I've been to this bar before!

Here we are tryting to catch a wave

Got it

 Oppss, got past us

 This is where we hit 10 knots

It is really hard to surf 54,000 lbs!!!





All in all it was a great crossing thanks to Bill and Jean of Mita Kulu. Besure to check out their El Salvador Rally blog for more fun pics. http://elsalvadorrally.blogspot.com/





Hello El Salvador, again!!

Three fishing boats off the shore of Nicaragua

We released the mooring lines around 12am on Friday the 19th to head out of Golfito toward El Salvador.  We had a really good trip over all, the first day and night were pretty high seas and some rain and lightening.  It was not the roughest we have been in by any means, but it was still uncomfortable.  Then the second, third and fourth days were great with some long period swells and 10 knots of wind where we were able to pull back on the throttle and motorsail part way.  We saw a few fishing boats, dolphins, turtles and birds, but other than that the ocean was all ours.  We had our fishing poles out pretty much the whole time and not a thing, we hooked one Skipjack tuna, but we released it.
 


On the last night around 12am we were about 15 miles from Bahia Del Sol we had some really good lightening surrounding us, for me it was a little spooky, but Jerry confirmed that it was far enough away.  We slowly motored to the waiting point outside the bar enterance to wait till 9am high tide for Bill and the pilot jet ski to show us in. We had a great bar crossing, with two good waves to give us a good push, Jerry even said he saw 10 knots on the speed indicator (unfortuently I was not able to get a picture of it.)  Bill got a good picture of us crossing the bar, but I have not got it from him yet.

Full marina, mooring field and anchorage at Bahia Del Sol

Bye Bye Golfito!!!

These last couple of days we have been finishing up our chore list of things needing to be done to leave.  Yesterday I spent the day getting a few more odds and ends at the market and cooking 4 different meals for the passage.  I made my mom's great stroganoff, chili, spagettie and chicken curry.

If the seas are rough at least we will eat good!!!

This morning we motored over to the fuel dock to load up with 300 gallons of diesel and 5 gallons of dinghy motor gas.  After having our last lunch at "Buenas Dias" restuarant and paying our 2 month tab with Tim from "Land and Sea", we are back securing the boat for our departure around 12am tonight.  Since the boat has been on the mooring ball for 2 months things get taken out of their place, and now we need to try to get them all back so they don't go flying around.  Sounds like an easy task but trust me it is not, so we just do it and hope for the best.  The rain we are having this afternoon is not helping the mater on deck.

Now those are some true fishermen!!!

We are also saying goodbye to our friends Sam and Nancy on SV Windfall, unfortuently they are not back from Oregon, but we have been traveling with them for the last 4 months, and they will be missed.  But we are ready to get on the move again, so we say "Goodbye Costa Rica" "Hello El Salvador". The seas look like they won't be to bad, but I am sure we will get some rain squalls hopefully not the whole time.

Happy Birthday Jerry!!!

We had a great night on the 15th to celebrate Jerry's birthday at Fishhook Resturant.  Tony, the bartender at Fishhook who speaks great Enlish, made sure that Jerry had a great time.  Lets just say we were never thirsty, there was music (sorry I can not remember the name of the man) but he was great, and even dancing (not by us.)

On Tuesday Jerrry and I went to Paso Canoas the town on the boarder of Panama to provision for our 98 hour trip up to El Salvador.  Since this was Jerry's birthday day, I thought it was important to get a picture of him with our provisioning!!!

Oh don't feel to bad for him, he had a great birthday evening, I baked a cake....Yes me Lauren for maybe the third time in my life I baked...Happy Birthday Jerry!!

Getting ready to leave Golfito!!

We have been working hard (some of the days) to get the boat ready for our 96 hour trip back up to El Salvador.  With the filters changed, water in the batteries, and all the other essentials in the engine room done all that is left is to provision in Paso Canoas ( the boarder town) on Tuesday, check out on Wednsday and after fueling up, we are out of here on Thursday.  We went to the Duty Free Zone here in Golfito last week and loaded up on our 12 bottles of liquer and 12 bottles of wine that we are allowd to buy, we also got a few other odds and ends that were cheaper there than paying the 100% duty that Costa Rica has. 

We excited and anxious about the trip up to Bahia Del Sol, this will be our longest passage yet 4 nights, but we are ready to be moving on.  We really enjoyed Bahia Del Sol and all of El Salvador the first time we were there, and are excited to return and see some of the friendly faces we met.  Bill and Jean from SV Mita Kulu are up there, and we will be waiting with them and a couple of other boats to head up to Mexico.  We have enjoyed our time here, but with our boat visa up on the 23rd it is time to leave. 

Tonight we are going over to Fishhook Restuarant to celebrate Mother's Day here in Costa Rica, but more importently we are celebrating Jerry's birthday (which is actually tomorrow the 16th)!!!!  There are not a lot of people here that we know anymore, but with the band that is going to be playing we should have a great time.  What a way to end our stay here.

Rain Gutters!!

The other night we had a pretty good rainstorm, and now that Jerry has made a "rain gutter" off our sun cover over the salon, when it rains we get some good water in the tanks.  Below is a little video of the water streaming into the tanks!


Last friday we went back to Ciudad Neily to pick up the altenator for the motor that we left to have work done on it.  When we got to the shop (that I have to remind you that it looked more like a junk yard than a shop) they were just putting it back together.  The gentelman was walking around like he lost something, but nothing was said and we got it back for $15.  Jerry installed it back in line and it worked like a champ, now while underway we should not have to worry about that not charging anymore. 

We finished the puzzle!!

We are still just doing a few boat projects a day, along with laundry and we have started watching the "West Wing" series again.  Todays seems to be not as hot as it has been the last couple of days, so hopefully we get some things done after we go into town to get a few items. 

Genorator Capacitor!!

The other night wanting to watch a movie and the housebank batttery voltage being low, Jerry went to start the generator and it started perfectly, but then after a few seconds he realized that there was no eletricity being generated.

Shiraz helping Jerry in the engine room!

After a few minutes in the engine room he figured out it was the capacitor (which is required for the genorator to start generating electricity.)  This has happened a few other times, when we leave the switch in the on postition and try starting the genorator and shorts it out.  So we went to turn on the big engine to charge up the batteries and the altinator was not charging.  Now the alternator has been on the fritz for a while now, usually it does not want to work right away, but after a while of motoring it starts to work, so we knew that needed to be fixed.  With not having another capacitor on the boat we needed to go to town, but not having much faith in finding one.  There was one hardware store in Golfito that had one that was 60uf but we needed 50uf, luckely Tim ( of land and sea) knew of Robert who we called who knew of a place in Ciudad Neily (a town not quite as far as the boarder but about 45 minute ride.)  We packed up the capacitor and the alternator (Robert also new of a place to get it worked on) and jumped on the first bus that came by to Ciudad Neily, now this was a cheaper bus than the bus going all the way to the boarder, but it was very crowded and they stopped much more often.  And of course it started raining and we were not prepared with an unbrella, so we had to stop at one of the grocery stores to buy some very expensive, cheap quality umbrellas.  We easily found the place that sold capacitors, they did not have the exact one, but the one they had would work according to the manufacture of the generator.  We then found the place that would work on the alternator, with our little spanish and his no english it was  difficult to communicate, but we managed and figured it was the brushes and we will be going back on Friday to pick it up. 

The old capacitor!

After a much shorter bus ride back, because we took the more expensive bus, we got to Land and Sea had a few beers with Denny and Becky from SV Kokomo who are leaving the next day for Panama, got back to the boat put the new capacitor in and started the generator...yeah it works.

Animals of Costa Rica!!!

This is just a short video of picture that we have taken in our travels of Costa Rica.  Hope you all enjoy!!!

Lazy Days!!

More boats in the anchorage

Between the hot days and sometimes rainy afternoons it is hard to get motivated to do boat projects (even though we have a list full.) So Jerry and I have been passing our days with much appriciated "nothing." Skeeter and I go running in the morning and then come back, maybe dinghy a couple of 5 gallon jugs of water back to the boat, then it is just being lazy watching movies and TV shows that we have downloaded, we are all caught up on our favorites: Burn Notice, Fringe, and Chuck; and some other older ones: V, Caprica and Moonlighting. We even have done a couple of puzzles...gotta love puzzles!

Puzzle # 1

Puzzle # 2 in process

In the evening we might go to shore for happy hour or just stay on the boat and cook dinner. I have been having a blast experimenting with different recipes, we have had Chicken Piccata, Spicy Peanut Chicken, and of course the old standby Chicken Curry. Yes a lot of chicken, the meat here in Costa Rica is not all that good, and if you do find some good meat, it is usually expensive.
The other night we had another potluck on the dock of Land and Sea with some of the other cruisers here. As always we had a great time with laughts and lots of different food.

Jim and Connie from SV Sound Effect and  Don and Gayle from SV Permenently Temporary

Jerry and Becky and Denny from SV Kokomo

Well, it is getting close to the time for us to start heading back up the coast of Costa Rica to El Salvador for a couple of weeks then onto Mexico. So we really need to start getting our butts in gear, on the list is wash inside and out of boat, repair dinghy (again), provision, and fill fuel tanks (not looking forward to that expense). But for now, we are going to town to get some fresh bagetts and I am going to make Chicken Parmagaine for dinner (we got some fresh parm in David), and keep working on our puzzle.