donathon take 2 miami to san blas panama – 15 to 25 aug 2014

backing up a bit before don and i could start our next adventure the anchor windless had to be fixed. fortunately it started acting up only a few days before arriving in miami. once safly on the dock in dinner key marina i began the process. pretty quickly it became obvious the gear box was shot. when i got into the anchor locker i could feel oil leaking out of the lowee seal, not a good sign. i also looked in the manual and it recommended having the gear box serviced every 3 years by an authorized dealer. mine was 8 years old and i dont think i have been anywhere near an authorized dealer.

i managed to get the gear box out of the boat with out major difficulty but then the problems started. i was able to get 3 of the 4 allen bolts holding the gear box together out but the 4th even with multiple allen sockets etc refused. eventually with my dads help we ended up drilling out the stainless bolt. the upside of this was my dad insisted on bying me a new set of titanium drills (thanks dad). after this was complete we where left with a gear on the shaft and a clearly blown worm gear. i remember back in the med with roge’ and daniel on chocobo having the same problem.

after much banging and pulling we finally had to take the gear to a machine shop to get a pushed out with a hydraulic press. this was quite the ordeal as there are no machine shops in coconut grove. this requiered a hair raising drive into miami with my parent driving and navigating. the event reaffirmed my decision to never drive again!

so with all this done i attempted to order a replacement worm gear. i called the factory and was told hey no longer sold gears and i would have to buy a whole new gearbox. $900 later a new one showed up at the marina office the next day. my dad was leaving but frank arrived to take his place on the rebuild. of course we had to install and remove the shaft twice which resulted in much hammering and cursing.

eventually we got the parts back in and everything together and surprise surprise it worked. we used the requierment to test the anchor as an opportunity to do a test sail so we set out for a relaxing motor and sail down the keys. the day was quite fun but went a bit sideways in the end as we stayed out too long and took the wrong channel back into the marina (twice). this was made more exciting as frank had a 630 am flight out the next day, hopefully eventually frank will talk to me again.

so fast forward to the donathon event. i had palapa pretty much ready to go and was finishing up some last minute errends when don finally arrived at 5pm. we made a quick trip to west marine for some bimini parts and then found a pigly wiggly for provisioning. we should have taken a photo of the two carts piled high but in 30 minutes we managed to spend 400 dollars on beer, raman, mac and cheese eggs, totrillas, cheese and a few condiments and of course limes and cabage and bacon.

we got back to palapa and loaded up and by 730 we had dropped the car off and where at our favorite bar having crab cake burger and beer. the next morning i got us up at dawn filled the tanks sent final email and checked us out. we had managed to spend 15 days on the dock to the tune of 130$ per day, yikes! and this was the cheep marina.

we had just enough water to motor over to the fuel dock where we fuled up and began our trip down to key west. it was a pretty boring 125 nm motor down the coast, inside the outer reef but outside the keys. of course there where crab pots all over the chanel so the night part was fun.

we stopped in key west to check it out fix the sail and top of on fuel. it took me 2 hours in the hot sun to stitch the leach line of the jib but once down i was much happier and we headed to shore to checkout the town. it was a bit touristy but after a bit of work don and i found a cool local bar with live music and 2 for 1 r&c’s how can you go wrong. we bought a hawain sling so seth would be able to get us lobster. don bought us a final tie dinner and we where back to palapa before sunset.

we had another early start and again refuled not sure how much motoring we would have to do. it was great to get off shore and our first step was to cross the gulf stream. this was again pretty painless without to much adverse current. fortunatly we had downloaded a current gulf stream forcast so we where able to cross and get into the eddies north of cuba.

once across the stream we where able to get the sails up in a beutiful wing on wing configuration and with a knot or two from the gulf stream eddies we where blasting along.

the next day morngin we rounded the west end of cuba close hauled. originally i was going to stay off cuba 10 nm or so but in the end we got as close as we could to get better protection from the waves and headwinds.

we had a day of motoring into the wind huging the south coast of cuba and then where able to do a beutiful reach down to the cayman islands. it was interesting that we saw no lights on the part of cuba we where on and no crab pots or fishing boats or anything. i guess all the fishermen would leave.

our meals where pretty basic as we used the new hot pot don got for everything from hard boiled eggs to ramen. i also had some left over sausages that i turned into sausage gyros with the sausage sliced and heated in the toaster oven. after a few days we also got into our happy hour routine as well just with the opposite proportions of r&c.

in any case it was an amazing sail i have not had such nice sialing to wind since i used to go to catalna everyweekend. we where going so fast we got into grand cayman at 4am. i found a spot on the chart labled anchorage and after navigating around a few other boats with the moon to guide us we dropped the hook and went to bed.

it would turn out we would managed to violate pretty much every rule the caymans had. it started in the mornign just after i finished hosing down the boat the customs guys came by. the frowned and asked if i had called in to “port control” when i came in. no i replied. you always have to do that in every country he replied. ok my bad i said. his next coment was do you know you are anchored on coral in a national park. no, my bad again i said (aparently the whole port is a national park who would have guesed. i offered to move to a mooring as we could now see some. no he said, wait right here this is a very serious offence and we need to go get someone.

great i thought, an hour later he came back with dude with a snorkal who began taking picktures of our coral desicration. he eventually aprochaed the boat he again admonished me for anchring in the first place nd reported that amazingly our chain was wraped among many coral heads but as of yet we had not done any serious damage. so for the next 20 minutes he swam in front of the boat with his mask directing us where to drive while don pulled up the anchor.

we followed the customs boat into the dock and after getting tied up the customs dude aproached and said “where is your q flag”. sorry my bad i said again was going to put that up when the coral dude showed up. that is a serous office with a steep fine he replied but i will just give you a verbal warning. great i thought.

next he asked if we had any weaopons on board, i had written no on the sheet, he pressed not even any spear guns or anything. i said we have a brand new hawain sling. thats a weapon he said we will have to hold that for you. great i produced the sling and headed to the office.

finally we where done and he said go ahead and raise your courtosy flag now, you do have one, of course no was the answer to he pointed me at the musium shop across the road and after a bit of jaywalking and 30$ i was back on palapa. don reported he had inpeacted the vessel and asked about what we had to fix. don pointed him at the white board and that was enough.

of course by now i had an email from kirk recomending coming south asap to take advantge of favorable winds. i confirmed with the grib i had downlaoded and we proceeded to move over and take on 70 gallongs of duty free fuel (after i repeated the process and cheked out.

we had time for a quick viist to the jimmy buffet margarity ville filled with cruise ship tourists and then we headed back to customs to retrieve our hawain sling and then where escourted to the dingy by the customs dude to make sure we did not run off somewhere and wreck mayhem or havoc with our new toy.

by the time we where back on palapa and got the dingy on board and under way it was 4pm. we had been there for exactly 12 hours and where exahausted.

the good news was we continued to have great weather sailing between close hauled and beam reach until the wind finally dropped off and we had to fire up the motor.

the motoring gave us some time to work on projects. i fixed the fwd cabin shade (again). with dons help i we finally found the forward hatch leak. it turned out to be a rivit holding the hinge to the frame. aparently these are some sort of water proof rivits complete with o rings but one of the 6 had failed after 7 years and water would pour in when ever we got heavy rain or a wave. we filled it with silicone and are looking fwd to the next rain.

we even had time to wash the boat again and do some stainless. don still gets a bit stir crazy talking about wanting to get to shore and go to a bar. i keep pointing out weather we are under way or on anchor we would do the same thing. relax work on projects, eat have happy hour and do it all again. i am only getting 4 hours of sleep each night from midnight to 4 am so other than that don can sleep. and yes we are on roger/palapa time when the sun is over head at noon and it rises at 615 and sets at 7pm.

the last two (now 3) days we have also had dolphins on the bow, a lot, i got some great video the second day after i figure out how to work the new iphone interface! this really has been one of the best sails ever with no miserable days and lots of different sail configurations makes me really appreciate the sailing part of cruising!

i spoke to kirk the other day on the ssb when we where 350nm out so that seems to work. we still have a long list of fix its when we arrive including bleeding the hydraulic autopilot, going up the mast to replace the windex and fix the camara. not to mention the bimini reinforcement project, installing a y valve for the aft head, rewiring the gnd on the bat desluinator, replacing the genset water pump seal… should keep us busy!

i also discovered we dont have ramarine charts for panama (have them on mac) so will need to get my chart chip back from larry.

tomorrow we should arrive around noon, so we are making ice and stocking the fridge with beer in anticipation of a palapa salsa reunion party, even did laundry! i have not seen kirk since thailand prob 4 years ago. will be fun to catch up and then we do it all again when seth fly’s in next week.

cheers
roger