June 29, 2014-Up the Mast and a Party in Paradise

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Fred at the Mast Head

I made a new windex, sort of primitive, works a little bit, and went up the mast to install it. Got some shots, click here. Maybe it will serve until we get a new one; we can order one as soon as we get to some place where we'll stay long enough to receive a shipment, probably Chiapas, Mexico. We'll also order a new mainsail from Hong Kong and have it delivered to the same port.

We have been watching the soccer world cup in the town of Playas De Cocos, where we are anchored. Today Costa Rica won the their third game and they move up to the quarter finals. The bar, the town, the whole country probably, went ballistic with this win. We enjoyed it too, but the party looked to last all night, might have been fun, but when they started to turn over cars we went home.

Ticos Celebrate

Tomorrow we will check out of Costa Rica and prepare to depart for Nicaragua.

Click here to see some more photos.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Costa Rica

June 24, 2014-How We Blew Up the mainsail

By 8:00 PM we were hauling. The wind was 24 in a squall and still building and the boat was broad reaching at 7.5 knots. We had the full main up, maybe more than we needed but the wind came up quickly and at the moment we seemed OK and we were happy for the speed. Except that the autopilot alarm kept going off as the computer complained that it could not keep the boat from rounding up. I went back and took the helm. One good hard pull on the tiller and the boat swerved down and we came back onto the course.

Then the boat jibed; a sudden, unplanned, un-wanted, accidental jibe. Not my first but surely my most disastrous. The preventer kept the boom from coming across and that probably saved the rig, but the main tore right up the middle. It was a hole big enough to fly a drone through.

Judy came up, “What’s going on?”

“We jibed. Stay clear of stuff, I’m going to jibe back. The main is torn.”

But I couldn’t jibe back. The back-winded main, that part of it which remained whole, held the boat pinned down. I looked at the swirls of water in the glare of our stern light and saw that we were not making any forward motion. We were on our side and just sliding off to leeward, the rudder useless.

I tied off the tiller and together we eased the preventer and centered the main and got some way on, then tacked around, but it was slow, and took two tries, the main flogging constantly and that first tear was just the start; suddenly the mainsail simply ripped to shreds. It was an awesome sight.

“Look at the main.” I said.

Judy didn’t want to. Anyhow, she knew it was gone.

Somewhere in this mess the windex departed, so that was gone too.

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Torn Dacron

We got the sail down, pieces of it all over the rig and over the side and tangled up in the runners and reefing lines. It took a couple of hours to get them untangled and cleaned up and it was difficult work with the boat rolling mercilessly in the pouring rain and darkness. We kept our harnesses clipped on and worked with hand tools and flashlights; the engine running slowly ahead and the autopilot steering again.

Now the shreds of the main are rolled into a ball and stacked on the quarter deck, a reminder to the skipper of his errors, and we have motored on to Playa del Cocos without having any further incident, but the emotional scars will not heal as quickly. This incident has left us shaken. We’ve heard stories of disasters like this happening to other boats but we’ve avoided them for all these years. Maybe we thought we were invincible. But it happens quickly and when it does there is no going back to the time before; you can’t unwind it, you just have to deal with it. Some of the memories of that squall will stick to us for a while, like looking aloft and seeing the entire mainsail flying in the wind like so many white streamers and like me hanging on to the boom for dear life while trying to undo the shackles on the clew, Judy holding a flashlight and urging me to hold tight as I swung from one side of the boat to the other like a rag doll.

And the total disorientation I felt when trying to figure out which way to safely turn the boat on that black night in that gusting and shifting wind. I kept looking up where the windex should be to see the wind direction but it wasn’t there and all the numbers on the B&G basically meant nothing. I remember one moment when I finally got a mental image of it: “OK, the wind is 165, we are heading 30, so I’ve got it; I have to turn right to tack.” Sounds easy now but then, when our course up till then had been 290 and the wind 110, it took time to make that new mental image. I was glad the shoreline was miles away; at least we had sea room.

So now we have to buy a new main. It’s no surprise; the cloth was old and getting brittle and just earlier that day I saw that some stitches on a previous patch were opening up new holes. I just hoped it would make it to Mexico but it didn’t. We put on the racing main so we can sail again, and we’re looking for a windex or some sort of substitute for wind direction aloft, and we have to start thinking about where and how we’ll get another Dacron main. But that can wait for Mexico. Right now we are going to get ready for another leg:

wingssail images-judy jensen
Fred

We’ll leave for Nicaragua in a few days.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Costa Rica

June 21, 2014-Back to Bahia Ballena

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Gulf of Nicoya

It’s twenty seven miles from Puntarenas to Bahia Ballena, less if you could go in a straight line but you can’t, Isla Negritos is in the way, and besides, on most days this time of year it’s a beat, and it was for us today, so you have to tack; you wind up going twenty seven miles.

That’s a long day if the wind is light, which it was. Longer if the bottom is foul, which it also was, and the boat is heavy with fuel and water, and which definitely we were.

But we made it. Even after waiting to leave until the wind filled in at 11:00 we got to Bahia Ballena by 5:30, well before dark.

There was a long starboard tack, a lift as the wind clocked to the west in the afternoon. We sailed easy, letting the wind vane steer, and we drowsed in the cockpit, taking turns watching for ships, never touching the sheets or the helm.

When we tacked to port for the leg into Ballena, Judy spotted the other sailboat.

“There is a sailboat,” she said, “behind us.”

I put the binoculars on it. A sloop, close hauled on starboard, with a tall mast and flat sails, looking good. They had been behind us all right, on a course to weather of ours, inside on the long lifted tack I thought, with some irony. I wondered how long they’d been tracking us, if they were, probably for a while. They could have been back there with an eye on us for a long time. We hadn’t seen them. Asleep at the switch. Lulled by the lazy day. We hadn’t seen a sailboat out here sailing in a couple of months so we’d become complacent. We let them sneak up on us.

We crossed ahead; there was that, at least.

The other boat tacked soon after we did and fell into an easy course to leeward. For an hour we sailed on parallel courses. I expected to leave them in our wake but it didn’t happen; they hung in there, neither gaining nor losing.

After a while I got irritated by their presence. I started to trim more aggressively. I cracked off a little and eased the sheets. I got on the helm. The speed went up, and we did not fall down on them. So it helped; we started to move, even starting to work up to weather of them. We were sailing better. I guess it takes some competition to make you sail better.

The wind continued to shift to the west. On this tack it was a knock. The other boat was benefiting by being on the outside of a knock, but by now it didn’t matter; the wind was lightening and they had sagged down quite a bit.

When it came time to tack they rolled up their headsail and turned on the motor. We sailed on to Bahia Ballena. They peeled off to the Tortugas.

I got out a beer.

Puntarenas.

Puntarenas is a province, not just a town. We took buses and traveled around a bit, to Jaco and Quepos. We saw some of the sights of Puntarenas, the province. We visited Manuel Antonio Park and saw sloths and howler monkeys, and a few hundred college kids from the US down here on break. We also saw a crocodile cruising just off the popular swimming beach in the park and a few dozen would be bathers gathered on the shore. The people and the croc eyed each other; a stand off. Once we took a long dingy ride up the estuary behind the marina and there were hundreds of fishing boats tied to small wharves and piers, and there were crocodiles.

In fact crocs are common in Costa Rica; we saw them often, besides when we were driving around in the dingy, but that part was the un-nerving bit since they are as big as our zodiac and have been known to be aggressive towards boats. After that we put the dingy away and stuck to tours we could take by bus.

wingssail images-judy jensen
Fred watching the game

And we joined with a lot of enthusiastic Ticos to watch Costa Rica win its first two matches in the Soccer World Cup. That was fun.

Now, however, we have departed Puntarenas.

Next stop, Plays Cocos, Coco beach

Click here for images of Puntarenas

Click here for photos in town.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Bahia Ballena

June 5, 2014-San Jose, Costa Rica, and Poas Volcano

We parked the car and walked up the trail towards Costa Rica's Poas Volcano. We realized right away that we didn't need the extra clothing we wore; the path was easy and the exertion didn't make us sweat but the sun did; it was warm even at 8000 feet of altitude.

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Poas Volcano

We reached the viewpoint at rim of the volcano and the stunning view of the caldera with the green sulphuric lake and the rising columns of steam made us forget the sun and the sweat and the climbing up there. We didn't say much, just looked at the lava field 900 feet below us and stared. We were spellbound.

The wind blew one of the columns of steam our way and the sulphur made us cough and brought us back to reality. We could hardly breathe. We'd been warned that sometimes the park is closed due to the sulphuric gas, but then the wind instantly blew it away again.

The wind also dried the sweat on our bodies and we were cool.

A burst of steam came up to the surface of the lake and threw a black cloud into the air. A boulder splashed back into the green lake. This was what we came for; to be close to an active volcano, our first since Tanna Island in Vanuatu in the year 2002, and it was fantastic to be here. We continued to stare silently at awesome beauty of the volcano and felt its power and we knew we were lucky to see it; often Poas is obscured by clouds and fog. They warned us of that too, when we came in through the park gates, but like I said, we were lucky.

We watched the constantly changing scene for an hour.

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
In the Cloud Forest

Then we returned to the trail and hiked another mile, still higher, through the cloud forest. There was another crater, the beautiful, cold, green Botos Lake, in the park, and we wanted to see it. The air was thin and we breathed deeply and we trudged up the trail with measured steps towards the 9000 foot level but the air was also cold and clean smelling and again the sweat dried on our skin leaving the welcome coolness and there was a tingle from our muscles and that metallic taste in our mouths from hard breathing. It all felt good and we enjoyed the climb.

Botos Lake was attractive but the crater's vents are not active and while pretty and surrounded by a forest of ferns and pine trees, we spent little time there. We were ready to go down, first to the car and then down the mountain road to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, where we'd come for a three day visit, leaving Wings in the marina at Puntarenas.

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
San Jose, Costa Rica

This was our trip: three days in San Jose and its surrounds, including one day going up to the volcano and back. It was a good trip. We liked San Jose; though it was far below the summit of the Poas volcano it's elevation is still nearly 4000ft and San Jose, too, is cool compared to Puntarenas. The city is pleasant and filled with walking streets, museums, and small shops. In the suburbs we found malls and fast food restaurants but the city center is older and historic and we enjoyed strolling around with our cameras. We stayed in a small hotel and had a great meal at an Argentine Steak house nearby where the waiter kept our glasses filled with excellent Malbec and then walked us home in the rain when we didn't have our own umbrellas.

On the bus back to Puntarenas, as we came down from the central valley, we felt the growing heaviness of the atmosphere and the heat and humidity at sea level, but even though we enjoyed the coolness of San Jose, it was good to get back to Wings. After all, it's home.

Click here for more photos.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Puntarenas

May 31, 2014-No Hay Problema!

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Puerto Azul

Well, we've exhausted everyone's ideas about what could be wrong with Wing's motor and we've found nothing.

We don't know what caused it to apparently and mysteriously consume eight quarts of oil.

Further, the problem is no longer evident; we're not losing any oil now, and we've put about five hours of operation on it without any loss.

So we are left with three choices:
1. We had a serious problem which we still have since nothing was fixed, but it's in remission.
2. We had a serious problem which fixed itself.
3. We never had a problem, we just thought we did.

Frankly I am leaning toward door number three, which is the same view as my mechanic here in Puntarenas, William Martinez, who seems to be very competent and thorough, and is highly recommended by several sources. William doesn't know what to think, he can't find anything wrong and can't say anything but good stuff about what he sees in our motor, although he's puzzled by the oil loss I reported. He also brought two other mechanics by to consult on the problem, and has taken the oil-cooler and fuel pump to test labs for examination. They came back certified sound.

Possibly he doubts my report about the oil loss in the first place but it's hard to argue with the empty oil containers which we kept and anyhow, he's too polite to say so.

So now what?

Well, Puerto Azul, the marina, is pretty nice, and the daily rate for ten days, which, as a condition for entry, we prepaid, covers 30 days at the monthly rate. So, effectively, we have paid in advance for a month if we want to take it.

We might. There is some touring we can do in Costa Rica, and life is pretty relaxed on the river in Puntarenas, so staying would be easy.

We'll let you know.

Oh, by the way, we replaced the water pump impeller, which we knew was going out although it still pumped heaps of water, and the engine never ran hot in the slightest, and upon taking it out, were surprised at how shot it was. Check out the last photo here.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Puntarenas

May 25, 2014-Sailing to Puntarenas

Clouds over Puntarenas

The motor’s broken and we need a mechanic. Puntarenas should have one, probably several; we need to go there and try to get our broken motor fixed.

The distance from Ballena Bay to Puntarenas is 25 miles but there is a good anchorage about 18 miles away and we think we can break the trip into two days. On Friday we will leave.

Friday:

At sunup we are watching the bay for any sign of wind. At 10:00 there are a few ripples on the water, then a light breeze. It’s only four knots of wind but we can sail this. We immediately weigh anchor.

The breeze is an easterly, so it’s upwind, and we set the main and genoa and haul sheets out of the bay. We expect to have to tack to get around the heads but a lift is showing and we clear into the open water on one tack.

Now the wind frees and fills a little and we ease sheets and crack off to northeast. The speeds are good. We’re seeing six knots of wind and Wings is going better than 5 knots as we pass Isla Tortugas.

The wind vane steers and we concentrate on trimming the sails.

At noon, looking at the chart and the time, we decide to go for Puntarenas, now only 16 miles away.

This is not a race but we sail like we are racing. Trim, steer, watch the tides, follow the shifts. We’ve done this before; we know how to make a fast passage when we need to. The wind has shifted further around to the south and even though Puntarenas is north we are reaching towards the NE to keep the apparent wind on the beam. The computer program says to jibe when the mark bears 335, which we do, and the wind comes around to the beam on port side and we hold our speed.

And Wings performs. Even in five to six knots of wind we can make 4-5 knots of speed. In 11 knots of wind we are over six, almost 7.

At 3:15 PM we are a mile out and approaching the shallows off of Puntarenas. We drop the jib.

Thirty minutes later we come head to wind behind the point and drop the main; we’re in the harbor at Puntarenas.

It’s been a good sail today. Tomorrow, at high tide, we’ll go into the marina.

Saturday:

At an hour before high tide we weigh and motor slowly up the river the three miles to the marina.

We’ve topped the oil in the engine and we think we can run the motor that long.

Judy navigates us and though there’s less than 1 foot under our keel at times, she keeps us off; we don’t touch. Luck is still with us.

At the marina they are expecting us and they help us into the slip, which is tricky in the strong river current.

The mechanic says the motor sounds and looks fine; he says the problem has to be the oil cooler, can’t be anything else. He’ll come back Monday with tools to take the oil cooler off and into a shop for a pressure test. After he leaves we shrug; what can we do?

Meanwhile we watch the depth of the water in the slip; it’s the deepest berth they have but as the tide goes out we sink into the mud. I rock the boat to see if we are aground: if the boat moves we’re floating.

It does.

We decide the bottom is pretty soft. We’re OK.

So, here we are: the motor's still broken, but we're in a marina with a swimming pool, bar and restaurant, and we can float at low tide. We’ve got the mechanic going on the motor, and things could be worse. We’re fairly positive.

And we’ll keep you updated.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Puntarenas

May 22, 2014-Mechanical Opportunities Change our Plans

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Sailing Back

Today I got up early to work on the engine. I was looking forward to it just like I was yesterday morning when I got up early to rebuild the backstay cylinder which blew out the day before. I hate to go to bed with a broken boat but evenings are no times to start big repair projects. Working after dark on deck doesn’t usually bode well however the fix went OK in the early daylight yesterday and I felt good about it all day.

Today I had another opportunity. While motoring out of Ballena Bay yesterday afternoon with our newly repaired backstay the oil pressure alarm started chirping. New Problem! Low oil pressure! Killed the engine, checked the oil. Low! Added oil. Restarted. Looked OK…for an hour. Then the oil pressure dropped again. We’re losing oil. It’s not in the bilge, and there is no smoke, so we surmised it was the oil cooler.

When it happened we were 10 miles out of port with 110 miles to go the next port and that is not a city or anything, just another bay in Costa Rica. Couldn't run the engine, the wind was light and we knew it would get lighter overnight. What to do? No other choice, set sail, turn back. We did. The wind was light but at least there was wind. We needed to get back to the anchorage. We turned downwind.

It was 3:00 PM. We figured we had two hours of breeze. Up went the kite. This time it was for real; we needed it.

Set on starboard and heated it up a bit to keep going in the light stuff. Watched the headings in the shifting wind and jibed when we could just lay the harbor entrance. Reached in on port just off the rocks and then hardened up. When we couldn't sail any higher, dropped the chute and sailed in the rest of the way under main. Judy did all the physical stuff while I conned the boat. She is good. In the last wisps of the dying breeze, we came head to wind and dropped the hook when we coasted to a stop. We used the main to back down to set the anchor.

Miller time; job well done.

Today however, it didn't go as well as with the backstay yesterday. I took off the oil cooler and bypassed it but all I verified is that it is not the source of the loss of engine oil. I guess it was an opportunity. Now what? We now think it is an exhaust valve seal.

Time for a mechanic.

We hitched a ride to the nearest town and bought 4 gallons of oil. With that and a little wind we probably can get to Puntarenas and maybe a mechanic.

That wasn't the plan, but that's what we need to do, so we'll do it.

Click here for more shots of us sailing back to Ballena.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Costa Rica

May 19, 2014-Sailing the Monsoon Trough

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Sailing the Monsoon Trough

Yesterday we departed Golfito and set sail in a nice southerly breeze. We pointed the boat out of the Golfo Dulce and sailed close hauled towards the open Pacific Ocean. Soon we felt the lift of the long Pacific swells. The ensign on our back stay stood proudly. It was good to be under sail.

At Punta Matapalo we took a hitch into the beach and caught the lift around the cape, then held starboard tack well out to sea, looking for the right angle back to the north. The wind shifted, a knock which we didn’t expect, and we tacked on that shift and found we could sail on port right up the coast. It was a glorious sail.

To sail north along this coast, however, we must deal with the monsoon trough. The rainy season is in full swing and with the coming of this season the ITCZ has moved north. A monsoon trough is fully established over the Pacific Coast of Central America. There is a daily pattern which we have come to know well: Mornings are calm and sunny and you have to motor if you want to get anywhere in the mornings but at least the sky is blue and it is pleasant. Then by noon the sky becomes overcast and a wind fills from the south. From then until sunset you have very nice sailing. By evening the wind dies and you are on the motor again and the squalls come, bringing rain and lightning, torrential rain, and heavy lightning. Nights are dirty. We don’t like being at sea in those conditions but the harbors are far apart; we must keep going through the night, and we do, but we hang on with gritted teeth through the squalls, hoping to avoid a lighting strike, and water drips everywhere, inside the boat and out, as the motor drones onward.

Our next stop is in Northern Costa Rica, Ballena Bay, and here, if it is pleasant, we will stop a while and work on the leaks which have appeared in last few weeks. We’d like to keep the boat dry inside, which it has been in the past, even during the heavy rains. We are hoping, however, to get away from the monsoon trough, and away from the heavy rains and the hours of motoring. Perhaps when we reach the Papagayo, between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, the pattern will change. There, and further north, across the Gulf of Tehuantepec, we might see northerlies blowing offshore during the night. But that brings its own issues. The winds over the Papagayo, gap winds, as they are called, often blow in the 20’s and 30’s. The Tehuantepeckers, as the heavy winds across Gulf of Tehuantepec are lovingly known, can blow even more fiercely. They can be strong enough to keep you in port for weeks at a time, although that happens less frequently during the rainy season.

And then there are the hurricanes. The rainy season is also hurricane season. This part of the coast is generally free of hurricanes, but it is not impossible to imagine one causing chaos in southern Mexico, or even bringing rain and strong winds here in Central America. We watch the weather, and when we get to Chiapas, the southern-most port in Mexico, we think we’ll hunker down for the rest of the season.

So that is the plan: get to Chiapas and hunker down. Right now, on the way to Ballena, we are having another nice sail, under spinnaker, and we push most of this weather stuff into the back of our minds and focus on the sailing.

Click here for more photos.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Costa Rica

May 14. 2015-Golofito is no Boca Chica

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Golfito

REVISION: I think my previous version of this story gave a worse picture of Golfito than is fair. In fact, we liked Golfito

We’ve sailed from Boca Chica, in Panama, to Golfito, in Costa Rica. Golfito is another great harbor with fine protection which is second to none, being surrounded by mountains and rain forests. And it is beautiful, even in the rain (which pours down like clockwork every afternoon). Maybe especially in the rain: sitting under an awning on Wings, in the steady rain, looking at the still boats anchored in front of the town and the mists rising from the forests, reminds us of places on Vancouver Island.

But even with the beauty of the surroundings, a great anchorage, and lots of welcome rain, (welcome because it fills our water tanks), I’ve been kinda grumpy here. Could it be the mud? Everything is muddy. Could it be the rain, which we love and need? Every time we get into the dingy we find it totally wet and half full of water. I operate the dingy standing up, with water up to my ankles, holding an umbrella.

Mostly, I guess, it’s the poor Internet and Costa Rica’s high prices which put me in a bad mood. Costa Rica uses an unusual frequency band for its high speed Internet, none of our devices can pick it up, and the WiFi is unreliable, so we haven’t had much Internet. Then there are the prices. The prices are high here for everything, particularly food, fuel, and transportation. Today we took a bus down the Pan American highway and back to buy groceries in Panama and the savings made it worthwhile. Marina prices in Costa Rica are so high it seems downright unfriendly. We don’t know why everything costs more in Costa Rica but it does.

But despite all this, Golfito has been a good stop. At least our water tanks are full. The Cruiser’s Clubhouse at LandSea Marina is where we hang out to get out of the rain has been fun and Tim and Katie, the people who run it, are helpful and nice. THEIR prices are good, so overall the Cruiser’s Clubhouse is a net positive.

Next door the Banana Marina has a great happy hour. We’ve been there a few times for $2 rum.

And we’ve spent hours wandering up and down the main street in town looking for bargains and finding some, if not many. Oh, did I mention the “Free Zone”? Down in the rainy end of town (yes, one end of Golfito gets much more rain dumped on it than the rest of Golfito) there is a shopping area, all fenced off, where, if you go with your passport in hand, you can buy goods which are duty free, which brings the prices back down to almost, say, anywhere in Panama. But they don’t have groceries.

Well, this is all part of cruising, and even if it sounds like I am complaining, I’m really not. Whatever we find when we come to a new place, like Costa Rica, it is still very much a voyage of discovery for us. And what we learn when we come to a new place, well, we couldn’t really learn it any other way.

But by the weekend we’ll be underway.

Click here for more Costa Rica photos.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Golfito