SV Fortuitous

Rio Dulce, Guatemala May 2011

2011-07-01T18:34:00.000-07:00

From Roatan, we headed to The Rio Dulce, Guatemala. There, we checked in, in Livingston, and headed up the Rio to Monkey Bay Marina where we will keep Fortuitous for hurricane season.

The Rio is very tropical, as you can see.

Temperature is in the 30's (90+ F) and the humidity is the same.

Fortuitous med moored in Monkey Bay.

The view from the lounge area of the marina.

Fortuitous, almost ready to spend the season.

Ralph had to go up the mast to plug holes to protect us from bees. We'd had them before, didn't want to go there again. This is the view of the marina from above.

The lounge area viewed from the top of the mast.

Looking down of the deck of Fortuitous.

A self portrait of Ralph, taken at the top of the mast. Now time to head off, to Guatemala City and fly home.

These are the flavelas in Guatemala City...no roads, no water, some with electricity. There are a lot of poor people in this country.

A taxi driver gave us a tour of downtown. The hotel owner said it wasn't recommended for us to go downtown alone.

Peanuts or pigeons anyone?

Lorraine, from SV Zephyrus was leaving to return to the US on the same day as we were, so we travelled to Guat City together.

Notice the fancy, lacy aprons. They are just amazing!

Roatan, Honduras May 1st

2011-05-01T10:07:00.000-07:00

We left Providencia and had again, as posted earlier in the blog, a rather boisterous sail!! We had practically nothing up for a head sail and still had trouble keeping Fortuitous under 5 kts. This is not the usual problem for Fortuitous...usually we can't go fast enough, not the reverse. Although the photo below is under the Providencia page, it is appropriate to include it here.

It is difficult to get a good photo of this and, of course, the seas look very tame...but this is the best we can do. The seas were from behind, so it doesn't translate well into a shot forward.

In French Harbor, Roatan Honduras, there is a marina and dive resort called Fantasy Island. A few of the "regular" cruisers got together and talked the resort owner into allowing them to build a deck area for cruisers to gather. On Easter Sunday, the couple on Cabaret hosted a breakfast. Some of us pitched in to help out with the cooking. I started on waffles and was relieved by Lorraine on Zephyrus. John, on Cabaret, made most of the eggs and sausage but Ralph spelled him off so he could actually have a chance to cool down and eat too!

A good time was had by all. This is a shot of the family Zephyrus: Lorraine in the foreground, Dan just behind her, Lance beside Dan, and Lance's girlfriend Io. Another cruiser, Alan, is in the foreground beside Lorraine.

This is the anchorage from the Marina. Fortuitous is back there somewhere. It was terribly windy in this anchorage and didn't let up. It was even worse at night but we had no problems with our anchor. The worst part was, you couldn't come to shore in the dinghy without being soaked with salt water!

Here I am doing the "goose step"...actually, trying to empty some of the sand out of my sandal...I know, that you should be plagued by such difficulties. We are trying to set up a round of monkey golf here.

There are monkeys here and, during the warm up, one of them ran off with one set of our golf balls. Thankfully, he/she dropped it eventually and it fell to a lower branch of the tree. We were able to retrieve it. We should have had photos of this, but don't. The monkeys were very tame as you can see.

In Roatan there are also these critters, huatusas (or watusas)...not to be confused with the dance, watusi. They are members of the guineapig family.

Finally got a shot of the long awaited Zephyrus-Fortuitous reunion. We hadn't seen these guys since Ecuador in 2008. It was great to finally hook up again!

French Harbor area also has an Iguana park. Cruisers enter from the backdoor for free. Landlubbers are charged...not sure why we get to go there for free, but...

I gotta say, I'm just not that fond of slithery animals such as these. Not sure if it was mating season, but there was a lot of aggressive behaviour. I believe head-bobbing means keep away...you don't have to tell me that more than once!!!!!!

One of our group isn't quite as bright as I am (just kidding!!) and actually tried to pick one up!! What are you thinking, Lorraine??? She got a scratch on the leg, but is still alive!!

This is Fortuitous at anchor. We were actually right out front of the iguana farm.

We went off snorkelling, but it was a rough trip out to the spot. The crew on Zephyrus didn't have to worry about the water temperature as they were soaked before we arrived at the buoy to tie up.

Io doesn't look that happy about the trip!

However, once in the water she's like a fish.

Lance, too, is a water baby!

There were divers in the same spot. It was weird snorkelling above them, and through their bubbles. Ithink you can see about as much snorkelling as they can diving. However, we'll see as Ralph would like to dive here in Roatan.

The coral was spectacular, but we didn't see that many fish.

Brain coral...I wonder how it got its name?

Zephyrus headed out of French Harbor before us and set off for a couple of different anchorages to give the kids a different experience. We hung out a couple more days in FH and then headed to West End. We're sorry we didn't do it earlier as we like it much better. Much less wind, and some nice little restaurants and shops. Tourism and diving are the mainstay of this island and there are tons of dive sites. Sometimes there are three cruise ships a day on this island.

This is from the deck of one of the little restaurants. Fortuitous is out there somewhere. We are a long way from town, but it's a pretty dry trip in.

It is very picturesque here. That would be one of the dive boats in the foreground.

The road along the beach is all hardpacked sand or dirt, with shops and restaurants on either side.

Hammock anyone?

No much room to pass here and there are pedestrians, bikes, motorbikes, cars and trucks but everyone drives quite sanely.

Here I am getting ready to go snorkelling. It always takes me 5 times longer, than Ralph, to get in the water. Everything has to be just so..no leaks...check and double check!!

Our underwater camera seems to be working again, so we got a few shots. Doesn't do it justice, though.

We still haven't seen as many fish as we'd like, but the coral is spectacular. Large purple fan coral.

We snorkelled along a bank of coral. This is looking down the side. The bottom is 25' or 30', so you can see it is very clear water.

An angel fish.

Now you see him, now you don't...pipe fish.

Spectacular coral!

This is my computer wallpaper, right now.

Fan coral amidst the other types. Amazing!!

Life is not all hard work. Here we are having a lovely meal out, at the Lighthouse Restaurant in West End Roatan. This is the Zephyrus group again.

We have really enjoyed the last couple of weeks and are glad we had that time, as Cartagena was a lot of work. We'll be heading to Rio Dulce, in a few days, and putting Fortuitous to bed for the season. Right now, we're enjoying snorkelling and visiting with our buddies!

April 20th

2011-04-20T18:41:00.000-07:00

We are here in Roatan, Honduras now. Wow, what a sleigh ride last night. We had nothing of a sail up and still couldn't keep it under 5 kts. We have 20 kts of wind in the anchorage, but no fetch. It was great meeting up with Dan and Lorraine after 3 years. They came out to the entrance to the anchorage in their dinghy and guided us in. That was good because the light wasn't good and the markers were crappy too. Then, they came back and picked up our laundry and later took us to town so we could shop and check in, then back to the boat. What great friends!! Looks like we'll probably be cruising with them next year as they want to do some of the same things we do. We are sure glad to be here! We don't like the passages, only the being here. I'm thinking, at least right now, nothing goes to weather like a 747...maybe that's how we'll see OZ and NZ and maybe even the South Pacific.

'April 19th

2011-04-19T06:58:00.000-07:00

It is the morning after our second night. We are motor sailing, mostly motoring, as we have little to no wind. While it would be nice to sail, it is great that the seas are calm and we have some cloud cover so we aren't too hot either. In fact, it's downright cold at night...must be in the 70's (low 20's)somewhere! I have to put on a jacket! We wanted to meet up with Hooligan (Tim and Paula), who we'd crewed for through the canal a couple of years back. However, if we stop where they are we won't meet up with Dan and Lorraine (Zephyrus) before their son arrives. I know I would be hard pressed to socialize with friends if I were supposed to be entertaining/spending time with one of our kids...so, we'll have to catch up with them next season.
We hope to spend at least 2 weeks in the Roatan area, before we head into Rio Dulce. We have some extra work to do, on Fortuitous this year, if we want to keep her looking good. Besides the regular lay-up, we'd like to do a couple coats of varnish and I'd like to sew some toe rail covers and a sunbrella cover for the companionway. That will take some time, so we'll need to be in a little earlier than we'd like. However, we're in a good cruising ground for next year as Mexico, Belize, Honduras, and Cuba are all waiting nearby.

April 18

2011-04-18T08:27:00.000-07:00

Here we are in the middle of nowhere, off the coast of Honduras somewhere. We are skirting the coastline and all the reef associated with it. We had an uneventful day and night, motor sailing for the most part as there is little wind. We are sailing now, kind of, at 3.5 kts. The seas are calm and the winds very light, coming directly behind us. We have a very small head sail up, right now, as the other needs some sail repair to the UV and general re-stitching. That's not helping our progress. However, it is a lot more comfortable than our passage from Cartagena. We should arrive in Roatan sometime on the 20th. Fortuitous is doing well and all crew are fine.

Providencia, April 16th

2011-04-16T06:49:00.001-07:00

Forgot to mention, before we arrived in San Andres the last time, we noticed our headsail UV sunbrella protection looked frayed. It must have chafed a bit on the spreaders at some point. We pulled it down and found all the UV protection needs to be restitched. That would be a big job, by hand aboard! I don't think my sewing machine will do that kind of thing so we'd have to do it by hand. Thankfully, we have a 110 jib that's never seen the light of day. We unearthed that and put the 130 away. It's working just fine, so far. Hopefully we'll be able to find a sail repair in Rio Dulce so we can have it done professionally. The sails are 30+ years old, but are generally in good shape.
We took a local bus around Providencia. Quite an experience with all the locals. The bus is completely open air, with a couple of tarps to roll down if it rains. The music was blaring from at least 4 large speakers (like the kind we have at home) strapped/bungeed to the corners. The people here are far more akin to Jamaicans or Bajans than to Colombians. Many swap from Caribbean dialect to Spanish to English easily, although some speak only one of the latter two. They are very friendly and helpful. The anchorage here is one of the calmest, and probably the shallowest, we've been in. We have about 6' below the keel. I'd be very worried about anchoring here if there weren't 10 or so other boats in the same area. Coming in, the charts were off by at least 1/4 mile. Thankfully, the channel is well marked as our charts indicated we were going directly over the reef.
We had a great lunch, yesterday, at the Bamboo Fishhouse restaurant. It wasn't cheap, $19 a plate, but the ginger coconut milk prawns were excellent. We will probably check out and leave either tomorrow or Monday in order to meet up with Zephyrus before their son arrives.

Now that we have internet, I will also add some photos below of our stay in Providencia.

This is a photo of the Bamboo Fishhouse dock...those of you who know me would easily be able to figure out how I feel about getting out of the dinghy onto a dock like this!

That being said, if we could have the coconut shrimp there again, I'd be gladly jumping onto that dock!!

This fisherman caught a barracuda and was cleaning it. Wow, what big teeth you have!!

In town we waited for the local bus to circumnavigate the island. That's an interesting way to do it.

The music was blaring and the people came and went. We loved the braids on this young girl.

This was our bus leaving to go around one more time.

It happened to be "day of the child" there and there was a parade and a program down by the dock.

All the school kids were wearing their colours or sports uniforms.

Catalina Island is attached to Providencia by a small pedestrian bridge. Catalina has a lovely little waterfront walk with these great tiles that appear all wavy, but are flat.

Something's lost in the photos, but it was really quite unique.

This is also part of the walkway and the bridg.

There was a trail out to where there was supposed to be a rock that looked like a head of Capt. Morgan. We started the walk, but it was quite long and would take much longer than we had if Ralph dragged me behind him. So, I waited at the beach and he contined.

Of course, he got there and can you see a head here? No, me neither!

A nice shot of the anchorage from Morgan's Head.

Fortuitous awaiting our return.

As we were leaving through the channel, Ralph took another shot...well, I might be able to see a profile there.

This is how much sail we had up as we were still doing over 5kts. The sea conditions are deceiving as all the wind and weather and seas are coming from behind. However, after 3 nights we arrived safe and sound in Roatan, Honduras where we are now.

Albuquerque Cays

2011-04-15T06:43:00.001-07:00

We are currently in Providencia after a 5 hour motor sail to San Andres from Albuquerque Cays, day before yesterday, then an 11 hour passage to Providencia. We should be checking in and out here in the next couple of hours. We hope to be here for 2 or 3 more days and then we'll have a 3 night passage to Roatan. We liked San Andres and rented a golf cart to see the island.
Albuquerque Cays had very clear water, but we found snorkeling there a little boring. We've seen better fish in Western Panama or in the San Blas. Fishermen approached us, our last night there, and needed water. We gave them a jerry can full and they have us a lovely big snapper (5 meals worth) which they cleaned, scaled, and filleted. While doing that, he rinsed the fish overboard and accidentally dropped it. So, he had to dive in to retrieve it. So, we gave them a couple of cans of meat and some coveted chocolate bars too! Very friendly and nice guys. The islands seem to prefer English to Spanish and most of the people we met don't really consider themselves Colombian, more Caribbean.
We haven't been off the boat here in Providencia as we arrived at 6 last night. We're not allowed to go to land until we've checked in. We'll be looking for fresh veggies, fruit and a laundry here. A nice meal out would be good too!

The above message was sent via the HAM radio. Now we have internet and I am able to share some photos of the Abuquerque Cays.

This is me on the bow entering the Cays. There is a lot of reef. We had way points but, just in case...it was a long ride in on the salty wet bow!!

Here we are finally anchored in front of the north island where there is a Colombian Coastguard training outpost.

"What do you mean you want me to go back out there again?"

A lovely sunset to go with our sundowners!

Next day, in the dinghy, we get off to have a look around and a good look at Fortuitous at anchor.

We went to the Coastguard station and took some pop and cookies for the kids. We'd been told they'd be very appreciative, but they didn't seem all that excited. There were all these paths on the island, all lined with conch shells.

We took a walk around the island. It was very small with a lovely clean sand beach.

These are all conch shells...it's almost obscene!

They'd made a Colombian flag, below the real flag, from painted conch shells.

I found a couple of beauties, with no one in residence...read deceased...so I took them back to Fortuitous.

"Which one, which one...hmmmmm??" Yes, Darcy, I have one for you!"

We have an underwater camer that keeps pooping out...we managed to take a couple of shots. The water was clear, but the sealife wasn't what we'd hoped for.

A sea cucumber...I prefer the vegetarian kind, but people do hunt and eat them.

This would be yours truly trying to keep out of the camera's eye and keep afloat while breathing through a snorkel...all a bit daunting for me!!

I'm not sure what these are, but there are all these cup/vase-like plants/animals? in this area. There are lionfish too, although we didn't see any. People kill them as they see them as they are not supposed to be in the Caribbean and are multiplying like crazy and taking over.

Albuquerque Cays

2011-04-11T06:55:00.000-07:00

Arrived the day before yesterday. It was a good sail, if still a bit lumpy with seas from the aft port quarter. Did a tour of the two islands. They're so small it must have taken maybe an hour all together. This is a VERY reefy area and was supposed to be fabulous snorkeling. While the water was very clear, with visibility to at least 30', we didn't see as many fish as we'd hoped to. We'll try again today.

All is well on Fortuitous and all systems are working fine, thank goodness!

San Andres

2011-04-06T07:36:00.001-07:00

Arrived yesterday morning. All is well, but we were very tired and a little salty. Certainly our most uncomfortable crossing to date, with large seas abeam. We took water in the cockpit, and some spray clear over the dodger. Not a lot of fun and we both arrived a little crabby, to say the least. It then took us 6 tries to anchor...not fun. However, we're here and almost checked in. We should be here till the weekend, then on the Albuquerque Cay or Providencia.

Now that we have internet, I can add some photos to our HAM radio sent comments above. We really like San Andres. It is touristy, but maybe we were ready to be tourists!

This shot of Ralph was taken when we were leaving Cartagena and before we were in the thick of things on that passage. It was not fun at all and, if we never see waves like that again, it will be too soon!

San Andres was a difficult spot to anchor. We tried in one anchorage, 3 times, and finally gave up. Then we moved to another and it still took a couple of tries. After that passage, we were in no mood for that difficult a process. Then, right after finally anchoring, a nice guy came along and told us we might not want to be where we were because all the party boats were around us and it could be noisy in the evenings. At that point, we couldn't have cared less!! Turns out, it wasn't bad at all and we never did move. This is a shot from their malecon. Beautiful water and a nice sandy beach. San Andres is termed the Hawaii of Colombia.

We stopped at this nice little restaurant and had a great lunch...just sat there and enjoyed the landlubbers view of the same ocean we'd just endured for 3 nights!!

We had to do the touristy thing, so we rented a golf cart and circumnavigated the island (about 20 miles). We went to Captain Morgan's cavern. Kind of a rip off, but they did the best they could with what they had.

Here we are in the cavern. As we decended into the cave, the guide, for this area, told us our tip was purely voluntary. He wasn't so laid-back about it as we walked away saying we'd already put a tip in the box at another area.

This is outside the "theme park". We forgot to take a photo of our golf cart so this is the only one we have.

There is Fortuitous looking happy to be in the water. We had a nice lunch in the yacht club outside which we were moored. The charged us about $4 a day to tie up our dinghy and, for this money, we could have used the pool and showers too. We also got a discount at the restaurant.

This was a weird boat with eyes painted on the side.

Looking back towards the hotel strip. This is a duty free area too, so shopping is a big thing.

It was rather disconcerting to see all the wrecks around San Andres. However, it is not surprising as there are reefs everywhere. From here we are off to Albuquerque Cays.

April 3rd

2011-04-03T16:04:00.001-07:00

Got away at about 2 pm. We've done a record of 160 n miles in 24 hours. We're flying out here at 7kt average. It's very uncomfortable as seas are abeam and large. Feeling crabby and wondering what we're doing out here!

The Amazon Part 2

2011-04-02T19:37:00.000-07:00

We had a great breakfast at Marasha and packed up all our gear to head off for the next leg of our adventure. In retropect, it would have been much better to have been able to stay where we were and do some out trips. The next accommodation was much less than adequate, in our minds, but the experience was still worth it all.

We had to slog back through the muck to get to a boat to take us down the river from the lake we had been on. This too is a bit blurry, but gives you some idea of the "trail"...and we'd been through much deeper muck than this the day before, but were too wet and uncomfortable to stop and take a photo. At least it wasn't raining, this time.

That big blob on the tree is a termites' nest.

And yes, we pretty much lived in our clothes! We did have another change or two, but, as you can see from the photos with the same clothing all the time, these must have been our favourites.

We headed down this river in a tiny ulu-type canoe to meet our bigger boat. This was great, as far as we were concerned. For $5 we could do this rather than slog back through the same long path we'd done the day before. This was a short slog and then an interesting boat trip.

Once in the bigger boat we headed off on the Amazon and then into another tributary. This is the Amazon, 2000 miles upstream (roughly) and still a huge river. Little islands of weeds are everywhere.

Zacambu Eco Reserve was our destination. There were several sloths hanging in the trees just where we headed into the tributary.

We had to check-in in Gamboa to get permission and pay to go into the park. Word has it that most of these people used to be in the drug trade but, since Colombia has had their clean up, they are now working in tourism. It appears their new jobs don't pay very well!

This was our transportation for the day.

What a life these kids have. There are no schools, so they don't have a hope of bettering their existence.

While waiting for the check-in to be done, we wandered around the property. Behind Ralph, they are constructing the thatching for their houses. It is a very interesting process of weaving.

Off we head downriver and pass several other homes, all with little to no amenities, but most with a satellite dish outside.

A family setting off, in the family car, for some outing or other. Makes you glad to be born in Canada!

Yes, we ARE in a boat, and yes, THERE IS a river there somewhere!! This entire section of our trip was spent bushwacking through trees and weeds. This weed is called sea lettuce, I believe.

Another tour was heading in the same direction, but not to the same lodge. We actually had our own tour, which was much better. There were at least 8 tourists in this boat and, yes, they're on the river too and somewhere under that blue tarp!

This was a tree we passed. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of it...we covered a lot of territory and a lot of plant names.

It was really a weird tree in that the blossoms were all along the bare branches and trunk, not at the ends as we usually see them.

During our tour, we stopped for lunch in some little back eddy of the river. We had to eat quickly, or be eaten...by the mosquitoes. We were fine, while the boat was moving, but once we stopped we were sitting ducks!

During lunch, several families passed us heading to God-knows-where.

Again, what an existence!

Not a lot of freeboard on these canoes!

These are the types of long-tail motors they use here...just like in Indonesia or Thailand.

As I said, much of the time we were bushwacking in order to make way in the river. I kept wondering what might be falling in the boat and, worse yet, on me...remembering the tics from the San Blas hikes! This stick bug was about the worst that we saw, thankfully!

We stopped at this place as the farmer had an anaconda in a cage here, poor thing!

They dragged him out, let him wiggle on the ground and think he might have a chance, then let those who wanted to hold him, and then put him back in the cage.

He didn't want to let go of Ralph's arm and, no, I didn't hold him!

At the same place, they also had 2 captive Amazon fish, piraruku. He splashed around in this mucky pool until he got a fish in the net.

He then threw the fish out on the land so we all could see it...what a life!!

This is one of the farmer's kids.

As well, they had a cayman attached to a string out in the river. This was our guide showing us the cayman.

This, apparently, was the farmer's wife's kitchen.

Here is the entire kitchen.

I prefer my kitchen at home, or even aboard.

We had some more rain, so I brought out my trusty poncho!

The river is still 12' to 15' below peak. In this shot you can see the high water mark on the trees.

Yes, in fact, there is a river here!

This was a bird apartment building near our new lodging. Some sort of oriole, I believe.

This is what they look like close up. They had the oddest cry, kind of electronic or robotic, not like a bird at all.

This is the last accommodation. As said before, the river floods to a height of about 12' to 15' above the present level, so all the construction is on stilts.

This, in fact, is the "washroom" where I actually spent most of my time after my arrival. Unfortunately, we don't have any photos inside. The toilet, again, had no seat...also no flush! You had to use a bucket of water from the barrel inside the cubicle. You can see the red sink on the outside, for washing up afterward. There was a shower or two in here as well.

This is the runway from the toilet to the main house and our "bedroom", for lack of a better term.

This is the front of the "lodge". We pulled up in front of here and unloaded our gear.

There was a lovely sunset that evening. We hit the sack a little while after dinner.

After dinner, the family (comprised of several related women, men and children) sit on the floor and a couple of crappy wood benches and stare at the soap opera on the flat-screen satellite TV set. It is just so incongruous!! That green chair is a rocker with one rocker missing...best chair in the house! For a little excitement, as I was getting ready for bed, Ralph looked up at the ceiling. There was the biggest, hairiest, brown spider we'd seen! He called the guide who said, it's not a problem at all. Ralph pointed at me and said, "Yes it is!" They poked it with a stick and it disappeared into the thatching that went outside...at least we hoped he'd gone outside!

By early morning, I was terribly sick. Don't think it was the food as we all ate the same and I was the only sick one. I felt crappy while it was still dark, but be damned if I was going out there alone in the dark! I think these vultures were waiting for me to kick the bucket and, I would have gladly obliged the way I felt.

I spent most of the morning sitting on the porch and running to the back out house/bathroom. They made me some herbal tea, to help settle my stomach, but I managed to get rid of that too. Thankfully, it didn't taste too bad...they were trying so hard; I really didn't want to hurt their feelings.

The plantain boat arrived and they bought some from the vendor.

This is part of the family; I believe the owner/cook and her two daughters. Just the cutest little kids!

While I was on death's door, Ralph was off fish for piranhas. I'm guessing this is his first!

They really do have sharp teeth. The native people use them to cut hair.

Here's his entire catch lined up! They do come in bigger sizes, but sadly Ralph didn't get any of those.

Here's the proud fisherman displaying his catch!

They cooked them up for him and, of course, he had to eat them. He said they were quite good but, you wouldn't know by me because just the smell of the cooking sent me off on the runway out back, to the loo. I gotta say, not being there for the photo, I can't tell if these have been eaten already or not???

This was his entire meal. The smell of this cooking just about finished me off! Directly after this, we packed up and left. I didn't think I'd make it back to Leticia without being sick, but managed during the 4 hour boat ride. We found a hotel and I went straight to bed. Ralph went off to the pharmacy and got something to fix me up. The next day I felt semi-human, thankfully, as we had to fly back to Cartagena. We splashed Fortuitous the next day and readied to move out.

The Amazon, Part 1

2011-04-02T12:30:00.000-07:00

Once we were in Leticia we tried to find an Amazon tour. It was Sunday, so nothing was open. Lo and behold, the tourist agent who we'd met in the airport found us at the hotel. He had a tour guide he wanted us to meet. We were a little skeptical, but went along. The guide had albums, a xeroxed copy of a Lonely Planet write-up on his tour, and lots of info. So, he sounded legit. In retrospect, it was amazingly naive of us to pay this guy $800 and then, worse yet, go off into the unknown with him, his guide, and a boat operator based on what we saw. How difficult could it be to reproduce what looks like a page out of Lonely Planet? At any rate, it all turned out to be on the up and up and we were OK...but I did give it some thought while heading down the Amazon in the boat...albeit too late to actually get out of it if we were in any kind of danger. I think we just kind of went with our gut feeling. He took us to a shop and rented rubber boots for us. I thought, after the fact, who would do that if he planned to kill us somewhere in the jungle?? We bought the huge rain capes we'd seen everyone wearing in Leticia. I've never been so happy for purchases in my life!!!

Here we are getting aboard our boat to head down the Amazon. We don't have any shots of the travelling portion here as it couldn't be raining any harder. We just huddled under our ponchos.

Once we arrived at the spot from where we had to hike, we headed off with our guide through the mucky wet jungle. Ralph carried my pack, thankfully, and the guide carried Ralph's. I became quite attached to that poncho and my rubber boots!

Isn't this a cute shot of me? Don't I look like I'm having the time of my life!!

We arrived at our destination "resort", the Marasha Reserva Natural and I use the term "resort" loosely, but not as loosely as I wll use it for the next place we stayed! There were several cabins here as well as dorm type rooms.

This was our cabin. It was quite nice, actually. We were lucky as it was the slow season, so we had no room mates. We could have had up to 5 people in that room...that would not have been fun!

This was the shower...not great, but OK. No hot water, of course!

This is the toilet...seems to be a shortage of toilet seats all through the Amazon!!!

This shot is a bit blurry but, unfortunately, it's the only one we have. All the beds had mosquito netting. We'd bought 5 tubes of deet-filled repellent before leaving Leticia. These were mostly for me as Ralph calls me his repellent...they go to me, not him!

They have a toucan that hangs around the eco-lodge. It is just so great to see a bird like this, in the wild, but up so close.

He was very curious.

He liked to peck at your feet...of course Ralph wants a shot of this. "Let him come closer and peck your feet!", he says. "Yeah right, have you seen that beak???"

Yikes!!!!

Another bird resident, a macaw.

This was really quite a lovely spot and we were lucky to have no rain while here. I'm resting up from my slog through the muck!

This is a view of the lodge from the river. We are on some little backwater tributary to the Amazon. We are actually in Peru now. There were about 10 to 15 young girls staying here on a school trip of some type. As well, there a few other guests.

Here we are heading off to look at birds in the area. I'm prepared for the rain, but eventually removed the beloved poncho.

Here is your birdwatcher in the act!!

Here are the "turkey birds"...can't remember their other name.

Quite spectacular plumage!

We also saw "mikos" or monkeys to us.

The guide called them down with bananas. Cute enough from a distance.

They were very friendly. Here they are, on Ralph's arm, fighting over the banana.

We paddled through these humongous lily pads, maybe 3 to 4 feet across.

Here's the intrepid explorer heading off through the jungle!

The lilypads had a kind of wafflling to the back of them. I guess the little boxes catch the air and keep them afloat.

It is certainly very jungly here!!

There are zip lines here. They require you to rappel up this tree to the top in order to get on the zip line. The young girls were doing this.

It was an incredibly tall and wide tree. A shot looking toward the top.

Here is where we left the canoes to go look at the tree. Quite a beautiful shot.

Here we are resting up before dinner and our night raid on the caymen!!

Lots of bats here too!

We went out, after dark, with our flashlights looking for caymen. Thankfully, we only saw their eyes. Apparently they can be 12 to 15 feet long here!!!

We had a good night's sleep here and headed off in the morning, after breakfast, for our next eco lodge. Little did we know, we were really taking a big step downward in accommodation!

Leticia

2011-04-01T12:27:00.000-07:00

So, since we had some energy and time left before we had to return to Cartagena, we decided to book a trip to Leticia and the Amazon. This had been what we really wanted to do anyway. Those of you who know me well will find it hard to believe that it was I who suggested this trip. I'm not one for roughing it and, somehow, I must have thought I wouldn't be. Little did I know!! That being said, we are both really glad we went. We arrived in Leticia on a Sunday and all the tour centres were closed. We wandered around and checked into a hotel that was recommended to us by a tourist agent at the airport.

Unfortunately, we were here at the beginning of the rainy season. We knew that, but the good months are July and August and we would never be doing this trip then. So, we headed to the Amazon anyway. After all, we'd seen rain before!

We hired a cab (driver taking the photo of us) and went for a little tour of town, and Tabatinga (the Brazilian town right next to it). This is an area without borders. The whole river area here includes Peru, Colombia, and Brazil.

This is the Amazon and the riverboats that ply her waters.

This shot was actually taken after our tour of the Amazon, but we did see rain before we left. Motorcycles are the most common means of transportation, but there are cars. There are no roads into or out of the Leticia area.

Here this poor guy is carrying stalks of bananas from the port to a vendor.

Yes, we've seen rain before...Vancouver....Cartagena...but never rain like this!!

Colombia Inland Travel-Colonial Villages

2011-04-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

We found a DBC life raft distributor in Cartagena. Because our liferaft was over 5 years overdue for a check, we decided to bite the bullet and have that done. It is expensive, but a necessity. Originally they said it would be less than a week, but it turned out to be longer. So, since we had to wait for that before leaving Cartagena, we decided to do some inland travel. This page is a little out of place because both this posting, and the one on the Amazon, actually happened before we splashed Fortuitous. We flew to Bucaramanga, inland Colombia,and then took buses through the old colonial villages and back to Bogota. We backpacked and stayed in hotels enroute.

We did not stop in Bucaramanga (gotta love that name...sounds like something from Dr. Seuss, doesn't it?). We bussed directly to Giron, declared a national monument in 1963. It was founded in 1631. This is the view from the lovely little room we had in Giron, overlooking the town square. The only drawback to this room (and, of course we didn't know this at the time) is that church you can see in the photo above. It has the most discordant bells we have every heard. Not only that, they would ring at the oddest times, and with great frequency. They stopped sometime around 11 pm, but resumed around 5am. They would ring, pause, ring again several times, pause for even longer, then ring serveral more times...and on and on it went. They'd stop, and you'd think "Thank God!", but then they'd start again. There might be 15 minutes in between, or 30 or 3?? We couldn't figure it out. There was no pattern to the bells (several different sounds, read clangs) and no pattern to the timing. At 6am, I don't usually have a sense of humour, but you just had to laugh!!

This is the view of the square. It was really quite lovely and busy. It was fun to sit there and watch the people.

Although backpacking, we didn't exactly rough it on this leg of our inland travel...you'll need to see the page on our travels to Leticia and the Amazon to witness that. We had lunch in this lovely little restaurant. We shared some food because we were saving ourselves for dinner. Little did we know, in this town all but the fast food restaurants closed early. So, we ended up on some small bakery and had ham and cheese croissants for dinner. Who closes their restaurant early??

It was a very quaint little town, but much like all the others we'd seen in Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala etc. So, we decided to push on. We couldn't have taken another "night of church bells" either!

The buses stop, enroute, to allow riders to take a bathroom break or pick up something to eat. The bus-stop snack bars are just a mass of colour and clutter.

There are the everpresent vendors who enter the buses flogging anything from religious icons to doughnuts!

Enroute, we passed many a fruit stand selling both fruits and juices.

Our next stop was in Barichara, another old colonial town also declared a national monument. Apparently, it was founded after a farmer saw an appariton of the virgin on some rocks in his field. They built a chapel there, and the rest is history! We looked for a little spot to enjoy a glass of wine, but couldn't find anything except this corner store. Here we sat, with our bottle of Chilean wine, and looked out at the square. It was an interesting spot.

This was our view out the doorway and onto the square.

This was a really lovely little square. There were orchids blooming in some of the trees.

All town squares are a gathering place, especially for the elderly citizens...who seem to look younger, to us, every day!!

The 18th century church was constructed of a lovely sandstone.

This is a very hilly area and the town had flagstone streets. Giron had cobblestone roads, very rough on the vehicles.

We got our exercise lugging our packs around here. At least, because of the altitude, it was much cooler here than in Cartagena. We were at 1340 metres.

This was the bed and breakfast house we stayed in, quite lovely.

From there, we moved on to Villa de Leyva. It really poured here, thankfully just after we booked into our hotel. It rained most of that night. This town is at 2140 metres and was founded in 1572. It has been a national monument since 1954 and is well preserved.

This is the doorway into our hotel.

We specifically tried to get to Villa de Leyva to attend the Saturday morning market. They are always so interesting and colourful.

There is a strong military/police presence everywhere in Colombia. I don't think we've felt any safer in any other country, including Canada!

We are in this market at 9am, and already many people are drinking beer...heck, that's worse than cruisers!! This market was interesting in that we hadn't seen many indigenous people in the other areas, or even in Cartagena. You see obvious mixes, but not people like the woman above. It reminded us a lot of the markets in Peru and Ecuador.

This was early in the morning and many of the people had been there for hours beforehand setting up their stalls. So, there were also little food stalls where people were brewing up this and that and the locals were having breakie.

Soup seems to be the mainstay for any of the three meals of the day.

Even the hats reminded us of Peru.

They are fascinating places to walk around and the colour never ceases to amaze us.

Whatever type of dried bean you need, it's there!

Blackberries anyone? They are very popular there, but they taste a bit different from the ones at home; maybe more like a combination of a raspberry and a blackberry.

These poor roosters don't know their fates!!

These two were having a bit of a scuffle...such a waste of valuable time considering what would befall them in the next day or two!! The owner came over to the basket and slapped both of them and then pulled the blindfold back over the eyes of the greyish one.

Ralph loved all the old trucks that have brought everything to the market.

They tried to sell one of the pigs to Ralph...just what we needed!

Bouganvilla grows here as well. What a lovely splash of colour!!

This was the courtyard inside our hotel, how lovely!!! At this point, we had had our fill of old colonial towns and headed back to Bogota. We lost no time there and decided, since we hadn't spent as long as we'd planned in this part of our sight seeing, we'd try to book a trip to Leticia and the Amazon. On to the next leg of our trip!

Finishing Up

2011-03-31T16:31:00.000-07:00

When we returned from Santa Marta, Fortuitous had her new topsides gelcoat. While still not perfect, we were happy enough with it after a few repairs. So, back in the boatyard and hard at it again trying to finish up the varnishing and re-install all the deckhardware, dodger etc. This is our room in Marina Manzanillo. Sadly, no closet at all so the drapes became our closet.

The boat will be heaven to live aboard after this type of camping.

It costs $3 a load for a wash or a dry, so I try to rinse out my work things in the sink...a difficult chore as it is so small. We've been without water, at the end of a long workday, on more than one occasion. We brought in our sunshowers, from the boat, and used those.

This is the sand truck going past Maicol's.

It's a very dusty place to eat.

Then came the gravel truck...must be mixing concrete somewhere down the road.

We had a yard worker sand the doors and toe rail, thankfully. Then the painter had to varnish them.

Lots of hard work, but here are some shots of the finished product. Every inch of wood below, save the insides of the cupboard doors (which I'll do later) has been varnish.

Most is in satin or matte, the trim in gloss.

These are Tuti's seat boxes all varnished up. Great storage here.

This is the new cabinet in the V Berth. Also great storage.

Here is where we had the dry rot and Tuti redid most of the bookshelf area and foot of our berth. You'd never know anything was repaired here.

The new nav station area where the doors to the cockpit used to be.

We had everything almost completed but, once we uncovered the table, I decided I couldn't live with it unfinished with the rest looking so nice.

So, we varathaned that too.

Very happy with the results.

We got some parrots on our trip to the Amazon (pages for a later blog). This was the perfect spot for them.

Voila!!! Done!!!

We had new cockpit cushions made as the configuration now is quite different. As well, the old cushions were not high density foam and very old and soft. They are supposed to be used to help someone stay afloat if, God forbid, anyone should fall off Fortuitous. The old ones would have soaked up water, like the sponges they were, and gone right to the bottom...not much help to anyone in need.

However, now that I've covered the new vinyl cushions with my nice new tropical covers, I couldn't possibly throw them overboard, so they won't be of much help either!!

So, came the day to float Fortuitous. It's always un-nerving and we're always glad when it's over. Just look at that shine, though.

Ahhh, in the water finally...but just. There's about a foot of water below the keel here.

Now comes the tricky part of getting the mizzen back aboard. Our camera died when we took it off last year, so we don't have any photos of that. But, here's the process in reverse. Ralph and the crew are contemplating the job.

Mast is carried by hand to the dock. Then, ropes are tied under the spreader and it's lifted onto the forklift forks, where Ubaldo is sitting in order to secure and guide the mast as it's put aboard.

Almost ready to haul it high enough to put aboard. Ubaldo wasn't tied on at all, so Ralph gave him a harness from our boat.

This is before he was tied on.

Up she goes and onto Fortuitous. You'd never see this in Canada or the US!!!

"A little this way...er, no, a little that way...."

Done!!

Here we are at the dock readying and provisioning.

Fortuitous floats.

We are almost ready to leave and plan to be out of here on Saturday, April 2nd. Ralph will be at sea for his birthday...but after this long haul, I'm sure he'll be happy about that!! The end of a very long refit...almost 5 months of work!!

Trip to Santa Marta

2011-03-13T19:26:00.001-07:00

After yet another problem with the gelcoat on the topsides, we'd had it! When the entire topsides were done, the cabin sides were OK, but there were many roller marks in the nonskid. We left Flavit and his crew to remedy the problem and headed to Santa Marta. After all, it was already the end of February and we were still working on Fortuitous. We felt (especially me) that a week in an all-inclusive was in order. I found a great deal in the Decameron and off we went. The girl at the desk was fabulous and, I think, gave us a much better room than we paid for. This is our balcony overlooking the beach.

Wow, what a treat!! I know you think this is what we do all day...but, sadly no!!

Downtown Santa Marta was not very interesting to us, but a little fishing village at the end of the road was very picturesque.

Some more fodder for my paintings...if I every get back to it.

Lovely little wood fishing boats.

Ralph takes such great shots, I never know which ones to include. Actually, come to think of it, I took some of these!

The local juice stand.

Fruit anyone?

This is a discount liquor store. Wine and hard liquor are very expensive in Colombia, but cheaper in these stores. Beer is cheap everywhere.

This is the thatched roof of a beach restaurant. We just thought it was so beautiful and interesting.

The view of the fishing village from the road above.

There were 3 or 4 theme restaurants in the resort that were open for dinner. Lunch was in the cattle car type buffet area. Here we are in the Asian section, whch was at the top of the Galleon in the centre of the resort. Can you tell it's Asian?

Ralph frolicking in the pool!!

Don't I look like I'm having fun!!? What was it I was saying about what good photos Ralph takes?

After a week, that was it and we headed back. We thought we'd be leaving Cartagena in a week or a little more. Little did we know.............................

Life in and Around the Boatyard

2011-03-13T19:13:00.001-07:00

We are adjusting quite well to life back in the boatyard. One of the up's, is I don't cook lunch and often not dinner because the boat is still in such a state. This is our lunch hang-out. It's just up the road from the marina...and, yes, that is a urinal just out front of the restaurant/store. And, yes, there are tables all around the urinal! This is lunch, plus a bowl of soup we've already consumed. Today is fried chicken, some rice, "white" salad, and fried plantain. There are usually beans too. To begin with, in January, tables were set up across the street too. But now (March) the sun is too high and there is no shade. Here we are enjoying lunch with Fred, from California. His boat is in the yard and he's heading off for a couple of months. As I write this, he has returned and his boat is back in the yard. He's gone home and we're still here. Looking up the street, from the restaurant, the fellows from some or other company in the area are resting over lunch.

The restaurant is called Maicol's (Michael's) and this is one of Maicol's sons.

This is the gate to the boatyard, and our "home away from home".

There's Maicol's on the left.

This is also a store/lunch spot two doors closer to the marina. I think they're cheaper but the fact that the first time we were there the owner/server was wearing no shirt and barely done up pants, was a bit of an appetite killer!

We are very happy with our hull gelcoat. But, when we left Cartagena, the topsides were not completed. The concern was matching the colour as Flavit had no gelcoat left to complete the job. We are also not happy with the sand embedded finish in the gelcoat around the new hatches.

It's a bit hard to see, but the entire deck behind the new propane box hasn't been gelcoated yet, and the colour of the propane box doesn't match the rest of the boat; it's much yellower. In fact, we have several different colours of cream on our topsides because they didn't mix well enough. Small wonder as they just used some stick they found in the yard!

After three unsuccessful tries at colour matching, they had to repaint all the topsides save the top of the main cabin.

All the nonskid had to be covered, as well as all hardware and wood. What a pain, since the first time much of that had been removed. It made for a much better, neater and easier job.

Getting ready to paint. We told them they had to use a drill mixer, no if's, and's, or but's.

Note the container...not sure what was in that before. Again, the guess by golly method of making a colour we'd like...a little of this, a little of that!

A break for lunch...always hungry street dogs in every Latin American country.

Sometimes cats too!

Urinal peek-a-boo!!

Since we have a lunch, that's more of a dinner, this would be a dinner aboard that's more of a lunch! But, Maicol's doesn't serve wine!!

This is a view of the boatyard taken by Ralph up the mast.

Fortuitous from on high.

Meanwhile, trying to work inside. We needed to re-varnish our cabin sole because of overspray last season (they didn't cover properly when spraying the mast). So, Ralph had to lift out the companionway stairs so I could varnish...they fell apart!! Another job. We were actually using waterbased urethane. Thank God we were, because I spilled part of the can just as i finished the second coat!!! !!!****&&^^&&!!! It mopped up and all was OK. This would not have been the case if it were oil based!

Here's the finished product! Still, annoying because it shouldn't have had to have been done. They were careless so I had more work to do. So, painting all done and the boys are removing the tape. It was a hot day and they found our gerry can covers and, first thing you know, they have hats!!

La Popa, Cartagena

2011-03-13T19:05:00.000-07:00

We were tired of working on Fortuitous so took a day off to visit La Popa. We thought that name referred to the Pope, but it actually refers to the shape of the hill which resembles the "poop deck" on a boat...that's what the name actually means in Spanish. This is the view from the hill looking out over Cartagena. That day there were 3 cruise ships in port. That's the day you DON'T want to vist the old historic city centre because the hawkers are in full force to get the other kind of cruisers.

This is the busy market area at the foot of the hill, or "Pied de la Popa".

Just a zoo of taxis and buses, as is the whole city.

At the top, there is a 400 year old convent, La Candelaria. The courtyard was lovely.

You have to love the bouganvilla!!

It's almost weed-like and is everywhere...but the colour!!!

A Day Off in Cartagena, January 2011

2011-01-28T14:27:00.000-08:00

We had time, on the day Flavit was sanding and getting ready to re-do our topsides' gelcoat, to take a day off in Cartagena. Below are a few shots of the beautiful old town. We just love this area!!

Lots of art shops with some of the artists being remarkably good.
I didn't actually paint, last year...not sure why as I had plenty of material from last year. So, Now I will have more.

These wooden balconies are spectacular!

Horses and carriages are the thing for tourists, especially the ones off the cruise ships.

Plaza Santa Domingo.

This is Plaza Santa Domingo. we come here often. The hawkers are always here, but go away when you say no thanks.

These Police officers were hanging around the corner of the square, not sure why. This lady approached them and had her photo taken with them.

You just gotta love those faces!!!

They seem to be having just too much fun to be working!

No, inspite of how it looks, this is NOT me!

These ladies charge for photos, but Ralph stole these.

Very colourful and picturesque!

A whole group of policemen/women arrived at the square, but they seemed to be on a tour.

As at home, the local sponsors advertise and probably provide the chairs and tables. These wooden ones are sponsored by the local beer, Club Colombia.

There are usually travelling musicians who will come and play for you for a charge. This group is taking a break, from the heat, under one of the restaurant umbrellas.

One of the restaurant tables in the buildings around the square...just a lovely little spot.

This is a short video clip of Plaza Santa Domingo, where we like to go and have a drink and people watch. Most of the stills above were taken there.

Back in Cartagena, Jan. 2011

2011-01-27T07:37:00.000-08:00

After a long two days of travel from Vancouver, complete with an overnight stopover in Winnipeg and another in Bogota, we finally arrived in Cartagena on January 5th. Considering we went from -30 Celsius, to +30, we fared pretty well. All was fine aboard, not much mildew and no critters. We were lucky enough to find the small apartment vacant, in the boatyard, so moved in the day we arrived. We took most of the junk from our 4 large duffels and loaded them aboard Fortuitous. No one can ever say we travel light!

The photos here were taken in our...'I can't believe we paid that' $80 a nite hotel room in Bogota. I chose it, on Expedia, because it was reasonably close to the airport and, supposedly, had a shuttle. Neither was true! No shuttle at the airport and, upon asking in the morning, none was to be had.
We had one see-thru towel and it was an imposition for the maid to get us another. A bed that was like no mattress at all and pillows like rocks, well maybe slate rocks! It wasn't particularly clean, either. This was a 2 star for Expedia; needless to say, I've written my review for them!

Ya gotta love the lamp, though! The drawers in the bottom of the mirror had no bottoms...only for show.

Here is your typical Colombian taxi out front of our lovely hotel. We're waiting for another because we can't find one big enough for all our junk. We did get dry toast, eggs, and coffee, though! Of course, that can be had anywhere in Colombia for less that $2.50. Off to Cartagena!

This is the view of the flowers from our screened over (thankfully) porthole in the bathroom of our little boatyard room. When we were here, last year, these weren't screened. Someone must have been tired of the mosquitos.

Across from the boatyard is the naval school. They have some lovely boats, there, probably confiscated from the drug runners. They use these to train the cadets.

This is a view from the balcony outside the cruiser lounge. We are looking over the yard toward the naval school.
This is the view of the yard and Fortuitous waiting patiently for us. They have started to cover her, again, with plastic, to protect from overspray. As I write this, it is now January 28th and we still don't have our heads above water. We knew we had lots to do but, when we wrote out our list, many things didn't make it on the list, but still needed to be done.

Flavit's crew started working a couple of days before we arrived, washing and polishing Fortuitous. We were lucky enough to get Tuti back to complete some carpentry jobs aboard. He has been working with us for the past 3 weeks and has just finished up. He's a master and we are so pleased with his work. You'll see in the photos below.

We knew there would be issues with the gelcoat colour topsides. When they had painted our propane box last year, it was much yellower a colour than the rest of the topsides. It seems that maybe the gelcoat paint hadn't been mixed properly, most of the time, and the cream colour had settled out. Flavit thought he could repaint and match the colour, but after 2 tries we've given up. Today, he is going to re-gelcoat the enitre topsides , save under the toe rail and the top of the main cabin. We've reserved our decision on these until we see how close the colour match is. If we can't see much difference, we won't require him to do it. This has been a real pain because we just want them finished so we can do some of the outside work too.

That being said, we've both had plenty to do inside. I've been cleaning, organizing, and varnishing, while Ralph has been installing, cleaning up and painting the motor, and generally destroying any kind of organizing and cleaning that I've been trying to do...ah, boat-life on the hard!

Ralph found a few blisters on our rudder, so they have been ground out and repaired.

For those of you who think we are sitting/lying in our hammocks sipping margaritas, here are a few photos of what the inside of Fortuitous is like right now. We have been working 10 hours a day, every day, since we arrived...still not much sign of improvement!

We are working around all the mess as there's never anywhere else to work! You just keep moving the "workshop" from one end of the boat to the other. In the shot above, you can see our new seat boxes. They aren't quite finished, here, as we also added trim to the bottom and have since varnished them.

This is the V-berth right now. Those are the new cushions for the salon and the mattresses from the aft cabin.
And, this is the salon, where we have all our meals.
Looks cozy, doesn't it? Besides the kitchen, it is also a workshop. Here we're putting new plexi in the salon hatches.
This was a nasty job as we'd used 5200 sealant on the first try last season, and it hadn't bonded to the plexi. We had leaks, so we had to redo them. However, it bonded only too well to the metal. Trying to remove it from the metal was a terrible job and left a real mess. We had to re-paint the hatches.
Doesn't look quite like everyone elses' kitchen, does it?
Those of you who know me well must wonder how I'm managing to live/work around this kind of mess. Thankfully, we have a room in the boatyard. I truly couldn't live aboard during this kind of work.
Here I am trying to varnish the aft cabin bookshelves. Nothing is easy as all the nooks and crannies are hard to reach and get to...especially when you have all the junk we have aboard.
Ralph had purchased a couple of new thru-hulls and installed them for the cockpit drains. The old ones were plastic and very clogged from years of use and all the construction.
Before we left last year, we'd found dry rot in the aft cabin corner of our berth.
We weren't sure how bad it would be, but soon found out.
Thankfully, Tuti was around and we gave him the job of tearing it apart and fixing it up. This was a big job because all the vinyl had to be removed, from the stern, and a lot of wood had to be replaced and fibre-glassed in.
We had bought a new stove in Panama...a great deal at $650. These cost about $1800, if you can imagine that!! It's a bit smaller than our last one, so Tuti had to build it in.

He also had to finish the trim on the salon hatches. What a terrific job!

Here is the stern berth with all the wood removed so that Tuti can start to rebuild the berth and wall under the bookshelf.

This is what the new salon hatches look like now that they're varnished! What a class act! The plastic is in the hatches as this was taken just before our rebedding job.

It is amazing what he can do with his few hand tools. He's truly a master craftsman.

Last season we had purchased a big ugly rubbermaid box to put on the the aft cabin. This was needed as we didn't have enough storage space aboard with the 5 people we had to go through the canal. In truth, it was actually mostly full of BEER for the guys. Because we used it so much, we decided to have Flavit build us a smaller version to put on the supports we already have. This is it before it's gelcoated.

Another project for Flavit, while we were away, was to build us a new lid (the inside portion only) for our fridge. My brother Rob had built the original and it had served us well. But, now we had a professional fibreglass worker, why not take advantage of him.

It now looks like a factory-made product!

So, that shows you what we've been up to so far, and so far so good!

August 2010

2010-08-20T13:41:00.000-07:00

Ralph had the opportunity to stop in Cartagena on the return trip from Santiago Chile. There are a few more completed projects, and some underway. I have posted a few new photos of Fortuitous' facelift, both inside and out.

Construction in progress of our underseat boxes.

Completed bookshelf where the aft cabin/cockpit doors used to be.

Finished cabinet in the V-berth.

Finished propane locker.

Aft deck still needs to be gel-coated.

Finished cockpit.

Cabin windows repainted.

The rest are photos of what a terrific job has been done with paint and gel coat. Just look at that shine!!!

Leaving Fortuitous and Cartagena

2010-07-20T15:12:00.000-07:00

We were right down to the wire on Saturday morning. We were scheduled to fly out to Bogota at 5pm, and the boat wasn't moved to it's (hopefully) final spot away from the work area. There were still tarps to first take down, and then put up, water tanks to drain, dinghy to put on board, etc. What a rush!!!

They were supposed to be moving us around 1 pm, so the gang put in a few hours of work finishing up bits and pieces. You can see our new propane locker aft, in this photo. That's our mizzen in the foreground.

Willi with tape in hand!

We didn't even have time to take real photos of all the finished and almost finished projects. We're very pleased with the results of all this work...but it really was a lot of work!

Here, we've finally been moved! But, by the time all was said and done, we had to leave the crew to haul the dinghy aboard, cover it, and re-hang all the tarps. We were just out of time. We don't like to leave things that way, but have confidence in the crew!

This is the view from the steps to our room. She looks great!

Flavit and Willi wave good-bye to us as we get into our taxi! There are still odds and ends to finish outside, but we trust Flavit and his crew and are confident all will be OK. There is at least 2 weeks of work for Tuty inside. We have left it all in his capable hands. It will be interesting to see what's what when we return.

In retrospect, we'd probably do this job again, but not with time constraints...just keep working on it until it's done. It was hard to leave Fortuitous in an unfinished state...but what can you do? Everything always takes longer than you think. Seeya in January, Fortuitous!

Last Renos to Fortuitous, July 2010

2010-07-20T10:47:00.001-07:00

If you remember and earlier post, once we'd been "renamed", Gato had rubbed off the centre "a" in Canada...We were from Can da for a few days!

Here we are, "re-a'd" and with the monitor mounts in place. The window frames are all painted and look great too!

The new lettering is a slightly different font, but we think we like it even better.

This is the new arrangement for the cockpit. The small doors into our aft cabin used to be here. You can barely see our new hatch at the top of this photo.

This is the new propane/storage box on the stern. Not quite finished, but almost there. The newly varnished grabs are there with their new covers.

The crew are re-sealing our toe rail. Some of the caulking had to be removed in order to do a good job on the gel-coat.

Carlos and Jorge hard at it.

Meanwhile, Tuty is busy making our V-berth storage cabinet. The little block in the centre of the photo is his pattern for the corner moulding.

Lining things up with bits of string...it's amazing what equipment they can get by without.

We purchased 3-ply and Tuty veneered it with teak. What a great job!

Here's the corner moulding being put in place.

The side of the cabinet, with the corner in place.

Last fitting before trying it inside. Once he was ready, the entire thing barely fit through the companionway and into the forecabin. Not sure if he'd planned this to just fit, or we were just lucky!!

These are the tools he uses! The cabinet is to the right.
Unfortunately, this is a bit blurry, but it's the only shot we have right now. This is the almost finished cabinet. He trimmed around the doorway, and also the door, so it is a really nice finish.
I looked up from my cleaning and saw these feet in the window!
We have a shot of Greg almost like this one! This time it's Jorge finishing up inside the lazarette.
There he is! He fits a little better than Greg!
We built in the air conditioner to help keep down the mildew and mold. We'll see how that has worked when we return.
These are our new cockpit cushions. We needed new ones because of the different layout...and the old ones were 30+ years old.
These are our new settee cushions. I think I still like the older style, with the buttons, better. But these are much firmer and it would not look right with the buttons.

Cartagena in June

2010-07-02T10:11:00.000-07:00

Cartagena is truly a beautiful city. We love it here! Below, find some paintings waiting to happen...I'm really looking forward to turning some of these photos into watercolours of some sort.
The balconies are just beautiful! Here, in front of a nice one, is a typical tiny taxi.

It's a joy to walk through Old Cartagena...well, except for the heat and humidity!

Ralph waiting for me to stop taking photos of balconies.

Not done yet! Some of the wooden ones have huge beams.

This is the square just as you enter near Torre del Reloj, or the clock tower.

Wonderful fruit wagons everywhere...but very little good fruit in the supermarkets. Obviously, everyone buys from these carts.

Bouganvilla cascades from the balcony.

And yet more.

Colour, colour everywhere!!

Yes, these are avocados! There as large as the papayas we get at home and they are just as good as they look!

Manzanillo, June 24th

2010-06-24T18:11:00.000-07:00

This was quite an exciting day for us. We had gone yesterday and picked out the lettering for Fortuitous' name, and today Flavit was going to apply it. Of course, they didn't have the same lettering as we'd had, but we thought we'd found something we liked as well, if not better.

First they place it in position and measure to see it's centred etc. Then they remove it from the backing, spraying it with soapy water.

Almost there!

Reminds me of wallpapering and worrying about getting all wrapped up in it!

There we are!! We are renamed!

This photo is a bit blurry, but they are so happy with their work!

The name is on both sides of the bow, now, and we are now getting ready to do the stern. Lots of measuring going on. Bet Flavit wishes our name weren't quite so long!!

Remove the backing and apply! It's kind of scary because those names cost us about $75! I'm guessing that's still half the price of at home!

Squeeze out the bubbles and flatten!

How does that look?

Applying Canada!

Here we are!! But, drat!!! Right after this photo, Gato (on the right) was cleaning up and drying the handiwork and rubbed off the centre "a" in Canada!!! What!!! We'll have a new "a" tomorrow!

A group shot, with us, of the entire crew. What a great bunch of guys and terrific workers!!

Here they all are, front row sitting, from left: Tuty, Jorge, Carlos, Flavit. Back row, from left: Blake, Jorge, Willi, Gato. Most of these guys have worked on our boat 5 1/2 days a week for the last almost two months!

We bought them some after work drinks...mostly a couple of beer, but some only had coke. Should have been champagne for the renaming but the local store didn't have that!

Willi and Tuty chilling. Most of the crew are 30 or less. Tuty is our age...that would be 40!

Carlos...he tries to teach me some Spanish words for various tools and I teach him some English. He gave up on scissors because he couldn't say it at all!

Gato wondering if he should have a beer. After he "cleaned" off our middle "a" in Canada, he said, "No beer for Gato!!"

I guess Tuty's wondering if he should go for that second beer! Today we also bit the bullet and are having our glass in our main hatches replaced. We've already sprung for new plexi in the little ones in the salon, but every new job seems to sprout another. We can't possible have all new hatches except for the largest ones, can we!!?? So, now we're $400 poorer for new plexi in the large ones too!! Yikes!! Time to go home!!

This is our main salon with the new headliner. The small hatches aren't completed yet.

We are never without problems of one kind or another. We already had one major flood, when the nav station became a swimming pool. This is the remnants of the second one. These are all our expensive cruising books drying in our apartment. What a mess. The new propane box didn't yet have drainage holes. We had rain, you guessed it...the box filled with water (even though covered with a tarp)...the water siphoned through the openings where the propane hoses go...into our cabin. The water dripped everywhere and poured over all our expensive books! You don't want to know how Ralph took this one!!

Just to finish off, I have to show you some close up photos of our "apartment". Don't get me wrong, I'm very appreciative of being able to live where we have air conditioning and can come and go as we work on Fortuitous...but this apartment is not up to my usual cleanliness standards. This is our kitchen sink and blow-torch...er stove. Those of you who know me well will realize, just by viewing these photos, how I feel about this place...words are not necessary!

Suffice to say, the place needs work!!

Yuck! What's living in there???

June 22nd

2010-06-22T16:36:00.001-07:00

Here we are hoping to be in the home stretch. Today we went off with Flavit to try to fix our aft cabin window that has something or other spilled on it. No luck being able to get it out of the frame so we'll have to try something else. He will try to buff it and, if that doesn't work, we'll be forced to get new windows eventually...but not yet as enough money spent. We also chose our lettering for Fortuitous. It is similar to the old, but a little different. We've got them in brown, instead of black. Since everything on Fortuitous is brown, it seemed the better choice. We'll see; more photos to come over the next few days.
This is our new propane box in the making. Getting there, but still a ways to go.

These are our new hatches, one over the nav station and one in the head. Getting there too!

This is how the cockpit looks now with the new seating arrangement after removing the aft cabin doors. It looks great and is...getting there.

There was a big space here, in the combing, so we had Flavit's crew cut an opening and fashion a storage box for winch handles etc.

Tuty is working hard to complete our headliner. There's a bit of sanding that needs new varnish...but an excellent job! We couldn't be happier with his work.

He finished up most of the headliner in the main salon today. It looks great too! We still need hatch trim for the small hatches. Bit by bit, but still a big mess. We need to sand the old hatch wood as it looks pretty crappy compared to the new trim. So much to do to clean up and yet so little time!!

Continued Renos for Fortuitous, June 21st

2010-06-21T19:30:00.000-07:00

As we continue down the reno road, more work seems to materialize. Ralph and I are both gettng tired, but we can't possibly leave Fortuitous in the shape she's in, right now, and go home. So, we are staying on awhile to see most of the work through. We are extremely happy with the work, but it is also a lot of work for us too. The mess is incredible, and we need time to get Fortuitous cleaned up once the dust settles...literally!!

This is our main salon as we see it every day. It doesn't do it justice as you can't really see all the dust and dirt. Worse yet, we have overspray on our beautiful teak and holly floor. I've sanded it and will try to re-varnish it before we leave here.

Another shot of the salon.

This is my galley, I think??

Tuty has been working hard and these are the first of the headline panels in place in the V-berth. We have still to sand the old boards in the hatch, one of the new trim boards is in temporarily.

This is a shot of our newly painted hull ports. This is the right colour as opposed to the first colour which was rust.

Our carpenter, Tuty, is very exacting. we have an air conditioner that we are installing in the companionway for while we are back in Canada. Hopefully that will keep down the mold and mildew. We needed a couple of steps to get in and over it. He built these...note the curvy side supports. Not really necessary for throw-away steps, but he's an artist.

More varnishing for yours truly. These are the cockpit seat edges and the companionway hatch pull.

Aft ports, newly painted.

We did take an afternoon to go and have some lunch in Old Town. This young lady was sitting selling her coconuts on the corner outside our cafe. What a long day for the little one!

This is the cafe. Lunch of soup, main course of fish, rice, beans and salad and a banana for dessert cost us $3.00

This is what is left of the whole fried fish we each had. It wasn't bad.

More Boat Renos, June 2010

2010-06-17T18:37:00.001-07:00

We are progressing with all our boat renos. This blog page, I'll start with a "rain shower" and I use that term very loosely. This is very typical of the downpours we've had here. They usually only last about an hour or so, but the downpour is unbelievable!
This is the view from our "apartment" window...and I use the term apartment very loosely too!

This is also taken from our apartment window. This would be the local coffee vendor...neither sleet nor hail...well you know the rest!

Take a look at the current going over his foot...this would be the road in front of our marina complex.

After the rain! This is all the plywood panels for our boat headliner. They all had to be painted and then we've covered them with thin foam and then vinyl.

They will all be installed and then trimmed with teak strips. They will look great, but a fantastic amount of work. We had to do this because we had to remove various deck fixtures for repair and replacement during our new gel coat.

These are some of the guys beside Fortuitous getting ready to start the day. We have 3 Jorges, Carlos, Willi, Blake, and Flavit, plus Tuty usually working on our boat...a big crew!

This is Flavit and Jorge applying gel coat to the cabin sides.

This is Carlos.

This is Willi, which is short for Wellington...a good Spanish name.

They use whatever is available to mix up paint etc. They are all very resourceful.

Here are the sheets of plywood ready for vinyl covering...oops, missed one.

Willi and Jorge applying gel coat to the back cabin sides. What a crummy job this would be!!

Flavit and Carlos hiding in the shade and contemplating what's next!

This is why I say it would be a crummy job!!

So...we had holes cut in our aft cabin so we could install our new hatches. They were covered with a tarp...and it rained like hell overnight!!! When we arrived at the boat the next morning, I thought Ralph would have a heart attack!! Over the large hole, the tarp had filled with water, then finally pulled away from the tie and dumped all the water (and the rest of the rainfall) over and into our nav station!! Amazingly, the nav station top is unbelievably water-tight!! Unfortunately, it was full of about 3" of water! Ralph lost it; I sent him away, bailed and cleaned up. These are some of the things drying out in our room.

Window/port painting number something or other...it took at least 3 tries to get the right colour or deal with rain ruining the right colour. This is not it!

Blake and Jorge taping to paint the bowsprit.

Just when we thought we were getting somewhere, one of the Jorges thought the deck felt a bit spongy...we explored and guess what??

He was right!! We found this big ugly mess...more to repair!

This is the view from inside the lazarette...take by someone much smaller than Ralph!

One of the Jorges grinds down all the fibreglass to a nice smooth finish. Another terrible job to do!

Meanwhile, on Fortuitous' aft deck, the new propane locker is being constructed.

An Tuty works hard teaching us how to install vinyl on the plywood panels. These will be installed in the ceiling.

Flavit looks on as Carlos tries to find out how bad the new-found hole in our deck is.

We have such a great crew, and the yard workers are so great, we decided to order in pizza for a thank you meal. Maurice, the manager of Manzanillo supplied the drinks for the festivities.

These are a few of our crew having a well deserved break.
This is the new arrangement in our cockpit. No more doors going into the aft cabin, a new seat and small lazarette instead.
This is me checking out all my varnishing. These are about half the teak strips needed to put our new ceiling in place. Two coats of varnish-minimum.
Here are some more of them and our bow decoration (which needed 8 coats of varnish).

New Paint Job, Cartagena June 2010

2010-06-05T12:38:00.000-07:00

After quite a struggle, we now have Fortuitous looking like she should! She had her stripes first painted at the end of May. There was a little mix up in the colour. We had chosen colours for the gel coat, small accent stripe, and the larger stripe. The gel coat was exactly what we wanted. The small accent stripe is fabulous too! However, something got lost in translation about the wide stripe. I did "OK" it (thought it would change colour a bit) so it was my responsibility for the most part. However, Falvit had said it would look different, so he accepted some of the blame. At any rate, it looked a little too pink to Greg and I (Ralph is a little colour blind, so he didn't get to vote). I tried hard to live with it, over the weekend (Greg has returned to YVR), but finally gave up and we negotiated with Falvit to repaint. He got it all taped off and the crew sanded away for a day and a half. Flavit and I went together to get the paint. I'm not surprised there was a mix up. There is no fancy paint mixing machine like the have in Home Depot or Revvy. It's all done in the guess by golly fashion! A little of this, a little of that, and voila!! But, even then, they've only mixed a tiny amount so this continues, and continues until they have a quart. Flavit painted the next day and, right after completion, it rained. A very sad day for us all...especially the sanding crew! Not to mention, with guilt being my strongest suit...it was hard on me too! More sanding the next day and then the final repainting. Wow!! It looks fantastic!! I'm so much happier with the colour!!!!! You be the judge!

This is the first colour, a little pinky in my opinion. You can click on it to enlarge it.

This is the final colour.

Here is one of our happy workers, Blake...now there's a good Spanish name!

Cartagena: Vendors Anyone??

2010-06-01T14:25:00.000-07:00

We spent one lunch in an outdoor cafe across from Bolivar Square. During lunch, Ralph just kept the camera rolling so we could give you an idea of all the vendors there are in Cartagena. We snapped most of these shots below during our lunch break...less than 2 hours, a few others are from our walk around town. You'll get the picture!

T-shirts
Plastic spoons and who knows what else?Coffee anyone?Plastic jewelery
Remote lottery purchasing Cuban? cigars Fruit "Real" pearls More coffee?Pop, water, beer?Ice cream
Water colour painting-on Canvas??

Watch repairs
Shoemaker (note the girl with her shoe off waiting for repairs)Limonada Dulces or sweets
Some sort of juice Cigarettes
Different ice cream

Lady who charges for photos

Water, pop, beer girl?

Yet more coffee
Pooped coffee vendor

Statues Hats This little girl was having so much fun with the pigeons, I just couldn't resist!

Tourists in Cartagena, May 2010

2010-05-31T09:52:00.000-07:00

We have not had a lot of time to be tourists in Cartagena, but we have a few photos to share. We hope to have a bit more time, now, as we can't work too much while they are busy grinding and sanding. I MUST take more photos as it's a painters dream in Old Town!
They have the most fabulous fruit and veggie wagons!
You can buy almost anything off some wagon or other! Fresh coconut milk being served here.
Beautiful old doors!
Balconies of wood or stone...just a beautiful old city. It is completely surrounded by walls of stone, and the streets are very narrow.
Here I am looking for the emerald of my choice. I didn't buy here, but found a ring I loved in another shop.
Coffee in the plaza.
No, this is not out of the Wizard of Oz, although it appears to be the tin man in the making! This is yet another vendor...not sure what...with the garbage guy/sweeper-upper.
Grapes anyone? I do wonder how well those hand-held scales work?
Pop or beer, anyone?
This is the view out the door of our favourite breakfast spot, Cafe Luna Nueva (New Moon), on Calle Media Luna (Half Moon). $3.50 buys you fruit, juice, coffee, scrambled eggs (ham, cheese, onion,and tomato), a slice of cheese on the side, and toast and jam. Even get free coffee refills here, something they don't normally do here...I think it's because we've been here so often. We discovered it when we flew in from Panama City.
The sweeper, again, talking to the tailor across the street from our restaurant.
We have fallen in love with this kitten, across from the restaurant too. This is Greg's shot. I worry, as we sit there, about her running off into the ever-present traffic, as she is playing with something on the sidewalk. I don't want to be there for that.
A pair of pants for you in no time at all!
This fellow sits all day hoping someone will pay him for his statuary.
Hats and more hats!

Bags and more bags...

Candy and more...well, you get the picture!
More of the architecture in old town.
You can buy pop, water, and even beer on the streets from these guys.
The jewelery vendors taking a break.
During our stay here, the tall ships came in. This guy is selliing anything to do with that, hats, shirts etc. His suit is entirely covered with knots.
Ralph bought a hat from him, he wandered off, then we did too. We weren't 5 minutes away from where we'd met him, and he approached us again to buy a hat...we said we'd just bought one...he finally recognized us...I guess all us tourists look the same!

There is a lot of poverty here, although we feel very safe in Old Town.

Real silver...really??

Ice cream too.

These are the tiny little taxis in Cartagena. We had one of these, with Greg's bag strapped on top, and his wake-board and guitar on our laps....the trunk is full of propane gas tank.

This is a typical delivery in Cartagena. There are carts like this everywhere, some pulled by donkeys.

You can buy some time on a cell phone from this young lady. I guess business isn't that good, right now.

Woodwork anyone?

Another deliver of something-or-other.

We were very lucky to be in Cartagena for the arrival of the tall ships. There were boats from various countries including the US, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, etc.
We boarded the Mexican ship to have a look around.
It is very hot, and I'm trying very hard to be interested in various bits of rope and hardware...but, as you can see, I'm not very good at looking interested in this. Although, I must say, they are beautiful.
The Mexican ship, from the Brazilian one.
And, vice-versa.
Captain Ralph!
Loved the buckets, though!
Figure heads on all the various boats.
Here is the entire armada. We saw these on a different day.
The Colombian ship.

Captain Bligh...er Ralph!

This is the reason we didn't get to board any of the ships here. Apparently, every kid in Cartagena was on a field trip here on the same day we chose to view them.

The Coast Guard keeping an eye on things. They have 3 times 350 hp outboards...can't get away from them too easily!! That's it for this installment. More in the coming days.

Manzanillo Marina Club, Cartagena May 2010

2010-05-31T07:43:00.000-07:00

We arrived, without incident, at the dock in Manzanillo Marina Club...not sure why they call it a club? We were given way points for the entry into the channel as it is very shallow. The points were very poor as at one point we saw one foot below the keel...a little too shallow for us! Since they only have one foot tides, there's not going to be much water coming in to float you off if you ground out.

At the dock, after much confusion about where/how we were going to tie up. We thought we'd go right into the travel lift dock, but that was not to be. We had to fit in between two boats on their dock (one boat left shortly after...maybe we scared him off? It didn't look like a lot of space, but turned out just fine...except for the "crew" who got their shirt in a knot about where/how many/how high the fenders had to be and where/and how the dock lines were to work! Maybe I'm too old for this or??
This is the travel lift area. It is a very small lift, and the dock is quite questionable, in Ralph's opinion.
They maintain they have repaired it, underneath. It was difficult to see, so that may be true. But, on the surface, the steel looks in pretty bad shape.
Here we are ready to be lifted. Unfortunately, we ran out of batteries in the camera when they were removing the mizzen. One fellow went up on the forks of the fork-lift as it came up to the mizzen. He tied a rope around the mizzen, below the spreaders, and then to the forks. Then they lifted it off Fortuitous. Never in Canada!!
I get to watch it all from a distance...just what I like to do best!
Ralph inspects Fortutious' bottom as they are adjusting the blocks and stands to support Fortuitous on the hard.

We have removed the bow decoration in preparation for gel coat and painting. You can see the colour difference since 30 years ago.
This is the tail end of Greg, as he has crawled in the lazarette to undo the bolts for the side boarding ladder. Nothing is easy! He's left Fortuitous now...so not sure who's putting those back on?
Flavit's crew is meticulous about fixing possible problems. We have the best of the best for all the jobs being done on Fortuitous. We decided to stick around now to do all the jobs as, in the fall, they are all super busy and it is much harder to get the workers you want.

Here, they are looking for blister damage but it was all quite minimal.
One of the fellows is grinding off all the bottom antifouling and old barrier coat. What a job...wonder what the life expectancy is of one of those fellows?
Here we are having our dinner at our "diningroom table". It must be all of 2' square! These are not the best of accommodations, but at least we have air conditioning and we are in the boatyard. It would be so much more difficult and expensive if we had to live in town, eat out, and take taxis every day. One downside is we're not sure how many ants we have eaten so far! We get rid of some, and they materialize somewhere else! had to throw out my entire stock of basmati rice...can't get that here either!
A little cramped for three.
We have bits and pieces of Fortuitous everywhere.
Ahhh, nothing like the high life!
Meanwhile, back in the yard...one of the first jobs almost accomplished! Gel coat being applied.
Fortuitous' stern coat...no more stripes there. That was tricky, making sure we had all the measurements to repaint the lines as they were.

Flavit applying gel coat to Fortuitous' starboard side.
He and his crew are amazing workers! They work 8 till 5, with a one hour break for lunch, five days a week...and a half day on Saturday.
Sanding her and shining up the gel coat. It's amazing how good it looks so quickly.
All finished the sanding of the gel coat! Wow, what a shine! She looks brand new!
Cleaning and washing off the ever-present dust.

What do we do next??
Here are the doors from our cockpit into our aft cabin. We decided to remove these as we don't use them, except for ventilation. We have a walk through down below, so they're really not necessary. We also wanted to remove the tiny port in the head and put a hatch, on top, instead. We'll also put a hatch in the deck where the old one is above the doors.
This is what it looked like when the closed it all in.

This is inside, above the nav station. We will have the carpenter build us some shelves in here.

A few days later, they've extended the seating on the starboard side and around where the doors used to be.

This area is also undergoing changes. The combi (the large instrument to the right of our companionway doors) is useless, so we are removing it too.
Here we are in the process of that...notice, just a bit of dust!
Flavit taping up to paint the stripes. It is a very difficult job to get them just right...not just one stripe but 5 along the sides of Fortuitous.
"Gato" working hard too!
Epoxy has been applied and we have a new barrier coat!
Last of the taping and plastic protection being applied, before painting.
Meanwhile, others in the crew are prepping the mizzen for painting. We had some dry rot under this mast, so we had to remove it. We decided to paint it since it was down anyway.
The new paint job! Old paint stripped, one coat of etching primer, another of regular primer, and then the topcoat! They also are cleaning the mast steps.
OK! Almost ready to paint.

Greg has been working hard on sanding and varnishing the grab rails. We removed them for ease of gel coating the top deck and to rebed them for any leaks we've had.

Inside, all the headliner has been removed and we've been cutting insulation and cementing it to the ceiling.

Tutti, our carpenter, has been re-doing the ceiling framing that had rotted out with various leaks over the last 30 years.

He has cut the panels for the ceiling and has tacked them in place. These panels will be covered with thin foam and then vinyl. They will be held in place with teak strips. This will make it much easier to take apart if, God forbid, we have any more leaks!

Here we are all painted! They did a beautiful job! However, there is one problem...I'm not sure I like the colour of the main stripes. It was supposed to be mocha, but seems a little too pink for my liking. Greg and I had the same reaction upon seeing it for the first time, "It's just a tad pink, isn't it?"

The jury is still out, but we are investigating repainting. We don't think it's their fault as I OK'd the paint. I haven't had a chance to look at the samples again, but we'll see.

It looks even more pink in these photos...really depends on the lighting. I'd like it more beige. Ralph's colour blind, so no help there.

To be continued...

May 6th, 2010, Manzanillo Boat Yard

2010-05-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

Here we are in the Manzanillo boat yard. We put Fortuitous on the hard on Monday, as hoped, and have been working on her ever since. Flavit and his crew have started grinding off the antifouling and old barrier coat on Fortuitous' bottom, in preparation for a few blister repairs and a brand new gel coat.

Ralph and I are working on all the other things that need removing in order for it all to come together. Looking forward to Greg's arrival tonight from his backpacking adventures in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. We'll be putting him to work tomorrow and he'll be sorry he's back.

I will post some photos of what we're up to, and of Cartagena, in the next few weeks.

San Blas To Cartagena

2010-04-30T06:57:00.000-07:00

Here are a few photos of our journey to Cartagena. We left Shelter Bay April 27th, and ended up in Isla Grande. We weren't sure if we were going to do a straight shot, or stop along the way. Turns out, we stopped here.
We headed off again, the next morning, for an overnighter to Cartagena. We had confused seas and winds, but a lovely sunset.
We hit a few squalls, enroute, but mostly a motorboat ride. Again, a lovely sunset/sunrise?? shot.

April 30th, 2010

2010-04-30T06:42:00.000-07:00

Left Shelter Bay Tuesday afternoon and overnighted in Isla Grande, Panama, near Linton. Left there at 6 am aiming to stop in San Blas. That didn't happen as we heard there could be some "weather" coming up. We are presently one hour outside Boca Chica, Cartagena. Our first night out was very comfortable until Ralph came on shift and I went down to go to sleep at 2 am. A big squall was straight ahead, and several others surrounding. No avoiding them. It was a very uncomfortable 4 hours passing through...rough and lots of lightning.

Last night was very uneventful. We have been motoring or motor sailing the whole way. We'll tie to the dock, in Manzanillo boat yard and put Fortuitous on the hard on Monday as the travel lift is down for maintenance right now.

Shelter Bay Marina, April 2010

2010-04-05T07:27:00.000-07:00

We are currently in Shelter Bay Marina, Panama. This is the first time, in over 3 months, we have had any form of internet, other than emails via our HAM radio. It is Ralph's birthday, today (April 4th). I am loading photos from early January, our transit through the panama canal. All photos are on the preceding pages so please scroll down. Hope you enjoy our voyage!

To Colombia and back, March 2010

2010-04-05T07:26:00.000-07:00

Our 90 day visas ran out so we had to check out of Panama and check in and out of Colombia, then return to Panama in order to go to Rio Chagras and Boca del Toro-our next planned stops. All was a heap of trouble, but necessary. We left for Sapzuro Colombia...about a 3 night trip with stops at various San Blas island in between.

Enroute, fisherman Greg worked very hard (as you can see) to procure dinner for us.

Below is the bay in Sapzuro. It was quite a rolly anchorage, so we put out our "flopper stopper". We were told, by others who had been there before, to talk to Johnny, a panga driver, about getting a ride to Caprigana (a small town 15 minutes down the coast). We needed to go there as that is where the immigration office is, but there is no anchorage in this town. However when we trying to anchor in Sapzuro, a small blue panga came out right away and buzzed us all during our anchoring process...quite annoying really. He obviously wanted to offer some sort of service, but he bumped us a couple of times as he got too close. Long story longer, Ralph decided to go with this guy since he thought one panga was the same as all the others. More later about this assumption!

We had scheduled to leave for the immigration office the next morning. Overnight, and next morning we had the rainstorm from hell. It was still pouring when 10am came (our scheduled departure time). We decided to postpone the trip till the next day. The bay, the usual green sea colour to begin with, gradually turned a muddy brown from the run-off.

We just watched the brown progress through the bay, along with branches, logs, etc.

Next morning, he came to pick us up along with 2 or 3 other fellows off different boats. Although we have no photos of this, this was not a fun trip. We headed out to open ocean and around the corner. The swells, from the storm, and wind wave were both pretty high. I've seen panga fishermen out in that and thought they were nuts...yet here I was!! What was I thinking...I'll tell you what I was thinking...I was wondering what the trip back would be like since the wind is always higher in the afternoon (and we were due to return at 4). We arrived safe and sound, did our check-in/out, and went to some hole in the wall cafe for a not so sumptuous lunch.

This was the view from the cafe.

This dog kept climbing to the top of the sandpile, after "slip sliding away". I guess it was a cool spot for him as it was a very hot and humid day.

We took a look in some of the non-stores for a few essentials. Greg was getting hot, tired, and bored.

We happened upon the local meat market. As we were standing in the street, along came this open cart, lined with black plastic. The cargo was completely uncovered and God only knows how far they had come already.

At the palapa, they began unloading their cargo, onto the tables inside or hanging from hooks. We couldn't believe it was meat...looked like beef. All the dogs in the neighbourhood showed up, along with the village dwellers.

There is a strong military presence in this town, as I gather there is in all of Colombia. It would be terribly hot in those uniforms.

Greg decided to hike back, over the hill, to Sapzuro. We waited for the panga ride.
Here I am looking out at the waves, contemplating my fate and wondering if I should have walked. The trouble is, my feet hadn't yet healed from the last walk...so it wasn't really an option. Our panga driver was late, and who should arrive but the Johnny we were supposed to talk to in the first place...his panga was 3 times the size of the one we'd used...and he charged the same $$!! !*!!$%%$%%^&&**** So much for the assumption that one panga is the same as all the others!!! I contemplated hopping aboard (since he offered us a ride) when our panga driver came over the horizon. Against my better judgement, we went with the original guy. It was the ride from hell! The waves were so big we couldn't see the horizon. I was scared out of my wits!! The life jackets were old, wet, and salty...probably wouldn't have kept me afloat anyway! So, I just gripped one in case we went over. I'm sure I will die if we go over and, while I'm contemplating this, Ralph looks back and sees that our driver is FISHING!!! Then, to top it off he catches a plastic bag, stops the motor amidst these seas, and takes it off the hook!!!!! I am completely devoid of Spanish (because of all the fear) so can't say a word. Ralph laughs, and says, "Let's go!" to him, and off we go. We did arrive, yet again, safe and sound but soaked!! On the upside, we didn't get any ticks on our trip back, Greg got two new ones!

We left Colombia the next day and progressed back up through the San Blas, meeting up with Southern Belle, on our way to Linton (for food and money) and on to Shelter Bay for fuel.

In one of the anchorages enroute, these girls and a fellow came out to collect their $10 anchoring fee. These charges really tick me off (especially since we are so short of money). I was not in a good mood when Ralph invited them aboard.
They wanted their photo taken, but then wanted the hard copy and said they'd come back tomorrow. Ralph had trouble explaining that they could view it in the camera, but we couldn't print it. Their Spanish was somewhat limited. They all speak their native Kuna, and only learn Spanish, in school, up to the mandatory attendance to grade 3, unless they elect to continue on. I'm guessing few go to school past that as there aren't schools on ever island.
Again, in one of the island we had another huge storm. This is Ralph's cue to get out, wash the deck, open the water intake and collect water. Our watermaker had been giving us trouble, so it seemed like a good idea. Since then, Ralph has managed to repair the problem, so we can make water again.
This water is being collected in a matter of seconds, off the side of the boat. We do laundry, in buckets, in the cockpit, during these downpours too. It's much cleaner water than we've used from the rivers and wells in Kuna Yala.
Something is lost in the photo, but I'm trying to show the rainfall.
Greg gets involved...washing this and than and a shower all at once!!

Lots of wind at the same time. You can see the rain and wind waves on the water. Keep in mind, this is a flat, calm anchorage at other times.
The happy water collectors!
Greg has decided to not cut his hair for the whole time he's with us...it's getting pretty long and unruly...is this some form of parent torture...we're the ones who have to look at him! Actually, it doesn't look so bad and is getting quite blonde! He'll be sorry when he cuts it all off...gone will be his surfer look.
Loved this balancing act!
He was such a long-legged dog, too!
These are the Colombian trading boats that come with supplies to Kuna Yala. From their appearance, it is amazing they stay afloat. They bring limited provisions and leave with their holds full of coconuts, the primary product from Kuna Yala.
From one island, we decided to do a river tour. Greg headed off in the kayak.
Up the river, we found a water pipe. Ralph waded into the river for an inpromptu shower. I was worried (what else is new) about what might be lurking in the river...so I remained dirty and smelly!
More Kuna kids. We've found the Kuna to be very friendly, especially in the more tradional villages. The kids like their photos taken, but no all the adults do, so you have to be cautious.

Back in central San Blas, we set up our monkey golf game. A young boy and his Dad came by and started watching. Greg invited them to play. The little boy played, right away, but the Dad held off for awhile.
While we were playing, this ulu came by with coconuts for sale. Gumboots, flip flops, or knock-off crocks seem to be the footwear of choice, but mostly bare feet rule.
Meanwhile, back at the game, the Dad (on the right) is now participating and we have a new addition in the white shirt too! Our game gets side-lined as Greg entertains the troups. Just before this shot is taken, we were standing on the beach. The fellow in the white shirt was supposed to get us some beer and bread from town. No beer, but he did bring bread. We were there, paying him, and a coconut fell from a tree and just missed me by about 3 feet. We've seen this happen at least twice before, to other people...scary!! One of those on the head would have killed me, I'm sure!!
As the father and son were leaving, they scooped buckets and buckets of sand into their ulu. They will use it to add to their lot back on the island.
Dad and son set up their sail for the trip home.

Enroute in the San Blas, fisherman Greg catches the biggest fish yet!

It was great timing, because we were meeting up with Southern Belle, and others, for a pot luck. Greg brought and cooked this fish! I had the night off!

The potluck was aboard Sympatica, friends of George and Melinda of Southern Belle. It is a 50 foot cat...just huge, and beautiful.

We continued moving on to Linton, where we took a trip into Colon to check back into Panama, get money, and add to our provisions. Colon is an extremely scary town where you have to take taxis, even if you're only going one block!! We thought Panama City was bad, but this was worse. The poverty there is overwhelming. We couldn't get out of there fast enough!!
We then headed up to Colon, by boat, because we needed to stop in Shelter Bay Marina to get fuel.

Here we are, in Shelter Bay Marina...the first true marina in over two years! It's great to have power, water, and a laundry! Such luxury!!

Another shot of Fortuitous in luxury!

Ralph and Greg went off for a 10km hike. I've learned my lesson...no fort or village is worth that to me! I stayed home and worked on this blog!

Looks like and interesting fort, though! They were tired, when they got back, even though they thumbed a ride for part of the return trek.

So, that brings us all up to date! We're still here in the marina, but planning to leave tomorrow for Chargras. Greg is contemplating helping our friends aboard Andante transit the canal, and het to Costa Rica. They want to ship their boat home to Washington state from there. All is up in the air, so we'll see what unfolds. If Greg does this, we'll probably only go to Rio Chagras, then back to the San Blas. We'll visit Bocas another time.

Hope you've enjoyed our photo update! Don't forget, you can leave comments, but you must sign in first!

The Dreaded Mandingo Hike, March 2010

2010-04-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

To get the full apreciation of this page, you must first read the March 11th blog page before this. This will give you all the info you need to understand the photos here. I will only give brief captions here, so as not to be too repetitive. Let's just say, this was the hike from hell for me!

Ralph and Greg really wanted to join Southern Belle on the hike in the Robeson group. We got off to a very bad start by running somewhat aground coming around the island above and into the anchorage. Our chart plotter was way off, and we didn't check our chart book carefully enough. Thank God we plowed right through and are not still stuck there!! We don't like coming into these anchorages with the wrong light, but we did that! Not smart as you can't see the reef. We won't do that again.

Here we are safely at anchor!

This is the next morning and all looks fine at this point. George is happy, we're all happy. We've just finished up the long panga ride to the entrance of the river. This trip was billed as a river tour/hike...but the river tour was about 15 minutes. The 1 to 2 hour hike was about 4...through muck, mostly (it could not have rained any harder the night before the hike). It was up the Mandingo river. It sounded like a decent hike for me because we were supposed to be back by 1, after leaving at 8. As well, it was termed a flat hike. What could go wrong?

Here we are in the river portion of the trip...still all happy!

The river gets narrower and narrower, and pretty soon there is no more river.

The hike's beginning. Nice! Shaded!! This is for me! It looks like I made the right decision. My gut feeling was no, but I decided I'd better try to look athletic!

OK, this isn't good! I don't like this sort of bridge, but I manage.

Here's a better view...slippery and narrow. Right after this, my first sandal falls apart. 5 minutes later, the other. Thankfully George has string in his pack...I trudge on.

This is the path...notice we're walking on the sides since the path is flooded. After awhile, we just gave up and trudged through the water.

This is already not fun, but I'm still thinking...only 30 more minutes till we arrive.

We have to ford a river to reach the actual village. This wouldn't be so bad if your sandals weren't filling with water and wanting to float downstream with the current. As well, I had such big holes in my heels, from the rubbing sandals, that I could barely walk. Eventually, I put moleskin (from George) on the sorest parts and hoped it would stay on in the water and muck.

Some people were having a good time in the river, even if I wasn't.

I could have taken an horse back to the boat...but, with the way horses and I get along, and the muddy ride back...I was caught between a rock and a hard place. I opted for pain and walking on my own.

Like I said, some people in the river by the village were having a great time!

This lady wasn't having any more fun than I was in the river.

She was busy doing her laundry in the "laundry ulu?" There were several of these boats here and they looked to be only used for laundry. This village has no road, only the path we came up and limited river access.

In town, we paid the Saila for our visit and talked to the kids outside the school.

A young Kuna girl. Life must be so boring for these kids.

As if I wasn't having enough fun, we all purchased a fine meal of fried plantains and sardines in tomato sauce...mmmm!! All for $2 each!

What a charming little restaurant!

The fellow in the red is our leader, Justino. The other is the "cook".

After this lunch we headed back down that long path and didn't arrive back at our boat until 5pm. What a long day. I had large sores on my feet for 2 weeks. What a trip!! Next time I'll go with my gut!

These are my tevas after the hike. The band-aid on the side is to stop the sandal from rubbing more skin off. Both soles are completely off and held on only by string. These were hardly worn sandals...I feel a nasty letter to Teva coming on!! To add insult to injury, the next day Southern Belle called, by radio, and told us they had found ticks on themselves. We did a check, and sure enough we had them too!!

Another typical ulu sailor.

The kids here came by the boats every day, peering in the windows and asking for candy. Here they're at Southern Belle.

This is the village they live in.

It's hard to imagine an existence like this one. These island have no water and have to bring it from the rivers on the mainland.

Southern Belle decided to finally invite a bunch of the kids aboard to play with Josh...what a group!

Southern Belle has a washing machine, we don't. This is laundry day for the boys (mom's feet are so destroyed from the hike that she can't go along). So, off they go together, up the river, to wash the clothes, sheets, and towels.

The met ulu-loads of kids and people getting water or doing laundry.

These were the others in the "laundromat".

Ralph and Greg helped these girls carry water to the ulu.

Not the kind of life our kids have at home, is it?

Finally, they get to do our own laundry...here Greg is demonstrating the power agitator!!

When they bring it back, we hang it all aboard to dry. Are we having fun yet?

As an aside, you can see below the comment from Teva. They found my blog, read it, and the end result of all the pain and suffering was a new free pair of sandals. I have to give them a star for customer relations!

Photos Rio Tigre Independence Day

2010-04-05T07:24:00.001-07:00

After Marilyn's birthday party, we headed to Isla Tigre, a more traditional Kuna settlement. We wanted to attend their independence day celebrations. It was a VERY long-winded affair, but entertaining. The festivities began the night before the actual dramatization of the rebellion. The dramatization seemed to take about as long as the revolution would have taken.
A Kuna man with his clan. We've heard the families can range from four to 14 kids!

Typical Kuna dancing was staged the evening before. You must ask Greg to perform a dance for you as he has the melody and rhythm down pat.

It was a much more pleasant village than Nargana, and appeared much cleaner. However, Homers' Odyssey stayed a day later and said, after the Colombian trading boat came in, there was tons of garbage floating in the sea. So, they must throw all their garbage there too. Plastics are not a friend to this area.

Again, the children love to perform for he camera.

More Kuna dancing. Notice the leggings...all beaded and wrapped tightly around the women's lower legs.

The molas they sell to us are really used on the ladies' shirts.

Playing a pan flute and dancing...that's real talent. The Kuna mostly stood while the cruisers (who had paid a small donation for attendance and photo ops) got to sit down. The smart cruisers got there earlier so they could sit on the shadier side of the square.

These are the rebels forming up to overthrow the Panamanian army. They wanted to be self-governing.

Very interesting looking women. They must be so warm in their dresses.

We were asked to wear red, if possible. There was a lot of red amongst the crowd, Kuna and cruisers alike.

Ralph has some fabulous shots of National Geo quality, I think!

These are the main men, or Sailas of Tigre. One on the right is an albino. Because of the inbreeding, there are quite a few albinos. They are revered and thought to have special talents and powers.

The men of Kuna Yala being beaten and taken away to prison.

Ralph got a little bored and wandered off to take some other photos. A pig ready for a roasting at some point. That seems to be their celebratory meal choice.

A Kuna Yala boat yard.

This one needs to go there, it seems!

Meanwhile, back at the rebellion.....boy, was it hot!!!

More beatings!! Some of the kids were actually crying watching the show!

A noble Kuna lady in all her finery.

A close up view of the Kuna albino leader. It must be very hard for them with no sunglasses. Their eyes and skin are so sensitive.

More ulu photos as the rebellion rumbles on!

The rebels finally win over and gain independence!! Thank you God! We wander off through the village. We took some candy in our packs, so we were very popular.

Brian, from Icarian, making some new friends!

George, and his son Josh, from Southern Belle. We socialized a lot with these folks. They really enjoyed monkey golf and Greg became Josh's substitute big brother (since his brothers are the same age).

These cuties were playing in the ulus. We gave them some candy too.

These are wild boar jaws...apparently a trophy of some sort. It's not clear if it signifies a successful hunt or?? We saw them, on several occasions, hanging outside various huts.

Photos, Laundry, Sing-a-longs, and more!

2010-04-05T07:24:00.000-07:00

While in Green Island, we were lucky enough to meet up with several boats we hadn't seen since Mexico. Slip Away (Jan and Rich) and Effie (Mac and Alan) have been in touch with us, but we haven't seen them in a long while. It was great to catch up and spend time together.

Slip Away, our sister ship is pictured above. She's had a brand new exterior job, so Fortuitous was feeling a little jealous.

Aboard Effie, we all had a sing-a-long. I've been practicing guitar so I could actually "play" along with Alan. He carried me, mostly, but it was tons of fun!
Here's the whole crew aboard Effie for the sing-a-long. Jan and Rich to the left, Homers centre, and Mac and Alan on the right.
On a less fun note, doing laundry at the local watering hole. The water isn't brackish, but I'd never use anything close to this colour if there was an option!!
Doesn't this look like fun!!

The sunset photos just can't be beaten!

One of the local fishermen with, finally, a decent sized fish.

We paid an extra couple of dollars for him to scale and filet...well worth the money!

Ralph took the kayak off for a spin. Just before he arrived back, we had a terrific rainstorm. Hard to tell here, but it couldn't rain any harder.

Doesn't he look like he's having fun! We collected a lot of water this day!

Greg enjoying the world's smallest banana!

Just bite sized!!

Fenders anyone?? It's hard to find a place for them all. We use some to protect the dinghy, while it's on the davits...the rest just hang around. We've lost at least one or two this season...that's expensive!

This is the famous Kuna bread, a semi-sweet bread. The beer can gives you some idea of the size. Not big enough for hot dogs...in fact, not big enough for anything, really!

We've had several bunches of bananas, over time. Most ripen all at once which is a bit of a problem unless you feel like 20 bananas in one day. One of these bunches can have up to 100 small bananas.

Greg borrowed 2 kayaks from Southern Belle to go kayaking with the kids aboard Hannah Day. They had a great time at Dog Island.

Greg says it was a fabulous snorkel, but we'll have to take his word for it as we haven't gone there yet.

Another shot with our now defunct underwater camera.

We had another sing-a-long aboard Southern Belle. This time Greg joined in too! What great fun!

A cruiser potluck on Green Island. We've met a lot of new cruisers this year. It's great to meet new people and we learn so much about where we are and where to go (or not go) by sharing stories.