FLEET UPDATE 2018-03-04

1) TAPPAN ZEE – Oaxaca City

Enjoying Oaxaca City capital of Oaxaca Mexico. We decided to leave Hualtulco for the city this week and Annie managed to find a 12 seat Cessna that is a 35 minute direct flight. Home of Mole, mescal and spicy grasshoppers Oaxaca has something for every taste. Plane ride is an extra bonus. On schedule for El Salvador later in March.

Plane
Julie
John

Tom & Annie


2) VOLANTE III – El Salvador – Looking for crew
With my arrival in El Salvador, I will be loosing my crew member. So I am currently looking for a new crew member. At the end of this crewing season, I am planning to take my boat through the Panama Canal. Currently, I am about 600 miles from the Panama Canal as the crow flys. Of course, it is a little longer by boat since boats don’t do the land crossing thing very well. You must be an experienced sailor capable of doing night crossings by yourself. If you are interested you can contact me at tonykubis@aol.com

Bar
Tony

Tony


3) CROSSROADS – Panama
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=8.88011,-79.41095&ll=8.88011,-79.41095&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1
  We just left Panama City and are anchored out at the Las Perlas Islands. On our way out we passed by Julia Max going the other way and chatted with them on the radio. We were in Panama City for almost a week and spent two days in La Playita Marina. We used an agent for check-in and Canal paperwork and we have now been measured and inspected. We have arranged passage through the Canal for March 21. Panama City is a big busy City loaded with skyscrapers and shopping malls. You New Yorkers should feel right at home! You can get most anything you want there. I managed to get two 8D size AGM batteries for a not too outrageous price! We got local SIM cards for our phones for Voice and data that are working great! We spent 1/2 a day in the gigantic Alderbrook Mall and even went to see a movie!


Stan
Diane

Stan & Diane




4) COCONUTZ Restaurant and Brewery- PLAYAS Del Coco, Costa Rica
Panama Posse, 12 boats, get together celebrating the ebbing of the Papagayos. 
We played Captain Ron on the big screen as we shared our wind
stories, ripped sails and other broken parts getting into Costa Rica.

Burgee

Special thanks to Pete, owner of Coconutz Restaurant, for hosting us in the upstairs lounge.  We enjoyed the smoked bar-b-que, fish
burgers, great fries, $2.00 drinks and great customer service.  Be sure to stop there for a good time, ask for Pete, and look for our burgee
hanging at at the bar.

part of
      the Panama Posse

RESPITE – SEA GLASS – LIQUID – DANIKA – HALCYON – MYLA – AMANTE – INTERLUDE – DAD’S DREAM – CARINTHIA – ANILA – EASY

Diesel

“Diesels love oil like a sailor loves rum”


5) OCTOPUS GARDEN – Mexico -Chiapas

Hi from Puerto Chiapas! I thought I’d share a little about the Tehuantepec crossing. We are a heavy, slow boat. Overall we average 4 knots. Sometimes we might hit 7. The boat loves big winds and big seas.

It’s late in the season now the windows are wider and the weather calmer. We needed a 4 day window. Having 4 days of light south wind was great!

We had south winds for the whole window making the “hug the beach” strategy irrelevant as it was a lee shore. We stayed 5 to 6 miles off shore. We broad reached almost the entire trip only upwind the penultimate day.

It can go from a calm 5 knots to 20+ in a minute then right back down to 5. Sometimes I wanted to get up and reef but before I did all the whitecaps were gone. Be prepared for gusty conditions and be prepared to ease the main. Most times a good ease and roll up a little jib for 10 minutes was all that was needed.

We had strong contrary currents the entire way. Seemed to be weaker really close to shore in shallow water. Make sure you have plenty of fuel and plan on slower speeds than normal.

The pattern we saw was: motor in the morning about 6 am to 11. The afternoon winds allowed pure sailing until about sunset. It glassed off every evening and we motored until about 11 pm. Then it got windy again for pure sailing all night.

There were big gusts and big winds each night around 3 to 4 am. Be prepared. Never too much, we enjoyed the wake up call.

Salina Cruz is a refinery town very stinky and lighted by fire plumes, glad to have that downwind!

After Salina Cruz we saw nothing – no boats no fisherman – until we were almost to Tapachula. Also no phone signal. A very lonely stretch.

Our trip took 75 hours. We motored once for 15 hours, once for 5 hours and on the last night and day it was flat calm and we motored for 19 hours. That’s 39 hours motoring, 36 pure sail. The pure sail was great, best winds we had since La Paz. From Double reefed main, rolled up some jib and full mizzen to conditions where I would have set the spinnaker if I had crew. We really enjoyed the sailing, nothing broke, but we were heeled very far at times and the fridge door wouldn’t stay closed

The real phone number that works for Marina Chiapas is: 962 111 8291

There’s plenty of room here. $0.80/ft per day weekly rate, 0.50/ft monthly rate. It’s really nice, quiet and peaceful

Arriving here is like motoring up a river.

Overall I was very worried about the passage but it was mostly boring- we watched movies, read books, listened to audio books, played music and sang and danced. Susy once cooked a fantastic dinner!

We need to improve cockpit entertainment systems for future long passages!

Ji,
Susy

Jim & Susy



6) Welcome to the (counter) Panama Posse
SV SILHOUETTE  – Steve & Liana 

SV ARGONAUTA   – David & Marylin

Panama
      Posse

7) Panama Posse Net Frequency

New net times are 13:00 UTC (currently 7:00 AM local time)
Calls on 8297 (8B) and fallback to 4417 (4C) USB.
We need to fill a few slots please confirm if you can help – propagation has been challenging.

Monday – 
Tuesday  – ANNAPURNA   – Confirmed
Wednesday – EASY – Confirmed
Thursday – CARINTHIA – Confirmed
Friday – 
Saturday – 
Sunday –


8) HALCYON – Costa Rica

The Eastern anchorage at Murcialago Islands in CR. You can see the puffs coming across the water towards the boat, when its really blowing Id recommend moving the boat as close into the shallow bay to avoid the fetch from open water towards Halcyon’s nose. The snorkeling is epic in this bay with a lot of larger predatory fish lurking about and loads of turtles and rays. We saw 2 types of turtles, 2 types of rays, wahoo, dorado, a bull shark, big jacks, a 4ft morray eel a small reef shark and all of the smaller fish you are accustomed to seeing. Be aware the during tide swings the current out in the middle and going thru the cut is significant but easy to navigate if you know its there and plan your trajectory accordingly.

ANCHORAGE @ 10°51.46812′ N, 85° 54.46801′ W  Depth is a puckering 10 ft.

We ended up stern anchoring with our stern pointed towards the beach.

At Anchor
John
Becca

John & Becca




9) WAPONI WOO

.. arrived in Huatulco last night around 11:30. I have arranged for our arrival at Marina Chahué in advance and was greeted by two reserve police officers who showed us to a slip. I expect we will be moved today to another slip. It looks like there is a crossing window late Sunday or Monday morning. If the forecasts hold out, we will most likely take it.

Caroline
Ryan

 Caroline & Ryan
10) PINEAPPLE

Recommendation for Huatulco: Pineapple and Wildest Dreams loved our day tour/trip with Enrique (enriquepinachotours@gmail.com), who I found on TripAdvisor. We visited 2 beautiful waterfalls and stopped for an awesome lunch at Finca La Gloria (and a couple surprise stops along the way). He timed the waterfall stops so we had them mostly to ourselves, was very knowledgeable, and took nice photos for us on his GoPro. Private tour. Price based on the size of the group. We paid $1000 pesos per person and we all felt it was a great value.

Huatulco
Michelle
John

Michelle & John


11) RESPITE – Costa Rica
Posse fleet, thought I would pass along a name and a recommendation for Alejandro Calvo he is a marine electrician and he speaks very good English. Dan at Papago marina recommended him also.
Here is his contact information
Cell +506-8822-4156
Email acalvow@yahoo.com

Janet
Chris

Janet & Chris





12) AVANT- Mexico 
Update on Marina Chiapas. Due to resurfacing of some areas in the yard, the access to the long store work and dry storage yard will be cut off for a week to ten days starting Monday March 5th. It will still be possible to get a lift and do maintenance or paint the bottom of one or two boats at a time during this period (this can be done near the water without access to the yard).

Rob
Debra

Rob & Debra13) ANNAPURNA – San Juan del Sur – Nicaragua


We caught a taxi to spare Debbie from having to walk (in a lot of pain). We lucked onto Hector Luis Larios Bonilla. He speaks English and is very helpful. He took us to the clinic in Riva, provided translator services, took us to a nice restaurant and a grocery store.
Call him if you want a ride. 505 85502592

We found out Debbie has a kidney stone. Ouch!

Hector

Annapurna made it to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua in time to see the moon pop up.

Debbie would like to see a doctor regarding her fall last week – either here or Liberia.
Are there doctors available? Info and recommendations are much appreciated.

SJDS
Rob
Debbie

Robert & Debbie


14) COLMENA – Mexico

Colmena is on the hard in Ixtapa getting bottom paint and some work done.
I should be heading south from Zihuantanejo in a week…mas o menos. Fashionably late.

on the
      hard
Kevin

Kevin
15) HALCYON – PICTURES of the week from Costa Rica

Halcyon
Halcyon
Halcyon
Halcyon

KEEP EM COMING


Panam
      Posse