GB has now successfully replaced all the boat parts that the April 28 lightning strike' had damaged. We did a short spin around the bay outside of Marina Papagayo to re-swing the compass and get the autopilot talking to the wind instruments and whatnot. All went well and it looks like there will only be…
Quite a while ago I mentioned some problems we'd been having in the Sea of Cortez, with boobies landing on our boat and…causing problems. Well. Boobies have continued to cause us distress. Allow me to elaborate. We were doing a long-ish crossing of the southern portion of the Sea of Cortez late last December 2009.…
…and I mean that literally. GB and I have often discussed that we are sailing long distances on what is now an 8 year old boat, and we have lived aboard continuously for over 7 years. Meaning, all The Fox's systems have been put to continuous long term use in a marine environment, so it…
17.-18. April 2010 Said goodbye to an excellent shell beach at Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua. Hoped for a dawn departure on 17.April but port & immigration officials did not arrive from Corinto to clear us out of Nicaragua until 1130, coincidentally at low tide. Day was hot & windless, left after lunch, no problems exiting…
April 1, 2010. April Fool's day. We had a spot of bother while traveling SE along the El Salvador coast toward the Gulf of Fonseca, attempting to raise the mail sail. User error. Details are unimportant. However, if any of you dear readers are ever performing some task on a boat and you encounter an…
It was time to say farewell to El Salvador. What better day than April 1, for cruising fools like us? On Marina Barillas manager Heriberto Pineda's advice, we planned our departure for an outgoing tide, intending to reach the estuary's entrance and long sand bar about midway between high and low tide. It was fine…
First, some background. The Gulf of Tehuantepec is a large body of water bounded on the east by the narrow isthmus that separates the Gulf of Tehuantepec from the Gulf of Mexico, near Mexico's southern border with Guatemala. The T'pec spans roughly 250 miles from the town of Huatulco on its northwestern edge, to the…
We moved southeastward fairly quickly along the Mexico mainland. Here's what happened during the month of February. 1.Feb.-3.Feb.2010Passage from Zihuatanejo to Puerto Escondido (15deg.51'N/097deg.04'W). Very little wind, mostly motor-sailing in S breeze of <5 knots. Water's calm, days are hot – 80s-low 90sF. Critters spotted en route include spotted dolphin, common dolphin, many olive Ridley…
For some time, I'd been mildly interested in taking the test to get my HAM radio license, mainly because it would expand the frequencies available to me to use on our single sideband radio. We were either moving around a lot on the boat, or were not in a location where the test was being…
WiFi pirate, that is. Accessing reliable Internet is difficult for a boat at anchor. Sure, there are the occasional Internet cafes on shore, and we use them when needs must. However in certain areas either Internet cafes are rare-to-nonexistent, or you have to schlep your precious laptop in a dinghy through rain or choppy seas;…