La Ceiba: Progress Update

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

015-47.100 N
086-45.540 W

Ahoy from the crew of the BlueJacket!

We hope that this new year has been treating everyone well. We've been in Honduras for two weeks and I realized that I needed to provide an update on how we're doing. We made it down here with our 4 bags packed to the gills with 240 lbs of boat stuff. Unlike Belize, Customs just waved us through. That was a relief! BlueJacket looked good from the outside, but we found that we had a mold/mildew problem on the inside. I had shipped a marine dehumidifier down here in June, but we think that the shore power cord kept getting unplugged, so that didn't do much good. As a result we spent four days wiping down every surface of the boat, using the carpet cleaner on fabric items and having everything washed. That was a royal pain, but the boat is spotless!

We brought down a lot of new equipment that needed to be installed. I think that our favorite is a Sirius satellite radio. It's great having English radio stations to listen to, being able to listen to NPR, get the news, as well as having US music. The marina has wireless Internet so I've been downloading the podcast of the NBC nightly news so that we can keep up with what's going on in the world.

Another great product that we've been using a lot is Skype. Skype provides free PC to PC phone calls anywhere in the world. All that you need is a microphone and speakers. We have a video camera and can even send video. It's not perfect, but for the cost, it's great! If you want to install it, go to www.skype.com and download the free software. Pick a user name and you're off and running. My user name is geoffschultz if you want to add us to your contact list. Just let us know what yours is.

The dinghy would have to go onto the list of unexpected problems. When we got down here I looked at it and hoped that it lasted another year. Well, one morning we were down below discussing the work items for the day when we heard a loud bang. We raced above and saw the dinghy with the motor starting to sink. I grabbed the motor and kept it out of the water while we secured it to the boat. The starboard (right) tube had ruptured. I was just glad that we weren't out on a dive ball potentially miles from shore where we could have lost both the dingy and the motor and have placed us in a difficult position. This was the dinghy that we bought from the jeweler on Guanaja for $200 three years ago when ours was stolen. I have no idea how old it was, but it lived its useful life. I've ordered a new dinghy which should have already arrived on a container.

Speaking of orders and containers...every year I have BlueJacket's bottom repainted. On December 9th I had the La Ceiba Shipyard order 4 gallons of bottom paint. On the 15th I wire transferred the money for it and I had subsequent e-mails regarding the order's progress. When we got here I started checking on where the paint was. After a couple of run-arounds it became clear that the paint hadn't been ordered. Finally they got it ordered, but the vendor (Port Supply) didn't ship the HAZMAT documents with it, so the shipping company wouldn't load it onto the container. Now it won't ship until this Thursday and we probably won't see it until the middle of next week. To say that I'm not happy is an understatement.

I also shipped down a new main sail and I've spent the past few days transferring the hardware that attaches the sail to the mast from the old sail to the new sail. In concept this was an easy task, but the sail maker didn't include some webbing the we needed (I made due with some oversized webbing that we had on board) and some of the hardware on the new sail is slightly different, so I need to have some parts fabricated. It's never easy...

Sue has been busy working on sewing projects. The sail cover for the main is 5+ years old and the sub has just done a number on it. Sue just finished up some major repairs (on top of the past repairs) and it will get replaced this summer. Believe me, sewing a piece of canvas that's 25' x 10' is not an easy task. Next she gets to work on the bimini...Oh yeah!

Our project list is getting shorter and shorter and we'll probably do some in-land exploring while we wait for the paint. In reality this isn't all that bad as January typically hasn't been a month that you want to be sailing in. Cold fronts come through every 3-4 days and there are lots of associated squalls and high winds. The weather at the marina has been delightful. It's been in the upper 70s during the day and upper 60s at night. We've had a lot of rain, but also some spectacular days. It certainly makes the transition from the New England winter much easier.

I guess that's it from here. We hope that everyone is well. Keep in touch!

-- Geoff & Sue

Log ID: 797