Latest Adventures on Merlin

June 2X, 2023: Yup, I haven’t updated this in a month. We are back in Texas for a couple of months. Merlin is safe and sound in Bocas Marina, and the staff there is looking after her/him (jeez – our boat has pronoun issues?). We will be back, probably in early September. Bocas is fabulous. Here are some pics.

In August, we are going to do the unthinkable. We are getting on a cruise ship. Hold on, hold on. Here’s the plan: Jan’s brother, sister-in-law, nephew and his family are all in Alaska. Her brother and wife retired there a few years ago. They chose Alaska because they were moving from Southern California, and wanted a place a bit… Well, you know. As well, their only child, Jan’s nephew is an Alaska State Trooper. They have 2 boys, one just arrived a couple of days ago. So, we are going to visit. Here’s the problem. Tickets to Anchorage were $1300 each. So, we are flying to Seattle (Jan has a Companion Pass on Southwest), hopping over to Vancouver, and getting onboard a Norwegian cruise ship to Anchorage. We will spend 9 days there, then hop on Royal Caribbean for the reverse trip. Crazy? Yeah. We will start a “Norwegian vs Royal Caribbean” blog here in a bit.

Monday May 22, 2023: Quick update, arrived a few hours ago to Bocas del Toro, Panama. Lovely place. Got thru Customs and Immigration, back to the boat, put Merlin into a slip, headed out to a floating bar for someone’s birthday, that we just met. Hooked up with Ken and Carrie Sharp, they are being so sweet as to dinghy us over.
Passage was trying. I’ll elaborate later. But delighted we are here. This place is sooooooo inviting. 3rd world is h, but inviting. Until later.

Friday May 19, 2023. Quick update. Garmin has us going north. Clearly, from the track, we are not. We are just west of Southwest Cay, on Serrano Bank. Headed south. Partly cloudy skies, winds 12-15 knots, seas 5-6 feet. Lumpy.

Tuesday May 16, 2023. WHOA!!! It’s been a while. We’ve been enjoying Grand Cayman with Rick and Diana, and now it’s time to move on. We were nudged a bit by our $928 electric bill in the marina. Is AC really worth it? Jan says yes…. Diana flew home yesterday, and we leave in the morning for Panama. Predict Wind says 4 days, so we are going to plan for 5. Weather looks good. For those following us, we are planning a route that will take us slightly SSE, towards Beacon Cay, on the Sarranilla Bank. Then to Bocas del Toro. This is to try and keep the “fishermen” well to the west. It also puts us into the shipping lanes. We are more comfortable dodging super tankers than “fishermen”. It’s likely that during some of this passage, we will “go dark”, with no AIS, and no masthead running lights. Just so you know. We WILL try and be good about Garmin InReach, and make sure it’s working.
Elon has finally figured out that we are using his “RV” product in the middle of the ocean. So they charge us $2/GB when we are out of sight of land. Damn. Still, feel free to text, email, or call!
Here’s our route:

Sunday April 30, 2023. Just hanging around on Grand Cayman, doing boat projects, enjoying the place. Got heat exchanger, turbo charger and exhaust elbow back on the engine. This included drilling out a broken bolt on the heat exchanger. Oh boy! Pulled our forward AC unit that sat on a failing plywood floor, replaced it with a better floor, rerouted the condensation drain. Hopefully this will fix a problem that has been plaguing us since we bought the boat. We will also order and then install a Venturi suction drain for it when we get back to the US to bring it down. It will actually drain the condensate using the seawater cooling lines. Better than draining into the bilge. Still have a bolt to finish drilling out on our prop shaft coupler, cleaning of condensation lines on the aft AC, fridge and freezer to do, along with a VHF antenna replacement 70 feet up the mast.

We have friends, Rick and Diana, joining us in a bit over a week. Rick has offered to make the leg to Panama with us. Depending on weather and stops, it’s 4-5 days. All for now.

Tuesday April 18, 2023. Holy carp, it’s been a week. We are enjoying Grand Caymam, and catching up on some “deferred maintenance “ on the boat. We rented a car for 3 days, did some shopping, bought some materials for a couple of projects, toured the island, and got some snorkeling in.

On Friday, we got a tour of the Cayman Department of Environmental Health. We met Tim, the Deputy Director, at the marina. He and Bill hit it off right away, discussing “marine biology”, and some of the projects and problems that the Caymans (and most of the Caribbean) are dealing with. Tim has a pet project he’s starting, where they are inducing local stony coral into reproduction four times a year (normally they reproduce 2 times per year). They are also working on developing more disease resistant varieties of their encrusting SPS (small polyp stony) corals. They have lost most of their branching “stick” corals, Acropolis species such as stag horn and elk horn. Acros are very fast growing corals (they will double every 30-45 days, under optimal conditions), but they are often the first to die off when conditions deteriorate. Anyway, it’s been cool to see what they are up to.

The last photo defines “cruising” as “boat repairs in exotic places”. In this case, in order to get to the heat exchanger (it uses seawater to cool a “radiator” that has fresh water and coolant in it), one must first remove the turbocharger. I get it. Yanmar makes great reliable engines. But in order to make them fit into tiny places, they are insanely difficult to work on, with zero clearance to get at nuts and bolts. Bilge-loss (parts dropped into the bottom of the boat) is huge. And in the case of the turbo, there is a special order to things. Very difficult to remove, but even harder to put back in.

Monday April 10, 2023. Arrived George Town, Grand Cayman this morning. Easy trip, no wind, so we motored. Cleared customs and immigration, paid a $90 fee because today is a holiday, and headed to George Town Yacht Club, on the other (sound) side of the island. Had a nice swim in the pool. A quick shower, then off to dinner.

HAPPY EASTER! It’s a beautiful day here, just a few miles south of Cuba, we are halfway to Grand Cayman. Unlike our Gulf crossing, the weather and seas have been great. A little wind might help too, as this has been an “Iron Genoa” passage, by motor. Fortunately most sailboats are very efficient thru the water. We caught a very nice 1-2 knot eddy current last night that helped us along. Right now we are seeing arrival sometime in the middle

of the day on Monday. Knock on wood. With some luck, Customs and Immigration will let us clear in at the marina. Coming from Mexico, that might not happen though. Here’s a pick of the Caribbean Sea at its quietist.

Saturday April 8, 2023. Left this morning about 9:20. Great weather, seas a little lumpy, but seem to be settling down. 290 miles to go.

Good Friday, April 7 2023. We are leaving Isla Mujeres in the morning. Still one of our favorite places, and we will surely be back regularly. But holy crap, note to self, don’t come here or anywhere else in Mexico during Holy Week!

We are headed to Grand Cayman, weather looks good, mostly flat seas. Just the 2 of us, as Patrick needed to get home. He SAID he had a good time and wasn’t happy to leave. But…. Should take us 2-1/2 to 3 days. About 350 miles total. If we drop off the face of the earth again, someone please call or text us! Our Garmin InReach has a habit of shutting off on its own. We have had internet service the whole time. Phone calls too. Here’s our route. Well, sort of. We will be a bit north of that, to take advantage of a current eddy. An arc towards Cuba. But not Cuba. We aren’t allowed to go there.

Saturday April 1. Sorry for the late update. We hit the reef and sank coming into Isla Mujeres. April Fools!

We arrived yesterday morning about 8 am, after taking our time the night before, so we could cross the bar north of IM during daylight. Turns out it was no big deal, at all. Had 15 feet of water (we draw 6+). Arrived into Enrique’s Marina aka (Isla Mujeres Yacht Club) and parked on the T head at the end of the pier. Clearing in is a bureaucratic process. Thankfully we elected to let Dorita do it for us. Well spent $150. It was well after 3 before we were set free, so we went up to the bar and had the first beers since before we left. They tasted fantastic!
Because we are “in town”, we got a first hand view of the “invasion” that takes place every day in IM. The tourists coming from Cancun on board 40-60’ catamarans. Holy crap! Thousands of them!
We cleaned up, then went to Jax for obligatory martinis, then to Hildago Street where we found a fabulous sushi and Asian restaurant, Asian Caribe. Then to bed early, since none of us had had a lot of sleep. All for now.

Wednesday 5pm. 170 miles to go. Weather looks pretty good. Sorry for the quick cut and paste job. I’m on watch.