There’s a certain amount of Déjà Vu as I begin by saying that my plan for 2025 is to sail across the Pacific Ocean, and the first step is to leave Rio Dulce to sail south to Panama.
The feature image above is the bright lights of the bridge over the Rio Dulce taken from the Happy Iguana marina where I spent some happy days in the 2024 hurricane season.
The weather has been awful…rain, rain and more rain. So much that I’ve filled both water tanks and various containers with rainwater, which is really the only positive I can take!
As I now have a boat survey report I can charge on in my quest to get insurance for the boat for 2025. Sadly, the Ocean Cruising Club (which I recently resigned my membership) and the UK marine insurance market are very narrow minded in their approach to any cruising plans outside Europe and the North Atlantic. My most recent insurance provider, Topsail, has been nothing more than dishonest and deceptive. So my simple priority is to resolve this conundrum…can I organise fully comprehensive, or third-party liability or just continue the adventure into the Pacific without insurance? Anyway, I have a friend flying out from the UK to join me sailing in 2025, and one way or another we’re off on an adventure!
Last night I went to Movie Night here in Mar Marine Yacht Club to watch American Fiction, which was a very enjoyable movie based on the book, Erasure by Percival Everett who won the US National Book Award for his 2024 book, James, a rewriting of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which I read in 2020. I shall now add James to my 2025 reading list.
Today is 10th January, it’s sunny and warm, and just the right circumstances to remember my dad, Peter who was born on this day in 1922.
UK friend, Diane, has joined me on the Wildbeast to sail none, some or all of 2025. In the meantime, I am waiting for some work to be completed and insurance to be agreed, and Diane is pampering her boat which is in a local boatyard and up for sale….but just one week later she has decided to leave the Wildbeast! I suspected as much as soon as I knew she’d booked a return flight ticket from the UK.
The truth comes out in the end!
It’s now early February, and Brooksy Point have provided full insurance with Miami based, Edward William. Since the end of December I’ve been trying to get a quotation to remove the teak decking to replace with gel coat or deck paint. The teak is very old and I was planning to replace it with a synthetic teak once I’d crossed the Pacific, but, time wise, there was an opportunity to complete the work here in Rio Dulce. But alas, it has taken weeks to not even have a sensible, decent quotation! So I have decided to leave Rio Dulce as soon as possible! I will head down to my happy place, Cayo Quemado to complete a job on the roller furler and, if the weather and high water times are suitable, I will leave Guatemala.
In Cayo Quemado I have completed the furler modification, reconnected the radar and updated the Raymarine Operating System. I have tested the Iridium Go satellite communications system and completed the Sailclear application to enter Belize. Tomorrow, I will take a lancha to Livingston to complete the Customs & Immigration clearance process to leave Guatemala. Over the weekend I will sail out of Guatemala to head up to Placencia, Belize.
The photograph above is a sunset taken in my happy place, Cayo Quemado.
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