NEW YEARS EVE IN GOLFITO 2009
Golfito, Costa Rica, 31 December 2009

New Years Eve is still a young day as I write. There has been no rain here at this Pacific coast harbour now for two whole days. So, I guess the dry season has arrived. Way out over the ocean some thirty miles away, however, there are the usual big cumuli. Maybe they won’t come ashore today again. I almost miss the rain!

I do miss Kathleen, however. Takes me a week to get used to functioning without her around, and not just because she handles the money and can actually count in her head. It's just not cool without her. Here are pictures of us going ashore for her to leave and pictures of us getting to the Frontera on the bus.



If Christmas and the dry season have arrived, the tourists certainly haven’t. Tim, of Katy and Tim, the managers of Land & Sea Marina, Real Estate, Property Management, etc, tells me he has never experienced a Christmas season like this one in his fourteen years here. “See all those sports-fishing boats at the docks all along the waterfront? They should normally all be out with paying guests who have flown down for the break. I haven’t seen any sports-fisherman go out in days.” The real estate boom seems to be over for the moment, too. All those gringos who were working in Maine in the summer and spending the winter down here and building a house for when they retire here permanently? They aren’t even coming down to inspect the progress of the construction. Some of them are months behind on their live-in caretaker’s pay and they owe contractors for materials and labour. Tim keeps an eye on things and even, I guess, acts as a contractor. He ‘owns’ lots of parcels of land in is own right all along this narrow neck of land where the marinas are situated (basically the buildings are either built out over the water on stilts or, houses, built on the side of the hill; the road used to be United Fruits’ railway bed). He is having to carry the costs for the owners until even he can’t handle it any more and writes to tell them that their properties are now going to be abandoned.

So, the economic depression in North America is really biting down here too. This of course does not yet mean that prices are falling. Noooo, siree! In fact, some prices are even going up. The dinghy docking fee at Land & Sea, for example, has stayed at $5 a day, but there is no discounted monthly rate and now they have added a $1 per day ‘internet usage fee’. Boats on Land & Sea buoys pay $8 daily (including dinghy docking plus another $1 daily for internet. Beers that used to be $1 each are now $1.50. A stealthy way of increasing income. I guess the old economic-pricing theory that when supply surpasses demand prices begin to fall is not really working. If the theory is right, that implies a monopoly or an oligopoly situation or price-setters are in denial. I definitely ration my visits to Land & Sea’s dinghy dock and, now that I have cleaned up my ‘marina’ bill as of yearend (it felt like a good thing to do as we go into 2010), I shall be thinking of finding another anchorage perhaps nearer to town. I am currently the only live-aboard cruiser at Land & Sea, so there’s no social life here as such. Maybe when bluewater cruisers Karen and Mike return from the U.S.A.

My friend Julio of S/V Pancho from Chile stayed here for three days. He left Panamá City to renew his Panamanian visa (you have to be out of the country for at least 72 hours after ninety days to get a ‘renewal’). Although he is still quite young, Julio is a retired detective chief inspector from southern Chile (I suppose to get the loyalty of the police, Pinochet made retirement possible after either 20 - 25 years of service). Julio and I met in Ecuador and we keep bumping into each other wherever we go. He too has tried several times to get to French Polynesia and has had engine trouble. At present his Volvo Penta engine has been pulled from his Swedsh-built sloop, and is being overhauled for $2,500 at Tornillero Alfredo’s shop in Panamá City. When I am with him and Maria, his novia, I get to practise my Spanish whilst chatting with a cruiser. They left early this morning for Panamá City, however. Maybe Ron & Diane of S/V Batwing will arrive soon, or Tom and Beate of S/V Luka.

The incessant rain and humidity till now and Kathleen’s departure for Frankfurt on the 23 December rather discouraged me from attacking my list of nearly 40 projects. But the To-Do List hangs so prominently, nay threateningly, over Vilisar’s navigation station that I eventually resolve to get started. Going into 2010 I also resolve to start exercising and to reform my eating and drinking habits. My blood pressure is fairly high and I have to keep taking beta blockers. AS for drinking, I can only afford cheap schnapps anyway, which tastes awful; cheap wine is by no means cheap in Costa Rica and it’s the same acidic, Chilean Clos boxed red-wine and it’s about twice the cost over Panamá; so stopping drinking is not that difficult. I shall stick to beer and limit myself to one or two a day. This is not hard on the boat where drinking more than two warm beers is an impossibility. But at the cruiser lounge, that cold stuff on a hot afternoon is very tempting. I have also decided to cut down on strong coffee. This is a pity since Costa Rican coffee from the highlands is world class stuff. Moreover, the supermercados don’t even carry decaff coffee. The closest thing to it is a coffee made from mais. I mix it half and half in my espresso pot. It’s drinkable, I guess.


I get cracking and clean up the cabin this morning, wiping down painted surfaces with a degreaser and washing-up liquid. After all the engine work, there are a lot of places where dirty mechanics’ hands have left their mark. I climb into the forecastle and tidy up that as well while I searching for my palm sander. Yepp, definitely makes you feel better!

I row ashore to Fishhook Marina to talk to cruiser Steve living aboard a Seattle-based double-ender. He introduces me to Mike, the wharfinger, who immediately calls ‘Cucho’ (it’s some sort of nickname), a local mechanic. He shows up a minute later, and we discuss removing the contaminated diesel fuel from our large tank, disposing of it and cleaning the tank. They can do this. $200. I gasp. But Mike talks to him and the price is halved if I agree to pay $20 for the fee at the re-cycling centre. No problem. He can do it today at one o’clock. Since this is in less than an hour. I row immediately back to Vilisar to get her ready to up anchor and motor the several hundred yards to Cucho’s dock.

Bad news! Although I have cabin electricity, there is no noise at all when I try to start the engine. I check the fuses; one of the terminals on the fuse box, the one for the fuse to the starter button, is totally corroded away. How can this be since the whole set-up is only a month old? I row into Cucho’s dock to tell him and use the opportunity to go grocery shopping. A day later I meet Robert, the son of a gringo United Fruits employee (United Fruits created Golfito as a place to export the bananas they grew farther inland) who now lives here permanently. Tim describes him in his presence as the ‘best electrician and mechanic in Cost Rica.” Could he come out to Vilisar right away? He could. An hour and $40 later, the electrical issue has been taken care of and the engine starts first go. I let Cucho know that I shall be over next week, i.e., after New Years when the various heavy-drinking holidays are all over. That’s fine with him.

So I decide to address my woodworking task next. Ever since the heavy German-built steel boat dragged down on Vilisar in a squall at Las Brisas de Amador a few months ago we have needed to replace the shattered lightboard on the starboard side. The starboard lightboard had been broken back off the coast of Baja California (also a good story but I won’t get into it here), but I glued and screwed it back together and it worked fine. I decided to get matching new ones made by a carpentero in Panamá City.

But, I think the guy was basically senile: he got things regularly confused, would forget he had even agreed to do the job and even had to be pressured to cough up the models. Eventually, he made a pair of teak (he says) lightboards for $60. I still had to refinish them. (BTW, Dennis, a shipwright at Balboa, told me that Tito at Balboa Yacht Club - he manages the marine ways – is a pretty good guy to do such woodworking jobs; wish I had known earlier.) I take the lightboards ashore this morning, wipe them down thoroughly with acetone and then scrub them with bleach and lots of water to get the teak oils out of the surface in preparation for Cetol. At this point I realise that the Panamanian carpentero after he had glued up the lightboard, had taken out all the stainless wood screws except for one or two each and left the holes all unplugged. I walk into Golfito to find new screws (Ferretería Flores on the upper/parallel street; they have a reasonably good fastener selection, though relatively dear.)

Although the cruising population is small, there are some characters around. Walter is a carpenter from Las Vegas, Nevada. He’s babysitting a simply gorgeous refurbished wooden schooner called Almura that belongs to his boss back in the U.S.A. He schools me today in installing the screws and putting in teak plugs. He is bored at present until the owner arrives and they sail north and out of the country and I at least give him something to do and somebody to chat with. Today I also bring in my palm sander and go over the lightboards with it, and finally apply the first coat of Cetol Marine. Looks pretty good, if I say it myself. Later today Walter has gone fishing with a new girlfriend; he promises to pass on any surplus fish he catches, so I might have an interesting meal tonight.

Later, I gossip with Tim for an hour or so and he tells me tales of famous or possibly infamous cruisers he has known, the story associated with every boat in the anchorage, the financial details of running a marina in Costa Rica, the real estate scene in Golfito and the legal shenanigans that go on with boats and properties in this country. He has been a delivery skipper and a deep sea ‘saturated bell diver’ (look that one up) and now he has swallowed the anchor in Costa Rica. He is in his early fifties thoyugh with his white Santa-beard he looks older to me.

I keep trying to Skype with Kathleen but so far no luck, although she has been on the phone with her parents for quite a while, I guess. Get in line.