PART V I:  NEW ZEALAND, COSTA RICA, PANAMA, HONDURAS, GUATEMALA

Editor's Note:  We received the following log and pictures from Heidi and Cabot on their second voyage to the South Pacific. The first was their circumnavigation around the world aboard CHEWINK, their Seguin 49 which Cabot built in 1987 and has sailed 60,000 miles. Starting from Maine in the summer of 1999, this segment depicts their return  from Guatemala back home to Maine.  If you have questions about their voyage, or would like to share similar experiences, just click Cabot's Link.

CLICK PICTURE TO ENLARGE

Averill looking back
over the divide

Drew visiting the North Island

Kauri Tree

Aussie Malcolm greets us
 in Tutakaka

Alvah and Diani Simon
hiking at Whangerai Heads

Tony Whiting
Guide Extraordinar

Dockwise boarding

Dockwise loaded

Tito

New bridge over
Panama canal

Klaus and Dave

Tugboat in a hurry
to get out of lock

Streets of Guanaja

Garifunda dancing
exhibition in Roatan

Graham's Place

Utila

Housing in Rio Dulce

Banks of Rio Dulce

Traveling up the Rio

Winter cover in the Rio

Lava Falls

Picture before saving Heidi

Taking baths in the
Colorado's 52° water

Best swimming hole ever

I arrived from Milford Sound in Queenstown a bit worse for wear, but managed to coincide with Roberta and Bobby Schmidt who had rented Harleys and were traveling throughout New Zealand. Bob and Roberta built the first Seguin 44 in 1981 -- the boat that essentially put us on the map. After a night with a group of Harley riders and I was happy to head back to CHEWINK at Half Moon Bay in Auckland to get some rest.

MAY 2004
Drew decided to join us for three weeks catching up to us in Keri Keri where we were visiting our old friends from our chartering days in the Caribbean, Angie and Brian Coen (Their ownership and skippering of TICONDEROGA was perhaps the most successful charter operation in the Caribbean ever. ) With Drew we traveled around the North Island, something we had never done before after many miles on the South Island. We have come to like the North Island as much as the South for many reasons, but mainly because it is more varied and is where most of the New Zealanders live. As a result, we were not channeled into the tourist routes, but could find a lot of great hiking, good cruising, and plenty of friends . Along with some very good hikes, we finally stopped to see the giant Kauri trees. Easily the most impressive tree we have ever seen. There is a Kauri forest buried from a Tsunami thousands of years ago that they are still harvesting.

JUNE 2004
We returned home after a good two months in New Zealand -- a complete change of plans. Heidi had the boat all stocked, charts were bought, boat was in great shape, but I was hesitant to commit to over a year to cross the Indian Ocean and up the Red Sea. With a lot happening at home, a lack of enthusiasm for another year of cruising and looking for a change, we put the boat in Tutakaka Marina where our good friend, Aussie Malcolm, gave us a berth for six months. Our first summer home in four years -- Maine is a wonderful place in the summer and we had a lot to do -- it was a good decision to take a break .

JANUARY 2005
Alex and Drew met us in Denver for a quick skiing trip in Vail over Christmas on our way to New Zealand for a month of cruising in New Zealand before we put CHEWINK on a Dockwise ship back across the Pacific to the West Coast of Costa Rica. This was a difficult decision, with a lot of ego to swallow, but it has worked for a lot reasons. Mainly it was time to spend more time home and be involved with what was/is going on (I enjoy being part of the yard). We might have made a different decision if we could have left CHEWINK in NZ for another year, but we had reached our time limit (18 months) after which the NZ government wants to tax the boat with import duty. I will never understand countries spending a lot of money to attract the yachting business and then spending a lot of effort to make sure the boat leaves. New Zealand is a great place to come and go from by boat, but it is also a terrific place to leave a boat for an extended period of time.

We had a great month of cruising from the Bay of Islands down to Auckland. The Christmas rains were gone and weather was great. A lot of visits with friends and Heidi’s family joined us as well. Usually we are always in a rush once we get to NZ, but a leisurely cruise in the Bay of Islands was really fun as this is also vacation time for the Kiwis so we were joined by several good friends -- in particular the Whiting family -- an extraordinary family as well as sailors.

FEBRUARY 2005

We were home for three weeks and then off to Golfito to take the boat off the ship the end of February. It was hard to come from Maine in the winter to a very hot and rainy Golfito, but we did find some great jungle hiking in the park on the Ossa Peninsula -- several types of monkeys, Tapirs, innumerable birds, snakes, and very lush jungle flora.

After unloading we pulled into the King and Bartlett Marina owned by sport fishermen from Maine. We quickly put CHEWINK together and cleaned her up from any leftover dirt from the exhaust of the ship. Luckily, the trip from New Zealand is upwind (major reason for shipping) making it much cleaner. I understand a downwind trip can often be quite dirty.

Golfito being almost on the border of Panama, we were in Panama after a long day and spent a couple of days amongst the islands of NW Panama. Still rainy and hot we moved quickly to Coiba, an old penal colony, now turned into a national park. This is a wonderful place for birders, divers, and sportfishermen. We were the first to see Tito, a large Crocodile, when he returned after a six month absence -- makes you think twice about diving?

We moved along after three days and headed for colder water in the Gulf of Panama and get in line for the transit. We had no wind so we motored for 24 hours fighting a good current after rounding Punta Mala. We spent five days in the Perlas Islands with the fleet getting ready to kick off for the Galapagos and Marquesas. Watching them gear up for their departures, we started to feel as if we should be going with them.

MARCH 2005
We had an unpleasant surprise queuing up for the canal. We had expected possibly a week’s wait to transit, but were told it would be three weeks. The Pedro Miguel Yacht Club in Mira Flores Lake is being closed down by the Canal Authority making it hard to enjoy Panama. The facilities in Balboa continue to be marginal and inconvenient, but we managed to find a mooring and headed to the highlands of Boquete. We love most of Panama, but the Canal Authority has made it their mission to make it unpleasant for yachts with policies which seem to change every day. The people who work in the canal are all pleasant, but the directives from the top are pretty counterproductive for efficient transit of small boats. However, there are plans in the air for better transit methods and our friends Russ Goedjen and David Wilson are helping to get a new marina started in Ft Sherman on the north side of Cristobal. This is going to be a great addition to Panama.

APRIL 2005

We transitted the canal April 1st with some good friends who must have had hundreds of transits between them. Panama has a great group of ex-pats whom we have gotten to know and enjoy being with. It is always fun to be back seeing them and they make great "line handlers". Transitting the canal is still an adventure (our fourth time) and we still really enjoy it. We had particularly good luck on this transit by being able to side-tie to a tug. A much safer and easier method rather than tying "center channel". The key to the canal is to stay in Contadora in the Perlas, or Porto Bello, on the Caribbean side and make arrangements to have the boat inspected, fees paid, and your name put on the list. After arriving in the canal zone and being inspected it is relatively easy to go back out to another anchorage like the Chagres river, Porto Bello, or Taboga, and the Perlas Islands on the Pacific side. Avon now has great blow up fenders that are easy to carry -- they are ideal for the canal as well as everywhere else you may tie up that is dirty or a swell is running. They eliminate the need for tires we have used in the past.

Everything is available in Panama -- great supermarkets on both ends of the canal and stores all over Panama City with most of what you need. It can be trying to find the shops, but taxis are cheap and knowledgeable. Panama City is a modern and fun city with some great restaurants, museums, shops, etc.

Since we’d now been in Panama for over three weeks and Colon continues to be a dangerous place for "Gringos", we only stayed one night after the transit and headed off to Porto Bello and then the San Blas with our friends, Sarah Terry and Craig Owings, on POGO. We finally felt like we were cruising again.

The San Blas are still beautiful, but there are a lot of cruisers there now who have made it their home. A fairly inactive group who are mostly interested in the next beach party, but a good retirement place with very few hassles, no government, and no real fees. However, they tend to stay in just a few places leaving the rest of the anchorages and rivers still relatively free.

Since we were behind schedule with the wait in Balboa, we took a straight shot up to Guanaja, the eastern most island in the Bay Islands of Honduras, passing two good islands, Providencia and San Andres. This was an easy four day trip with very light winds. In fact, we went through the next month with hardly a rain cloud and very light winds.

Now that we were in the Caribbean, we expected to see a lot of boats compared to the Pacific. The San Blas and Panama now have a sizeable cruising fleet so we were surprised to find Guanaja with only a half dozen boats spread out over a couple of anchorages. In fact, the entire Bay Islands are not very crowded.

Guanaja is a great place to clear into the country. Everyone lives on a picturesque, overcrowded, out island despite plenty of space on the main island because of sand flies and mosquitoes. Sand flies are the number one problem in the Bay Islands -- similar to the Marquesas. Guanaja is a bustling town fueled by the shrimp boats of which there are hundreds stored here in the off-season.

We moved to an out island on the reef called Graham’s Place This is the nicest place in the Bay Islands for yachts. He caters to cruisers with free moorings, a great bar, a funky restaurant, laundry, fresh water, and rides to town. All the other resorts have closed down in Guanaja (except for a couple of old hotels in the middle of town) making this the center of any activity which wasn’t a lot. In other words, a quiet place.

Roatan is a much larger island with harbor after harbor that all rate as the best in the Caribbean. No trouble finding a hurricane hole here. Some very good diving and good hiking. There are some theft problems in the anchorages near the town, but we had no troubles. We spent a week diving on the West End of the island, a place that reminded me of Key West 30 years ago -- pretty funky place that caters to divers -- like a big factory.

We stopped in Utila to dive with the whale sharks, but never saw one. This island is really a dive factory with the cheapest diving in the world. You get what you pay for here and we were unimpressed. There is the suspicion that some of the bars are working with thieves so as you come ashore they go out to the boats. We had no problems, but moved on pretty quickly. However, it is a pretty town with funky houses and very few cars. Some cruisers like this island best of all.

The diving in these islands is terrific with very clear water undoubtedly the clearest water we have see in the last five years. The anchorages are all close to the reef and the dive operations have all set up buoys at the better spots making it incredibly easy to reach from the anchorages. Since the commercial dive operations all operate in specific areas, they leave a lot of unused territory for us to explore. We have had better diving in the Pacific, but this is so convenient and clear, it comes close.

MAY 2005
We made one stop on the mainland at Escondido as we headed to Rio Dulce in Guatemala, a really nice anchorage that is part of a national park with plenty of howler monkeys ashore and incredibly long beaches and paths to hike on.

The Rio Dulce was a very pleasant surprise. We easily carried 6.5 feet over the bar (We draw 5’ with board up). We entered Guatemala here and had no trouble in the very clean and pleasant town of Livingston. Livingston has no roads or airport (everyone moves around by boat) and we had heard that it was a very dirty and unpleasant place. Guatemala has undergone a huge transformation by cleaning up the country. There are no plastic bags or other trash anywhere. It takes a moment to figure out what is wrong when you come ashore from Honduras and Panama, but it dawns on you the place is CLEAN. I think it also has changed the attitudes of the people.

But what a beautiful trip up the river with cliffs and jungle on both sides and good deep fresh water. This is truly spectacular with the lush jungle and a nice departure from the Bay islands with their dry climate.

There are several marinas twenty miles up the river with 7 to 20 slips each. All small and quite pleasant. Many of the docks are rundown, but because of the hurricanes in Florida there is an increase of boats coming here for the season as there has never been a recorded hurricane in this area. Mountains all around and situated in the corner of the Yucatan Peninsula it is hard for a hurricane to make a right turn into here. They can, however, drop a lot of rain which can cause its own problems.

We had been told that Mario’s Marina is the most like the old Pedro Miguel Boat Club of Panama so we had used email to make reservations to stay there. This is a very funky friendly marina with great people running it. There is a good program to update the whole place and is the meeting spot for most of the cruisers spread around the river. Sadly, we put CHEWINK’s cover on and headed home. There is a lot to do in this area both cruising and exploring the many Mayan ruins. We look forward to getting back probably around Christmas.

Why were we in such a hurry to return? It was an easy choice. A Grand Canyon rafting trip for ten days the first week of June. These trips are often booked for years in advance so we had no intention of passing up this opportunity of joining a great group of teachers and parents from Phoenix Country Day School and guided by Christa Sadler. She has been on this river for eighteen years and is truly an extraordinary guide and person. It was like living in National Geographic for ten days and too much to absorb.

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