Visiting the Ranhoffs in CR

Here is her sister Jackie. I was hopeless with these two pumpkins. They stuck like glue to me, constantly calling Tio (uncle). I tried to get them to call me Tio Jimbo, not much luck on that.
I write this update from the gates of the Panama Canal. Buenas Dias!

This is Sophia, up to a little mischief.

Tom and Lilly treated us to a great dinner in downtown San Isidro.

A view of San Isidro from the mountainside stop.

Jenee and I are making a side trip to visit with friends Tom and Lilly Ranhoff in San Isidro, CR. This trip took us on a beautiful 2-3 hour ride over the Cost Rico mountains. We made a quick stop at this mountainside restaurant.

Flying through the trees in Costa Rica

Check out Jenee on the zip line!

Lots to see in Costa Rica

And here is the admiral positively glowing inside the "cave". We had a great dinner out (Italian of course) and another wonderful end to a beautiful day. Don't you just wish you were me? I sure do. Mucho Gusto until we meet again amigos.

OK, so now we're not quite roughing it. We pulled into the Los Suenos Marina on the Los Suenos Marriott Resort property. These are hedges they made into a cave walkway.

And on the other side we find Jungle! Pretty neat anchorage - we honestly had no idea we'd find her on the other side of the cave. By water it's a 30 minute motor around the point (punta).

Here I am making like National Geographic through the cave. Hey, check out my cool new boat shoes - special order size 14. Stylin' baby!

Jenee and I went for a 2 hour dinghy exploration and she spotted a cove with this cave that peeked through to water on the other side. So we went in ...

Costa Rica Beauty

Costa Rica has some beautiful beaches. Jenee and I had this one to ourselves for a little swim. Just us and the camera crew, key grip, best boy ... More to come!

Jenee and I are checking out a "fixer upper". This is missing half a boat - who knows, a little paint ...

Jenee walked outside and caught this moment - nice work. Costa Rica works hard to manage the revenue from the tourism attraction of resort hotels, while still maintaining the small fishing villages. We might look upon these areas and see shacks and poverty, but it works for generations of families. Not everyone is chasing the dollar, bravo for them.

Now this is what I call an idyllic anchorage. This is Bahi Ballena (Bye-yea-na Bay), and you can see Jungle amongst the pangas and larger boats. Great little place as we took this picture from the Ballena Bay Yacht Club - bar really. We met manager Federico - great guy, loves his country.

We've arrived safe and sound to Costa Rica - Golfo (Gulf of) Nicoya. I didn't want to scare anyone or jinx us prior to making the 6 day sail straight from Mexico, past Guatemala, El Slavador and Nicaragua. The fact is we needed to cross one of the most difficult bodies of water in the world - Mexico's Gulf of Tehuantepec (Tay-want-eh-peck). In a nutshell this is one area in Central America where the Sierra Madre mountains are at their lowest point between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific. All the winds from the Caribbean funnel through and can blow at gale force (30-50 knots) offshore, so the standing advice is to sail "one foot on the beach, one foot on the boat" - basically as close to the beach as you can get without hitting it. That get's challenging in it's own right, so we're happy to have met Steve and George at the Marina Chahue (Cha-way) in Huatulco. They both surveyed the weather for us and Steve sent us daily weather updates as we took the direct route south. Here I am on the stern BBQ-ing dinner, so at least we're not in a panic. We crossed another, somewhat less challenging area, Golfo de Papagallo, Costa Rica. Again our man Steve provided timely weather updates and humor; "Todays weather; mushroom clouds and 10.000 degrees! No wait that's Marshall Island nuclear test site, my bad". Our thanks to Sailtahoe Steve.

Adios Mexico - Viva La Mexico

It turns out Huatulco is a big stop for cruise ships - who knew? It also turned out to be arts and crafts day - Kai was ready with his own coconut lid. The fun never stops. Now excuse me while I get something out of my eye with and ice pick. Until later ...

Another thing about our navigator he can't walk by a map without pointing out where we are. We laughed for hours. One thing to point out on this map, when we go through the Panama Canal, we will be east of Miami. Our route will take us north to Belize and around the east side of Cuba. Cuba! Habana, hmmmm ....

Finally on land in La Crucecita (Crew-say-she-ta), and here goes Kai again chasing after Bimbo's. He just loves their bread, or maybe he just loves chasing trucks, not sure. I know this, if you scratch him behind his ears and he gets all kind of frisky, but I digress.

This was a hairy moment. We've just entered this harbor after 3 days at sea from Zihuatanejo nearing Huatulco (Wha-tool-co). We skipped over Acapulco because we're avoiding big cities. Night was coming on quickly and this harbor (Puerto Angel) was listed in our guide book as a "lovely little anchorage". Not so if you have southerly swells - and we did. This harbor was rockin' and rollin', so what do you do? You turn around and head back out to sea for the night which sometimes is a tough call as you want to drop anchor and chill. This wasn't a tough call for us as our depth meter wasn't working and all boats in the harbor were bouncing. That evening we ran into all the dolphins Kai wrote about, so it turned out perfect.

Ahhh ... the little green man. It turns out to be a broken depth meter - rather important if you want to answer questions such as "will I hit bottom?" My bad, but I did draw the lines for the "eyes" - pretty cool. Fortunately we had a spare depth meter and our intrepid marine electrician/navigator/weatherman/bimbo chaser got everything back in working order.

Jungle moving at 7 knots under sail - with dolphins!

The night after this sail a school of dolphins swam with us for hours! I'll let Kai narrate the experience:

It's a bit past four in the morning and I've just come off one of the most incredible watches I've ever had. We tried to go into a cove for the night just at sunset to find it was a bit to dicey to linger in overnight. Wall to wall fishing boats with a wicked surge around a rocky hole in the wall 'harbor'. Our next destination is only about 20 miles down the coast so we went straight off shore, did a 180 degree turn at the half way point and are headed back towards shore.

As we left the coastline, in the quickly fading light there was quite a lot of bio-lumeneces around the boat. Sparkles in our wake and pulses of green light all around the dark ocean near us. Earlier I had seen a pod of porpoises playing near the boat and riding our bow wave for a while. They came back in the dark water as glowing trails in the inky black water, twisting and turning, jousting, jumping and parrying all around us, seeming to delight in the light they were stirring up and sculpting with their fluid movements.

I watched their antics for a while, checked the boat's systems and then watched them some more. At one point they zoomed ahead and I lost them in the dark. I stood there for a few minutes, my body half way out of the hatch just marveling at all of the the stars on this moonless night.

All of a sudden a motion of light off to the right of the bow caught my attention. A straight line of light was streaking through the sea directly at the boat! Like a neon green torpedo it came on straight and fast. At the last second it darted left and went past the boat with three blobs of light trailing it and arcing off in different directions.

I could almost hear the porpoises giggling in the water around me. They had herded a marlin or sail fish towards the boat for sport. They didn't seem intent at eating or hurting it in any way. They just seemed to do it for fun and either my or their own amusement.

Visitors from above?

What's this? Little green men, friend? foe? republican? (just kidding). This may take a while to investigate and get back to everyone. We set sail for 8 days from Huatulco, Mex direct to St. Elena, Costa Rica. Until then.

Another end to a beautiful day in paradise - this never gets old.

We didn't haul in any fish, but we did catch this sea bird after it dove on our lure - a first for all of us including this fella. Pretty sure it's a Pissed Off Black Bill, but I'll have to research to find out what type for sure. It hung around on deck for an hour before catching it's breath and flying away. In the end, Jungle crew and bird are happy.

Heading southeast from Zihuatanejo to Huatulco - our final stretch in Mexico. These are called Elephant Rocks, you can see why.

Vacation time!

Here's a happy couple after a relaxing day at the beach. I'm still working on whitening my forearms to match the beautifil pale glow that I carry so well. Well, time to get back to Jungle to critique Kai's hard work - he loves my inputs.

At the end of this beach is an old resort that appears to be in little use - this what's left of the Hotel California bar.

After a successful theraputic massage, I bought this rediculous cocktail for Jenee to make sure the pain was completely eradicated. Success!

Jenee was in such pain I insisted she get a full massage - poor thing.

Chief navigator Kai decided to get in some work on Jungle. So what does the Captain and Admiral do? Why go on vacation! Here we are at a beach that can only be reached by boat - no roads in or out.

Zihuatanejo Baby!

Jungle is resting in the calm, evening waters of Zihuatanejo - Buenas Noches

We're enjoying the best food at Il Mare in Z-What - all the while keeping a vigilant watch on Jungle.

Jenee and Kai admiring the view - this walk led us to a great Italian restaurant, so we made reservations at 7.

Z-What has a beautiful waterfront walkway that winds it's way around the bay.

We arrived Zihuatanejo (Zee-what-en-eh-ho) we came here only because we dug the name, turns out to be another cool place on the Mexico Gold Coast. We pulled in around 1 AM after 40 hours of sailing. We hit this cantina, after sleeping til 10 AM - Tata's (that's right) and had a beverage overlooking the harbor.

Enjoying Barra de Navidad

Barra nightlife is great. We did not know what to expect from these visits, but we've met the nicest, friendliest people in places we've never heard of and are having a blast. Our plan is to skip the big ports and go for the little villages - working like a charm so far.

A little afternoon siesta

Straight out of a French Impressionist art exhibit, we see two not-so-strangers biding time in a Barra cantina - El Gordito (means little fat). Great place.

Here is Jungle entering Barra de Navidad (simply called Barra). The guide book we've been referencing suggested we turn left inside the harbor for a nice anchorage. When every Mexican on shore is screaming for you to turn around, it's time for a new guidebook. We hit bottom but managed to escape to deeper water and a great anchorage.

The admiral is taking a much deserved leave - rafting in Tenecatita Bay. Blowing up the damn raft was my toughest duty to date.

Video view of Jungle River Tour

Here's a good view of what it's like going down the Jungle River

Jungle River Tour from Tenecatita

Beach view.

Here's the beach, a nice restaurant, and a happy crew. This week is Easter celebration in Mexico so everyone's having fun.

At the other end of the 3.2 mile river, we come to a little cantina that opens to a large beach and resort.

And here we are on the Jungle River Tour (no relation to our boat) - on our dinghy. The mangroves form a canopy where you just squeeze through in parts of the river.

Puerto Vallarta to Tenecatita

Arrived Tenecatita where there is a cool Jungle river to another resort. Kai and I are pulling the dinghy around the sand bar at the entrance to the river. (view is out of the river mouth into the bay)

We made a lunch/dinner stop at Ipala Bay - a little fishing village, before we sail overnight to Tenecatita (Ten Bays).

Chief Navigator Kai looking good.

Chief Safety Officer Jenee in the midst of valuable research.

Puerto Vallarta in the rear view mirror - heading to Barra Navidad (Christmas Bay)