Moondancerx's BIG adventure

Golfito – 21st February We left Golfito yesterday after being there almost a week. When we stop in a place for as long as a week it definitely starts to feel like home and leaving becomes a little wrench. We move along so frequently that ‘home’ no longer has the same larger meaning that it used to have. Home of course is where the heart is and though Tony and I are at home on Moondancer because we are together we miss our families and friends and the short term friends we meet go some way to filling those gaps. In Golfito we met 2 other boats from Vancouver; Joyce and Peter on Maruatu left Vancouver 6 years ago and have circumnavigated via South Pacific, Indonesia, Africa, South America and are now on their way back up to Mexico. We met them on our last day in Golfito and spent a great evening together with our friend Gary from Pursuit II who is from Toronto and is eagerly sponging up information from veterans like Peter and Joyce. Peter and Joyce have also bought retirement property i...

Herradura to Golfito and Glen’s Visit From the 5th February we were anchored in Herradura Bay close to the entrance to Los Suenos Marina and Resort. This Marina housed mostly a sport fishing charter fleet aswell as power boats owned by inhabitants of the multi million dollar condominiums in the resort, so the charge of $3.00 per foot per day was totally justifiable to them and ensured that the riff raff like us stayed out. Their daily dinghy dock charge was $40 per day, which just about sealed the place up against visiting yatistas. They did however sell us fuel, and unknown to them we did use the ‘public’ dock outside the marina to tie up our dinghy until the security guards found out. This, we found the last couple of days we were in Herradura. But we didn’t need it anymore by then, we had picked up Glen, Tony’s brother and were weighing anchor to leave Herradura. For the first 4 days of our stay in Herradura we dinghied ashore, the landings were always a bit nerve racking as th...

Islas Tortugas to Bahia Herradura to wait for Glenn At a leisurely pace we pulled up the anchor and headed for Isla Muertos, which looked like a pretty interesting anchorage (not just because its called the Island of the DEAD). We were enjoying sailing under genoa only for awhile (leisurely) and made a decision to go out into the straight – the Gulf of Nicoya makes a fairly long straight not unlike the Georgia Straight but with a closed end – rather than zig zagging through the island passes so that we could continue to sail. Had we been cruising in our Gulf Islands we would never have undertaken this without consulting our tide tables and local weather station. BUT we did neither – we don’t have easily accessible tide tables and there are no local weather stations to tap into. So we got out into the straight and into a lot of wind which was nice (for awhile) – but the tide against us was not – we were making about 2 knots working hard to get past the rocky promontory off Islas Negro...

Ballena to Islas Tortugas Which actually wasn’t where we intended to go yesterday, 2nd February but we were given a nice gentle sailing breeze so rather than hurry along to the next destination which was to be Isla Muertos, we went slower knowing we had some options to stop at along the way. Islas Tortugas are 2 islands. One is called Isla Alcatraz and the other Isla Tolinga which does have a gorgeous white sand beach surrounded by palm trees and a thriving day tour business. A giant motorized catamaran brings about 50 people ashore – perhaps every day, as well as packed pangas. On the beach a person can rent beach beds, tables, umbrellas, buy souvenirs and beverages at a nice little store and have a great day in ‘paradise’. The catamaran pulls right up onto the beach and drops a ramp to let the people on an off. There is hardly any surf here, so it was pretty easy for us to go ashore. The people all leave at 1600 hrs, and then we were looking forward to a lovely quiet evening with the...

Bahia Ballena Another physically lovely place with only 2 other sailboats in the vast anchorage. One American which left shortly after our arrival, and the other showing a Canadian flag where its club flag should have been and a Fleur de Lis where its Canadian flag should have been; hmm, wonder what that means? When we put the dinghy in the water we went over to ask them and found out they are French Canadian, shortly after they left and then there was just us and a few pangas. Later that day another boat came in proudly flying their Canadian flag. Sealise is the name of this boat and the people onboard, Paul and AnnaLise are from and returning to Vancouver after cruising on and off for the last 10 years. Their crew Inar is from Denmark and has been with them for some of their trip. We spent a couple of ‘happy hours’ with them, did a bit of trading and made some new friends. The village we were anchored off consisted of a very unusual main street made up of houses built on stilts on th...

Leaving Golfo de Papagallo – some very beautiful places, but for us marred by too much wind and very swelly We estimated we would need about 14 hours to get to our next anchorage in Bahia Carillo, which we had on good authority was around the corner and out of the windy zone. We like to arrive in a new place in the daylight, especially in areas that have many reefs – which most of the anchorages we have encountered in Costa Rica have – so we got up at 0300 hrs last Thursday (not Friday), 27th January. Leaving in the dark is ok because we had already looked at the exit many times while at anchor, plus we already had a track on our chart plotter to follow out. So, peace of cake – until our mighty Lofrans windlass showed Tony its latest catch, another anchor and rhode with deflated, sunken marker buoy. The local panga owners here make anchors that look like multi tine grappling hooks out of rebar. By the time Tony extricated that !!!###****&&&*****//////! from our anchor he wa...