoining town of Santa Marta. It´s like a land that time forgot, with its pre-revolutionary cars, mostly 1950s Dodges, Chevys, Fords, and Chryslers. Also decrepit little cars and motorbikes from behind the Iron Curtain. They keep them running because they can`t buy new ones. Many people get around by horse and buggy. They play baseball a lot and ride around on bicycles.

After eight days at Varadero we felt acclimatized enough to continue our journey. The coast leading to Havana has few harbors. We requested permission to anchor in Santa Cruz del Norte one night, to break the trip in two and avoid sailing in the dark. They said we couldn´t stop except at marinas, and there are only five marinas on the entire north coast. Finally they said we could anchor there provided we didn´t land. When we entered at Santa Cruz, through a narrow break in the tall, rocky shore, soldiers at a Guardfrontera post at the entrance yelled at us to go away. They were very disturbed by our presence. Steve yelled back that we had permission. Eventually they allowed us to anchor in front of the military station.

At the first hint of light maybe twenty tiny wooden fishing boats with putt-putt motors started circling around us. Evidently they were chomping at the bit to go out and fish but are required to wait in front of the Guardafrontera station until light. When streaks of red cloud appeared in the eastern sky they all left and dispersed into the ocean with their hand-fishing lines out. The government is afraid Cubans will escape to America by boat. Tens of thousands already have!

We next stopped at a marina called Tarara, ten miles before Havana. The opening to the marina was only a foot deep, plenty for us but impossible for most boats. So we were the only customers. The plumbing and lighting fixtures tended not to work, but the people were friendly. Four or five guards watched over us every night. The surrounding community was mysterious! We were in the midst of a vast residential complex which was well constructed and well tended, unusual for Cuba. But the houses were empty and the entire area was surrounded by a fence. There were also many large dormitories filled with Chinese students learning Spanish. Ukrainian victims of the Chernobyl nuclear accident also live in Tarara. In fact, the 20th anniversary of the disaster occured while we were there. They held commemorative events, presided over by a former Ukrainian president. And that was it: Chinese students, disabled Chernobyl victims, guards, groundskeepers, and us. The entire place was surrounded by a fence, no regular Cubans allowed.

Twice we went into Havana by an incredibly crowded bus. We walked for miles around this fascinating city, so full of ornate, dilapidated Spanish architecture. Vendors and shoppers thronged the dirt-floored farmers markets. Pedestrians hung out along the wide waterfront sidewalk, where the ocean waves crash and soak you if you aren´t quick.

We then sailed to Hemingway Marina, on the other side of Havana. This is Cuba´s largest marina. We were one of perhaps a dozen inhabited boats, including French Canadians, Swedes, and a delightful Argentine who had recently bought a big Morgan sailboat in Florida. Boats frequently arrived from or left for Mexico or Florida. We went out each day in search for places selling things for the ¨moneda nacional¨ pesos because these items were always extremely cheap. Now and then you could find pizzas, sugar cane juice, or muffins. But usually they were out of food. Bread, fruit, veggies and street food are all sold in MN. We ended up getting stuck with about five hundred of these pesos, worth a nickel US each. Oddly enough, the other Cuban currency, the CUC, is worth about 20% more than the US Dollar and is used for the rest of the few products and services one can find. A fresh loaf of bread costs 15 cents, but processed, packaged bread costs about $3.00 (If you can find it, which is highly unlikely.)

Next we sailed to a harbor used as a graveyard for dead ships, where we were again watched over by Guardafrontera and forbidden to go ashore. Then we stayed at Cayo Levisa, a small island with a tourist hotel. We tied to a piling in the water and did a lot of swimming and beach walking. This was one of the few places we were able to go ashore so we stayed a week. We have finally arrived where the water is warm enough to swim!

From Cayo Levisa the coast consists of a reef of coral origin which partly protects a lagoon or gulf one to 25 miles wide. There are many mangrove islands within this inner sound, some with a patch or two of sandy beach. The mainland, forbidden to us, is mountainous and relatively unpopulated. In these waters we traveled and anchored without supervision.

On the fifth day we reached Los Morros, just inside the curling tip of Cabo San Antonio, the great western cape. The only sign of man was a dock, a restaurant, a marina office, and a narrow road leading into the flat tropical forest. Yachtsmen come here for refuge before and after crossing the Yucatan Channel, but we were the only yacht there upon our arrival. We tied up and walked down the road and along the beach, all the way to the lighthouse at the cape itself. Around that tip is the Caribbean!

When we got back an American yacht had arrived with plans to leave for Isla Mujeres in the morning. Isla Mujeres is a small island off Cancun, Mexico, on the Yucatan Peninsula. The owner, Jim , invited Steve aboard early the next morning to listen to a weather forecast on his single sideband radio.

We had been considering continuing around to the south coast because they say the water is clear and deep there, ideal for snorkeling. But the forecast called for moderate east winds, bad for the south coast but good for crossing to Mexico. Jim was interested in ¨buddy-boating¨with us. Steve convinced Ginny we should jump at this weather window. The tanks were already full of Cuban well water, purified by pumping it through our REI filter. We already had a planned route for the crossing. We proposed to sail 120 miles southwest before cutting across the current itself. This would be extra distance but it would prevent the Gulf Stream from sweeping us north into the Gulf of Mexico. It looked good to Jim. A couple hours later we were underway.

While we headed straight to the cape Jim circled way around it to avoid coral heads. We figured Jim would catch up with us by motor-sailing, but after some confused VHF contacts we concluded he wanted to take a different route. He was soon out of sight.

It was sunny, hot, windy out of the ESE. For 25 miles we sailed due south, on a near reach. Then we turned SW, more off the wind, faster. Night came, but this time there was a half moon overhead and stars were visible. We would steer to the proper course by our compass, then note a star, and steer by it. We could see the surface of the waves, which allowed us to steer through the waves better. We were better able to brace for the rolls and yaws. All night long we sailed fast. Steve took a couple catnaps curled up at the forward edge of the cockpit. At first Ginny was anxious and lacking in self confidence, having drank way too much coffee and without any time to mentally prepare for the journey. She was unable to sleep or eat. But before long she reached her zen, was able to relax, and performed well.

Morning found us at the end of our SW-bound leg. We were on course. Currents had not affected us because we had stayed in extremely deep waters, typically over 13,000 feet. But now it was time to turn west, where we expected current. That would be good in that it would help carry us to our destination, which was now to the NW. But it would be bad if the current interacted with high wind to make big waves.

The wind increased to 20-25 knots. The waves grew to eight feet. We reefed until each sail had less than half its area up, and still we maintained six knots! Now that we were going down the waves at a diagonal we had to steer carefully to prevent broaching, a type of capsize in which the boat turns upwind and rolls onto its side. Water had been splashing into the boat all night, but now bigger waves occasionally sloshed in. We kept bailing. Sometimes we had to throw out little fish left wiggling on the deck. Once a little land bird considered landing on our boat because he was too far from shore, but he lacked the courage to stay with us.

Would we arrive before dark? The map showed a place called Arrowsmith Banks, where the water is under 100 feet deep. A cruising guide said the current is strongest there. We stayed south of it. We never saw much current until mid-afternoon when we were heading NW, thirty miles from Cancun. A knot or two of current finally kicked in, boosting our speed. The mammoth Cancun hotels started appearing on the horizon! Several hours later, as the sun went down, we rounded the point and anchored in Cancun harbor, just offshore from a series of lovely, lofty resorts. They extended high into the sky above us, blocking the blasting wind. Clients played in the water on the sandy beach 100 yards away. The sound of dinners and cocktails wafted over the water. We took off our salt-encrusted foul-weather gear. Steve´s butt had sores where his ilia bones stick out. Ginny was physically and emotionally spent, having been nowhere near as good at napping as Steve.

We lay down in the cabin and slept, relishing the lack of motion. Mexico, finally! We´ve been two years getting back here. First finding a boat that could carry us, then modifying it, then sailing it here. And after this is just gets better: the reefs, Belize, Guatemala, etc. And none of that requires long passages!

In the morning we sailed across Cancun harbor to Isla Mujeres, the yachting center. Here we cleared customs and found some pilings to tie to where we can wade ashore. The stores are lushly stocked with fruits, juices, and cookies! Internet is affordable. Every morning the cruisers confer by VHF, just like in Marathon.

We are looking into whether any of the boats going to Florida want to take us as crew. If so we would drive our truck back around to here. It would be nice to have it available to us, but not mandatory. We´ll get married soon, but we haven´t decided where yet. Would anyone want to vacation in Los Angeles or Cancun or Belize in the near future if it included attending our wedding?

Click here for our latest photos. We hope you are all doing well and that there is some adventure in your life too.

April 14, 2009

2010-04-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to let you know we're alive and having a wonderful time. We have many stories, but cannot do a real update for another month. For now be content to know we are sailing, sunburning and snorkling to our heart's content.

March 10, 2010 - Boot Key Harbor

2010-03-10T11:18:00.000-08:00

Hi guys,
Here is our latest mass email which summarizes in a little more detail our journey since Everglades City.
There are about 20 new photos in the Current Photo Album.
________________________________

Dear friends and family,

Unless you’ve been following the blog (http://ginnyandsteve.blogspot.com), you last heard from us in Everglades City, Florida on January 12. We had just survived the big freeze that killed so many fish and reptiles. In Everglades City we bought all the groceries we could carry then sailed south through Everglades National Park.

We were in or near the open Gulf of Mexico most of the time, but we also traveled some of the tidal passages between islands. Each day we reached a new key and tied up there. Sometimes there was solid land to walk on, sometimes not. Sometimes we saw other people, sometimes not. One day the weather and water were warm so Steve relieved some curiosity by intentionally tipping Thurston over in a calm creek. Once past about 60 degrees she capsized to the point where the masts hit the bottom. He swam underneath and pulled the masts out. She rolled over a little more but the buoyancy of the cabin caused her to float extremely high and cocked to one side. Steve stood on her upturned belly, tied a rope to the high side, and leaned back toward the low side. She righted! It’s good to know we can rescue ourselves from a capsize.

As we approached Cape Sable, where the land bends to an east-west direction, the winds became contrary, so it took us four days to round this major headland. Then we sailed east through Florida Bay, which is extremely shallow and dotted with small islands. We ran aground several times but within 24 hours we were in the Upper Florida Keys.

We landed at the town of Islamorada on Plantation Key. We anchored in front of a city park for three days. The authorities said we were illegal there so we moved to Upper Matecombe Key, which is where Steve landed at the end of his famous 1990-1993 voyage. We anchored in a bay on the Gulf side where we could wade to a public street end. We took the bus to various stores as necessary to further improve the boat. For example, we upgraded our cushions, reinforced a leaky mast step, and installed a stern light. The local police didn’t like us there either, though, so we moved to a canal hidden in an abandoned forest on the Ocean side of Windlay Key. No one noticed us while we reconfigured the footrests that Steve uses when he rows. (The new footrests are integral with an open stowage bin on the forward side of the lazarette.) Whenever we emerged from the woods onto the public road we were careful to not be seen, so the cops wouldn’t run us off again. It’s unclear whether we’re actually breaking any law; according to one interpretation even a small boat is required to have a sewage holding tank if lived in full-time. It is abundantly clear, though, that the Islamorada police don’t like hobos!

After three weeks in Islamorada we sailed, over the course of three days, to Marathon, the next town down the chain of islands. In the center of Marathon lies Boot Key Harbor, where hundreds of boats lie at mooring buoys, at docks, and at anchor. Many of these boats are lived in fulltime. The liveaboards are a complete community, with a daily 9:00 am radio discussion on VHF. We couldn’t find anywhere to anchor where we could wade ashore, so we anchored among mangrove at the inner end of the harbor. Then someone gave us a free inflatable dinghy! Once we had replaced the missing oars and oarlocks we were able to easily get ashore. Now it’s hard to see how we got by without a dinghy! Some boaters stay here for a day or two, others have been here for years. We’ve made friends from New Brunswick, Ohio, and Ontario, all of whom spend some portion of their time living aboard sailboats.

Marathon is even better situated than Islamorada for getting boat work done. A West Marine, a Home Depot, a library, and food stores are all within walking distance. Here we have added shelves, spice racks, and a rain tarp. We’ve also added secure closures to our water tank caps because they were coming loose and spilling our drinking water. In fact, we have so successfully worked out Thurston’s bugs that we no longer deem it necessary to return to Larry’s house in Georgia before proceeding toward the Caribbean, which remains our destination.

You could say that our shakedown cruise is now done and we are poised nearly as far south as you can go in the U.S. The weather is finally warm enough to wear T-shirts, but the water is far too cold to swim. Must . . . go . . .further . . . south! But Cuba blocks a direct southerly route. Should we go east around it or west? Stay tuned!

We hope you are all doing well and that newness spices up your lives with sufficient frequency.

January 29, 2010

2010-01-29T13:32:00.000-08:00

Hi Guys,
We made it to the Keys after an eventful 10 days or so of sailing through the Everglades. To those of you with a map, We went from Pavillion Key to Graveyard Creek, to the Little Snake River in Ponce de Leon and holed up a few days in Little Sable Creek. It was there we discovered a gallon and a half of salt water in our bilge (yikes!) and had to take the boat entirely apart to find the source. The main problem we found was a leaky mast step, we have since sealed that up to the best of our ability. Having the boat apart was a great opportunity to do some capsize tests.

We found she floats very high in the bow due to the cabin. Steve had an easy time flipping her when we had the masts out, but it was a little harder with the masts. Though they float now when apart, they can't keep from being pushed all the way down with the weight of the boat behind them. Important things to learn!

Next we spent a couple days in Lake Ingraham (there are tons of tiny channels we crashed ourselves into so as to get out of the strong winds). When we got sick of hiding from the wind we went out only to be greeted by a front as we reached the point of no return. The horizon to the North darkened until it was black and the sea was a sickly yellow green from the last bits of sun still coming from the South. We saw bolts of lightening in the distance and Ginny got pretty nervous. When the front hit the wind started coming from behind us, propelling us through the waves which had not yet caught up with the change in wind. The sky was dark all around and the thick raindrops plopped into the waves fast and constant. We became unable to see land and Ginny bailed like crazy just so as to have something to do to avoid becoming too freaked out.

It didn't last too long though and the resulting change in wind allowed us to speed to Flamingo where we we rewarded with an excellent anchorage right on the Coastal Prairie trail that leads between Flamingo and Clubhouse beach.

After a couple days there we sailed across Florida Bay with the intent of landing near to where Steve landed on his arrival back in the US after his three year voyage. To do this we had to defy the advice of wiser people and cut right through the middle of the bay, navigating tons of shoals and hard to find channels with the aid of a 25 year old chart. No regrets. It was beautiful! The water became clear and Steve even saw a sea turtle.

So here we are in Key Largo today with our boat anchored by a park in Islamorada. We are reprovisioning and planning on spending a week re-fixing all the things we already fixed that came apart due to faulty epoxy! Always with the boat work. Maybe we'll even find some time to swim!

There are about 35 more pictures in our "Current Photo Album"

January 12, 2010

2010-01-12T12:41:00.000-08:00

It has been about a month since you last heard from us, and an eventful month at that! We left Atlanta on December 10 and drove to Niceville, Florida to visit Ginny's friend Stephen. He hates Florida, but at least he has a nice girlfriend there, in our opinion. His ultimate goal is to make it back to Hawaii and we wish him luck, and not just because we want to visit him there! During a cold storm we went for a long night walk on the Gulf beach. The sand was blinding white and crunchy the way cold snow is crunchy, so Steve kept subconciously thinking we were walking in snow!

We stopped in Panama City to show Thurston to her previous owner, and in Largo to see our friend Ron Hodinott. Then we sped southeast to Miami to meet with Bremerton friends Danny Stroberger and Betty Boop, who were on their way back from Haiti. We spent an amazing evening together at a Haitian "jazz club" jamming with their musical friends. Danny and Steve took a swim in the Atlantic before Danny and Betty had to catch their flight home.

Driving west back through the Everglades we saw many lazy gators enjoying the warm sun. But rainstorms began upon reaching the Gulf coast, keeping us holed up in the truck a couple days.

Now the good stuff. On December 19th we left our dear truck and trailer on the property of an acquaintance on Pine Island, near Fort Meyers. We launched our newly finished boat in shallow Pine Island Sound, sped on a beam reach across to Captiva Island, and spent our first night in a mangrove lagoon. Only fifty feet of mud separated us from a road in the middle of a swanky resort! With muck-covered legs and our hair full of sticks we must have looked a sight emerging from that primordial thicket! But no one seemed to notice us.

From that night on there has been no question whether the boating life suits us. It definitely does! We typically row or sail about fifteen miles (the days are so short this time of year) then anchor parallel to a sheltered beach. We place one anchor forward, one astern, and tie a line to something on the beach. To step ashore we just pull on this third line. Around Christmas time we spent four days at ritzy, condo-infested Marco Island due to high winds and the need for some minor boat refitting. Then we proceeded into the Ten Thousand Islands, which are the saltwater southwest edge of the Everglades.

For nearly two weeks we camped on uninhabited Panther Key. It has some beach around its edges but is mostly mangrove in the middle. We arrived several days early for a gathering of small sailboat enthusiasts organized by Ron Hodinott. We anchored in a tiny lagoon that drains out at low tide, leaving us aground. It was a good place to make further boat improvements, such as a rope-steering system so Ginny can steer while Steve rows. We set up the tent on the beach and had a campfire going when Ron and his friends got there. Unfortunately, their arrival coincided with a record low temperature and high winds. The water in the cockpit froze one night! The other boaters left; we stayed on, merely surviving. We scavenged old clothes and pillows from an abandoned campsite and wore everything we had. For two days we barely left the tent. We weren't prepared for "Arctic in the Everglades!" Thank you Jenna for the cashmere sweaters you gave Ginny!

Yesterday it warmed up a little so we sailed here to Everglades City, our last place for provisions before the Keys. We will skirt the Everglades National Park then probably sail to Marathon Key. This may take a week or so. We don't expect to see many people.

We hope you are all enjoying your central heating! We'll try to update the blog again in a week or two. There are about 50 new photos in our "current photo album" which is linked on the left.

December 9, 2009

2009-12-09T17:20:00.000-08:00

Friends and family,

You last heard from us on October 6 when we had just returned to our friend Larry’s house near Atlanta. The household now includes Larry (nurse, works nights), Karen (HR clerk for the local fire department, works days), and Karen’s 18-year-old daughter, Alison (budding actress, works and studies odds hours). Consequently, there is almost always someone awake and someone asleep at any given time! It's a wonderful place to be and we are very grateful to our Stone Mountain family for always making us feel so welcome.

Steve gets up at dawn and starts the boat work. At 9:00 he hands Ginny a cup of coffee and says, “Hey Babes, here’s your coffee.” She mumbles a thanks and comes slowly to life (sometimes). Except for leisurely meal breaks we have worked full days every day getting our boat ready to cruise. Along the way Ginny’s cat, Thurston, unexpectedly passed away back in Seattle with Jenna, Ben, Carley and a giant bag of catnip at her side. Now our boat is named Thurston (just as Steve’s Squeak was named for a dear, departed cat.) in her memory and in hopes that her spirit will bring us good fortune in our travels.

This last boatyard stint has been three months (already?!). In Atlanta last spring we worked four months. Before that we worked in the junkyard in Tampa for three months. Ten months total, but she’s ready!

In this last session of boat work we have finished the aft stowage locker (“lazarette”) and rowing station, applied anti-fouling bottom paint, made cabin cushions, installed a solar panel and simple electrical system, and many smaller projects. We’ve packed utilizing every cubic inch (Ginny’s specialty). We have loaded up on charts, digital maps, ebooks and simpsons episodes aplenty. Now we even have a place to leave the truck and trailer, on a guy’s property near Fort Meyers. That’s about 2/3 of the way down the Florida peninsula on the Gulf of Mexico side.

Tomorrow we leave for Florida. We will stop by Fort Walton Beach to visit good 'ole Stephen, then drop off the boat at Pine Island and zip down to Key West to see Dan and Betty before they head back to Washington. After that we plan to cruise southern Florida, plus maybe Cuba, the Bahamas, the Yucatan, and/or Belize, until spring. Then we will probably return to Larry’s, refine Thurston based on live-aboard experience, return to Washington in the summer, then start our REAL voyage in the fall. At least that’s our best guess for now. We’re pretty sure Thurston will kick ass, and we look forward to finally doing a lot of swimming, rowing, sailing, wildlife-watching, etc.

Ginny’s got some funny pictures (a few below), so take a look! Our love to you all!

Steve and Ginny

Photo Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/TheAdventuresOfGinnyAndSteve#

November 29, 2009

2009-11-29T17:39:00.000-08:00

Still working. We are getting very close to being ready to leave. Recently we've decided we need an electrical system after all. So, we installed a 12-watt solar panel and a cute little 10.5amp alarm battery. This should be sufficient to charge our phone and netbook so we can read lots of ebooks and compile more pictures for the photo-greedy among you. Speaking of which, we've uploaded 14 more to our album, a few of which are below:

In response to the $580 quote we got on a boat mattress we decided to make our own. It turned out Awesome!! We even had enough left over to make a little bed for Ginny's cat Snazz.

We also decided we needed an "anchor buddy", so we tore up some old batteries to get free lead (and yes, we were quite aware of all the many levels in which this was a terrible idea) and then broke down and bought some lead after two batteries only yielded 10 lbs worth.

We painted Thurston's name on the boat :(

... and had a tiny bit of extra time to hang out... But only while working!

November 17, 2009

2009-11-17T06:50:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed lately the dramatic increase in the misery of existence? The black hole of despair eating the entire universe? Well, don't fret too much, everything will end soon enough. It is true that the world revolves (revolved) around only one creature and sure enough it must be stopping now with her passing. Presumably we will all disappear within the next few days. Thankfully.

So, go crazy! Punch your enemies, hug your cats, loot your neighborhood grocery store, and try to find some meager pleasure in our new and entirely unwelcome Thurstonless Universe.

In memory of our dearly departed fuzzy friend we have finally christened our boat, Thurston, a name that will carry with it the wisdom, dignity and pure spirit of the world's most perfect creature. Also, hopefully, it will act as a beacon to her ghost!

It's hard to remember what we were doing before, but there are some new pictures in our photo album.

October 29, 2009

2009-10-29T07:03:00.000-07:00

Hi Guys,
Just a quick update as we don't have a lot to report. Larry and Karen took off on a two and a half week trip down the St. John's River in Florida and are still at it, presumably having a wonderful time.

In the meantime we've just been working as per usual. The details of that work are much more suited for Larry's Sea Pearl website, so on here we'll just offer a little summary:
We finished our Lazarette:

Painted the canoe (completing all our canoe modifications for the time being), the outside panels of the lazarette and cabin, and the inside of the boat.

We've recently worked out our tiller tamer system and fixed various little bugs. Speaking of which, we've also met various little bugs!

We still have a few small things to do, such as have a custom mattress made (pricey!!) and make sun/rain covers for ourselves and our sails. For fun we're back in the habit of watching old movies at night and Ginny has finally started working on her "year of photographs" project again. Some of you may remember she was taking an excessive number of pictures from November 06 -07 in an attempt to catalog every single day of her life. The end result is interesting and will result in some sort of massive work of digital art.

In the short term we're looking forward to Larry and Karen coming home, seeing Addison eventually (we hope!) and a visit from Ginny's old friend Stephen who will give us an excuse to take a day off and canoe the Yellow River. Stephen will be borrowing the canoe while we're gone now that he's living in Florida.

Lastly, we have unnamed our boat Pepper. Steve is leaning back towards Tusk, Ginny is thinking Snuggles Jr.

October 6, 2009

2009-10-06T06:20:00.000-07:00

Friends and Family,

You last heard from us from from Calgary, Canada, when we had just begun our truck trip back to Georgia, where our sailboat is. After Calgary we crossed the plains provinces: Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. These are mightily flat and full of wheat. We camped each night in or on the margin of some vast field. Once the grill was saturated with grasshopper guts and the ground was crawling with black, lethargic crickets! The only city was Medicine Hat (named for a war bonnet that once imparted great powers to its Indian owner), but we passed through countless towns consisting of a grain silo and a few houses and stores.

Around Winnipeg the vegetation transitioned to low forest but the land remained flat. Then ponds and rock outcroppings started to appear. These features culminated in Ontario, which someone said is two-thirds water: lakes big and small, connected by beaver-choked streams. The land portion consists of rugged hills composed of ancient, Canadian Shield granite. The land is dotted with lakes, yet the lakes are also dotted with islands: 14,000 of them in Lake of the Woods alone, where we camped for two days on a pristine, forested isle. Loons called mournfully in the night, an ascending cry that slips from a lower to an upper register in mid-call. The days were hot and sunny, the water cool and tranquil. The canoe's oars and rowing station came in handy as we circumnavigated one island after another trying to comprehend this alien landscape. We want to return some day and explore Quetico Provincial Park, where in a lifetime you could never canoe all the old voyageur routes. And just across the border in Minnesota lies the Boundary Waters Wilderness.

We next drove around the north shore of Lake Superior, like a freshwater ocean with surf and rocky beaches, remote and undeveloped. Finding places to camp was easy: just drive down any faint pair of tracks into the woods until the highway noise fades in the distance then stop wherever we can turn the Isuzu around. We kept her undercarriage well polished driving over tall grass and saplings! Then we pull out the pantry (an ice-less cooler), the kitchen table (accordion case), our utensils kit, and the white gas stove in its little oven box with the pots and pans nested inside, and arrange them in a row facing the tailgate, so we can sit with them in reach. Dinner may not be any culinary magic, more likely macaroni and cheese with a can of peas. But we couldn't be more snug in our truck canopy bed, and, who knows, off among the mossy pines a moose or bear may even raise its head to the haunting wheeze of an accordion inexpertly played.

As an old sailor would say, we did our eastings in Canada but then we had to do our southings down through the States. We crossed at Sault Ste. Marie. Homeland Security welcomed us with an hour-and-a-half search and verbal grilling. They fingerprinted Steve to see if maybe he was Somebody they were looking for, but he wasn't. Sorry guys! We crossed at night so there wasnt any line, but the dozen or so personnel on duty had nothing else to do, so we didn't save any time.

Then we drove south through Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina, averaging a state per day. In Detroit we we gaped at the abandoned buildings, and Ginny bought the new Modest Mouse and Cure CDs with money she found on the ground. (She keeps Steve happy by downloading old Small Faces and Stevie Ray Vaughn cuts for him. We now have his and hers MP3 players.) Disdaining freeways, We wound up and down and back and forth through Appalachian backroads until we though our tires would wear out. We camped under a bridge one night, next to a burnt-down house (meth lab?) another. The weather turned cold and wet.

Last night we crossed into Georgia. A couple hours ago we pulled into Larry's driveway. Karen lives with him now, but they had the spare bedroom waiting for us. Their hospitality overwhelms us. We now have a few weeks of final boat work before us before we can set forth in Pepper, but we have a warm home to do it in. Thank you, guys!

We hope you are all well and ready for these short days and long nights. . For more new pictures, see our corresponding photo album at: http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/TheAdventuresOfGinnyAndSteve# starting with the Zamboni picture.

Steve and Ginny

September 17, 2009

2009-09-17T12:11:00.000-07:00

Friends and Family,

You last heard from us from Larry’s House in Atlanta on June 21st. We had nearly completed work on our sailboat so we headed back to Washington to see people and take care of business prior to what could be an extended trip into the Bahamas or Caribbean. First we returned to St. Louis, Missouri, where we stayed with our friends Jesse and Lena again, except by this time they had had a baby, Violet.

Then we droned across Missouri, Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle, and New Mexico. In Albuquerque we visited Steve's niece Kat, her (now) husband Billy, and baby daughter Kayla. We also received the new netbook computer we had ordered. Then we attended the annual Rainbow Gathering in the mountains of New Mexico, which we had heard of through Ginny's sister and a Juggalo-looking guy at a rest area in Oklahoma. It was Steve's second and Ginny's first. Fantastic, huge, lots of music, bizzare spirits, and free food, though you have to stand in lines for that. There was a rainbow inside a rainbow as we freaks went wild. This all took place above 9000' where it was surprisingly cold.

Next we went to Arizona and hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We camped a couple nights in the canyon. The temp was over 110 during the day. We sat in a stream for hours to keep cool! Then we met Jim Hogg in Phoenix and camped with him for three days around the Chiricauhua Mountains. Next stop was Ginny's grandma's house in Los Angeles, where for the second year in a row we made it to her birthday. Our arrival this year was a surprise! Almost everyone made it, even Carley, who then drove up to Washington with us.

We got back to Washington late on the 19th of July. The tasks we set for ourselves ended up taking eight weeks. Steve found a new renter for his house in Pacific and got his income taxes done. Ginny integrated the new Asus Eee into our lifestyle and helped Jenna with her clothing design business. Though we visited quite a few people we mostly stayed at Jenna and Ben's house in South Seattle. We worked on the truck (our Isuzu is better than ever now; it even drives straight when you take your hand off the wheel!), put new gunwales on the canoe, built a new waterproof accordion case, made an awesome rocking horse for Violet's first birthday, snuggled with Ginny's cats, and checked off many smaller tasks from a long To Do list.

On September 11th we finally headed back toward Pepper, who awaits us at Larry's house. We went via the Canadian Rockies, where our improved canoe has again proved its worth. We now write you now from Calgary, Alberta, where we are also adding to our gallery of mp3 songs to listen to while we travel. We hope this finds you all well and that your lives similarly blessed with newness and love of each other, eh.

Steve and Ginny

Check out the rest of our new photos at: http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/TheAdventuresOfGinnyAndSteve#

September 3rd, 2009

2009-08-25T12:04:00.001-07:00

We've been doing more boat work, only we're still in Seattle. This time it is on our precious canoe, which has had some rot problems in the gunwales as well as sun damage to the kevlar.

Ginny has been helping her dear dude Jenna with some of the more tedious tasks of running a clothing design business as well as working on a secret project for some special people. Steve has been running wild in the streets, being productive in various dull ways (sanding gunwales, fixing dryers, changing tires, etc) and finally getting around to visiting some of his friends and family. Not really much new to say, but here are a few more pictures and a lot more can be found at: http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/TheAdventuresOfGinnyAndSteve#

August 7th, 2009

2009-08-07T22:02:00.000-07:00

Trying to be better about updating... trying to be better about updating...

We've got a few new pictures in our online album at: http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/TheAdventuresOfGinnyAndSteve#

Since being back in Washington Steve has been fixing up and renting out his house, while Ginny has been hanging out with her best friend Jenna and her favorite, favorite cats Thurston and Snazz (plus a bunch of other awesome cats too.) This is definitely as exciting as it sounds.

Other fun things we have done include: Thrift store shopping with Jenna, truck maintanence and (one of our few purely social activities) a party at Steve's friend Tzaddi's place on Lake Union. Thanks to everyone who made it, we had a great time.

Here are some pictures of the cats we've been hanging out with. If you want pictures with humans in them you'll have to go to the photo album.

July 21st, 2009

2009-07-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

We are in Seattle! Drove up from Grandma's B-day with Carley at a first leisurely, then hurried pace. Visited a bonus sister and nephew in Fresno (Us? Aunts?) and camped in a Napa vinyard among other things. We have a bottomless list of tasks to accomplish while in Seattle. Most of Ginny's involve hugging her cats, so don't expect to see much of her. Steve is planning on being less sedentary so if you want to see him you may have better luck. Give us a call or drop us a line if you're in the area. Here's some pictures of what we've been doing. More can be found in our web album at: http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/TheAdventuresOfGinnyAndSteve#

July 14th, 2009

2009-07-14T10:02:00.001-07:00

We're back in Los Angeles after a year of wandering the states. It's Grandma's birthday once again and we're planning another epic party.

In the past week or two (who can keep track) we have been exploring the Southwest. After leaving Albuquerque

we drove up to the wilderness for the Rainbow Gathering. Free food, free camping, free entertainment, filthy hippies galore and eternal drum circles. We had a great time and met quite a few characters. A video of Steve playing accordion (as shown below) will be posted on: this website at some unknown point in the future.

On our way out we visited the four corners, then on to the Grand Canyon! Woo Hoo!! We conquered the canyon over a leisurly three days and almost died at least 15 times. The temperature at the bottom was 109 in the afternoon shade. It was awesome.

On the way down to Phoenix after an early morning of dragging ourselves up out of the hot, dirty canyon we got pulled over by a Yavapai County cop who was suspicious of our filthy appearance and wanted to profile and hassle us. It was very rude. DOWN WITH YAVAPAI COUNTY SHERRIFF'S DEPT!!! We made it to Phoenix despite the Sun's attempts at murdering us. Steve's buddy Jim was down there and we all took off East for some camping adventures in the Chiricahua Mountains.

On the 12th we sped to Los Angeles, driving straight from Phoenix with nothing but ice for air conditioning. We had a picnic under a dinosaur and made it to Grandma's just in time to scare the hell out of her and mom, who were not expecting us. Particularly not expecting us to come screaming in the backdoor.

Good job us!

July 2nd, 2009

2009-07-02T11:23:00.000-07:00

We left Lena's place Saturday night and went down to Bonne Terre, MO where her father has a lake house.

Spent a couple days there swimming and feasting and a good hour or two staring at molting dragonflies. Just so you know, they are SUPER weird. Took a few pictures of them:

Monday we drove out in the afternoon until we reached the Mark Twain National Forest. There we found an awesome rickety, rusty old tower to climb

and a neglected forest road which led into some excellent camping grounds. Shot off some bottlerockets (Steve's excellent aim resulted in an enormous gaping wound on Ginny's leg) and hiked down into a stony valley before moving on. Covered many miles the next few days, spending the following night in an Oklahoma rest area where we met a possible ex-juggalo (!) who gave us directions to the Rainbow Gathering which just happens to be going on in the mountains near Steve's niece's house in Albuquerque (where we were already headed.) We hoped Carley would be able to make it down, but unless someone wants to sport her a ticket asap it looks like it'll be a 2/3's bandido event. Here in Albuquerque we have been hanging out with Steve's niece and family and mixing up garbage bin's full of pancake mix for the gathering.

Some more recent pictures may be found at: http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/TheAdventuresOfGinnyAndSteve#

June 27, 2009

2009-06-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

We can both be found on facebook if you want to hassle us on a more personal level. We have spent the past few days mostly hanging around the house because the temperature has been in the high 90's and low 100's. Lena and Jesse took us to the Botanical Gardens where we ran across Magic Plant! It was very exciting to see it somewhere outside of the amazingness that is Belize, where one feels like they've left the planet entirely

June 23, 2009

2009-06-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

We've realized pretty fast that it's going to be a lot easier to update a blog like this than bothering with creating a whole new website. This one can be updated from anywhere and posts can be uploaded from our phone. So, maybe we'll be good about updating. Sorry we've been such slackers lately! All our archived emails can be found here now.

We went to the zoo yesterday; Please be appeased by the following:

December 9, 2007 - first of archived emails

2009-06-23T08:55:00.001-07:00

Hi Everyone,

We're in Hidalgo Del Parral, otherwise known as Parral, State of Chihuahua, on the way South East. In the interest of minimalism, efficiency and as Steve puts it "getting more bang for the buck", we're consolidating our peeps/homies/cohorts/compadres/amigos into one mailing list. If you don't want to be on this list or know someone who does, please let us know.

With that said, we've been spending the last week in and around the town of Batopilas, visiting one Jim Hogg who leads a crazy life in the surrounding hills. We were kindly welcomed into many homes on account of his popularity, given beds and fed many delicious beans, tortillas and (unfortunately) even freshly slaughtered creatures whose corpses hung from the ceilings of our host's homes so that we might grab a bloody chunk at any time we desire.

The homes have dirt floors with no bathrooms or sinks, and the surrounding grounds are loaded with goats, cows, chickens, pigs, burros, horses, dogs, and cats. The town of Batopilas, with its great old Spanish architecture, is deep in a massive canyon with one way crumbling roads dropping up and down the mountains in the most terrifying fashion you can imagine. The wee Isuzu pickup couldn't take it so we were at the whim of Jim and his essentially brake-less truck. Turned out better that way because we could spend more time looking at the views and trying to pet the many creatures who wandered the roads with us. Steve made many human friends and shined up his spanish quite a bit, Ginny made many non-human friends (which is of course quite preferable), but sadly most of her friends were either ripe for slaughter or starving to death.

Some things of interest we have been up to include:
* Borrowed a .45 pistol from a known drug lord and shot it off a peak in the hills (did we remember to wipe off our prints?)
* Gave a ride to a cool Indian guy with brightly colored traditional clothing, head band, and homemade sandals. In return he gave us oranges!
* Steve listened to a great 3-piece band playing 3 "Ranchera" songs per 100 pesos. (Ginny preferred to sleep in the house made available to us that night because she was tired from banging around inside Jim's truck on those terrible roads all day.) The only song whose words were translated was the lament of someone whose dog had been shot so he shot the shooter.

And to generally tie you into the bigger picture, we were going to swim along the Sea of Cortez coast but it was too cold, so we are going to the Caribbean, Yucatan first, and visited Jim for 5 days along the way. From here we shoot down through central Mexico, hopefully avoiding excessive traffic, bad roads, and army road blocks.

We have an online photo album for those of you interested in seeing pictures. This may be found by clicking here:http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/MexicoTrip
Click the individual pictures to see bigger ones or mouse over to see the captions. There is also a slide show option.

Bye for now,
S & G

January 18, 2008

2009-06-23T08:54:00.001-07:00

Hello again Everyone,

You last heard from us upon arrival at the Caribbean coast of Yucatan, where the water is warm enough to swim. We went out on a 4-day trial trip in the canoe, north from Cancun, about 20 miles up to Isla Contoy, which is at the NE corner of the Yucatan Peninsula. We were promptly kicked off that island but were generally successful, camping on beaches, paddling through the mangrove swamps that lie behind the beach, and succeeding in our first open crossing. Steve pulled the canoe while swimming much of the time, per the strategy of traveling like that to maximize swimming exercise. We have since solved a few equipment problems: gave the canoe a new paint job, installed new canoe seats, bought new waterproof duffel bags, resolved storage issues, etc. Moreover, we discovered several problems with the traveling strategy itself:
1) The wind (standard Caribbean trade winds, usually from the east) is often too strong to counter either paddling or swimming.
2) The surf is sometimes too heavy to land or launch.
3) Public access to the shoreline is scarce, making camping and reprovisioning difficult.
4) It's hard to carry enough food and water and stow it all in a safe, capsize-proof manner.
5) It's an on-going challenge to avoid sunburn, insect bites, flipper sores, and other skin disorders associated with our environment.

After fixing the problems as best we could we gave up on the idea, though it was never firm anyway, of continuously following the coast in the canoe. Steve can still get his swimming in and life can be much simpler living out the truck while scouting for good diving places along the coast, and using the canoe as an occasional adjunct. So we proceeded south from Cancun looking for places where we can swim out to the reefs that lie along much of the coast. Here and there we find good places to swim, and there we stay a few hours or a few days. We've also been swimming a lot beautiful cenotes, most of which extend down into caves which, naturally, we can't go far into. We've spent time in Puerto Morales, Akumel, and Tulum, our home base the past few days, desirable because there is a public beach RVs can camp on for free, and the reef is unrestricted and only about 300 yards offshore. The water is clear, the fish and turtles are colorful and abundant, and an important Mayan ruin site is just up the beach from us: stone temples overlooking the brilliant aquamarine sea. We've battled rain storms which find surprise leaks in our truck canopy, devised new mosquito net techniques, and utterly failed to make lentils taste good. In other words, things are great and we hope they continue that way! We've befriended a couple of people along the way, one of whom, a skinny galoot from Wisconsin, will probably accompany us for awhile.

We plan to continue following the coast southward swimming wherever we can get access to a good place. For a while we will follow a long barrier-beach peninsula ending at Point Allen, from which point we will have to return to Tulum. After that there are the myriad islands off the coast of Belize, which promise great long-term canoing. perhaps allowing a return to our original travel strategy. So, we'll probably just continue South and see what becomes of it. We've arrived at our general playground - long driving trips are no longer necessary. Steve swims an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon, and Ginny swims nearly as much. Our bodies are getting pretty strong and tan. The swimming is good for Steve's back.

We've put up some more pictures for your enjoyment onhttp://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/MexicoTrip. The last 43 are new since you last went to that site. Steve thought there were too many pictures of him and Ginny thought there were too many of her. we settled the dispute mathematically, making the number proportionate to how many people each has on the distribution list, and Steve has more on the list!

ginny and steve

March 4, 2008

2009-06-23T08:53:00.002-07:00

Hola everyone! Here's another update whether you want it or not!

We last emailed you from Tulum in mid-January. We're still floating around the east coast of the Yucatan peninsula, in Mexico's state of Quintana Roo, the major towns of which are Cancun and Chetumal. Our daily grind is coffee/breakfast, swimming, lounging, exploring, eating, sleeping, etc. Two unusual circumstances have superimposed themselves upon this routine: a mystery tropical illness in Steve's gut, and Ginny's sister's delivery of Steve's accordion, which included a scouting trip to Belize.

1) Steve's Mystery Illness:
In late January we were staying at our public beach in Tulum. Steve decided to make a fire and test out our new grill set-up consisting of a rusty grill and a couple of tentpoles we scrounged. The entree: a delicious (in Steve's opinion, not in vegetarian Ginny's) fish. We drove into town to find a massive political rally going on and almost everything closed, including the pescaderia (fish store). Fortunately some fishermen were lurking in the alley, one of whom was eager to sell a barracuda he had hanging off the fence in a black plastic bag. Steve jumped at the chance at the scary and sometimes poisonous barracuda. (They say that when the fish is caught some organ must be pulled out and chewed raw to determine by the taste whether the fish is safe to eat.)

With half a barracuda proudly swinging from Steve's hand we returned to camp, Ginny expressing concern about the possible poison and Steve insisting that "sometimes you just have to trust people." So the fish was fried and eaten over two days, with some but not necessarily enough ice in the meantime. The second night Steve became very sick, even fainting once. In the morning we went to a hospital where Steve consulted a doctor while Ginny was beset up by a very drunk, bloody, and friendly man. The doctor prescribed this and that. (Here Ginny wants to insert false information regarding bleeding eyeballs but Steve insists that this be omitted.)

We took a flea-infested room in Felipe Carrillo Puerto in celebration of Steve's illness and Ginny's anniversary of birth. Steve got better, then worse again. We went to Chetumal and parked the truck in the front yard of an alcoholic named Victor to whom we had given a ride a few days prior. His kind neighbor, a doctor, suggested blood and stool tests (which indicated Salmonella poisoning), prescribed more medications, and warned us to leave Victor's house because his drug-addict brothers would soon relieve us of our few but precious belongings. These medications didn't cure Steve either, but we subsequently went to a vastly more expensive doctor in Cancun, and Steve now suspects himself cured.

2) The Amazing Accordion Courier:
After months of longing for his accordion, Steve decided he could live without it no longer. Despite the severe space crunch in our Isuzu pickup he requested the services of Ginny's sister, Carley, a world-reknowned accordion courier :). What luck, she was available! On February 11th she arrived, accordion in hand.

Carley stayed until the 20th, sharing in many delightful adventures. We took her to our Cancun home of MecoLoco (a trailer park amongst Mayan ruins) and introduced her to the friends we could track down in our one day there, including our old friend Javier and a couple who are rescuing sickly stray dogs, bringing them back to health, and arranging international adoptions for them. (Let us know if you need a dog!) To fill out her ten days with us we all went to Tulum, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, and beautiful Lake Bacalar where we took a three-wheeled bike for a joyride, justifying our nickname: Los Tres Bandidos. We then entered Belize!

Belize is so amazing that, as Carley says, "Even the garbage looks like butterflies!" In fact, we could only stay four days without spontaneously combusting. It gained its independence only in 1981 and seems to be a very new and hopeful country. The wonderful people are an unlikely mixture of Africans, Mayans, Chinese, Hindus, Europeans, and (best of all!) Mennonites! They speak English, Spanish, Chinese, German, and various Creoles. All these disparate peoples seem to tolerate and even like each other! Finally, a place in the world for Los Tres Bandidos!

In Belize Los Bandidos visited a Baboon (actually howler-monkey) Sanctuary on the Belize River and made friends with the proprietor, a 24-year-old guy named Shane whose job is to hang out with his monkey friends and show them to people for a small fee. The Bandidos swam in the river after being assured the crocodiles stay away from the swimming hole due to a distaste for people. Then we went to the town of San Ignacio, in the hills, where the bandidos foolishly hoped it would be cooler. It is an endearing and surprisingly touristy town in western Belize. It is the start of the Ruta Maya, a canoe race that we've considered participating in. The bandidos stayed there two days, exploring a 1,600-foot waterfall and a cave with a river flowing through it. The ancient Mayans considered the cave to be the passageway to Hell and sacrificed mainly children there. After San Ignacio we zipped Carley back to the Cancun airport, packing in as many mini adventures as we could along the way.

We've been so unsuccessful at leaving Quintana Roo we've decided to give in and spend some time on the island of Cozumel, famous for its excellent diving. We write this from the upstairs apartment of our new Cozumeleno friend, Pepe, a very peppy and hospitable soul who sells puppets and other trinkets to the thousands of cruise-ship tourists that pass through every day.

Such are our latest adventures, best told in our captioned pictures, the last 80 of which are new (you can click on the first new one- "diving instructions..." to see the larger image, then use your right and left buttons to flip through the pictures). They may be found at:http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/MexicoTrip, (We have also uploaded a video of a magical plant which apparently lives only in the Baboon Sanctuary here:http://s233.photobucket.com/albums/ee87/ginnygoon/ ?action=view&current=magicplantcloseup.flv )

g&s

April 8, 2008

2009-06-23T08:53:00.001-07:00

Hi friends! Time for another update on our wanderings.

We last emailed you from the island of Cozumel on Feb 23. That was our final fling in Mexico. Steve having kicked his intestinal disorder, we then scooted down to Belize, which we briefly investigated earlier. This time we'll stay longer. "Ah! I love Belize!" is Ginny's constant refrain and Steve is of like mind.

Corozal is the first town across the border. Here we met Mae and Craig of Oregon, who like many Americans have bought land here (and had a beautiful Mennonite house built on it), adding another strand to this small yet diverse culture, where one hears English, Creole, and Spanish equally, and we haven't even hit the Garifuna districts yet!

Our new friends made us feel instantly welcome in Belize after a long day of border hassles. They also found us a place to keep our truck while we went canoeing. We started with a four-day cruise in Corozal Bay and adjoining rivers and lakes. As in the Yucatan the land is flat, the waters shallow, and mangrove is the typical tree where land and sea meet. We saw the splashes of crocodiles launching themselves into the river, and heard the scratchy whistles of what we think of as the Mexican crow, but which is really the Grackler!

The shake-down trip having gone well, we now wanted to go to the outer islands, where the water is clear and the sea-life rich. But the northeast tradewinds were too powerful to paddle against, so we boarded a fast ferry to Ambergris Cay with the canoe on deck. They dropped us off in San Pedro, a bustling fishing-and-tourism town. We spent a week circumnavigating the island, up the west side to the Mexican border then down the east side along the Barrier Reef, back to San Pedro. Steve got back into his two-hour-a-day swim routine while Ginny made new friends in the animal kingdom. She especially likes the blue land crabs, the hermit crabs, the manatees and the batfish, which walks through the eelgrass on "legs" and inflates a booger-like appendage from its nose to attract small fish to eat. In other words, she especially likes the animals she has seen so far. Creatures still required include: Toucans, Scarlet Macaws, Tapirs (Steve saw one, he thinks!), Jaguars, and Crocodiles. (The plurals may be indicative of unreasonable hope on Ginny's part).

From San Pedro we canoed SSW along the Barrier Reef and its associated islets. We spent four days in Cay Caulker, popular among a more laid-back class of travellers. We camped in a sandy grove across a narrow channel from a loud reggae bar. The other islands were quieter. We'd camp where no one was around and supplement our food supply with coconuts, which we open with hammer and chisel to drink the water inside. It's slightly sweet, slightly carbonated, and oh-so refreshing. Other nights we roasted marshmallows while clouds scudded past a bright moon.

This outing ended with our arrival at the the tumble-down Belize City waterfront, where we write this email from our third-story hotel window. Outside, chaotic waves slap at the seawall. Traditional wooden sailboats swing at moorings while powerful launches shuttle tourists to and from the cruise ships that lay at anchor in Belize Harbor.

What to do next? Continue canoeing south? Go back to truck camping wherever there's a swimmable beach? But the utlimate snorkelling is out where deep channels cut through the shallow coral reefs, and at the outlying atolls, where we can't very well live out of our canoe. We need a bigger boat for that: another option. And there's still Guatemala and Honduras to see.

Again, see our captioned pictures. A new photo album has been uploaded to http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/BelizeIt. The old pictures may still be found at: http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/MexicoTrip,

We wish you well!

Ginny & Steve

p.s. Check out the batfish video found online. It's too weird!http://www.liquidguru.com/kajhtm/vidPages/2bat.htm

May 5, 2008

2009-06-23T08:52:00.001-07:00

Hi friends!

We last emailed you from Belize City at the conclusion of a canoe trip through the northern Belizean islands, which was limited only by our canoe's inability to function well in the wind and waves common at the outer reef where the snorkeling is best.

Unsure what to do next, we drove down into central Belize checking areas we'd heard about. We hiked in the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary, canoed local streams, and camped on the beach in Placencia, a town popular among cruising sailors. It was all great, but again short on snorkeling. So we looked for a larger boat.

We lucked out in Stann Creek Town, also known as Dangriga. A Belizean fellow named Junior rented us "Li'l Hang Man" for two weeks. Li'l Hang Man is a small, stable boat with a 15-horse motor. The boat came with free use of its namesake, Hang Man Caye, which Junior happens to own!

Thus began a fortnight of intensive snorkeling in the crystalline, bio-rich waters lying off and south of Dangriga. The area is scattered with dozens of tiny cayes (islands) formed by coral growing up from the bottom, which is typically 30-60 feet deep. The islands are low and mangrove-covered above sea level, tall and steep below sea-level. Some are shaped like rings, with deep lagoons in the middle. Dozens more are "almost-islands", that is, coral-formed underwater hills that don't quite reach sea-level but which offer the same magnificent diving. We saw lots of spotted eagle rays, nursing sharks, lobsters, moray eels, tarpon (behemoths that appear to be sculpted from highly polished stainless steel) and even squid! And let us not forget the many, many species of small niche-dwelling fish, mollusks, and crustaceans that contribute so much of the reefs' color and personality, nor the several species of corals themselves, nor the many wonderful anenomes, sponges, and seaweeds. We rarely know their names, but we cherish them all. The highlight came on the last day, when we stopped our boat next to eight dolphins, jumped in, and swam with them a while. Our new friend were relaxed, playful, and mildly curious. Ginny didn't sleep well that night, she was on a dolphin high.

Having somewhat reluctantly returned the boat we drove back to Corozal, in northern Belize, where we made friends before. We are now looking into the feasibility of fixing up a sailboat and using it for a while, with the blessings of the American couple that own it but lack time to sail it. Or maybe we'll find something nicer over the internet and buy it, which could involve a return to the States.

So we again leave you on an uncertain but happy note, with new panoply of captioned pictures athttp://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/Belizeit. Start at #48. The older pictures may still be found at:http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/MexicoTrip. Use the magnifying glass above the right corner of the picture if you want to see more detail.

We wish you well!

Ginny & Steve

June 3, 2008

2009-06-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

Hola Friends -

As you'll recall, we did a lot of great swimming in Belize, but the lack of a larger boat excluded us from the superior offshore sites. In early May we decided, rather than fix up our friends' sailboat, to find a boat of our own back in the states. Thus began our slow return via Guatemala and the Pacific coast of Mexico.

We stubbornly insisted on getting back the $150 US worth of "temporary customs duty" we had paid on our truck. It turned out this meant a customs guard had to escort us from Belize City to the western frontier! He rode in the cab with us and required an extra $10 US for every stop. This curbed our usual proclivity to investigate points of interest along the way. But the border was soon reached and this impediment removed.

The feared Guatemalan robbings, kidnappings, and carjackings never occurred. Either they were afraid of the "Tres Bandidos" logo on the side our truck or Guatemala is not really that dangerous. We found the people friendly and stylish. The countryside teems with villages into which men, women, and children are constantly carrying colorful jugs of water and massive bundles of firewood, either on their back or their heads. They seem to haul these necessities over great distances. Result: they are Incredible-Hulk strong. And they still find time to weave elaborate fabrics and make their own clothing.

We visited the famous ruins at Tikal, then Guatemala City, Antigua, and Lake Atitlan, where we ran into Fabrio, an Italian traveller whom we'd met back in Cancun. The three of us canoed along the cliff-rimmed shore and saw little villages accessible only by boat, also an unnerving number of dead fish floating in the water. One down side of Guatemala is the pollution.

Driving through the Western Highlands we hit 11,000 feet above sea level at one point. On the recommendation of a hiking book about Central America we stopped at the town of Todos Santos Cachumacan, where we each had tailored for us a pair of the pants which all men wear here. You'll see these high-stylers in the pictures. We stayed at a $4-per-day hostel, got sick as dogs on the local cuisine, and spent the next couple days lying miserably in the back of the truck, parked in the courtyard of the hostel, to avoid whatever we felt crawling on us in our room and to be closer to the two bathrooms, which are dank, dark, concrete dungeons with seemingly pre-Columbian plumbing.

Once we were better we entered Mexico on the route that leads through San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. From here we made our way down to the Pacific coast, which we have been following ever since. The main stops have been Salina Cruz (overpowering smell of fish), Barra de la Cruz and Puerto Escondito (lots of surfers), Acapulco (worst traffic jams), Manzanillo (where Steve met up with a friend he hadn't seen in 26 years), Puerto Vallarta, and Mazatlan, not to mention the many small beach towns, which are practically abandoned, this being the tourist off-season. The Mexican states thus traversed are Oaxaca, Guerrero, Michoacan, Colima, Jalisco, Nayarit, and Sinaloa. The countryside is dessicated, the rains not having started yet. The land is alternately mountainous and flat, with vast cultivations of mango, cocoanut, and corn. The beaches are beautiful and easy to access, we've had great luck with free campsites, and we've used the canoe for some nice lagoon and river trips. On the down side, the ocean is usually too murky, cool, jellyfishy, or heavy with surf to swim.

We are currently in the town of El Fuerte, Sinaloa, sussing out a way into the canyons of Chihuahua to see Jim Hogg, whom we visited early in our trip, but with whom we have no means of communication. After that we may take the ferry over to La Paz on the Baja Peninsula and see if the summertime offers hope for our original plan to canoe along the Sea of Cortez. If not we'll return to the states sooner than later. As you can see, our plans remain fluid. It's more fun that way.

Hope this email finds you all well! The Belize and Guatemala Pictures will be the last ones starting at number 98 onhttp://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/Belizeit and the new Mexico pictures are onhttp://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/BackInMexico.
The older pictures may still be found onhttp://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/MexicoTrip

Love,
Ginny & Steve

July 25, 2008

2009-06-23T08:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

We last wrote you on June 3 from El Fuerte, via which town we hoped to reach Steve's friend Jim Hogg in the canyons where the states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa, and Sonora come together. In December we had dropped down from the Sierra Madre plateau and found him in Batopilas. This time we ascended from the Pacific coast. Given that our map indicated bad roads and our pickup lacks 4-wheel drive We doubted if we could drive all the way in. Nor did we know just where Jim would be, not having heard from him for a couple months, since he has no phone or email.

It turned out that a new road had been punched through a couple years before. This took us up and down mountains to the dusty village of Tubares. We then forded the Uribe River, still low because the rains hadn't started yet, and reached the village where Jim previously stayed. The people there said he was now in a place through which we had passed several hours before! This was Steve's third visit to Jim and each time he is further back in the mountains! We joyously reunited with Jim and spent four days reviewing his water projects, hiking the simmering hills, and swimming in the El Fuerte River. The area is incredibly hot, windy, and dry. The plantlife all wants to scratch you!

We then drove back to the coast and took the five-hour ferry from Topolopampo to La Paz on the Baja Peninsula. We spent a week exploring the Cabo area, at the tip of the peninsula. We camped on beaches and swam at Cabo Pulmo. The marine life was rich, the shallows containing considerable coral, but the water was chilly.

Our prime interest being the Sea of Cortez, we drove up through Loreto, Mulege, and Santa Rosalia, swimming here and there. The water temperature improved but the visibilty remained disappointing. One day we canoed to offlying Isla Coronado. On another we paddled up the Mulege River, where a mangrove estuary transitions into a turtle-filled lagoon surrounded by tall grasses and date palms. We visited ancient Spanish missions, explored the salt-mine lagoons around Guerrero Negro on the Pacific coast, and detoured to Bahia de Los Angeles, where tan desert islands dot a turquoise sea. Usually we drove the paved highways. Occasionally we took dirt tracks, loving the absence of people and the closeness to nature: caves, weirdly shaped rocks, many species of cactus and palm, and the fantastic cirio cacti, which seem the invention of a Dr. Suess or a peyote tripper.

We spent our hottest night near Mulege, lying in pools of sweat, praying for a breeze. We took to buying ice cubes and sucking them as we drove, but we never knew how to quantify the heat, lacking a thermometer. Then one evening after it had cooled off we stopped at a rustic roadside cafe that sported a collection of wall thermometers. It was 105 degrees Fahrenheit! If that was the cool of the evening, what had been the temp in the heat of the day?

Driving north up the peninsula, the final stretch is along the Pacific coast which is bone-chilling cold, at least to us, who had been seven months in the tropics. We crossed the border in Tijuana on July 2nd and marveled at being back where the drivers all stay tamely within striped lanes and the bathrooms have toilet paper and running water, but everything costs more.

In San Diego we paddled around marinas looking at multi-hull sailboats for a few days, and saw the 4th of July fireworks from our canoe near the fireworks barge in the harbor. Then we spent nine days at the Santa Monica home of Ginny's mom and grandma, during which time Grandma turned 92. All her four children came to celebrate, plus a few friends and grandchildren. We looked at boats for sale in San Pedro, Santa Cruz, and the Sacramento estuary, took a detour through northwest Nevada and southeast Oregon, just for variety, visited too few friends and family along the way and now find ourselves back among the strip malls and traffic of Pierce County. Steve says in other words, we're home (Ginny says nothing because she's too busy wrapping herself up in blankets, louring cat-snugglers and crying for the far-off Belizian sun!)

We have maybe a month's worth of business to take care of around here, then we'll be off again, most likely to buy a Corsair folding trimaran, 24 or 27 feet long. The biggest concentrations of these are in Massachusetts and Florida. Then we will probably sail back to the Caribbean where, as Steve sang during his Three Years in a 12-Foot Boat, " . . . the fish can fly and the birds can swim and the water's so warm that you wanna jump in!"

Hope this email finds you all well! The pictures will be split again by country, the new Mexico pictures are the last half or so, starting with "Cactus Fruit" onhttp://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/BackInMexico and the US pictures on http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/USAUSA. Older pictures may still be found onhttp://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/MexicoTrip andhttp://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/Belizeit

Yours in squid,
Ginny & Steve

September 21, 2008

2009-06-23T08:49:00.002-07:00

Dear friends and family,

We last emailed you as we returned to the Puget Sound area on July 26. We spent August getting stuff done so we could resume our travels. Steve filed his 2007 tax return and worked out management issues for his properties, Ginny sold her car, visited her friends, and hugged her cats. Despite all our serious work, we somehow found time for an 8-day trip through the San Juans in Steve's Squeak, the boat in which he spent three years. We figured that experience sailing a 12-foot boat together would make us enjoy even more the relatively palacial one we plan to buy.

We repacked, based on revised expectations as to our travelling needs, and departed on September 2. We went first to Portland to see a 21-foot called a Sea Pearl, a beautiful and very simple boat. It's not a multi-hull but has the advantage of being a rowboat as well as a sailboat. Then we drove across Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado, where we visited Ginny's friend Stephen, who lives in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. In Pueblo CO we saw another boat, this time a home-built 24-foot trimaran similar to the Corsairs we like. The owner took us out on his local lake. Then we drove to Oklahoma City, where we saw another Sea Pearl.

After traveling in Mexico so much we appreciate the nice roads here in the States. Where possible we take the small state highways and county roads. Finding camping has been a breeze, it's always easy to find a dark, quiet spot. We have slept in residential neighborhoods and in farmer's fields, at public recreation spots and wherever any old rough wheel track might take us. Being Western Washingtonians we cannot help but find strangely beautiful the desolate openness of the Great Basin, and the vast plains of Colorado and Oklahoma, where thunderstorms take up the whole sky and can last all day and night. Road side attractions are the most exciting part of travel. We pull over for every historical marker, mud bog, and mysterious museum. Sometimes we even check out abandoned homes and the odd cemetery, where Steve fantasizes about pioneers and their descendants resting after hard lives trying to live off some Dustbowl farm.

Now we've been a few days in St. Louis, at the home of Lena (close college friend of Ginny) and husband Jesse. They expect a baby in about a month, so Ginny has been sewing up baby clothes emblazoned with her omnipresent were-squid motif (cross between a werewolf and a squid). Meanwhile Steve sketches how to modify a Sea Pearl to suit our needs while remaining on the fence about whether to do that or buy a Corsair.

We leave soon for New York and New England to see more boats and enjoy the fall colors. Once it has cooled off down south we'll go to Florida, where the most Sea Pearls, Corsairs and Waffle Houses may be found. It's also the ideal jumping-off point for our return to the Caribbean.

There's nothing so special about our photos and rambles, nor is this "one-size-fits-all" email very personal, but we consider it a place-holder for our physical presence among the people we care about. At least you'll know where we are and know how to get hold of us! Meanwhile, enjoy your own adventures, whatever you're doing.

The new U.S. pictures are the last fifty or so starting with "Steve and Beaker" on http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/USAUSA .
Older pictures may still be found onhttp://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/MexicoTrip http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/Belizeit andhttp://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/BackInMexico

Yours in weresquid,
Ginny & Steve

November 25, 2008

2009-06-23T08:49:00.001-07:00

Hello again everyone,

We last emailed you from Lena and Jesse's house in St. Louis on our cross-country search for the right sailboat in which to return to the Caribbean. Since then our windshield has been a blur of American forests, fields, concrete, and strip malls.

We passed quickly through Illinois and Indiana. In Ohio we each reestablished contact with an old friend from years before, hoping to visit, but no luck. Steve's pal, it turns out, is now in California, and Ginny's is in prison! We saw bits of Kentucky and West Virginia, then traveled the east-west length of Pennsylvania, pausing in Punxsutawney to learn about the groundhog phenomenon. In the Adirondacks and Catskills the towns became fewer, the roads more winding. After Western Massachusetts and Vermont we arrived at Steve's ancestoral homeland around Lake Winnepesakie, New Hampshire, where we stayed a few days. During this phase of the trip we took county roads and small state highways, passing through the small towns, avoiding the big ones. And we stopped at dozens of historical markers, a passion of Steve's. We slept in the back of the truck in cornfields and forests and along rivers and abandoned country lanes.

As we entered the metropolitan areas we usually took freeways and were confined to rest areas, park-and-rides, and Wal-Mart parking lots. Around Boston we visited an old friend of Ginny's and toured Steve's old Harvard haunts. We nearly bought a beautiful 27-foot Corsair trimaran sailboat but chickened out at the last minute because the cost was prohibitive given falling stock prices. We enjoyed the New England colors at the expense of cold weather, and sped south with the heater on full blast.

We rushed through Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. We were still cold, but at least we started finding good campsites again. (One night we slept in a tobacco field next to a KOA campground. After dark Steve sneaked into the KOA and copped a free shower!) Having bought a sliding-seat rowing station for the canoe, we took delightful rides in various Southern estuaries and rivers.

On October 22nd we arrived in Florida. Here it's cold at night and warm in the day. For the past month we have explored the northern half of the state, which teems with alligators, turtles, springs, traffic, and strip malls. We've been lingering around Tarpon Springs (near Tampa), where they build the 21-foot Sea Pearl sailboat. The Sea Pearl company helped us find an excellent deal on a 1985 Sea Pearl in Panama City, Florida. We made the big purchase on November 10th. Then we went to a gathering of the West Coast (of Florida) Trailer Sailors at Lake Harris in central Florida to see what we could learn from other Sea Pearl owners.

Turns out we learned a lot because we capsized the boat in a gust during a tack. The water was eight feet deep. Below that the silty muck was at least 14 feet deep, because the boat eventually turned completely upside down with the masts stuck in the bottom. Swimming under the boat, Steve pushed the masts further down into the muck until they came out of the mast steps, moved the boat aside, then pulled the masts back up to the surface. Many people helped us rescue our stuff and get the boat upright. Everything was soaked and some things destroyed, including the phone, camera, gameboy and GPS. The keys on Steve's accordion froze up from absorbing water but they are working OK now that it's dried out. We also lost a boom, sail, anchor, and anchor line in the capsize, but were able to retrieve them by scraping a hook through the muck. The capsize was a hassle, but it could have been a lot worse!

One day a couple weeks ago, as we were carrying our canoe down to the beautiful spring-fed Rainbow River, a guy named Mike helped us carry it and invited us to his place later. Currently we are staying with him and his wife Julia in a suburb of Tampa, Florida. We are helping them remodel a guest house in exchange for the use of his shop to modify the boat to suit our needs. Among other improvements our still-nameless vessel will be receiving ballast (a way to secure drinking water and canned food to the cabin floor) so we will be less likely to capsize, and a cabin top so the water will stay out if we still capsize. We may be here a few weeks. Then, presumably, we will return to the Caribbean in a route not yet determined.

So, this is what we've been doing, what about you?

Steve & Ginny

P.S. We have more pictures online at:http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/USAUSA# , starting at the picture "Part 3".

P.P.S. We are trying to decide on a boat name. Please let us know what you think. Names we are considering include:
1. Boat
2. Flipper (inspired by our friend Rudy who said, "Be careful, she's a flipper!")
3. Window
4. Awl (prehistoric sewing needle)
5. ...Or, name it after a cat, which is always a good idea:
5a&b. Salt and/or Pepper (steve's childhood cats)
5c,d &e. Gumball, Bing or Cynthia (Ginny's childhood cats)
5f&g. Thurston and/or Snazz Monkey (Ginny's current cats)
5h. Bongo (Our Cancun friend Mark's recently deceased cat :(
(see http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/MexicoTrip
#5173664636647493826)
5i. Squeak
6. ...Or, name it after an equally loved and missed non-cat pet. Why not?
6a&b. Lisa and/or Shotsie (Ginny's childhood dogs)
6c. Lucifer (Ginny's childhood turtle)
6d. Zsa Zsa (Steve's childhood dog)

Important things to consider:
*2 is the only name she has earned.
*4 came to Steve in a dream where a voice from the sky (God?) demanded to know the name of the boat.
*Only pets 5a,b,c,d,h,&i and 6a,b&d are confirmed deceased (unless there is something Ginny's mom has been holding back. ahem?)
*5g Snazz (minus the Monkey) is tentatively taken by the canoe. Monkey, Snazz II or Snazz Monkey are still available.
*5h is also the name of an awesome Matt Groening one-eared rabbit-like creature (http://www.pixelydixel.com/img/groening.jpg)
*5i is taken by Steve's 12-foot boat, but Squeak II is available.

As you can see, this is a very difficult decision!

February 22, 2009

2009-06-23T08:46:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and family,

You last heard from us when we had bought our used 21-foot beach-cruiser sailboat and hunkered down in a Tampa suburb to modify it for our voyage into the Caribbean. We traded money and labor for use of a shop, tools, and camping accommodation in a courtyard surrounded by an odd assembly of fences, roofs, and shops. Neglected chunks of automotive restoration projects and a small family of cockroaches shared this space with us, causing some of you to be concerned that we were living in a junkyard. Well, yeah we were, but we became hardly aware of it over time as we worked every day, all day on our boat. We never took a day off, though there were some good opportunities (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Ginny's Birthday, Valentine's Day). We eschewed holidays as we became increasingly aware that we did not want to linger or spend any more time there than necessary. For details on our refinishing, rowing station, cabin, and stowage/tankage/ballast system projects, see www.seapearlboats.org, then the "Steve's SP mods" link. There will be an update there in a few days detailing our last month's worth of work.

As we said, we worked every day for three months and now these projects are nearly completed. We didn't travel or see much other than run around the Tampa area buying boat-building materials, and of course we shopped at the local grocery store and generally attended to the miscellaneous needs of life like laundry and checking out books from the library. We slept in the back of the truck as usual and cooked in a moldy (the deadly black kind) old travel trailer. It has been a lot of drudgery, and the weather has often been surprisingly cold, so we derived our much needed pleasure from planing planks just so and seeing our epoxy glue-ups cure properly. Many little parts must be held together forever in a very exact manner!

Ultimately our host had problems which strained our relationship with him. Sorry if that is vague! Two days ago we abruptly fled that junkyard in favor of visiting with a friend we had been meaning to meet with for months. Now we are here at the home of the author of the www.seapearlboats.org website, in a suburb of Atlanta. We arrived yesterday and though we raced out of Tampa without stopping until Georgia, our prior host's bad energy seemed to follow. On the freeway coming here a car rear-ended us, but only the truck and trailer were damaged, the boat only a bit scratched up, so no problem! Conditions look excellent here to put the finishing touches on our projects and continue our travels. Our plans are flexible as always, but full of potential for adventure and possibly a brief return to the West Coast before leaving the country (lock up your valubles!).

The latest pictures may only interest you if you like boats. Sorry, we have been rather boring lately! To view the pictures please see http://www.picassaweb.com/ginnygoon/#USAUSAstarting with "Part 4"

Love Always,
Ginny and Steve

June 21, 2009

2009-06-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

Our Atlanta working conditions are much better than those in Tampa. Actually, the location is Stone Mountain, about 25 miles east of Atlanta. Stone Mountain is a huge granite rock. Here is a picture of us climbing it .

We were at the house of Larry Whited. Larry is sort of the president of the unofficial Sea Pearl fan club, having owned several and being a thorough boat nut. He has a bottomless inventory of tools and is an incredible friend and sponsor. Larry is a nurse who works weekend nights. He put us up in our own bedroom, accepted us as housemates, and made us feel at home right away. His property is about an acre is size with a comfortable rambler and quite a few boats of all shapes and sizes.

Once settled in at Larry's, we helped him update his facilities. We put on a new roof on his tool shed, which is out back, and built shelves for his many tools. We turned a screened porch into a shop by clearing it out and organizing it around Larry's fantastic Shopsmith, a combination table saw, table sander, and drill press.

Next we recovered from our car accident. You may recall that we were rear-ended as we approached Atlanta. The truck's bumper and tailgate were damaged and the boat trailer was wracked out of shape . We found a used bumper at a junk yard, bent the tailgate back in shape by driving over it a certain way, and pieced together a new trailer from leftover parts in a manufacturer's storage yard. Most of the money we got from the guilty party's insurance company went into savings.

Now for the boat work. We finished the stowage/ballast project, including painting all those strange aluminum objects white. Then we finished the cabin top , which was very tricky. The whole thing comes off by removing 27 bolts and lifting it off. Larry's Sea Pearl website, Seapearlboats.org , has some excellent detail of the work if you're interested in learning more. We worked seven days a week, usually until dark, but somehow still found time to watch movies on the Turner Classic Movie channel and fatten up on biscuits.

In May Larry took us to the annual small boat gathering at Cedar Key, Florida. We had a magnificent time sailing every day, kayaking, bicycling, swimming, and exploring, not to mention looking at cool boats and meeting their designers and owners. We have a few pictures of Cedar Key in our new photo album , but for the real experience check out Larry's Photo Album and his Cedar Key website write-up .

When we got back to from Cedar Key our boat, Pepper, was done enough for a shake-down voyage, so we spent four days on Lake Lanier, a large, man-made lake north of Atlanta. We sailed and rowed up and down the lake. At night we nosed Pepper onto various uninhabited islands, with an anchor astern in the water and another up on the beach, and slept in her tiny cabin. Good thing we're small! Pepper proved out well, but more projects remained.

Back at Larry's we have almost finished building a stowage locker for the aft part of the boat. Associated with this is a re-do of the rowing station , whereby the rowing components can be removed when not rowing, to free up room in the cockpit. Steve's birthday came and went, he wasn't interested in celebrating, but Ginny, Larry and Larry's girlfriend Karen dragged him out to dinner anyway. After that It was just about time for us to go back to Washington for a visit prior to hard-core cruising.

So three days ago we left Pepper in Larry's keeping and got back into our old Isuzu pickup with the canoe on top. The next day we found where the states of Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee come together . (It's not as grandiose as where Massachussetts, Vermont, and New York meet.) Now we have arrived back at the house of Lena and Jesse , Ginny's friends in St. Louis.

Basically, we will spend the summer on the road and in Washington, and return to Stone Mountain in the fall. After a little more boat-work we hope to travel down Georgia's Chatahoochie River to the Gulf of Mexico, then south along the west coast of Florida, then to the Bahamas right in time for Hurricane Season...

We hope that you too are finding plenty of challenge and adventure in your life!

Steve and Ginny

P.S. We hope this new site will inspire us to do more frequent, though smaller, updates for those of you who find yourselves wondering what ever happened to us. We will continue to mail out periodic big emails too for the rest of you.