Caught napping

Bahia Huevos, Costa Rica

These last 3 days have been pretty exciting, making some real progress for a change.

With the weather prognosticators telling us that we had a great window for getting past the notorious Papagayo winds, we checked out of Nicaragua and left the marina at Puesta del Sol at 11:45AM on Wednesday, Feb 26th. The winds were predicted to be no more than 10 to 15 knots, for maybe 8 or 10 hours on early Thursday morning - otherwise we could expect pretty calm conditions. Maybe, as sailors, we should not be excited by promises of "no wind", but right then that sounded pretty good.

As soon as we left the estuary, some 12 knot winds came up from the west. We were able to sail quite nicely for a few miles until the seas became very rough and the winds climbed into the 15 to 20 knot range. We ended up very close-hauled and motorsailing into the waves. Susanne, predictably, succumbed to the bad conditions and was quite sick.

The winds abated in the evening, Susanne felt much better, and we were able to sail for a few more miles before the wind dropped to under 5 knots. We motored through the night and early morning hours. I had a lot of fun dodging an incredible number of pangas with very bright lights - fishing no doubt.

At around 9AM, the winds came back with a vengeance. These winds were the start of the true Papagayo winds, almost dead on the nose, coming across from the Caribbean and sweeping across Lake Nicaragua. These blew off and on for the rest of the passage, sometimes dropping to 12 to 13 knots, then blowing in excess of 20 knots. For most of the trip, I was forced to use the engine to allow us to keep hugging the coast to avoid the large seas that these winds stir up a few miles offshore (with the engine helping the sails, I could keep us pointed much more directly into the winds).

When we finally made our turn for our final run of 20 miles across the Golfo de Santa Elena, toward Bahia Santa Elena in Costa Rica, around noon, we were able to kill the engine and had a beautiful sail on a broad reach in 15 to 20 knots of wind, all the way to the entrance of the bay. The wind would actually pulse, sometimes blowing only 10 knots, then increasing suddenly to 17 to 20. When the winds were light, we were going around 3.5 to 4 knots, when they winds blew hard, we made an incredible (for Sine Timore) 7 to 7.5 knots. We made good time and were able to get our anchor down in Bahia Santa Elena by 4PM on Thursday - after spending almost an hour trying to get our chain out of the chain locker - all the bouncing around over the last couple of passages had resulted in a real rat's nest in there. This is a beautiful spot, but we had decided to push on while we still had a favorable forecast.

Today, Friday, we made the push to get around Cabo Santa Elena, one of the most feared spots on this coast. This time we caught the weather gods napping. We had an excellent passage. Smooth seas and gentle breezes. We were even able to sail a good portion of the trip across the Golfo de Papagayo, in an unusual on-shore west wind.

Now we find ourselves in a little bay called Bahia Huevos. It is a little rolly right now but I think it is a result of the unusual wind direction today. By tonight and tomorrow, when the Papagayo winds start blowing from their usual NE direction, we should be very sheltered here. If the conditions are OK, we may stay here a couple of days. Since we got here late in the afternoon, and tomorrow is the start of the weekend, we cannot possibly check into the country of Costa Rica until Monday. Thus there is little reason for us to go anchor off the town of Playas del Coco just yet.

Note: We saw quite a lot of wildlife on this passage. Birds, fish, turtles, dolphins and whales all made their appearance. And we were treated to an incredible display of "bio luminescence" during Wednesday night - spectacular green glowing wake beside and behind Sine Timore.

Note: Total distance covered over the last 3 days: almost 200 miles.

{GMST}10|55.029|N|85|47.3274|W|Bahia Santa Elena, Costa Rica|Bahia Santa Elena, Costa Rica{GEND}
{GMST}10|38.3556|N|85|40.704|W|Bahia Huevos, Costa Rica|Bahia Huevos, Costa Rica{GEND}
-

Anticipation - part 2

Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua

Now that we have our engine problems resolved (or ignored), we are starting a waiting game with the Papagayo winds.  For the last couple of weeks, they have been blowing quite steadily.  The few boats that have come up from the south have reported some quite unpleasant sailing and it would only be worse for boats going south.  My crew has made it quite clear that she would like a nice peaceful passage this time.  As a place to sit out this hiatus, this resort is not the worst place we could be.

One thing that has made the wait a little easier to bear has been the discovery of "Joe's Place", a small restaurant in the village next door, owed by a Portuguese gentleman (Joe).  The food is very good and the prices are too.  They make great pancakes with lots of fresh fruit for breakfast.  To get there, you just leave the resort through the front gates and follow the signs - probably only a 1/2 km walk altogether.  The clientele is primarily surfer-dudes and dudettes - apparently this is a surfing hot spot along this coast.

After spending the last two weeks here, usually with no other cruising boats, or maybe one at a time, the last day has seen the arrival of no less than 4 boats, including our good friends David and Caroline on Aztec, who we last saw back in Bahia del Sol.  It has been nice to have people to talk to again.  While Aztec and one of the other boats are heading back north, the other two are going our way, so we may have some company when we finally pull out of here.

On the weather front, it now appears that there is a big opportunity opening up for us later this week. At this point we are tentatively scheduling a Wednesday, Feb 26th, departure.  If the weather is as mild as promised, we may just make a 2-day trip all the way to Playas del Coco in Costa Rica, however we will keep our options open for stopping along the way if things do not go as planned.

As I am writing this, the wind has come up here in the estuary, with some actual whitecaps on the usually quiet waters.  To the weather gods, we say "Good, get it all out of your system now!"

All in all, life if good...

{GMST}12|37.5204|N|87|20.5242|W|Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua|Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua{GEND}

Colonial Nicaragua

Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua

We have just returned from a very relaxing 5 day, 4 night, adventure into historic Nicaragua.  What made it so relaxing was that, instead of taking local buses and finding our own hotels, etc., we just booked the whole trip through Luis, a gentleman we met on our day-trip into Chinandega.  Victor, our taxi driver, picked us up at the marina and delivered us, in air-conditioned comfort, to the city of Leon, then took us from Leon to Granada and finally back to the marina, with a couple of touristy, sight-seeing stops along the way.  In each city, we had a 3-hour city tour and then had the rest of the time to ourselves - this worked great for us.

First stop, just outside of Chinandega, was the world-famous Flor de Cana rum factory, home of the world's largest rum reserves - during the civil war they continued production and just stockpiled the product.  Pretty cool, and they gave out free samples of their 18-year old slow-aged product.

The Rum Museum

The next day, on the tour of the colonial city of Leon, we were treated to a great view from the roof of the cathedral.  As you can probably imagine, Susanne was ecstatic with the climb up there. This  city is a little bit touristy, with the usual Spanish-designed central square and cathedral and lots of red-tiled roofs.  Lots of small hostels and a variety of restaurants.

Former prison overlooking the city of Leon

A lot of what we saw were reminders of the horrid recent history this country has had, with the civil war pitting the rebels against the USA-supported government; all forgiven and forgotten now of course.  The main prisons and torture chambers are now museums.

After our two nights in Leon, Victor drove us to the other colonial city of Granada.  Along the way, we stopped at the Masaya volcano where we enjoyed views of the steaming caldera.  We did a short hike to the rim of one of the less active craters to get a better perspective - pretty impressive.  Note: The whole Pacific side of Nicaragua has a row of smoking volcanoes, and can you guess where the bulk of the population is?

Granada is a much more touristy town than Leon, bursting with hotels and restaurants and a fleet of horse-drawn carriages to ferry the tourists around.  Our city tour here included, inevitably, a ride in one such carriage.  We saw the usual highlights like the various churches and museums, much more concerned here with the Spanish colonial period than the more recent wars.  This whole town has been restored to a much higher degree than Leon.  Of course, no tour would be complete without a climb up some high church tower to get an overall view of the city.

 

 

One odd highlight was a visit to the local cemetery, with its incredibly ornate mausoleums.  This is one place where you really can take it all with you.

In the afternoon, we took a boat tour of the Granada peninsula and some of the 365 islands that populate this area of Lake Nicaragua.  This was an incredibly interesting ride, viewing some very elegant vacation homes built by the rich and famous of Nicaragua, along with a glimpse of the local wildlife on the lake.  One small island was populated with nothing but monkeys.

While visiting a fortress, built in a bygone age to protect the city of Granada from pirates, we were directly exposed to the strong winds coming over this huge lake, from the Caribbean Sea (the lake is connected to the sea via a river to the east).  This gave us a hint of what we will be facing as we try and sneak down the nearby coast at some point in the near future.

That volcano in the background is apparently the source of all of the
islands now found in Lake Nicaragua

Our last day in Granada saw the start of a huge festival of poetry that is held annually in the city.  In the evening thousands of people swarmed the central square to hear poets recite their works.  Not being fluent in Spanish, it was mostly lost for us.

On the boat front, being in all these cities I was able to use the opportunity to find an adapter for my new temperature gauge.  I installed this unit into the spot formerly used by the overtemp alarm, placing the head by the fuel dip-stick.  In this way, I am able to check on the engine temperature by simply lifting the access hole for the dip-stick.  I cannot use this temperature gauge to replace the original because it is a mechanical unit and it will not reach to the cockpit.

I ran the engine up to temperature and under load for a half-hour and confirmed that the engine is just fine - it is NOT overheating at all.  As I suspected, the problem is just a faulty alarm and an unreliable electronic gauge.

So now we just have to wait for a suitable weather window to allow us to move on past the raging papagayo winds that stand between us and Costa Rica...

Watching the winter Olympics during lunch in Leon

{GMST}11|55.776|N|85|57.4986|W|Granada, Nicaragua|Granada, Nicaragua{GEND}
{GMST}12|26.1726|N|86|52.5582|W|Leon, Nicaragua|Leon, Nicaragua{GEND}

Chinandega

Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua

The resort here in Puesta del Sol is very pretty but very isolated.  The nearby village is basically dirt-poor with little to offer for your typical tourist.  There is a restaurant at the resort but the prices are prohibitively expensive.

The day after we got here saw the arrival of one of the boats we had met in Bahia del Sol, a Canadian family of 5 on a 73-foot trawler called Family Time.  Greg, the captain, had need of some parts fabricated, and I really needed some kind of working temperature gauge for our engine, so we made a trek into the nearest larger town of Chinandego.  For $50 US we had a taxi for the entire day and were able to make lots of stops at hardware stores, machine shops, automotive supply stores and supermarkets.  We had lunch in town at a typical Nicaraguan restaurant, which we really enjoyed.  Note: it was cheaper to rent a taxi for the day to take us to lunch in the city, than it was to have lunch at the resort.

Machine Shop

Once we were back at the marina, we joined the crew of one other sailing vessel that had just arrived at the marina, and we all gathered at the "beach" side of the resort to watch the sun set - a nice ending to a very busy day.

The day before our trip into the city and the day after, I spent tearing into the plumbing on our engine.  At this point I cannot find anything much wrong, or at least not much that I can fix, and I am not really sure if it was overheating at all.  The new temperature gauge I bought has the wrong thread so I still don't have a working gauge.  To try and simplify everything, I have stripped off all of the nifty plumbing I did a few years ago in order to get an engine-heated hot-water tank working - we don't really need it down here in the tropics anyway.

So far, Nicaragua appears to be even poorer than El Salvador - a lot of room for improvement.  The people we have met have all been very friendly.

While on our trip into Chinandega, we were able to make arrangements with a tour company for a more extensive whirlwind tour of the country.  Tomorrow morning we will start a small custom tour of the surrounding countryside and the colonial cities of Leon and Granada.  Sounds like lots of fun.

Our new friends on Family Time left for Costa Rica yesterday, so now the only cruisers here are ourselves and the crew of Eyoni, another similar-sized sailboat.  This is not a real a hot-spot for cruisers just now.

{GMST}12|37.5|N|87|7.5|W|Chinandega, Nicaragua|Chinandega, Nicaragua{GEND}