One more lock to the Atlantic!

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Standing by to go through the last set of locks now - at 2:50EST

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Anchored in the Panama Canal

Well...here we sit. Waiting our turn. We were told we'd be through the last set of locks by 2pm latest, but still have not seen our onboard "advisor". Without him we can not go through. Is it possible that New Years celebrations are affecting the supply of advisors???

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So far so good....

Making our way now through Gatun Lake. Looks like we will spend the night on the lake and then finish up tomorrow. No harm done so far!! Very interesting. Amazing actually!

-Jim

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9am here and we are still waiting for our advisor

9am EST

Still at Balboa YC. Advisor is now 45 min late. Hope we don't lose our
spot in line!!

SPOT is on. So you can figure out where we are by checking it.

Links to webcams on blog.

Future updates will be on the blog rather than email.

All onboard are ready and excited!! Supposed to go through tied to a 100'
motorboat. The girls are hoping for mimosas, and invitations to hang out in
the air conditioned cabins on the big boat!!

We shall see....

-Jim

Panama Canal Transit -Tomorrow?

Looking good for us to go through the canal tomorrow. No time yet! But once that's known this link may come in handy for any of you early risers that want to spot us as we move through...http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html

I have spent some time thinking about delaying for a day and getting permission to anchor oVernight in the lake halfway through. How great a spot would that be for New Years?
y
But...the more I think about it the better just getting all the way to the other side seems.

jim

Cal Football and the Rose Bowl

In what has unfortunately become an annual tradition, I have once again updated my Rose Bowl T-Shirt. 
As it turns out, I purchased this shirt in 2004 when it looked to be a near certainty that Cal would finally go to the Rose Bowl.  An event that last happened 11 months BEFORE I WAS BORN!!  Somehow, at the end of 2004 Texas displaced Cal and went to the Rose Bowl.

Not to worry, I was sure that Coach Tedford had us on the right path.  I just made a small change to the shirt and figured I'd be good to go on New Years Day 2005.

Well.  I'm still waiting (and updating my shirt every year).  Maybe next year???

-Jim

Patrick has left the building....

Very few parents are lucky enough to spend two plus solid weeks of time with their college age kids.  Debbie and I just had our son Patrick join us for the sail (and stops) from Northern Costa Rica to the Panama Canal.  Two weeks that I think we all enjoyed.  Wish he could have stayed longer!!

Phase 1: Complete!! We've made it to the Panama Canal

Really a pretty exciting place to visit.  For the past couple of days, we've noticed the increase in shipping traffic and traffic in general.  After weeks of seeing one or two boats a day, we see several at all times and are tracking many more on the computer.
We arrived in the "Canal Zone" at about noon this afternoon.  Ships anchored or underway everywhere.  The procedure is that you call into Traffic Control when you are one mile off the entrance bouy.  Give them your boat type, length, and speed. Plus a destination.  After that you are under their direction.

Check out the picture above to see what the traffic situation was when we arrived!!!

Moored at the Balboa Yacht Club now to clear customs and wait for friends that arrive on the 29th.  Best case we'll transit the canal on the 30th!!

_jim

Christmas Dinner in Panama

A formal sit down affair.  Cornish Game Hens, Sausage Stuffing, Fresh Baked Bread, a little bit of Wine....NICE!!!

Christmas Onboard

Happy Christmas Eve!

Well, we had hoped to find a place with internet access so we could call some of you on skype tonight, but instead we are anchored off of a beautiful island that will be one of our last stops prior to the canal scene.

And what a scene that will be. Last night was a nightmare of dodging super tankers and trying to stay out of the way. Today as we sit alone in this anchorage, I have 168 targets on my AIS ship tracking display!! 168 when I normally might have 4! This place has to be seen to be believed.

Anyway, we have sworn to take it easy today. The anchor is down, the swim ladder is down, the dinghy is in the water and we are getting ready for Christmas!!

To all of you, from all of us.....Merry Christmas!!!

-Jim, Deb, and Pat

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Milestone - 07 degrees 06min North - 8:50am

At 8:50am this morning we reached the extreame Southern latitude of this trip!!

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Morning Glory, AIS, and Punta Mal

We are currently sailing under a clear blue sky in 12-14 knots of breeze. Perfect!
Morning Glory just went by at 13 knots, but it turns out that this Morning Glory is a 200+ foot luxury cruising YACHT. Don't know if it's associated with the string of racing boats by the same name or not.
We did talk with them and confirmed that our AIS location transponder was transmitting and they said they had us on their plotter from 20+ miles away. Nice thing to know when you are about to enter the busy shipping lines on the way to/from the canal.
Punta Mal looms ahead and I think we'll stop for the night just before then. Punta Mal is one of the busiest compression points for shipping traffic in the world. And my basic spanish has me a bit concerned as I think in English it is called "Point Bad". We'll tackle that tomorrow morning.
130 miles from the Canal!
-Jim
PS. We've already been dodging shipping traffic all night and morning. You can tell things are about to get busy!
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A giant swordfish just stole my Cedar Plug lure!

I kid you not. It was huge, must have bitten right through the line first thing I knew was a really angry swordfish leaping into the air about 20 yards away from the boat! It did that about 10 times! Long enough for me to grab my camera and take some video.

That was the only lure on the boat that worked! Now what?

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To my sailing friends...

I've got one of the Morning Glory's motoring up directly behind me according to my ship tracking equipment. She's moving along at 13 knots to my 7.5. Which one could it be?? Is the maxi still roaming the world winning races??

-Jim

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It's a small small world

Yesterday, while walking down the streets of Golfito, Costa Rica and roasting under a typically hot sun we suddenly heard someone yelling at us from a car on the opposite side of the road. As per usual, we did our best to ignore whoever was trying to abuse us, but had to stop when we heard our names!!

We turned and there hanging out the window of a Land Rover were Robin Jeffers and his wife Betsy!! No way, how could that be that we'd run into friends down here?? Robin is a friend that we've met on the West Coast sailing circuit. One of the most respected boat captains and delivery skippers around. He also has an uncanny way of getting hired to work on boats that end up winning our races.

Turns out Robin had just delivered a SC52 to Golfito to load on a dockwise ship heading for Australia. We had seen the dockwise ship leave as we entered port yesterday.

For those that think we've been rushing along (ourselves included), Robin left a month behind us and beat us by 2 days!!

We met later in the day at the marina that we were docked at and enjoyed catching up.

You never know who you'll see next,

- Jim and Deb

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Tonights Lunar Eclipse

I cleverly arranged the watches tonight so I'd be able to watch the lunar eclipse.

Lots of high clouds, but I've still got a pretty good view.

-Jim

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Manuel Antonio National Park

 

We spent yesterday afternoon wandering through Manuel Antonio National Park.  A pretty amazing place!!




Manuel Antonio National Park



Check out the photographs gallery

Manuel Antonio National Park is one of the most beautiful and bio-diverse areas in the world. Although it is the country's smallest national park, the stunning beauty and diversity of wildlife in its 683 hectares is unequaled.

Manuel Antonio contains a combination of rain forest, beaches and coral reefs. The beaches are  beautiful, lined with lush forest, and the snorkeling is excellent too. The forest is home for sloths, iguanas, the rare squirrel monkeys and millions of colorful little crabs. 

The trail that winds around Punta Catedral affords some spectacular views. The park is easy to reach, south of the town of Quepos.

 

Photoshow

Just for fun....

Too many blue boats. Time to move on...

Eos & Helios

Marina Papagayo has been a nice stop and a good central location for us to rent a car and do some touring.  But, the time has come to move along South.  We are looking for one of those anchorages, full of clear blue water, white sand, and lots of snorkeling.  You would think that Costa Rica would be the perfect place to find that place, but according to what we read and what we hear we may have a bit of a challenge.

Either way, we'll make some progress towards the Panama Canal!!!

-Jim

Navigation onboard

"This doesn't look so hard.  Where do you want to go?"
      - Ita  (the dog)

What do Barry Dillar, Larry Silverstein and Jim & Debbie Gregory have in common??

Not all that much!!  But we all own boats...

Morpheus, Eos, and Silver Shalis

Marina Papagayo - Waiting on Patrick

Arrived safe and sound in Bahia Culebra after a great sail yesterday.  Getting the lay of the land and making plans for some fun with Pat while he is here!

Longest passage done!

Yeah! We made it to Costa Rica. We are sitting in a beautiful deserted cove in Northern CR, sleeping off our 5 days of sleep deprivation before heading into Coco de Playa tomorrow to check into the country. It can take 2 days to check in by boat, and we just didn't want to do that sleep deprived and 8 hours further into the country. As Jim says, it does look like Jurassic Park here. Beautiful, but I'm not going for a nature hike.
The sail was good. Windy at times, but not outside the boat's happy zone. When it was outside Debbie's happy zone, Jim drove! Ita does not like the loud sounds or rough waves, but she's good after you get a nice rhythm going.
Dolphin's every morning and evening, and often during the night. I could see them coming for the boat likes bat's out of hell, from 1/2 a mile away, jumping and blowing. Sounded like they were yelling, "Party! Party!! Party at Morpheus!" Some mornings it was like someone had put up a Facebook Post.
Saw some more whales, way off, and this time a Manta Ray jumping and doing flips about 15 feet from the boat. Big Belly flops! We think we have Ita figured out. Not perfect, but workable.
That's all that's new from here.
Deb
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Morpheus - Arrived Jurassic Park!!

Boatspeed = 0!!

We have arrived and are anchored in Bahia Santa Elena. Take a look at it on Google Earth. Pretty darn cool, with some very strange noises coming out of the jungle that grows right down to the waterline!!
Here's what our guide has to say about it...
"a pristine, nearly land-locked cove in Northern Costa Rica's Santa Elena National Park. Parrots adn exotic birds twitter close by in the jungle canopy, while howler monkeys wail to nearby tribes - the only sounds within this tranquil anchorage."
We are the only ones here...
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Easy night

Saw no more than 20. Timing worked out to allow us to go slow and we will be entering Bahia Santa Elena at sunrise. This is an early stop, but supposed to be deserted tropical paradise. We shall see. 24 hours and we'll continue on.
Looking foward to dropping my anchor!
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A little help please.... Active volcano or not??

All,
We are now about 110 miles north of the Nicaragua/Costa Rica border.
On our left is a huge mountain towering above Chinandega, Nicaragua.
To me it looks like an active volcano with a constant stream of smoke bellowing out the top. Debbie thinks what I see as "smoke" is actually clouds that magically form at the top of this mountain and nowhere else within hundreds of miles that can be seen.
Can someone with access to google, or google earth, or wikipedia please let us know if we are looking at an active volcano or not?? Leave a comment here and we'll get it by email.
thanks,
-Jim
PS. We are about 130 miles short of our destination now at 9:30am, anyway you look at it our average speeds bring us in at night. Not good. So...we are doing our best to slow down. Definitely not something that comes naturally to either of us.
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An easy day....

Had an easy day today after a challenging night last night.
Winds filled in at midnight in the 20-30 range. Normally, while not fun that's not a big deal, we just set the boat up for it, slow down and keep everything as comfortable as possible. The problem last night was the constant and large change in direction and strength for the breeze. We saw 60 degree shifts multiple times and wind speeds up and down between 10 and 30. This created very confused "washing machine" seas, so there was no way to "set up" for the conditions. We just kept changing things and never getting them right.
Lucky for us things calmed down totally this AM and we spent most of the day in 5-12 knots of steady onshore breeze.
Hoping for more of that tonight!
-Jim
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How this silly email thing works...

To those of you that send us emails (or more importantly reply to one of ours!), Deb sent this to her family last month. I think its worth sharing with a wider audience.

-Jim

Hello Brothers and Sisters!

Here is a quick primer on how Jim, my computer Geek of a husband, has set up our email accounts and addresses. If anyone of you has ever tried to turn on my TV, you'll know how complicated he can make things. But it is cool once he gets it all working.

So, Sailmail was developed by and for sailors (duhh) to keep in touch with loved ones and to download weather info while off shore. It takes the emails, "Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo's" them, sends them over the Ham/Single Side Band radio waves, then "Boo-Bobbity-Bibbity's" them back into emails to your computer. We get a generous daily "Key Count" of how much data we can send over the Air Waves, but it is limited. We download email wda7721 at sailmail.com at least twice a day, like 6am and 6pm, or more often if we are looking for something important. This is where you send short, important stuff, like, "Love You", or "Austin got an A", or "TMI in the blog, Deb..." When I send you stuff from wda7721, and you want to get back to me, DON"T hit "Reply". This sends all the stuff I already know as well as the new stuff and uses up part of our total "Key Count" for the day.

Also, Jim has set up our regular emails, deb at jdgregory.com, to send "Shadow Files" to wda7726 of anything set to them. The Shadow files tells us who it's from and the Subject line. I go through the shadow files and download the ones that look important, providing it's been a light day on the Key Count. So, if you put in a accurate title, like "Dosage info for Ita's UTI", I'll know to download it ASAP. I'll save the "fwd,fwd,fwd Why women live longer" ones until I get onto internet on land. Also realize, that it takes 2 downloads to actually get the info to me if you send it to deb@jgregory.com... once to download the shadowfile, then once to download the whole email.

And lastly, Jim has set up the blog to automatically send the comments you make to us, so we do get to see your comments.

So, that's the primer on email. I love you all. Please forward this as you see fit. Please x3 keep emailing me.

Love you all,

Deb

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Acapulco and Huatulco

Deb Here:

I know I haven't blogged lately. I've been concentrating very hard on not melting....

Jim asked me to blog on Acalpulco, and I added Huatulco. Well, Acapulco was very nice, in a BIG town sort of way. The YC was great! They had a great pool, with David, the waiter, who fetched me Mojito's whenever I even thought about one. That was great! The people were friendly, but the hours were wonky. No one's out in the am, the shops open at 11, everyone is closed 2-4, and they stay up way too late!

My adventure was trying to find a Vet to give Ita a Health Certificate for our next stop, Costa Rica. 6 cab rides and the best I could find was a pet store, selling roosters, puppies, cats, and really dirty stuff that had a clinic in the back where I could get Ita shots. I wouldn't even put her down on the vet table. I decided to wait for our last stop in Mexico, which was Hualtulco (Waa-tool-co). The cab rides through the various neighborhoods of Acapulco made me know I was good to stay in a cab. Fun to look at in the day safe in a cab....

Huatulco is my favorite by far. We tied up in this tiny newer Marina called Marina Chaway. Safe, clean and just deep enough for us to get into. From there there were 2 towns. Cruecita is the small town right by the Marina. Everything is a 20 peso cab ride, no mater where you go, so no getting ripped off. No one at the beach selling you the sombrero. NICE, NICE people. Clean streets. Lots of food and Bars. A GREAT Vet. Safe to walk in at night. A big plaza in the middle of town with the church on one side, and a band stand in the middle. Every night every one congregates down there to stroll and sell stuff. It was great.

Santa Cruz was the other town, and it was smaller, but that's where the cruise ships come in, so it is kinda ruined. Good Palapa Bar on the beach though...

That's it for now

Deb

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SPOT Tracker not working??

Have had reports that our SPOT tracker may be down. This is possible as we have run out of the lithium batteries that are supposed to be used for this. Now we are using plain old batteries and the instructions say that it may or may not work depending upon where we are.

Well, there's some news. We are in "Turtle Town", Guatemala. Aprox. 25 miles over the boarder, and 25 miles offshore. Huge turtles are floating all around us, we saw 5 at one time a little bit ago and have to steer just to make sure we dont run any over.

Weather is perfect other than the fact that there is little or no wind. Hope there is more later, as we are burning our fuel now!!

All good, no problems.

-Jim

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It got windy again

Not sure if I celebrated too early and brought this upon ourselves or what, but the wind came back up to 30+ at sunrise.
20 knots now.
The rule of thumb here for this passage is "one foot on the beach". The gulf is so shallow that if you get too far away from the beach and give the waves a chance to build up, you find yourself very uncomfortable.
Well, when the wind dropped and we thought we were good to go, we started trying a more direct course rather than staying on the beach.
I just spent 2+ hours hand steering and regretting that decision.
If you are watching us on SPOT you can see that we've decided to return to the beach!
-Jim
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The tough part is over!

We've past the worst portion of this gulf and are now sailing with the wind just aft of the beam in 20 knots.
We saw 31 knots for a bit, but all and all a pretty easy evening.
Only 4 miles off the beach, sailing in 30 knots on a beam reach is something like ice skating laps at full speed in a rink that's just been zambonni'd (nice word) with the lights off.
Smooth, fast sailing, its just tough to know where the edges are.
Pretty cool!
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All good

All is well. Deb is sleeping, the dog wishes it would calm down, but really things are fine. 25 knots and building slowly. Double reefed, no engine. Almost have the wind on the beam now.

Suppose I'll probably see 30 over the next few hours, but am staying 3 miles off the beach so the water should be flat. Maybe it will even be fun.

The downside....no moon....and no lights on shore.

Hope the GPS system does not go down over the next 6 hours!!

BTW - remind me to talk about my new $35 IPAD application from Navionics with charts of Central America and the Carib. that is almost as good as anything else that I have onboard. The ultimate backup!

-JIm

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Looking good...

5:45pm - smooth seas, 2 miles off the beach, nice sunset, beautiful scenery, and ONLY 18 knots @ 40M.

About to enter the belly of the beast....let's hope our luck holds.

-Jim

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Sort of getting windy, and still quite bumpy

Looks like we have almost 1.5 knots of current from behind and about 18 knots of wind from ahead. Makes it a bit bumpy. All good though, although the dog is pretty firm in her desire not to leave Deb's lap!!

2:30pm
wind 17 knots @ 84M
forecast: 5knots @ 17M

We shall see....

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Off we go

12:27 local time
We have left Huatulco (very nice town by the way), and are on our way to Costa Rica!!
The forecast is good, and we'll just see how things go.
Current wind is 10 knots from 110M. Vs a forecast wind of 3.4 knots out of 180. Wish it was the other way around.
Updates to follow...
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Should I stay or should I go now???

The Gulf of Tehuantepec

We have arrived at the first significant challenge of our trip -- The Gulf of Tehuantepec.

The picture you see above is what my nav screen looked like this morning.  We are the little green boat in the upper left corner.  We were actually sailing along in 6 knots of wind at the time, but obviously if we continued things were going to change.  By the way, those little red triangle flags show 50 knots of wind!!  That's basically hurricane force!

The Gulf of Tehuantepec is the huge open bay that spreads across 260 miles of shoreline.  The Gulf of Tehuantepec i sthe South side of the great Isthmus of Mexico, the lowest land at the narrowest width.  Before the Panama Canal was complete, many engineers considered digging a transcontinental canal across this isthmus.

This region experiences gale force winds on average 140 days per year.

The trick getting across here is to wait for the best possible forecast, and then follow the beach as closely as you dare from one side to the other in order to avoid the possible large seas that build up if you are surprised by heavy winds.  We think we have pretty good weather forecasting data these days, and Gibb Kane is helping us as our shoreside weather expert so....we think we will be fine.

However it does look like we are "stuck" here in Huatulco for a few days until the weather shown above changes enough to let us through....

Standing by....