BVI

 I know it's been a while since our last blog update, so here comes the latest news since we arrived in BVI on the 21st of October. The last leg of our journey from Panama was the Dominican republic to BVI, and it also turned out to be the hardest part. The wind was against us 25 knots the whole way, and it took longer than expected to get to BVI. When we finally arrived after 36 hors or so we anchored off Norman Island and spend the night there. The next morning we continued to Virgin Gorda. 

We spend the first two weeks in Yacht Harbour, the marina in Spanish Town. Dive BVI where I work has its headquarters there, and it is also the "capital" of Virgin Gorda. It soon turned out that the marina was very expensive, so we moved the boat up to Leverick Bay in the North Sound, where Dive BVI also have a dive shop. So now Windsong is sitting two slips from the dive boat, and I'm literally 5 steps from work. Very convenient, and it's also a very nice place here with pool, beach, restaurant and a very lively beach bar with live music every evening in the high season. We might need earplugs!

            

The dogs´favorite beach at Mosquito Island

     

                      

Afternoon cocktail in the pool

            

                      

    The beach at Leverick and the mast of Windsong in the background

  Painkiller, the famous local cocktail

Map of BVI

 Saba Rock, probably the smallest island in BVI

Panama - Haiti - Dominican Republic

Yesterday we arrived in Boca Chica in the Dominican Republic.

After leaving Bocas Del Toro we had 4 days of flat seas and no wind at all, and a single day of big swell before arriving in Haiti where we made a stop to see our friend Jelle. We stopped in Port Morgan and had a nice lobster dinner before we continued the next day. It took us 48 hrs to sail to the Dominican Republic, and almost all the way we had 12 ft waves and 25-35 knots of wind in the nose, so needless to say the trip was less than pleasant and we were all exhausted when we finally arrived. It is almost impossible to cook, sleep or do anything at all when the boat is moving in all directions and you are nearly thrown out of your bed when trying to get some rest.

After a good night of sleep we all felt much better, and today we've been on a trip to the capital, Santo Domingo. Thanks to Jelle we finally got solar panels for the boat!

The weather here is cooler and much less humid than Panama, and the place is nearly bug free.

All in all things that contribute to much better sleep!

We'll be here until Tuesday when we continue on the last leg to BVI, hopefully with calm weather and less swell than when we arrived.

Back in busines

Laurent and I are back on the boat after spending 3 months in Europe, and we can now call ourselves Mr and Mrs de Courtivron.

We had a great time in Denmark and France, nice to spend time with family and friends and enjoy some quality food.

We are just about ready to leave Bocas and set sails for BVI where I got a job at Dive BVI starting early November.

We have two new crew members onboard, Abi from England and Kevin from USA.

Our planned route is via Jamaica, Dominican Republic and maybe Puerto Rico, and at the moment the weather looks great for the passage so we hope to leave tomorrow.

Laurent, the dogs and I have left the boat in Bocas del Toro and are now in France. We'll be in Europe until mid September when we return to the boat and continue our trip.

We wish all our friends a nice summer without hurricanes!

The Panama Canal

On Thursday last week it was finally our turn to transit the Panama Canal.

Each boat is required to have a captain plus four people to handle the lines, so we asked our friend Leo and 3 of his friends to come and help us.

At 6:00 in the morning we were ready to pick up our pilot outside the Balboa Yacht club, and at 8:30 he finally came on board. We proceeded to the first lock, where they kept us waiting another two and a half hours before we finally got clearance to start.

We had hoped to be rafted with a couple of other boats, but were told to go through the locks center chamber, alone. In front of us we had another sailboat and a sport fishing boat.

We went into the first lock, the water came in and we were lifted 16 meters before we proceeded into the next lock and repeated the procedure. After the second Miraflores lock there was a one mile passage to the third lock called Pedro Miguel.

By the time we came out of the third lock and crossed the Gatun lake it was late afternoon, and we were told to spend the night tied up to a buy in front of the Gatun locks on the Atlantic side.

At 10 the next morning we got clearance to enter the first Gatun lock, and started our trip down to the Atlantic Ocean. We exited the third and last lock about an hour later and went straight to Shelter Bay Marina where we said goodbye to Leo and co.

We stayed two days in the marina and then set off towards Bocas del Torro.

It took us 24 hours to get to Bocas, and for the first time in ages we were just the two of us and the dogs onboard.

We are now anchored right outside Bocas Town, close enough to hear the live jazz music from one of the bars in town.

In a couple of days we'll go and explore some of the other islands in the area, there are a lot of beautiful islands around and most of them are uninhabited.

We're happy to be in the Atlantic Ocean again, and enjoy the clear warm water and beautiful coral reefs around. Time to go diving again...

Some more pics from Panama

We are still in Panama City waiting for the canal authorities to tell us when we can transit the canal. They say they have a shortage of canal pilots, so it may take another week or so. So we wait...

Panama City and Las Perlas

We arrived in Panama City on the 22nd of April, just in time to pick up our friend Ann who arrived from Minneapolis one hour after we pulled into the slip in Marina La Playita.

We had a bit of a rough trip from Golfito to Panama City, especially the area around Punta Mala caused some big waves and gusts of 35 knots of wind for 24 hrs.

After arriving we spend 2 days in Panama City, and then we went out to cruise the Las Perlas Islands for one week. The islands are very beautiful and most of them are uninhabited and fringed by the most amazing white sandy beaches. And there are absolutely no people anywhere, we were the only boat in most of the places we anchored.

We bought cheap lobster and prawns from the local fishermen almost every day and had a great time cruising the islands. The weather was hot and humid, and we had a squall almost every afternoon or evening.

One week ago we returned to Panama City, where we said goodbye to Ann whoe went back to the states and Mike who returned to Playa del Carmen.

We have spend the last week doing some repairs on the boat, changing our battery bank and alternator and preparing for the canal transit.

At the moment it looks like we'll transit Tuesday or Wednesday, and we haven't decided what to do once we get to the Atlantic side. Still cinsidering our options.

Costa Rica

Our first stop in Costa Rica was Playa del Coco, in the Papagayo Bay. We spend 3 days there, mostly scuba diving, and exploring the surroundings. It's a nice little town, but complicated to go to shore since you can not leave the dinghy on the beach without getting it stolen.

Anyway, we had a good time, did some nice dives, finished the open water and rescue diver courses and said goodbye to Johanne and Martin.

After they left we spend a night in marina Papagayo 4 miles away to clean the boat and fix a few things before continuing. It is a beautiful marina with facilities like a 5 star hotel.

We then sailed for 2 days before arriving in Quepos where we had planned to check out of the country, but no one was working in the customs and immigrations offices because of Semana Santa (easter week). So we had t continue to Golfito, where we arrived this morning and got all the official paper works necessary to clear out taken care of. Took us only 3 hours.

Golfito is a very pretty little place, surrounded to all sides by tropical green rainforest. It looks like we might get some rain for the first time in maybe 8 months, the rainy season is just starting here.

We are now relaxing and catching up on some much needed sleep before leaving Costa Rica early tomorrow morning to be able to arrive in Panama City Friday evening.

El Salvador

Here we are crossing the sand bar and surf to get into Marina Bahia del Sol. Very interesting experience, hope it will be a little more calm when we leave tomorrow. We have 250 miles to go to Bahia Papagayo in Costa Rica where we'll stop next. Should take us no more than 2 days to get there.

3 days ago we arrived in El Salvador after just over 3 days sailing (motoring mostly) from Huatulco. It was an uneventful stretch right up until we arrived to the place we had been told to meet the pilot boat assigned to guide us over the sandbanks and into marina Bahia del Sol.

From there we had to go straight thrue a crazy surf and 3 meter waves, while trying to avoid getting pushed to the shallow part of the bank where there was high risk of going aground.

We made it thrue safely, though it required a bit of cleaning inside the boat afterwards. We thought we had secured everything, but many things still fell down. Now we know what to secure before our departure tomorrow.

The place here is very nice, it's a little hotel and Marina in an estuary in the middle of the jungle. The nearest village is 4 miles up the river by dinghy.

Yesterday we all hired a van with driver and went into San Salvador for some shopping, haircuts etc. The capital is 85 km from the marina, it is mostly very poor and polluted but it has a few nice spots also. One of the highlights was the huge open air market, where you can buy just about everything you can imagine for one dollar.

The climate here is hot and very humid, and we spend the afternoons lazing by the pool side drinking the local one-dollar beer, Pilsener.

Our next stop will be Costa Rica, it should only take us 2 days to arrive in Papagayo where we will stop to clear into the country.

Huatulco

We arrived in Huatulco Monday evening, and spend the first 2 nights anchored next to the cruise ship dock. When we woke up early next morning we had a new neighbor, a huge cruise ship. It was a great anchorage, and we were almost sad to move over to the Marina in Bahia Chahue where we arrived yesterday.

Michael Bolt, owner of DiveMike and long time friend from Playa, arrived yesterday and will sail with us for the next 6 weeks or so.

Today we have done all the paper works required to leave Mexico, and we spend half the day going back and forth between the Port Police, immigration office and the bank. Now it's 8 in the evening and we're waiting for the custom officer to come and check the boat.

After that we'll be cleared to leave the country, and we plan to leave early tomorrow morning.

After exactely one year in Mexico (we arrived in Ensenada on April 1st last year) we're more

than ready to leave!

Our next stop will be Bahia del Sol in El Salvador, if all goes well it should take us 3-4 days to get there.

Bye bye Mexico!

Acapulco

Thursday we left Zihuantenejo around noon, and had a great afternoon of sailing until the wind died around 18. After that we motored throughout the night.

Early yesterday morning we arrived in Acapulco, we entered the bay just as the sun was rising and it was very beautiful.

We picked up a mooring buoy in front of the yacht club, and form here we have a great view of the downtown skyline.

We spend the last two days exploring the town and swimming in the warm water .Today we went to see the famous cliff divers dive off a 30 m cliff into the waves. Impressive sight!

We met our friends Wayne and Ellie from the boat Zeppelin, they were moored right next to us and now on their way to Huatulco.

We plan to leave ealry tomorrow morning, and depending on the weather we'll arrive in Huatulco either Monday evening or Tuesday morning.

Arrived in Zihuantenejo

This afternoon we arrived in Zihuantenejo, after 30 hours sailing form Manzanillo.

After leaving Barra de Navidad on Monday we sailed to Manzanillo and spend the first night anchored in front of Las Hadas marina.

The next morning we left early and cought a couple of hours of decent wind, enough to turn off the engine and enjoy the quietness of sailing and the calm Pacific Ocean. It is very very hot, and everyone are doing their best to find cover from the sun which has been shining all the time.

There was almost no swell and no one got seasick, and we arrived in Zihuantenejo without any problems.

Tomorrow we'll spend the morning exploring the town, and in the afternoon we'll probably take off so we can arrive in Acapulco Friday afternoon.

Ready to go!

Today we did another sea trial, and everything worked fine. We went to Coastecomate where we anchored and went for a swim and later returned to the marina.

Tomorrow we'll leave Barra and sail to Manzanillo, where we'll anchor in front of the Las Hadas marina to go for some provisioning and buy spare parts for the engine.

This evening we had Jim and Juanita over for yet another goodbye dinner, have had quite a few of them since we left the marina in Ventura, California, where they were our neighbors.

We're all happy to be leaving tomorrow, it's time to move on!

Sea trial - and a bit of drama

Yesterday we went out in the bay for a sea trial, to test our newly rebuild engine and transmission for the first time.

We started out spending about an hour at the fuel dock to taking on diesel, and then headed out in the bay. On board was Laurent, Martin, Johanne and the mechanic, I stayed in the dinghy and followed the boat. Just in case...

All went well and the engine was running fine, and after about an hour we returned to the marina. There was some wind, and it was not so easy to park the boat in our slip - and it suddenly got a lot harder when the transmission failed and Laurent could no longer use the reverse. As the boat was drifting towards some big expensive powerboats I pushed with the dingy and Laurent did his best only being able to move the boat forward, and we managed to dock the boat making only a small scratch on another boat.

The mechanic took the transmission out, checked it and put it back in this morning making some adjustments to the idle rpm. This afternoon we went back and forth a lot outside the marina, and all seems to be ok now.

Tomorrow we'll go out and test everything again, and if it still works we'll leave Monday morning. We cross our fingers...

Engine back on board!

Yesterday, after more than 2 months delay, we finally got our engine back. Completely rebuild and with all moveable parts replaced, this will hopefully be the end of our many engine problems.

After the engine being held hostage by evil mechanic, we finally decided to involve the marina management, pay the ransom and get our engine back.

Hopefully the installation will be completed tomorrow, and we will be able to get out of here by the end of the week.

3 months in Barra de Navidad is more than enouhg, and it's about time we continue South.

Martin and Johanne joined us about a week ago, they will be sailing with us for a couple of months. Johanne started the Open Water course and we have been diving in the pool at the hotel the last couple of days while waiting for the mechanic to finish the work. Then we will do a sea trial, and if everything works we'll be on our way to Huataulco very soon.

Engine out!

Last weeke we took the engine out of the boat to have it rebuild.

It was heavy, but after about 2 hours we managed to get it out of the boat and onto the truck.

Hopefully it will be ready again in another week or so, we are still waiting for the new parts to arrive from the states.

Charlotte arrived almost 2 weeks ago, and will stay with us for 2-3 weeks more.

John finished the Open Water course, and has started on the Advanced course. Diving is ok in this area, and really nice around the Melaque anchorage where the visibility is much better.

One of the best things about being here in Barra de Navidad is the French bakery.

The baker comes to the marina in his boat every morning, selling fresh baguettes and croissants.

We have decided to stay in Barra de Navidad for 2-3 weeks to have the engine rebuild. By doing so we will hopefully avoid any more engine problems in the near future.

So we'll just have to endure the beach and the pools at a 5 star hotel a few weeks more.

It's a hard life...

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!