BOUND FOR COSTA RICA X; GOLFITO
Golfito, Costa Rica, Thursday, 17 December 2009

I can’t believe what a change today’s ‘seas’ have been! We woke up at first light with the seas near the surfing beach absolutely calm. And, as usual, no wind whatsoever. We take our time having coffee before pulling up the anchor. This seems more civilised than jumping up, going on deck in a semi-comatose state, yawning, starting the engine, pulling up the anchor, hoisting the mainsail and only then drinking a coffee once we are under way. It’s basically the same content, but it’s nice to have a ‘coffee in bed’.

Golfo Dulce is over 21 Nm wide and certainly navigable for ocean-going ships, though, from the light colour, it looks rather shallow. Twenty-one Nm from the Pacific entrance to Golfo Dulce, at the southern end of the gulf, there is a second even more protected ‘golfito’, and it is here that United Fruit started the export of Costa Rican bananas in 1938. In 1985, after building a company town called Golfito complete with permanent docks and a large ex-pat community, United Fruit capitulated to falling banana prices and closed up shop. This is the fate of all natural resource and agriculture communities dependent on export markets and even more so when the owners are foreigners. Anyway, this was a catastrophe for the local economy, of course, and it is only now recovering with tourism, a duty-free port, etc. It is certainly pretty here at first glance. On one side of the long cove is a low, wooded island and behind the town the lush green hills rise steeply.

Arriving at 1120 in front of Land & Sea Marina, basically a collection of mooring balls and anchored boats much favoured by cruisers because it is reasonably priced and actually offers something for one’s $5 per day dinghy-docking fee (grasping marina operators in Panamá City, please note), we shut the engine down and within half an hour we have all the sail covers on, the sun awning and windscoop rigged and the dinghy launched. There’s nothing like having run out of wine, beer and schnapps as a motivator for getting ashore.

We have another one of those little chats about whether we want to be doing this cruising thing and come up with the same yes and no answer. The trip up was either a lot of wind (Golfo de Panamá) or no wind whatsoever (most of the trip). Just getting up every day to push on with the noisy and hot engine with no possibility to stop for a couple of days at each place becomes a grind and gets old quickly. Basically everything worked well this trip with the exception of the dirty fuel problem. We got here on the small fuel tank with the clean diesel all right, and now I have to figure out how to get the dirty fuel drained and disposed of. With the advent of the dry season, it is time also to deal with the cosmetics, i.e., painting, but there are some other small jobs to be done too.

Kathleen leaves in a few days by bus soon to catch her Christmas Eve flight to Germany from Panamá City. We shall go ashore this afternoon and collect information about long-distance busses across the frontera, to take hot showers, have a cold beer and check the internet. Tomorrow is check-in day. Welcome to Costa Rica.