Moondancerx's BIG adventure

Sunday morning, and not too much breeze yet. Arrived in Potrero on friday after noon. Called up an old friend Steve who now lives down here. We motored ashore and tried to not get too wet in the surf. I'm getting better at landing the zodiac in the surf but like Kevin always said "make sure you put cameras and valuables in a water tight bag" Steve came and met us at the "monkey bar" (i wonder why i wanted to go there!) we had a nice visit and he asked us to come to his place for the evening which is in Tamarindo. We were reluctant as we don't like to leave the dinghy on the beach for too long. He called a friend who happened to have a house on the beach right next to where we landed and said it was o.k. to leave the dinghy there. We drove in to Tamarindo with Safari Steve at a bout 150mph. Even 40kmp seems fast when you havent been in vehicle for a while. No kidding i thought we were going hit at least one person and a few other cars on the way , i'll st...

Papagallos are not to be taken lightly, and contrary to some of the information we've read in the guides it blows alot harder than 25 knots. I've already posted information on our first attempt to enter Cost Rica, and how we were basically re-routed to Nicaragua. Before setting off for Costa Rica we consulted our usual source of weather through our SSB radio, knowing that we would get a bit of wind for a day or so. We got alot more than we expected, which one would think would make our passage fast - no so in this case. We reached Costa Rica's border after dark and made our way into Bahia Santa Elena using unreliable charts and radar. Thank God we got in. We anchored as close to shore as was safe which put us into the wind shier, so the 30 - 40 knot gusts mostly went over us. ( By the way our guide books warn us not to pull into any of the bays north of Playa del Coco which is the first port of entry. We left Bahia Santa Elena with north east winds blowing us along at almos...

These video's are a bit short. We lost our old camera in the drink, and just getting used to the new one, so they will improve!

Huatulco to Costa Rica (via Nicaragua) By the time we left Huatulco we were glad to be getting underway, not that we didn’t like being there, but because it was time to get moving and the Tehuantepec (a big bay with its own nasty weather system) was looming. We plan most of our passages on the basis of moving at about 5 kn. That’s how we estimate our fuel consumption and the time we will be at sea. So the trip to Costa Rica was due to take about 7 days and we fuelled accordingly. The first 4 days were fairly uneventful, mostly we motored and stayed about 13 – 15 miles offshore, as we had no intention of going into Guatemala, El Salvadore, Honduras and Nicaragua, we thought it right to stay out of their 12 mile limit. We did stay fairly close in going around the Tehuantepec as that is the prescribed method, just in case the offshore winds pipe up, as they can be very strong. But strong winds are not really the problem for sailboats as we can just keep reducing sail until we have the rig...

New Years Eve in Huatulco and Leaving Huatulco Its easy to see why people stay in places they visit, especially if their future plans are a bit blurry. We really got to know some of our neighbours in the Chahue Marina and became very fond of them. Fernando, Delphin and their twin sons, Pablo and Adienne are a lovely family from Mexico City. They came out to spend their Christmas holiday on their boat Santa Lucia – every time I saw the boat I started to sing the song of the same name which we have recorded by Mario Lanza. After Tony installed our spare speakers in our cockpit we cranked up the song and asked the whole family and their visitors to stop what they were doing and listen. They were very happy to hear the song and Fernando’s mother knew a lot about Mario Lanza, an opera singer (tenor) who my mother adored. We took Pablo and Adienne snorkeling with us one day, we went out to a reef and anchored the dinghy. The water was a bit wild and made me a bit nervous, and as alway...