BOUND FOR COSTA RICA IX: PAVONES
At sea between Pavones and Golfito, Thursday, 17 December 2009
It was a long and boring day yesterday. The Costa Rican side of Cape Burico is wildly beautiful and lushly green with large hills running in a spinal ridge and increasing in height from S to N. These hills drop steeply into the sea with no harbours or beaches to be seen, unlike the Panamanian side which offer more by way of beaches and harbours. There are ranches and some houses visible, but it looks more or less uninhabited until we are nearly halfway to the top. Including the long trip around Punta Burica our total mileage for the day is about 40 Nm, and old Lister gets right at it with his workhorse ability. He’s not fast but he plugs away. After midday some sea breezes come up to our advantage. The Pacific swells are much more noticeable on the west side of the cape: very big but slow and we only ride up and down with no real bother. Against the steep shore, we see them crashing, however.
Pavones is not really an anchorage at all. It is the site of one of the major surfing beaches in Central America. Just after you reach the Golfo Dulce at the top of the cape, the huge Pacific swells provide some sport for those interested in this sort of thing. You can anchor off the beach and watch. This sounds positively frightening to me, and I am really apprehensive about the whole thing. But it is now too late to make the final 20 Nm to Golfito (get it? Golfo Dulce and Golfito? A gulf inside a gulf), so we shall just have to check it out.
Kathleen navigates us to the ‘anchorage’, which as I suspected us just an open roadstead again! You can see the huge surfing swells breaking on the beach about 200 yards away. But where we drop the anchor in 25-30 feet over sand again, there is relatively little by way of swells. We are getting a little breeze and some wind waves also coming form the SW. But no huge swells. Can’t explain it and once again I let out nearly everything I have to make sure. After all, the next piece of land upwind is probably Antarctica! And if a SW wind really blows up, we shall have to skip out of here fast. For that reason and because it is already late in the afternoon, we decide not to put up the sun awning. Vilisar rocks but doesn’t really roll even when the wind turns her sideways. Late in the evening even that stops altogether. I can’t get used to this exposed way of living at anchor! In British Columbia you wouldn’t even consider something that wasn’t protected on 4-6 sides!
We are hot and a bit short with each other. Kathleen gets out the swim ladder, strips off and dives in, sening the usual splash in through the skylight. But refreshing. I have apparently been bitten again by a spider or something, and have been lancing the place for two days and trying to drain it. Tropical waters tend to carry a lot of infections and it is always better to clean open sores or wounds with alcohol. I decide on a bucket bath and a rinse with fresh water. We are getting really short of drinking water now, so it is good that we arrive in Golfito tomorrow.
After a meal of refried beans and guacamole, we watch the second half of War and Peace, Carlo de Ponti and Dino di Laurentiis, while we have a brief rain shower outside. Great battle scenes and lots of horses and uniforms. The acting is all all right except for Henry Fonda, as out of place as a pork chop at a synagogue picnic. Kathleen is asleep before Napoleon wins Borodino. I am up for a look round at 0400. Completely calm and bright stars including the Southern Cross again. But there are a lot more rain clouds around and occasional lightening. According to our cruising guide, there is plenty of lightening around even in the dry season, ‘dry’ as in only one inch of rain per day.
At sea between Pavones and Golfito, Thursday, 17 December 2009
It was a long and boring day yesterday. The Costa Rican side of Cape Burico is wildly beautiful and lushly green with large hills running in a spinal ridge and increasing in height from S to N. These hills drop steeply into the sea with no harbours or beaches to be seen, unlike the Panamanian side which offer more by way of beaches and harbours. There are ranches and some houses visible, but it looks more or less uninhabited until we are nearly halfway to the top. Including the long trip around Punta Burica our total mileage for the day is about 40 Nm, and old Lister gets right at it with his workhorse ability. He’s not fast but he plugs away. After midday some sea breezes come up to our advantage. The Pacific swells are much more noticeable on the west side of the cape: very big but slow and we only ride up and down with no real bother. Against the steep shore, we see them crashing, however.
Pavones is not really an anchorage at all. It is the site of one of the major surfing beaches in Central America. Just after you reach the Golfo Dulce at the top of the cape, the huge Pacific swells provide some sport for those interested in this sort of thing. You can anchor off the beach and watch. This sounds positively frightening to me, and I am really apprehensive about the whole thing. But it is now too late to make the final 20 Nm to Golfito (get it? Golfo Dulce and Golfito? A gulf inside a gulf), so we shall just have to check it out.
Kathleen navigates us to the ‘anchorage’, which as I suspected us just an open roadstead again! You can see the huge surfing swells breaking on the beach about 200 yards away. But where we drop the anchor in 25-30 feet over sand again, there is relatively little by way of swells. We are getting a little breeze and some wind waves also coming form the SW. But no huge swells. Can’t explain it and once again I let out nearly everything I have to make sure. After all, the next piece of land upwind is probably Antarctica! And if a SW wind really blows up, we shall have to skip out of here fast. For that reason and because it is already late in the afternoon, we decide not to put up the sun awning. Vilisar rocks but doesn’t really roll even when the wind turns her sideways. Late in the evening even that stops altogether. I can’t get used to this exposed way of living at anchor! In British Columbia you wouldn’t even consider something that wasn’t protected on 4-6 sides!
We are hot and a bit short with each other. Kathleen gets out the swim ladder, strips off and dives in, sening the usual splash in through the skylight. But refreshing. I have apparently been bitten again by a spider or something, and have been lancing the place for two days and trying to drain it. Tropical waters tend to carry a lot of infections and it is always better to clean open sores or wounds with alcohol. I decide on a bucket bath and a rinse with fresh water. We are getting really short of drinking water now, so it is good that we arrive in Golfito tomorrow.
After a meal of refried beans and guacamole, we watch the second half of War and Peace, Carlo de Ponti and Dino di Laurentiis, while we have a brief rain shower outside. Great battle scenes and lots of horses and uniforms. The acting is all all right except for Henry Fonda, as out of place as a pork chop at a synagogue picnic. Kathleen is asleep before Napoleon wins Borodino. I am up for a look round at 0400. Completely calm and bright stars including the Southern Cross again. But there are a lot more rain clouds around and occasional lightening. According to our cruising guide, there is plenty of lightening around even in the dry season, ‘dry’ as in only one inch of rain per day.
posted by rjb @ Saturday, December 19, 2009
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