Escape from Costa Rica

Arrival

In August of 2010 we headed back to the Costa Rica Yacht Club to rescue Virago. As I pointed out in a earlier post we had overstayed our welcome by exceeding the limits of our Costa Rica cruising permit. It was hardly the crime of the new century, but it seemed prudent to remove any threat of empounding our boat or charging us to import it to Costa Rica. Our local CR attorney suggested that we might have to pay a fine of $500, but we were not comfortable that would be the total bill if we left Virago at the CRYC for months more.

 

Virago had been on the hard and was in fine condition with the exception of mildew as seen in the following pictures. Fortunately, it was confined to surfaces that had been wetted with either salt water or sweat. Thing kept dry including wash back from the laundry without having been worn were mildew free, even if they did smell a little musty boatish.

 

The crew consisted of Marjorie Goss, John Eichinger, Harry Reppert and I. We stayed a few days at the CRYC’s motel. We rated it a little lower than a Motel 6, but serviceable for crew’s quarters while cleaning a mildewed boat. Here are some final shots of the CRYC and crew.

 

Schedule

I often tell people that I do not have the “cruising gene”—that I am a passage maker at heart. The easiest way to tell the difference is that Virago always has a schedule and makes a reasonable effort to stick to it. I get antsy being in the same place for more than a few days. There seem to be two basic responses from cruisers upon hearing this:

1. “You’re missing out on so much.” This is a matter of taste and after 4,500 miles on this trip there are very few things that I lament not having seen. My crew understands this and so far have been willing to undertake passages with limited lay overs.
2. “It’s dangerous.” This always puzzles me, since it is boat, crew, and sea conditions that  most effect the degree of danger of a passage. To date I think my crew and I would agree that we have done nothing foolhardy just to make a schedule. I know this can be a great temptation and I count on my very experienced crew to help me guard against rash decisions.

Those points having been made, here is the planning for the trip from the Costa Rica Yacht Club in Puntarenas, Costa Rica and Bocas del Toro, Panama. First the route:

 

This route was planned far in advance even if the final date was pulled in due to our cruising permit running out. So as you see we only planned to stop at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal to await our transit, then at the Caribbean end just in case we needed any provisions or repairs, and finally at Bocas del Toro Yacht Club and Marina to wait for the right season to head up to Isla Mujeres. (This marina was recommended by our friends Paul and Tamar.) On the short scale we read the weather from BouyWeather.com and other sources as shown.

These charts show the wind at six hour intervals for up to seven days ahead. The body of the little arrows show the direction of the wind while the number of flecks indicates the wind speed in knots. We could see that there would be less than 10 knots of wind predicted for the entire trip and we expected to have to motor most of the six hundred miles. Not fun, but hardly foolhardy.

The Trip to the Canal

Having planned the trip, gathered the crew, launched the boat, provisioned, taken on fuel, and checked the weather we were ready to leave on our motor cruise on August 27th, 2010. (What Bill Eddy would call a Princess Cruise for its lack of wind and waves.)  Here you see the actual punta (point) of Puntarenas (sand point) and John beginning the arduous work of passage making.

 

Every section of coast has its bad place such as Point Mendocino, Point Conception, Cabo Corrientes, Bahia Tehauntepec, Bahia Papagallo, or in Panama, Punta Mala (Bad Point). Our weather prediction turned out to be accurate and here we see Marj checking the course at the chartplotter.

 

In the closeup we see several AIS targets (the little isosceles triangles) and some rain storms (the fuzzy blobs) . Our ship position is shown by the little teardrop shape. The AIS targets as ships sending out their name, position, and course information—we want to avoid them. We want to avoid the rain storms also. We were lucky to travel through on of the great lightning centers of the world without really being caught out in any thunderstorms. All in all, a true Princess Cruise.

We motored at about 6 knots to conserve fuel and to time our approach to the Panama Canal for dawn. We had decided to take a slip at the Flamenco Marina on the Eastern side of the canal to await our transit date. But first we had to thread our way through the ship traffic on the Pacific side of the canal. The following picture shows the number of AIS targets we could detect. Of course, smaller boats are not required to carry AIS, so we had to watch out for recreational boats and fishing boats as well as true ships.

We did arrive safely at Flamenco Marina around dawn on August 31st, 2011 after having spent three nights at sea. One of the amazing things about Flamenco is the tidal range. You can see in the pictures that the dock pilings tower over the boats to allow the floating docks to go with a tidal flow of over 14 feet. This was a particular challenge to the builders of the Panama Canal since the Caribbean side has tides of less than 3 feet. That means that “Sea Level” is not level from one ocean to the other! One of our biggest surprises was the skyline of Panama City sceen behind Virago.

Prep for the Next Leg

The usual preparations had to go on for the rest of the trip. Luckily, the trip having been so mild there was no significant damage to be repaired. About all we had to do was get fuel from the local Pemex station since the marina was out of fuel for two more days. John, being the newest crew member got the unpleasant duty of decanting the fuel from the jerry cans into the fuel tanks. He also took the obligatory trip down into the lazarette locker to retrieve and stow rarely needed items.