Mea culpa, mea culpa. I have been guilty of total non-communication over the past several months and I apologize. We have had so many e-mails wondering if we are home, traveling, sailing, working, golfing, etc., and we have failed to respond. Incommunicado. Bad people.
Yes, we sailed in Panama from early November until almost February, and we are back in CA working (towards retirement) while we plan our next adventure afloat. We spent the three months in Bocas del Toro, Panama enjoying good winds, pleasant anchorages, white sand beaches, small bars, cheap beer, rain, bugs, humidity, running aground, swimming with jelly fish (even paradise isn't perfect), and having a good old time. Of course that is very much what we had done the previous two trips south so I got a little bored with the blog and ignored it for a while. But no more.
When we first arrived in Panama in 2009 we had intended to spend just 3 months in the country before moving on. Instead we just spent our third Christmas in Panama which should tell you something about how much we enjoy the place. The trip was great, but we are now home (cold), and I am making an effort to catch up on the mail.
The boat is in great shape with new sails, new motors, new windows, a smaller bank account, etc. We are ready to move on, but the crew is reluctant to leave such a pleasant place as Bocas del Toro for the open ocean trip north. We have made a lot of friends there, both liveaboards with their own sailing plans, and ex-pats who have chosen Panama for their retirement, and we have enjoyed the frequent gatherings on beaches or in restaurants or on other boats. This we will miss.
We are planning on flying back to Panama in early April, and the goal (I won't use "sink or swim" to describe our determination) is to leave the boat in Guatemala at the end of this trip. We have new solar panels to install when we return and a new GPS sitting here in living room, but then... off to greater adventures.
The trip from Panama to Guatemala will take us several weeks. We will cover about 900 miles of ocean travel with stops at small islands and reefs to break up the passage. The first leg of the trip will be moving north from Panama to the Colombian islands of San Andres and Providencia. These islands are some 250 miles from Bocas del Toro and about 100 miles off the Nicaraguan coast. From there it is on to the Hobbey Islands and Roatan in Honduras. The leg from Providencia to Roatan is about 400 miles and would take about 72 hours of continuous sailing, but we plan to spend several days along the way enjoying some uninhabited islands and coral reefs. Hopefully we will also be spending a good deal of time in Roatan before we have to seek shelter from the summer hurricane season in that part of the Carribbean. One of the nice things about Panama is/was... no hurricanes!
From Roatan we will sail another 200 miles to the Rio Dulce River in Guatemala where we will head upriver about 20 miles to hide out for the summer. Of course we will be back in CA for golf and farming by late June while the boat rides out the storms in the river all by itself. All of these islands and the Rio Dulce River are supposed to be beautiful and we are looking forward to the new scenery, but the trip will involve a lot of travel. Because we have been lying idle in Panama for so long we have almost forgotten the rigors of an ocean passage. Still we are both looking forward to being under sail for days at a time. AND.. we hear that the Rio Dulce is a social hotspot for cruisers in the Carribbean, but more on that later.
I absolutely PROMISE to do a better job with e-mails and updating the blog in the spring. It should be a little easier because our trip will be a little more adventuresome than just sitting in some palapa bar sipping mai tais... or will it?
Tom and Andrea
