Chewink 2008 Photos

PART V II:  Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Mexico, Key West, Bahamas, Bermuda, Home

Editor's Note(05.15.08): The following is the final segment of Heidi's and Cabot's log of 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 where CHEWINK wintered at the yard in Thomaston, Maine. The following year, Cabot and Heidi headed south to the Caribbean and spent a good part of  the winter of 2007-2008 aboard CHEWINK cruising the West Indies. For 2008 photos sailing in Bequia, click here. If you have questions about their voyaging, or would like to share similar experiences, just click Cabot's Link.

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Mario's Marina.
The social center for Rio.
 

Locals sitting beside Lake Atitlan.

Our 6 a.m. wake-up call.

Mayan ruin at Tikal

Reclaimed from the dense
jungle in Guatemala.
 

Lighthouse Atoll

Hopetown, Bahamas

Bermuda dinghy

We kept the boat at Mario’s Marina, a great place and the social center for the Rio—we woke to the Howler Monkeys and joined the early risers for coffee at six in the morning. Mac and Ron are the owners and managers of the marina and can’t do enough for you. When they take some time off, Daniel takes over and is great to work with. A funky place that is easy to stay for a long time and many people do!

Alex, Drew, and Zach all joined us for Christmas and we visited Tikal and Antigua, and even had a few days of lounging around the boat enjoying the fresh water and swimming. The weather at this time of the year is fantastic in the Rio Dulce and Guatemala -- cool, dry with calm winds -- a great time to explore the river, lakes, and the Guatemalan interior while the northerlies roll through the northwest Caribbean.

January 2006
In late January Heidi and I went to Antigua for two weeks of Spanish school and touring of Guatemala. We are now a bit more proficient in Spanish and know a great deal more about this country with its indigenous people dressed in fantastic colorful fabrics. The old Spanish towns, the Rio Dulce, and the Mayan culture make this a great place to visit.

Antigua, the original capital of Guatemala, is a great town to spend time in with a wonderful selection of restaurants, cobblestone streets, and lovely old Spanish architecture. There are over 100 Spanish language schools here all specializing in one-on-one instruction. Many people come to Antigua every year for a vacation and to improve their Spanish.

However, the best thing about Guatemala is the Mayan heritage. The Mayan ruins of Tikal are truly astounding! There are over ten thousand structures yet to be excavated in the Peten area of Guatemala alone. El Mirador, a city in the jungle that has recently been discovered, might even dwarf Tikal. There is a lot to be learned about this civilization that essentially disappeared about 900 AD.

February 2006
We left the "Rio" February 15^th thinking the cold fronts and high NE winds would be slowing down, and headed for Guanaja, the eastern most island of the Bay.

Islands of Honduras are our favorite. However, as we reached Roatan after a wild overnight sail the door closed with a 25 knot easterly forcing us into West End of Roatan. West End is another funky town with sandy streets and good restaurants. This town is a diver’s heaven with many dive shops and a reef 200 yards off the beach—ideal for diving from our dinghy. Perhaps the diving is not world class but its accessibility and water clarity makes this area a lot of fun.

The wind continued to blow so we sailed over to La Ceiba on the Honduras mainland to a small marina and a shipyard with a 100 ton lift. The marina, owned by Rita and Tony, is a great place to explore inland Honduras. We also took advantage of the nearby shipyard and hauled CHEWINK for an overnight repair to the propeller—we had hit a wire or something in the Rio and wanted to make sure all was well for the long trip north.

We took a whitewater rafting trip and another into a bird sanctuary via the banana train. There are lots of things to do in Honduras and warrants more time than we gave it.

With an overnight sail, we were in southern Belize—a landscape of sandy islets and mangrove islands inside the second longest barrier reef in the world. With the Rio Dulce as a base and its proximity to southern Belize this area makes a very good cruising area. There’s a lot of good diving and snorkeling here, especially near the atolls of Lighthouse (an incredible sanctuary of Frigates and Boobys), Turneffe, and Glovers there is good diving at all of them but we enjoyed the town of Placencia the most. This is a small town south of Belize City that seems to have been forgotten yet is a convenient place for more inland travels to Mayan ruins. Placencia also has the best ice cream in the Caribbean—that alone makes this a worthy stop.

April 2006
Drew and Zach arrived in Belize City early April with their girlfriends, Mackenzie and River, for ten days. We managed to visit Cay Caulker, Turneffe Atoll, and many of the various islands. Plenty of diving, snorkeling, and reading. There was a time when doing our circumnavigation that it was necessary to be always moving with three very active sons. How times have changed—I was not prepared for them wanting to just relax and enjoy the sun and water, and read.

After they left we were off to Isla Mujeres in Mexico—our first time in Mexico where great tacos are a dollar and the Mexicans are very friendly. Isla Mujeres, overshadowed by Cancun and its high rise hotels and many cruise ships, is like an oasis in the desert. Cancun is perhaps one of the least interesting places we have been, but it does provide a staging ground to go inland to the many Mayan ruins. We enjoyed getting back to using our "terrific" Spanish after a month in Belize and its brand of English.

The two day sail to Key West was a challenging one with some very strange currents. The Yucatan Current reached five knots driving us northward and then we had almost 12 hours of adverse currents just north of Cuba and finally the beginning of the Gulf Stream.

Not a place to be in with easterlies which is about all it blows.

But Key West was worth the effort. Although the anchorage is marginal with lots of currents, we had a very good time—it is definitely a friendly place for the free spirit—nice to see all the old hippies my age that have settled into driving taxi cabs to make ends meet—I can think of a lot of worse ways to live.

May 2006
Off to the Bahamas and a night crossing of the banks entering at Riding Rock and ending up with Pacific cruising friends (Mary and Rick on TRANQUILITY) at Rose Island for a night, then off to meet the Bynums in Spanish Wells. We cruised with them for the next three weeks before jumping off to Bermuda the third week in May. We motored for a couple of days and then had almost a perfect NNW wind and calm seas to make up for lost time the last two days.

Bermuda continues to be a great stop and you’re always made to feel welcome. We were stopped there by Hurricane Albertous for an extra week so we moved around to

Hamilton and took advantage of Ted and Rachael Gosling’s incredible hospitality. CHEWINK and a bunch of Bermudians sailed over to watch the Bermuda Dinghy races and had fun watching the three we had built perform.

June 2006
A fast and easy trip up through the centennial fleet of the Newport-Bermuda Race brought CHEWINK home after seven years. Entering Buzzards Bay is always a thrill after a long time away and New Bedford/Fairhaven is an excellent place to clear in.

January 2007
CHEWINK is now in the shed torn apart but in the final stages of a re-fit that started with a new engine and has ended up digging into most of the twenty year old plumbing, wiring, and machinery.

It is nice to be home for the winter and bother everyone at the yard—something like a bad penny.

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