The seas calmed down finally dropping to 1-3 feet so Ron could dive on his boat and look at what happened to his prop. Turns out the whole shaft is broken off. What a bummer. No slapping on the backup prop there.

So we have taking over the "Open Ocean Sea Tug" title. We started towing them this morning and we are only able to make about 3knts and we are about 25-30 degrees off course because of the strong 2knot WSW current trying to drive us to the Galapagos. We remain hopeful that once we near the coast we will get a break in the current, otherwise we'll be in for a long long long slog at about 1 knot or less for days.

I think our cats want to kill us. Shh...here comes one now. sdnmtr ko,.fkl

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We had another good sailing day, covering about 120 miles and sailing for about 20 hours. At one point we had a shark following our boat, a big grey sucker. Sherrell said it looked like a nurse shark, but I think it might be a doctor shark. Anyway it got bored quickly and took off.

However our spirits were dampened when Batwing called us in the morning to report a problem -- they lost their prop. Somehow it had become detached from their shaft and lost to the deep. You might think, well, it's a sailboat, so sail. Unfortunately Batwing is a junk rigged sailboat and this is a mostly upwind passage, junk rigs don't like going upwind. So we've spent quite a bit of time debugging his problem to determine it is hopeless then the rest of the day trying to match his sailing speed. I can honestly say I've never worked so hard to go so slow in my life. We often have two reefs in the jib and two in the mainsail just to go slow enough to stay with them. Their orginal stragety for this passage was to motorsail upwind the whole way if necessary, but with no prop and the current pushing them SW, they were screwed.

For us, it got to the point where we couldn't use the autopilot to steer because our boat speed was so slow and hand steering 300 miles was really looking depressing. So Leonides the other boat with us has now taken Batwing into tow. We're not going much faster, but the speed is constant and we can at least head in the right direction. The bonus is the added speed lets us use our autopilot again. So rather than the fast 4-5 day passage we were looking at achieving, I expect we'll be out here for a while longer.

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Well 24 hours later we've covered 150 miles and sailed about 1/2. We are into the ITCZ which last night treated us to hair raising squalls filled with lightening. By turning and running from them we were able to use radar and avoided the worst of them. I hope we can clear out of this squally area soon. We have about 450 miles to go. The cats are not very happy, but they're adjusting as are we. It's a bit bouncy, but we are making fast time with a healthy current push.

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We managed to get our new anchor chain, which was no minor miracle. And to my extreme joy, I was able to finally remove the rust stains from our deck, hull and my skin. We took our 300' of old rusty and gave it to the locals for them to use on their much lighter boats. They should be able to cut it up and get some more life out of it.

The islands here are beautiful, if quiet sandy beaches are your thing.



We are prepping for the slog to Ecuador, about 7 days worth of a passage. We'll post our position and progress as we sail along. You should be able to track us on the map on this page. I suspect we'll be underway in about a week.

We made it to Panama. We certainly have been taking the slow boat here, but we're here. Now we are getting geared up for the crossing to Ecuador. I've got to get these stupid kidneys checked out via X-Ray to make sure I'm up for the passage and we're going to get our new anchor chain and I'm also going to bus down to Panama City with my life-raft to get it serviced before we go.

Boca Chica is more Chica than Boca -- it's a small sort of place. There's not much here at all, it's going to be a challenge just to get some diesel! Fortunately we are only an hour from David, the 2nd biggest town in Panama.

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The day we were departing Golfito a familiar voice was hailing Sarana over the radio. It was Ryan on Sonrisa! We didn't expect to see him until Ecuador, so even though we checked out of the country, we stayed a day to hang with him. And out of a strange coincidence two other boats with surfers showed up in the bay. The beer and rum flowed and there might have been a flare or two involved that night. But we all agreed to head south to a surf spot in Costa Rica before all of us head our sperate ways.

That's how we ended up in Pavones catching some waves. This will be our very last stop in Costa Rica and it appears that some of our other friends are mystified we are still trying to work our way through Costa Rica. We just keep finding cool places to stop, isn't that the point?

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Once we blasted our way out of the Papagayo winds in Northern Costa Rica and tied up at the Costa Rica Yacht Club, we were able to recharge. Feeling a bit spent and depressed (a new kidney stone didn't help) and with a long list of broken things, we really needed a break. The Yacht Club was great, Sherrell flew back to Seattle to help her mom through a tough surgery (which turned out well). I stayed at the Yacht Club and got busy on the boat.

Most of the boats hit bottom on low tide (like our neighbor in the photo) but we were fortunate to stay upright so I was comfortable reparing the genoa, main sail, sail cover, autopilot, towed water generator, cleaning the dirty fuel tank, painting and repairing the raw water pump, and a crap load of other stuff.

Anyway our buddies on Desidarata showed up and we made plans for Sherrell's return to rent a car and split the time. Finally something fun! So when I picked Sherrell and her 170 lbs of boat parts up from the airport in a car, it was quite a treat. We used the car to go to Arenal, the only active volcano in Central America.

We hiked trails, swam in a hot river and in general spent two days not working or worrying about papagayos. It was a break we really needed. We saw lots of animals like this Coati:

After touring we used the car and had some more medical tests done (I passed that stupid kidney stone the day before Sherrell came back). Not exactly fun, but someone's gotta help those doctors pay for their club memberships.

We eventually got of out Puntarenas and the Yacht Club with a working sailboat and started to explore the unknown areas of Golfo de Nicoya. This included a hike up to some waterfalls. There were three falls in a row with swimming pools in between. The brave (or crazy) jump from the second falls where this photo was taken and into the pool below!
There's also a rope swing which was more my speed and lots of fun trails to climb. We even saw howler monkeys romping around in the trees there. We've done a lot of touring and exploring new bays and exploring parts that many boats don't visit. Now we are winding up our Costa Rica trip down here in Golfito in the southern end of the country and in about a week we'll be chillin in Panama where we have a new anchor chain to pickup in a town called David.

Not much has changed on board. Jordan is still biting the hand that feeds her and trying to kill as many things as she can get her paws on.

Our pactor modem went bonko. Instead of getting email over our HF radio, we just get an un-ending string of E4 pouring out of our radio modem. I found out that pulling out the backup battery and restarting the box seemed to get it talking again, however it crashes when we get down to the business of trying to send/receive email. So we're still working on it and we've been unable to update our perpetual slog due to technical difficulties.

Right now we are in beautiful Golfo Dulce in a town called Gulfito. There's a really cool place to hang out called Land and Sea which is IDEAL for cruisers like us. I can't say enough good things about the place. On the walls we see our friends who have passed through here have left their marks with artistic drawings on the walls.

We're going to spend some time fixing more broken stuff on the boat (hopefully our pactor modem will be one of them) and getting ready to go to Panama in about a week.

Costa Rica has been great and we're excited about seeing Panama.

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We're still hanging out in Gulfo de Nicoyo. The charts and guidebooks have so many errors its taking a long time to sort things out for ourselves. We've been doing a lot of surveying and exploring, some of it is a bit nerve racking as we discover uncharted shoals.

Some people we met had their dinghy disappear in the middle of the night, most likely the work of some local sticky fingers. We went around talking to people about it and letting them know there's a reward for finding it. I hope something turns up because it's hard to get around without a "car" and it's even harder getting a new one. It's a real bummer but we're hopeful it will turn up.

Also we finally did some inland tours and saw the only active volcano in Central America, Arenal. We got some video of the rocks flying out of the top and down the mountain. At night we drove out into the jungle with a pizza and some beer and found a spot to watch the red hot lava ooze out and red rocks tumble down. And we found this hot springs under a bridge where the Ticos were swimming. We sat under a waterfall and let the hot water pour over us. I can't tell you how nice it was to take a break from working on the boat or dealing with medical crap and enjoy our trip to the volcano. When we have internet access again I'll try to post some photos.

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