The Saga Begins.

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Hey All,

I arrived very late last night in Managua, but didn't want to take a cab in the dark, so I checked into a local hotel for the night. Getting through customs and immigrations took no time at all. While on line I started talking with an older women next to me. I thought she looked like someone visiting from the bay area; actually, I thought she looked like someone you might see riding on the back of a motorcycle as part of Dykes on Bikes. I think I might have been wrong; she was a nun and worked for an evangelical charity.

She pointed me towards a shuttle that would take me to "The Mercedes", a part of the Best Western Chain of hotels where I could spend the night. On the way over I met Wim, a very nice man from the Netherlands, who was working for an NGO doing charity work in Nicaragua. When I got to the hotel, there were two people in line in front of me. Both of them were carrying very large, well thumbed bibles. The man behind me was chatting on the phone about setting up a prayer meeting. I may be the only unbeliever in the entire country. They put me in room 666, but I'm sure that is just a coincidence.

So, no trip is complete without at least one horrible cab story. This leg of our journey started with the front desk person telling me it would cost $150.00 for the taxi to drive me to the marina. "Okay", please ask the driver to come here", I say, knowing already how this is going to go. He doesn't speak English. "Explain to him that I will pay only $150.00 and nothing else, and he must take me directly to the marina." I tell the clerk. They chat in Spanish for a few minutes.

She then tells me that he doesn't know the way to the marina, do I have a map. I show him the stuff I got off the marina's website. He says he doesn't know how to get there, but that the roads are impassible. It is amazing that he can both not know how to get there, and also know about the road conditions getting there, but this kind of Zen knowledge is part of the Cabbie From Hell job qualification. He tells me he can only go as far as Chinandega, the closest major town, but will only charge me $100.00. I explain that that doesn't help me at all, I need to get to the marina. The desk clerk asks for the number to call the marina, so I begin to look it up, but the power fails, and all their internet connections drop. I've got a map off the marina website which is almost as useful as the Microsoft Help Desk. I realize that the webpages I have saved off don't have the local marina number, and my cell phone doesn't work in Nicaragua yet so I can't call Ann to ask her for this info, and "telephone information" is a new concept in Nicaragua.

Realizing that I'm just wasting time waiting around for the power to come back, I decide to get in the cab and head to Chinandega, but I'm not feeling comfortable about the situation. As we are driving past another hotel I see a huge sign for car rentals, I realize that cab rides for the crew are going to add up, and I could just as easily rent a car. I tell the cab driver to let me off at the next hotel we come to, and I inquire about rentals. The price is $10 a day for the car, and $14 a day for the minimum insurance. That is still cheaper than what it is going to cost me, AnnMarie, and Robinson in cab fares, plus I'll have the ability to go into town when I want. I rent a car and head off into the jungles of Managua.

Now, most Americans will find this hard to believe, but there are no maps for sale in Managua, or parts near by. The reason for this is that there are no street names in Managua, or in parts near by. The idea being that if you don't already know your way around here, you are probably a foreign spy. I thought it was odd that the directions listed on the marina web site didn't mention street names, and included comments like "turn right when you see the rock shaped like a bear", but it didn't occur to me that I'd be navigating my way there. Had I known I would have brought my compass and GPS/Chartplotter along. I stopped about twelve times along the way, each time asking for directions.

Nicaraguans don't like giving simple directions, probably because it takes a lot of Spanish words to say "turn left after you've gone past Jose Gomez's barn that fell down". The fact that I speak eight words of Spanish which don't include "right", "left" or "road" didn't help. Basically, at each fork or intersection, I'd stop, find the most anal retentive looking man I could, and ask him to draw a map. Fully fifty percent of the maps were wrong. I'm sure that if given enough time, I will be able to find my way back to the airport, but I think I may need to hire a guide for the first trip. It is really quite impressive. Even CalTrans could hold their head up high compared to this place.

On the way to the marina I was stopped by police. At least I thought they were police. They were wearing police uniforms, and had guns. They were pointing at my car and directing me over to the side of the road, so I pulled over. There were two officers, and it turned out they wanted a ride up the road. They were not police, but guards at the local factory, and were on their way home. Hitchhiking while fully armed and in uniform is a new one for me. None the less, I spent a few tense moments realizing this, then another ten minutes wondering if I'd just made a really stupid mistake picking them up. They turned out to be very nice folks, we tried our best to communicate, and I even learned the word for "farm", which is all we saw as we drove along, but I've since forgotten it.

Eventually I found my way toward the marina grounds. At about this time the paved roads became gravel roads, and gradually the gravel roads became dirt roads, and then ruts, and then ruts filled with water, and then parts that were just water. At some point along the way I realized I'd made a horrible mistake in not renting a 4x4, preferably a truck. Or maybe a HumVee, if not a tank. The ground was saturated, and I found myself having to do some pretty tricky driving to get past some bad spots. On top of that, it was starting to get dark and I really didn't want to get stuck out in these parts at night. About a mile from the marina I encountered a really bad patch of muck, and pushed the poor little rental car to its limits getting it through. By the time I was driving down the marina driveway my vehicle looked like I'd just finished a Baja cross country race.

As I drove up the driveway I encountered Ron & Diane on bicycles coming the other way. Ron had been watching my boat for me while I was away, and I was bringing down some boat parts for him from the states, so it was a delightful accident to bump into them just as I arrived. Ron is a bit of a character; he is tall and lanky and always making jokes with everyone. He is the kind of guy that somehow knows everyone by name, and is able to befriend even the most reluctant natives. He and his wife Diane have been teaching English to many of the locals, and they have come to recognize his goofy antics and also make fun of him. We hit it off immediately, and have been teasing each other ever since. Its fun to watch him interact with Diane, who just shakes her head at his jests and rolls her eyes as if to say "Can you believe this guy?" They are a very cute couple.

They were bicycling along the road with another cruising couple, Tom & Ann, and were all on their way to dinner at a near by restaurant. We ate at a palm covered palapa overlooking the ocean. The hilltop sloped down to a beautiful beach with what, as I'm told by the local surfing tourist, Brad, is an amazing left break with two hundred yards of run that tubes most of the way. At least, I think that was what he said. I don't speak Surfer any better than I speak Spanish. I just pretended I understood and nodded dumbly. He had brought his guitar, I borrowed one from the restaurant and we sat and jammed after dinner. Eventually we hiked back to the car and I drove into the marina parking lot, glad to have managed to get this far.

So, I've made it back to the boat, which is still floating and doesn't seem much the worse for wear. The battery was dead when I got here, but that was because one of the marina workers decided to shut off the power to my boat but didn't turn it back on. When ever there are serious blackouts and the marina needs to use their own generators, they walk along the docks shutting off everyone's boat that isn't occupied. This is something they've started doing and it really is the only problem I've had with the marina so far. Power is such a rare commodity here that the folks will do anything to reduce their load. Unfortunately, it killed my battery. I've plugged everything back in and started charging it again, but it isn't clear if it will come back. I've decided that batteries are like small infants. They will die unless constantly attended to.

Beyond that, and being unbelievably tired, things are good. I trust the same holds for you, and hope everyone is enjoying themselves as much as I.

Cheers,

Robb


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Arriving at Puesto Del Sol, Nicaragua

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Well, we made it so far!! Safe and sound in Marina Puesta Del Sol and not a single crew member lost overboard, captured by pirates or tempted away by the song of the sirens, although Jeff did disappear for several weeks in Cartagena, but he came back eventually, only to leave us once we'd made it through the Panama Canal and up to Golfito. It was still a great adventure and we mostly had fun, and when we didn't, it made for great stories later on.

This leg has been relatively easy, compared to the previous ones. Of course, that doesn't really include the fact that I had to fight off several mutinies, a Nicaraguan Gun Boat, and the combined forces of the Costa Rican Customs and Immigration Services, but that was nothing compared to the long days at sea, the hardships of a high fat/strong rum diet and the complete lack of any really decent cigarettes anywhere in the tropics.

For the most part the trip along the coast was uneventful, although both Jacob and Roxanne weren't feeling that well. We mostly motored, catching a little wind on our beam for a bit as we neared a harbor entrance just south of the marina. Anchored about a mile or so West of the harbor entrance was one of the U.S. Mercy Ships. If you've never seen one before, its a massive Panamax ships that has been converted into a giant floating hospital, with several hundred beds, many operating theaters and a significant amount of support services for things like eye care, dentistry, medical checkups, etc.. Its still part of our tax dollars, and run by the good folks of the US Military (smile when you say that, boy) and travels around the world providing medical care for the citizens of poor or impoverished countries who couldn't otherwise get access to decent doctors. It is really quite an impressive boat, with helicopter pads, yacht launches, marine escorts and such.

We didn't pay it much attention to it as we cruised, it was anchored far outside of the harbor entrance, at least a mile off shore, and our vessel was maybe only a hundred yards from the coast line as we motored along past it. Our course would bring us in between the harbor entrance and the ship, but we were no where near it and didn't think much about it until a Nicaraguan Coast Guard Gunboat came racing up along our port side. There were six very, very, very young crew members, one of which was manning a very large cannon at the front of the boat. The others were all holding automatic weapons of one flavor or another, and all of them were looking directly at us and gesturing. Now, I've been in a few odd situations before, and have had various loaded weapons pointed at me, but nothing quite compares with sight of looking down the barrel a large bore cannon. You suddenly become very attentive. They pulled up along our port side and began hailing us in Spanish on the VHF radio. I immediately cut the engines and yelled to Robinson, asking him to get on the radio and see if he could figure out what they wanted and what we should do next. As we drifted to a halt they positioned themselves just a few feet away and a bit behind us, with their weapons ready. It was clear that they were not at all happy.

Here is a bit of nautical advice that I've picked up along the way, and will pass along to all you folks for free: If the crew of a well armed gunboat are not happy, and they are very close by, then no one else near them will be happy. This is actually one of the few nautical sayings that turns out to be true in all cases. There was this very tense moment while Robinson tried to figure out what they were saying as they came along side us. Suddenly they stopped communicating on the radio. None of us knew what to do, but that didn't seem like a good thing.

About that time we noticed that the Mercy Ship had dispatched a large, high speed inflatable with two U.S. marines on board. They were headed directly for the Nicaraguan gunboat and pulled up along side them, leaving us on the far side. As they got closer to us we realized that the Nicaraguans stance completely changed. They lowered the weapons, turned their backs on us and walked over to the other side of their boat to talk to the marines. Whatever threat we might have been, we were longer any concern of theirs. It was then that I remembered to breath again.

The Nicaraguan Coasties conferred with the marines, and with much smiling and waving they motored off. Then the marines came up along side us. I asked them if they wanted to board us, but they just shook their heads and said that we were too close to their ship and to stay further away. It wasn't clear just exactly how far off we needed to be, since the shore was about 100 yards to our right, but since we needed to head north, and they were due west, we just smiled and thanked them for the heads up, then continued on our way. Apparently the U.S. military is getting very touchy about keeping a secure perimeter around their assets, and the Nicaraguan Coast Guard was an active part of that effort as well. No harm, no foul, but it was the first time in my entire life I was ever glad to see an American military vessel coming at me at high speed.

Not long after that we rounded the shallow point just South of Marine Puesta Del Sol. We could see a giant triangular palapa from miles off shore, jutting out from behind the tree line, so we knew we were close, but the harbor entrance wasn't obvious. Their website gives pretty detailed instructions for entering the channel, but it doesn't mention the fact that the channel entrance isn't visible from the South until you are almost completely past it, and that there is a reef extending out quite a ways and you need to go pretty far off to the West before rounding the corner and heading in. As we motored up we noticed the depth gauge warning us of a shallow bottom, and we could see some very large breakers almost dead ahead. We changed course a bit, headed out into deeper water and after going much further than we thought we needed to, spotted the marker leading into the harbor. We made a sharp right towards the channels and heading in.

Since it was getting on towards quiting time, we tried raising the marina on the VHF, and managed to get a few brief comments through, but they were having radio problems. Apparently their power goes out regularly and their VHF radio wasn't charged enough to broadcast. We would hear the first few words, then a blaring sound. We at least got enough information threw to let them know that we'd be arriving momentarily. The channel is quite well marked, surrounded on each side with lush vegetation, but snakes around a bit, and unless you stay directly inside it, you can easily end up aground. After a few minutes we pulled up to the marina docks and set foot in Nicaraguan soil.

The marina itself is brand new, with room for about fifty boats, plus a gas dock, swimming pool, restaurant, and a very classy hotel. It is surrounded by jungle on three sides, and ocean on the fourth. Not ten seconds after we pulled up a few of the resident cruisers came up to greet us and offered to show us around. Not long after that the harbor manager arrived and got us situated, plugged into shore power and water, and pointed at the restuarant. Everyone was warm, gracious and very helpful, what a change from some of our previous marinas. Within minutes we were all sitting on a beautiful deck overlooking the harbor and sipping drinks with umbrellas in them. Life was good, and everyone was happy to be here. We ordered dinner, but Roxanne still wasn't feeling well, and Jacob became very sick. That night he seemed to be better, but Rox was getting worse, vomitting most of the night. By morning she looked terrible, was clearly dehydrated and miserable. Her concern was that their flight was leaving in a day, and they were worried that they might be too sick to make it. It didn't take much to convince her that she go into the local town and see a medic. We packed her and Jacob up into a cab and they went off, returning several hours later. The nurse pumped her up with saline, gave her some antibiotics and sent her home. When she returned she looked one hundred percent better and was clearly on the mend. We longed around the pool for a bit, and had one last meal together, but this time on dry land!

Well, not the most spectacular of endings, but everyone arrived in one piece, and packed up to leave for the airport the next day, leaving me on my own for the next few days. I spent a day or two just relaxing, making friends with the other cruisers, especially Ron & Di from "Batwing" and getting to know some of the other folks in the marina, then started packing up Triton. We made one excursion off to a local "restaurant" that consisted of an open sided brick hut, but the food was delicious and cheap.

Eventually it was my time to leave, and I arranged for a taxi ride to the airport. The road out of the airport is pretty bad in sections, and the ride takes about two hours and costs around $110US. It should have cost a few bucks less, but I didn't realize I needed to book this way in advance, so by the time we'd figured it out, we were being charged "premium" prices. About half way there the cab driver stopped for gas and demanded I give him $30.00 to pay for it. I didn't understand him at first, and he became quite belligerent and agitated as I tried to make sense of what he was saying. I think he thought I wasn't willing to pay him at all. I gave him the money, and we got back in the car and headed off, but a few minutes later he quickly pulled off to the side of the road, got out, and pee'ed on the side of the road. It's still better than the Trinidad Cab Ride From Hell, but certainly more surreal.

The trip threw Managua itself was a bit shocking. Nicaragua is poor. Very poor. But the capital is a pit. A really scary, dirty, ugly pit. There were sections that looked worse than any ghettos I'd seen in Panama, or for that matter, Harlem during the '70s. I was glad once we'd made it across town and had arrived at the airport. I was three hours early, and there was no one at the counter yet, the airport was almost deserted except for one other man, and the automatic check in machine didn't seem to be working, so I asked him if there were any restaurants nearby. "Oh, no, don't leave just yet!" he said, "Stand in this line until they open the counters. In about twenty minutes there will be about a hundred people here, and it pays to be first in line if you want to get a seat." He was absolutely right. In just a few moments there was a queue behind me that stretched out the door. Eventually I checked in, got my ticket and we both grabbed a bite to eat.

He turned out to be a missionary, working in Nicaragua. Apparently you can't swing a cat without hitting a Christian Fundamentalist in this country. The airport was swarming with teams of youths wearing identical shirts with logos that said things like "Walk for Jesus" or "Youth Prayer Council". Several different people waved hello to him as we sat there talking, and I counted at least twenty different denominations proudly displayed on various luggage throughout the airport. Apparently, Nicaragua imports missionaries, and they are doing a booming business.

Eventually my flight boarded, and I winged my way back to the lovely S.F. Bay Area, where the lovely AnnMarie was waiting at the gate. It was good to be home, and I think I spent the next two days just sitting quietly and staring at the wall. I'm only back for a few weeks, just enough time to attend this year's Burning Man Arts Festival, go to my good friends Ted & Suzanne's wedding, and drive up to a fabulous camp out called "Fortuna" in Willits. Then I'm headed back to Nicaragua to sail Triton onward and upward.

In the meantime, we will be rounding up crew for the next leg, which will be Nicaragua to San Francisco, California, via Alcapulco, Cabo San Lucas, San Diego, and probably a few other points in between, at the very end of October (most likely the first week in November) so if you know anyone interested, send us a post at the email address listed up at the very top of this page in red & orange font. In the meantime I wish you all well, and hope your days are filled with adventure and your evenings with passion.

Cheers,

Robb


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