Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

There was no wind for our trip from Bahia Herradura to Las Tortugas. This was in contrast to our previous trip north over the Golfo de Nicoya when we had over 30 knot winds. We therefore motored the entire distance. We had four trolling lines out with a hope to give Jess & Ben a glimpse of our fish catching fun but we had no luck there. We did have a brief visit by three dolphins which was good.

Shortly after arriving we went snorkeling at the nearby rocks as the vast waves of tourists had yet to arrive. Jess bowed out as she had yet to settle her concerns about sharks, etc. I brought my spear gun in the ever present hope of spying lobsters. In the end I opportunisticly caught a couple of small fish which we believed to be edible. The second one I knew to be a grouper and the first would have to wait for identification.

Back on the boat I used the fish identification guide brought down by Ben (among a number of other goodies) to determine the first fish was a gafftopsail pompano (often called just a Paloma, Palometa or Pamponito) and was deemed to be excellent food value. We had a lot of food planned for the BBQ that evening so it was good the fish were only small. I dispatched each in turn and removed their innards. John wrapped them in foil ready for the evenings grilling.

Most of the midday and afternoon was spent reading and resting through the heat. In the late afternoon we left John aboard for a brief visit to the beach next to (and separated from) the tourist beach. There was not a lot to see there but it was good to stretch legs and cool our feet.

I had been having trouble with my ears resulting from a bad wave slap during surfing and aggravated during the morning’s snorkeling. Turned out some of our less palatable 70% (by volume) proof rum from Grenada turned out to be a great solution for driving moisture out of my ear canals and presumably attacking any infection. The relief was near instantaneous. The bottle should be good for several thousand applications more.

Evening was spent having wind, margaritas, a few beers and BBQ. On the grill went chicken, burgers, sausages, and the caught fish accompanied by salad.

We rested our bloated bodies watching the movie “Millions” which is a great feel good movie. Desert followed the movie – banana flambee which included more rum. The dilemma with this dish is how long are we prepared to let the rum burn. The Y chromosone is attracted to both the fire and the rum. I guess the risk of the boat burning down comes into it somewhere.

Getting shore in the morning was far easier than leaving the previous afternoon. We hauled the dinghy up to the tree line and chained it securely to a tree. We didn’t have to wait too long for our bus to Jaco. Our first stop was the beach to make sure we had our places booked with the surf school. With an hour to wait we explored the high street.

Shortly after 11am (they’re always late) Helen, Jess and Ben started their lesson while John and I went out on our rented boards. We were given smaller boards this time which turned out to be a lot more difficult to get up on. Soon the rest of the family were out on the water with the same trainer that I had and from what I could see they all did pretty well. Jess’s turn ended a little sooner when she collided with someone else who was making their way back to the surf. The other lady ended up with a sliced ear. While Jess was ok she was a little shook up and decided to end her day there.

After all the surfing we had a late lunch/early dinner before catching the 4pm bus and heading back to the boat.

We’ve decided to have a little more variety so rather than stay here another day we’ll be off soon to Islas Tortuga for some snorkeling and maybe diving. The day after we’ll make the short hop to Playa Curu where we can hike inland.

Yesterday morning was spent with Helen cleaning and my continued research for things to do while Ben & Jess are with us. Our internet connection was very flaky so this was a little frustrating. We have our Monteverde accommodation sorted out. We’ll be staying in the casa at Cabinas Capulin for the last three nights of their stay. We also have Helen, Ben and Jess’s surfing lesson booked for today. The hire car is well on it’s way to being sorted out. Just need to sort out accommodation in Arenel for one night.

As the afternoon wore on the waves and swell built quite alarmingly. It normally does peak between high and low tides. We received the call from John about an hour and a half before we were expecting them as a result of a good run on the busses from the airport. The sea conditions and surf were the worst we’d seen them here when I went ashore to pick them up. It took two trips. The first to pick up Ben and Jess, the second to pick up their luggage (which we enclosed in tough bin bags) and John (which I didn’t).

Ben and Jess were both tired and hungry from their trip and from the fact they had stayed up the night before. Helen accelerated the curry which we ate early. Sadly the boat motion had a bad effect on Jess who needed to head down early without eating too much. (I’ve just checked on her and she’s much better).

It was good to catch up with how things were going with Ben. His first real, but temporary, job is flying. Having been brought in to do some data entry and beating all expectations he is now being tasked with setting up their complete record keeping including the responsibility of hiring his own temps for later data entry. Not a career in itself but a very good resume builder.

Today (cue the Beach Boys) we’re off surfing.

One thing I’ve neglected to mention in the recent blogs is the increase in night time phosphorescence. Our last night around Isla Jesuita was particularly amazing as the waters around us were absolutely flat. We could see the trails of fish swimming in the water around us. Just the act of spitting in the water would create a primary flash and secondary sparkles around. Taking a pee of the back step was like waving a sparkler around.

Yesterday morning continued to be flat, calm and windless. We kept to our plan of moving Dignity close to the ferry dock and dropping John/Ella off via Dinghy. In hindsight, with the waters so flat it would have been easier just to dinghy them over from where we were anchored. We couldn’t have been sure about that though and we didn’t want to send them off wet following a mile’s dinghy ride through choppy waters.

We said our Au Revoirs to Ella and headed off perhaps to meet again in Australia. The waters were so flat and the air windless it was back to motoring. With no rush to get to our next stop we decided to find a more optimal way to motor the boat. We kept the motor power consumption down to a total of 75A which kept us moving around 4.5 knots versus the 6 to 6.5 we would normally motor at. We learned that at this speed we needed to only run the genset for a third of the time giving us an approximate doubling of fuel efficiency. This fits nicely with our plans to only motor when our speed over ground is below 3 to 3.5 knots on our longer passages. The nice thing about the hybrid system is we can augment the boat speed (say from 2 to 4 knots) by using a small push from the batteries over a long period of time and only run the genset when it’s time to give the batteries a solid charge. A 4 knot speed over ground will ensure we cover around 100nm per day which will get us through the doldrums in a decent time. This is our biggest weather obstacle ahead of us which I want to get through reasonably quickly but without burning too much fuel.

We also calibrated the speed log. The flat conditions were ideal for this. I ignored the built in recalibration the unit has and simply motored a square taking readings of the measured speed through water and the speed over ground from the GPS. Once each reading was taken we would turn to port 90 degrees, wait for the readings to settle down and repeat. The speed through water reading, as expected, remained constant but the GPS readings varied due to local currents. Averaging the SOG and dividing by the measured speed through water gave me the ratio by which I had to compensate the speed log. The speed log was already compensated once before so I had to multiply the two for a new setting. Seemed to work.

We arrived at Bahia Leona in time for lunch. This bay is just north of Bahia Herradura and we wanted to test it out as a possible stop when Ben and Jess are with us. After lunch we went and snorkeled on the reef but were again disappointed by the murkiness of the water. That was enough for us to decide not to come here again. Despite the crowds it looks like our best option is to take Ben and Jess back to Islas Tortugas for the one day we’ll have to spend snorkeling/diving (according to our current plan).

Not having any reason to stay (ie, no access to internet) we again used our new motoring strategy to head around to Bahia Herradura. With the lessons learned from the morning I was able to time the start up of the genset so we would arrive with the drive batteries acceptance down to 60A. We had planned a wash later in the day and when using the genset to provide on board power the driving bank charging is capped at 60A so this would mean we would get good use of the additional generator time.

Our first stop in Bahia Herradura showed many open internet connections but I failed to get traffic on any so we shifted the boat nearer to our location from a week ago. Here we found a good open connection and settled down.

We decided to eat out for the evening. The downside of this was that low tide was at 6pm. That meant we had a long dinghy haul up the muddy beach before we could chain the dinghy to a tree. We had a very pleasant meal ashore. At the same time we learned what we needed about the bus schedule between here and Jaco.

Ben and Jess are on their way here today. Their flight left Newark 4 minutes late (that’s pretty good going really) and is currently due to land in Costa Rica one minute early. John and Ella will be at the airport then. Her flight leaves two hours later so there’s a chance they’ll all meet up. They’ll catch either the 2pm or 3pm bus from San Jose that will drop them off in Herradura 2 hours and 20 minutes later. It’s a short taxi ride to the beach from there. Fingers crossed and they’ll be here in time for Friday night curry.

For a while we hand wind but it was right on the nose so we were back to motoring. We could have tacked our way up wind but seeing as this was Ella’s last day we decided not to take this longer route.

Sadly, this anchorage turned out to have little appeal apart from it being, by far, the calmest we have had – it feels like we’re on a lake, not the sea.

The boat has recently been going a little slower than she should so I pulled the hookah out and went below to scrape the barnacles from the props and the undersides. Each time I go below I get less impressed by the paint job performed by Grenada Marine. Whole chunks have come off now which is very disappointing. The props were covered in about a millimeter of small barnacle which certainly affected performance. Not as bad as the growth back in Cartagena but I’m sure the smooth flow of water over the surface was being disrupted.

I spent a little while checking up on the anchorage in Punterenhas. I should have done this before as I learned the only safe place to leave the boat for any time was tucked up behind the spit at the yacht club which is only accessible at high tide. We could have just got Ella and John ashore in time but we would not have been able to leave in time tomorrow. We threw a few alternate ideas around and eventually settled on the idea of dropping them off at the ferry terminal around the corner. Because our various guides disagreed on the times of the ferrys, John and I dinghied over to get a timetable. We got a little wet in the chop around the corner so our final plan is to bring Dignity around the corner to the terminal and dinghy over the last bit. They’ll have time for breakfast ashore and have the day to themselves which turns out good.

The only other event from yesterday was seeing another sailboat, Happy Hour, who came along side to warn us of the prevalence of theft in the area. We made doubly sure to bring all loose articles inside and to chain the dinghy to the boat. We also left the VHF on an agreed channel in case one boat got into trouble. I also laid out bright dive lights, the fog horn and flares just in case we were boarded. We could use these to disorientate any boarders in advance of taking physical action. In the end this was all unnecessary.

So – this morning we’ll drop off Ella and John before heading down to Bahia Leona which we’ll check out as a possible stop with Ben and Jess. The tide thing at Punterenhas creates restrictions on their stay too. The yacht club is the only place to leave the boat when we go inland. I had hoped to arrive early in the morning but we’ll have to arrive mid afternoon and stay the night. We wanted at least one day in a place where we could swim/snorkel so we’re hoping Bahia Leone is it. It’s worth checking out in advance given that we can. If we don’t get internet there we know we can around the corner in Bahia Herradura which we’ll move to tomorrow morning. We can then sort out all car hires, accomodation, etc. for our planned land trip.