Passage to Panama

Belize and Passage To Panama

The poorly generator has rather dominated our season so far, and at times we have felt it would be easier and cheaper just to throw in the towel and buy a suitcase generator. At the time of writing it still does not work properly. It is 99 percent done and runs sweetly, it just takes a lot of cranking to get it started. We are just as fed up writing about it as you are reading about the endless saga, so let's come back to it at a later date when we have had a chance to garner some more opinions.

Now as places go, Placencia in Belize is ok, especially if you like ice cream. 

It may have a swinging nightlife, but we are usually in bed by nine, curled up with a good book, or listening to music. However, we did do a little exploring by day.

The downside to the anchorage in Placencia, is that in anything except with wind from the North, it is rolly to the point of uncomfortable. Those with shallow drafts could, if they wished, head round into the lagoon behind the town, but we stayed put. Some anchorages afford a gentle rocking motion that eases you into slumber, not always so in Placencia. The rolling from side to side means that you become human conkers in bed, not at all conducive for a good nights sleep. That said, when it is calm, it is wonderful.

We did witness the lunar eclipse, and even managed to take a respectable hand held photo from the moving deck.

It was therefore a relief, or so we thought at the time, to be underway again and heading to Panama, a place that has eluded us for the last two seasons.

All started off fine. We decided to head out of the outer reef system via the Ranguana entrance we came in at. We had the foresight to record a track, so we followed this all the way out.

At first we got lulled into thinking all was rosy. We managed to make some Easting close hauled, and our 1000nm passage did not seem too daunting. Our aim was to stay well clear of the shallows off the coast of Honduras and Nicaragua, as several incidents with pirates had been reported. This meant doing a wide detour.

Our logbook shows that things started to go a little pear-shaped that evening. The winds were light and variable and the swell troublesome, progress became tedious and going anywhere close to the direction we wanted was not an option.

The best course to wind we could make took us North towards Cozumel in Mexico. When the wind did change and we tacked back, we headed just 20 degrees from due South. The only way we could make any gains was to run the engine and beat East into wind at 3.5 knots against the counter current. You know when it is a rough passage when you have seaweed on the side decks! It was looking as though we might have to head to Cuba to make the angle. However, our options narrowed down to just one... Grand Cayman. 

We won't dwell on our time in Grand Cayman, we visited 2 years before and did a blog entry back then. It remains the most expensive place we have encountered in the Caribbean for provisioning.

It was in Grand Cayman we met up with Katherine and Steve on a racy catamaran called Gemini Sunset. We left at the same time and kept in touch each day via a position report using the Sat Comms.

As a small digression, we also had an issue with the Sat Comms. Using the iOS App on our Apple devices, it would send the same email nine times! Using the PC it was fine. A big shout out to our airtime provider GTC, who worked around the clock with helpful support.

Back to the passage to Panama...

We took on much needed fuel in Grand Cayman and finally the North East winds kicked in, allowing us to make a good angle and fast, although not as fast as Gemini Sunset, which is a rocket ship!

We noticed an increase in Merchant Shipping the further South we went, which was to be expected, and kept our AIS transceiver on as well as the active radar. Even then we made at least three ship to ship calls to confirm intentions, better safe than run over. We also had a visitor in the form of a very tired migrating Barn Swallow who made him or herself at home.

After seven days at sea we finally arrived just outside the entrance to Linton Bay. Although we had waypoints around the reefs, we decided to wait until the sun came up, rather than risk an approach in the dark. By 10.00am we had cleared in with the Port Captain at the marina, organised the laundry and said hello to our friends Pamela and Charlie on Castalia.

Linton Bay Marina is going to be very nice when it is finished, and it is not too bad now. No shops, but guys in pick up trucks seem to come round near daily with fish, fruit and veg and sometimes a bread van will turn up.

In order to complete our clearing in process, we had to travel Portobelo to visit Immigration. As we wanted to buy supplies as well, we opted for a taxi at 12 US dollars. We would have needed a bank loan to provision in Grand Cayman.

Portobelo is an interesting place. Not sure the town captivated us in the way the guide books suggested, but we enjoyed walking around the remains of the fort and noted that it was one of the earliest Spanish settlements in the Caribbean. If you have the time and inclination, we enjoyed reading about the exploits of the notorious Henry Morgan in a book called The Buccaneers of America by John Esquemeling. By all accounts, some of the content is contradictory with other sources, but nonetheless, it makes a cracking read, although perhaps not for the squeamish.

All too soon it was once again time to leave the comfortable environs of a marina, and our aim this time was to sail about 40nm East to the San Blas islands.
Many cruisers spend whole seasons in the San Blas, but we will only gain a snapshot. It is on our list of 'must sees' and close by, so we will go.

At some point, perhaps after a week or two in the San Blas, we will head to Shelter Bay Marina and start to make our arrangements to transit the canal. The busy period is now over and we hear it is possible to make arrangements in just a week to ten days.

As WIFI coverage is meant to be hit and miss in the San Blas, our next update will come via Shelter Bay, or close by. 

Utila, Roatan and Belize

Leaving Livingston

We had spent a wonderful few days at anchor in Cayo Quemado, which translates to Burnt Cay. We later discovered that this was due to charcoal production.
It really is an idyllic spot and we would encourage any cruisers visiting the Rio to break the passage up and enjoy the tranquility.

Once again we anchored close by to the sail maker, as we just wanted Tom to make a check over. We also met up with fellow cruisers for a meal in Texan Mikes restaurant just around the corner, and ended going back the next day as well. If you like burgers, Mike does not disappoint, and he also gave us a lift in his launch to and from Livingston in order to clear out with our Agent Raul.

The next afternoon, with the anchor stowed, we headed towards the river entrance through the gorge. It is hard to describe the beauty of the gorge, and it is very surreal to witness it from the deck of a sailboat. This is one place where pictures just cannot do justice, you really have to experience it. The river meanders for many miles and with each turn the vista is just breathtaking.

We followed our inbound track on the chartplotter and safely navigated to Livingston, arriving late afternoon. The high tide was just after 6pm, and we had once again booked the services of Hector and his Father in two powerful motorboats, one to tow us and one to tip us over the sandbar.
Whilst on the subject of tides, we use an app called Aye Tides, which works worldwide and offline. 

Hector appeared on the scene over an hour early, but clearly wasn’t going to wait for another inch of tide, so we made a bridle at the bow and passed our spinnaker halyard over.

It is in moments like these that we wish we had a lifting keel, catamaran, or frankly anything with a shallow draft. 

Once over the bar we felt a pang of emotion, it was certainly a bitter sweet moment, knowing we would be unlikely to return to a most wonderful place, the lovely people and a lifetime of memories. Guatemala has certainly made a deep, lasting impression on us.

We pushed on heading 10nm North to an anchorage popular with cruisers entering and leaving the river, at Cabo Tres Puntas. Using a waypoint from last time we found a spot to anchor and managed to avoid the fishing nets, as kindly pointed out by fellow cruisers. The wind had died, the sea state was smooth, and after a late dinner we slept very well.

The next morning we awoke to a glassy calm vista and watched as fishermen recovered nets, and hungry pelicans looked on. 

Our objective after breakfast, was to head to Utila in the company of friends on Castalia and Susimi. The forecast had been for light winds, so we had expected to motor all the way. However, forecasts are often wrong and within half an hour of leaving the anchorage, we had the main and genoa out and were fair flying along. It felt very invigorating to be back out at sea again, and on the first chapter of our long voyage to New Zealand.

Of course, it was not all plain sailing. Far from it...

By late morning the wind had veered sufficiently to make heading to Utila in the East fruitless, as it was more or less on the nose. That gave us two choices: furl away the sails and put the engine on, or tack North or South continuing to sail. We ended up doing some of both, but it became clear that if the wind stayed in the same direction, we would need to head a long way North. It does seem counter intuitive to be sailing well, but heading in the wrong direction, but eventually it paid off and when we tacked back, we had a decent angle to the South of Utila. By nightfall the first squall had hit us with strong winds and heavy rain. We had fortunately received warning of it over the VHF so could prepare ourselves. As it was not too bad and passed relatively quickly, we once again deployed most of the main and genoa and picked up nice speed. About half an hour later we were frantically furling in first the genoa and then the main as the wind rose dramatically in just a few seconds, peaking at 35.1 knots according to our instruments. The sea was just white foam and the noise of the wind almost deafening. This time the squall had caught us out and we were not as prepared as we should have been, even though we had our lifejackets and harnesses on. By that, we mean we just had a little too much main sail out. In order to furl it away quickly, we broke a cardinal rule and used the electric winch. This resulted in the remainder of the main going away with multiple creases, and it later took us a while to sort this out. You are always learning on a sailboat no matter how many miles under the keel.

We eventually arrived in Utila by taking our preferred Northerly route. It is a little longer, but we are sceptical of the chartered depths on the Southern reefs by the approaches. This was later borne out when a fellow cruiser who took the Southerly route, said that the actual depths did not correspond to the charts. We endured one final squall, which handily washed off all the salt and anchored in the same spot as last year, using our previous track for guidance through the reef fringed entrance.

The next task was to clear in with the Port Captain and Immigration. We already suspected Immigration might be an issue, as our Central America visa had expired on passage, and our suspicions proved to be correct. The Immigration official would not grant a temporary 30 day visa, and said that we had to go to the next island of Roatan and visit the commercial port to do that. We were told we had ten days to do so.

As we had spent a month in Utila last season, leaving in a couple of days was not going to be an issue. The one thing we did want to do, was buy some homemade sticky cinnamon buns from the local bakery, they are just so delicious, one is never enough!

A lack of wind saw us motor just over 7 hours and once again, we used our tracks from last year to enter the reefs into one of our favourite anchorages, French Harbour, about half way down the South coast.
Once settled in, we made a visit to Immigration to sort out our visas. This was on a Monday, and by Thursday we had collected our freshly stamped passports. We could have had them back sooner, but high winds on Tuesday and Wednesday meant we preferred to stay on board.

It was just before Christmas that we ran the generator to charge up the batteries, and run the watermaker. A friend dropping Lynne back noticed soot coming from the exhaust and a few minutes later, the soot had turned into billowing black smoke. We shut the generator down, took the insulating clamshell off and waited for it to cool down. We noticed that the airbox had fallen off, and later on that day we failed to restart it. Having recently spent so much money on repairing the electrical side, we should have asked the mechanic to strip down the engine, but we had a time pressure to catch the tide to leave the river. We contacted Roky and made arrangements to meet him and his team on the other side of the sandbar, as the next high tide for entering the river was in June.

Just coming back to Christmas for a moment, thanks go out to wonderful hosts Sandy and Brit on Halcyon for a lovely Christmas Eve get together on their spacious catamaran. We also enjoyed a delicious curry and homemade onion Baji's one night onboard Susimi with Hazel and Paul. Special thanks to Sandra and Kevin for the wonderful gifts of new full face snorkel masks and nautical cushions.

Our new rain catching system also got a good testing one day.

Reluctantly we headed back to the Rio, and fortunately it was a calm day when once again the generator was removed. We then headed back to Cabo Tres Puntas to wait for news. 

In early January, a trickle of news started to feed back to us. The thermostat was broken and allowed the engine to overheat. The valves were damaged, the water cooling pipes partially blocked, a piston ring had broken and there was much evidence of salt water corrosion. 

Roky assured us that it could all be fixed, but we would have to wait for parts, so we made the decision to head to Placencia in Belize.

Clearing into Belize is not a quick process, but we managed to do it all in just half a day. First we had to catch a water taxi in town for a 20 min high speed ride to Big Creek, where Customs, Immigration, Port Health and the Port Captain are based. It is a slick operation as when you get off the water taxi, land taxis are waiting to take everyone to Immigration. Fortunately, all the offices we needed to visit were close together, so it wasn't an arduous process. All in all, it cost us about US $160 once all the fees and taxis had been paid. In this fee was a week's worth of compulsory National Park fees at $2.50 per day. If we stay longer than a week we can pay the National Park fee in Placencia.

The first thing that strikes you about Belize is the locals all speak English, as it was once a British Colony. Most also speak some Spanish, as the country is sandwiched between the Spanish speaking countries of Mexico and Guatemala. Like the surrounding countries, it was also once home to a vast Maya civilisation and even today, Guatemala and Belize are still in dispute over bordering territories.

One of the great attractions is diving, courtesy of the vast World Heritage coral reefs straddling the coast, and part of the vast 560 mile long Mesoamerican reef system. All of which makes for nice diving, but not especially easy navigation by boat. In fact electronic navigation charts are simply not to be trusted and all the cruisers we know, use a Cruising Guide by Captain Freya Rauscher. This provides detailed notes and hand drawn charts, and is simply the best source for navigation. Of course, not having planned to come to Belize, we sold ours a few months ago! Fortunately, fellow cruisers helped us out with waypoints, but we will be sticking to Placencia rather than exploring the numerous Cays.

In the meantime, we have had a wander around the town and shore front, and treated ourselves to an ice cream.

One other thing we have managed to do in Placencia, is obtain another Raymarine ST6002 autopilot control head. The 'New' one we got last year appears to have cooked in the heat of Guatemala whilst we were back in the UK. As a result, most of the display is black and impossible to read. 

With some cleaning up of contacts internally we got the buttons working again and the unit does still work, but of course, far from ideal.
Thanks to Larry on the yacht Lady in Red, we now have a perfectly working replacement and will keep the other as a back up. 

We communicate with Roky the mechanic via WhatsApp, and the latest message we had was to say he now has nearly all the new parts, has removed the corrosion and the other parts are due in any time. 
With any luck, we can get the genny back on board in a week or so, and continue our passage to Panama.
In many ways the generator issue has been a blessing. At least we can get it fixed to as close to new as possible, and we have ticked another country off the list.
As always, a sailor's plans are made in the sand at low tide!