Last passage of the season

Bahia del Sol, El Salvador

 

Well, we had one last kick at the sailing cat for a while. It had its exciting exciting moments and its boring moments but overall a nice finale to the season.

 

We left Marina Papayago early on a Tuesday morning. We motored for the first 1/2 day in absolutely calm conditions, until we started to round Punta Santa Elena. The winds and waves quickly built up, right on the nose of course, and we found ourselves tacking back and forth with the engine assisting the double reefed mainsail until we managed to claw our way closer to the Nicaraguan coast. We were treated to the antics of a large pod of dolphins, who seem to really enjoy the rougher conditions, sometimes leaping to great heights, although Susanne does not think they deserve many style points for their re-entries.

Dolphin escort

 

Around 4:00 in the afternoon we were able to change to a beam reach in the moderate Papagayo winds blowing offshore. We followed the generally accepted rule here of sailing with "one foot on the beach" for the next day and a half - this keeps the wind-waves manageable as the winds blow consistently offshore along this coast. We sailed for 50 miles on a single broad reach in about 15 knots of wind. Later, we got caught with a little too much sail up when we caught somes gusts in the mid 20's. For a while we sailed with only the double reefed mainsail in winds that were gusting from 12 to 25 knots. Our speed was only around 3 knots but we were in control and had plenty of time. Lots of fun dodging fleets of fishing boats in the dead of night.

A stowaway trying to get out of the wind

 

The last day, it got easier, although what sailing we did was now all close hauled in relatively light winds, rarely reaching 10 knots. We ended up motoring very slowly for most of the last night, in order to not arrive too early for our scheduled high tide crossing of the entrance bar at Bahia del Sol. Just before 7 AM, the pilot boat lead us into Bahia del Sol, almost exactly 3 days from the time we left Marina Papagayo, all as planned.

This time the bar was totally flat and basically a non-event. Total distance covered was 291 miles.

Sailing west into the setting sun

 

Parked between two monster 60+ foot boats

Now that we are here, we have been dumped into the whirlwind of social activities that is Bahia del Sol, meeting with other cruisers, some new, some old, heading for lunch at one of the Palapa restaurants in the estuary, Bocce Ball at low tide, pot lucks and pool parties and such.

We are staying at the dock at the resort for a couple of weeks before we will be moving the boat down to the same little Marina we used last time we left the boat here, a couple of years ago.

 

Meanwhile, I have volunteered to crew for one of our friends, who wants to get his boat a little further north to Chiapas in Mexico. We plan to take off on Thursday (day after tomorrow) and it should take about 2 days to get there. I will then attempt to find my way back through Guatemala and El Salvador by bus. Always an adventure...

 

{GMST}13|18.072|N|88|53.526|W|Bahia del Sol, El Salvador|Bahia del Sol, El Salvador{GEND}

 

 

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Baking in the sun

Marina Papagayo, Costa Rica

 

It is hot, humid and a little bit boring here in the marina.

 

We decided not to leave by Friday last - the Papagayo winds are still blowing strongly off the coast of Nicaragua. They are not so bad that we couldn't cope, but we would love a nice gentle sail up the coast if we can arrange it. Since we did not check out of the country before the weekend, we cannot now check out until tomorrow (Monday), making Tuesday our most likely departure date. Once we are out of here, we plan to make a straight shot all the way to El Salvador, not stopping in Nicaragua this time.

 

We have a couple of other cruising boats to keep us company here, mostly just meeting for dinner and drinks at the marina's small restaurant. It is happy hour from 5 till 7 every night, making the prices almost reasonable. It is a good thing too, as there is no place else within walking distance. Note: There is lots of room for more boats in the marina right now - we are not sure if this because of the time of the year or if this is normal. Unlike Quepos, this area is apparently not known for its great fishing - thus the lack of sport fishing boats.

 

On Thursday we rented a car for the day, in order to travel to Playas del Coco to do some shopping, and to check out the location of the Port Captain's office, Immigration and Customs. We will rent a car again tomorrow so we can make the rounds officially. While the Port Captain and Immigration are both in the town of Playas del Coco, Customs is on the highway into Liberia, close to the international airport.

 

{GMST}10|38.45|N|85|39.17|W|Marina Papagayo, Costa Rica|Marina Papagayo, Costa Rica{GEND}

 

 

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Blown away

Marina Papagayo, Costa Rica

Sometimes you just don't know where you will end up at the end of a passage.

After a blessedly peaceful night in Bahia Ballena, safely anchored behind a small protective reef, we got an early start on Sunday morning, expecting to motor for much of the way to Playas del Coco, some 110 miles around yet another peninsula. We rounded Punta Blanco, the only spot I thought we could run into some wind and currents, around 9:30AM in very calm conditions - just the way we like it.

Indeed, other than a few hours around mid-day when we were able to sail in some onshore thermals, we did end up motoring the entire distance. We had to go very slow in order to avoid arriving before sunrise, especially as we had a very favourable current pushing us along for much of the way. We arrived at Playas del Coco around 7:30 AM on Monday morning and anchored just outside the many moorings there. Shortly thereafter is when the problems arose.

Around 11:30 AM the Papagayo winds struck with a vengeance. Gusts of up to 30 knots coming off the land persuaded our boat to try and leave the anchorage. I did not have adequate scope out on our anchor, primarily due to the limited swinging room we had amongst all the moored boats, and the anchor dragged (pretty much the first time this has happened to us in our short sailing career). Now the question was "what do we do now?".

We elected to bring the anchor up (lots of fun in 20 to 30 knots of wind), and we motored some 7 miles, out of the bay, across the mouth of Bahia Culebra (lots of wind and waves hitting us on the starboard side), and into Bahia Huevos, a spot that we know from our experience when coming the other way down this coast last year. We managed to anchor in a great, much better protected, sub-bay near the entrance to the bay. Here we sat out the afternoon winds, which rarely got over 10 knots, and watched all the local tourist boats come and go. This is a favorite little beach for swimming, snorkelling and playing in the sand - we even managed to get in a swim ourselves. We spent a peaceful night and got caught up on our sleep.

Early this morning. before the winds had a chance to get going, we upped anchor and motored about 8 miles into Bahia Culebra, where we took a slip at the upscale Marina Papagayo. We are much happier being tied up to a dock for now.

The expected winds put in their appearance, starting just before noon again today - we are seeing gusts up to the mid-30s. The only danger for us is the possibility of popping a fender or two, as the gusts are pushing us strongly onto the dock.

The reason that we were stopping in Playas del Coco is that this is where we need to check out of the country, however we can do that from here by renting a car and driving to the town. Much more civilized.

{GMST}10|38.45|N|85|39.17|W|Marina Papagayo, Costa Rica|Marina Papagayo, Costa Rica{GEND}
{GMST}10|37.89|N|85|41.18|W|Bahia Huevos, Costa Rica|Bahia Huevos, Costa Rica{GEND}
{GMST}10|33.495|N|85|41.879|W|Playas del Coco, Costa Rica|Playas del Coco, Costa Rica{GEND}

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Can't slow down

Bahia Ballena, Costa Rica

 

Like something out of a suspense novel, our part showed up at 6PM, just after my last post. The yard manager delivered it to us, on the boat, in person.

 

It appears to be an exact match for the old unit. For some reason I was half expecting it to be the wrong size or something worse. I guess I worry too much. I had the old oil cooler off and the new one installed in under an hour, being extra careful not to screw anything up by over-tightening or some such. I ran the engine and put it in gear to check for leaks and make sure the oil was flowing ok, then once again drained and refilled the transmission with fresh ATF - it has now been flushed 3 times and hopefully should have little trace of seawater in there anymore. I ran it up to temperature and made sure everything looked good before I could possibly get a good night's sleep.

 

In the morning we arranged for our national Zarpe, allowing us to leave Quepos, then around noon we headed over to the fuel dock and topped up the diesel before leaving the marina around 1 PM. We planned to go to Bahia Ballena, only 55 miles away and decided it was easier to do as an overnight passage, arriving at first light today. We anticipated very light winds and expected to motor for much of the way. We were wrong!

 

Shortly after leaving the marina, we hoisted the mainsail, double reefed again, and brought out the Genoa. We had a great beam reach in about 10 knots of wind all afternoon. Since we had lots of time, we tried to extend the sail into the early evening, even though we had almost no wind. For a change we had a bit of a favourable current which helped. Unfortunately we found ourselves drifting into a bunch of local fishing boats, with all their confusing lights and stobes, so we had to motor around them for a couple of hours.

 

Later, a brisk North wind came up and we did some close-hauled tacking back and forth until the winds settled on coming from the NE, allowing us to use a single tack to our destination for the rest of the night. The winds steadily increased until we found ourselves in steady 15 to 20 knots, coming out of the Golfo de Nicoya, which has enough fetch to build up some impressively nasty wind-waves, hitting us from the side. In order to keep our speed down so we did not arrive at Ballena in the dark, I had the sails reefed right down and was deliberately trying to go too close to the wind, close-hauled, somewhat stalling the boat that just wanted to charge ahead. After a bouncy few hours, we entered the bay at around 5:30 AM. We chose to anchor on the north end of the bay, in case those Papagayo winds sneak into here too.

 

Interesting note. This passage is exactly the same length as the one that took us into Quepos. Instead of 4 days. we did this one in 15 hours, almost all under sail, and we were trying to go slow.

 

{GMST}09|44.538|N|84|59.319|W|Bahia Ballena, Costa Rica|Bahia Ballena, Costa Rica{GEND}

 

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Down to the wire

Quepos, Costa Rica

 

Tomorrow we get kicked out of our spot in the marina and we still have not got our new oil cooler. Each day we are told it will be here tomorrow, or this afternoon, or whatever it is we want to hear, and each day it does not put in an appearance.

 

 

It is after 5 PM now and no part has shown up. I have reinstalled my jury-rigged broken cooler so that we can at least run the engine, I have topped up the ATF and run the transmission for a while to see that it at least works for short periods of time. If we don't have the part by early morning, we will have to limp out to the anchorage and hope it holds out long enough for us to get the hook down. We are not happy campers right now!

 

 

{GMST}09|25.5708|N|84|10.0602|W|Marina Pez Vela, Costa Rica|Marina Pez Vela, Costa Rica{GEND}

 

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No progress

Quepos, Costa Rica

 

Predictably, our vital oil cooler part has not yet arrived. Apparently it did not leave Miami until Monday, which would normally mean we would see it on Thursday, however because Holy Week (Semana Santa) was this week, everything shuts down from Thursday until the next Monday - no one could possibly expect anyone to do anything during that time period. So we are again playing the waiting game...

The beach, at low tide

 

One good thing about being stuck here is that we are managing to avoid a late-season bout of strong Papagayo winds - they have been blowing hard the entire time we have been here and are not expected to let up for another week or more. You can see the current forecast on the accompanying picture - we are located at that little blue dot, while the strong winds are depicted just some 100 miles or so to the north, coming across Lake Nicaragua. It is possible that the timing might work out well for us after all.

Meanwhile we fill our time taking short walks and reading and watching movies and such. The Marina has been very busy all week, with music or movies on their big outdoor screen most every night. Lots of people on the big party boats during the day too. Today, Sunday, the town of Quepos is very tranquil - just a few restaurants and bars open for business (and one very nicely air-conditioned ice cream shop).

Party boat, complete with water slides

 

Yesterday, much to our surprise, another cruising yacht arrived - our friends Wally and Lori on the sailing vessel Stella Blue, here for a couple of days. They are also making their way to El Salvador - no doubt they will be there long before us. It was sure nice to talk to some fellow cruisers for a change, and get caught up on the status of some of our other friends, most of whom seem to have been hanging around Panama City lately.

 

Tomorrow is the start of another week and hope springs eternal for the imminent arrival of our new oil cooler. Stay tuned...

 

{GMST}09|25.5708|N|84|10.0602|W|Marina Pez Vela, Costa Rica|Marina Pez Vela, Costa Rica{GEND}

 

 

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