Fun with the Felt Family

Bill, Alice, Stephanie, Brea, Jensen, Tom, and Analisse

Mary, their cook, makes fresh tortillas for each dinner!

The second Sunday Alice attended church in Puerto Vallarta she met the Felt Family of Bucerias.  Their Utah home is in Alpine, but they are living in their vacation home in Mexico this year so the children can attend school to acquire Spanish language skills.  Tom offered to pick Alice up for church each week, cutting her travel time in half!  They have visited us on Grey Wolf and we have enjoyed a lovely dinner at their beautiful Spanish style home on the beach within view of our anchorage.  We appreciate their generous hearts and sweet spirits.  We hope to visit them again, perhaps in Utah!

Christmas Message from the Captain

Well, it's that time of the year again. I remember when I was a kid that the last two weeks before Christmas seemed like five years. Now it seems like the last five years only took two weeks!
It is at this time of the year when people turn their attention to Christmas that Satan gets busy using people who are afraid of Christmas or anything to do with God to try to persuade people that there is no God. I remember when there was a push to tell everyone that God had died; now they run ads that say "There is no God'. Psalms 14:1: The fool says in his heart 'there is no God'. So this foolishness has been going on for much longer than most might think.
I have oftime wondered what a great faith these people must have to convince themselves that all we see- Sun, Moon, Stars and this beautiful Earth and all life that is on it just happened by accident... If I tried to tell those same people that the automobile came into being by a Big Bang that happened some time ago, they would think me crazy and they would be right, if I really believed that. When you think about it, isn't a car much simpler than mankind and the animals? We all know that the car was created by a higher being than the car. Does it not stand to reason, then, that everything was created by a being much higher than the thing created and that something so complex as the animal and man had to be created by a much higher being? Genesis says 'In the beginning God created...'. Simple faith and logic tells you this must be true. I have always wondered why anyone would spend so much time and energy fighting something they 'don't believe in', or do they? I have a theory that they fight God so hard because they don't want Him to be there, because if He does exist then all that goes with Him is true also. Down deep they worry about the judgment day that is coming and they well should. Numbers 32 tells us that God punishes His people when they ignore Him and seek their own glory. Remember, God is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever!
Now as we look to Christmas, and reflect on the coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we see the great LOVE that God has for His creation. In Philippians 2: 5-8, (read please), we are told that Christ, in His great love, came to provide the only way back to our Father in Heaven.
We can all retell the Christmas story of Jesus' birth in a stable with people and animals at His side, the wise men coming from afar bringing gifts, but what we so often miss is the great love God has for us. He has provided everything we need to be close to Him. Some complain about how commercial Christmas has become, but it has long been that way. When I consider God's great gift of love for us in the coming of Christ, is it wrong for us to show our love to others by giving gifts as well? I think it is the thing to do, and I think it pleases God that we show our love. But don't forget to give a return gift back to God to show our love for Him. He is what it is all about, after all.
I am so thankful that we can look back and remember that Christ has already come. Before that time God's people looked forward to His coming with the same faith we use to look back to that wonderful day~ Christmas!!!
My hope and prayer is that you will celebrate Christmas by praising, singing, and giving a gift to God. Also, show your love with gifts to your family and loved ones.
Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year!
With love to all from Bill and Alice

El Dia de los Muertos

The Day of the Dead is celebrated on November 2. It is a really major holiday here in Mexico, complete with decorations, as shown above. Graves are decorated and some families bring food to the cemetery to share a meal with deceased family members, as in Costa Rica where all burial plots are above ground. The cemetery shown above was in readiness for El Dia de los Muertos when we left. In El Salvador, Alice found special bread in the bakery to commemorate the day (see El Salvador 2 slideshow). One government office we were in had a display of photos of dead relatives, flowers, food, and candles. Roadside memorials were decked out with orange and black Halloween decorations, too!

Guatemala did not want to be forgotten!

We had spent time in Guatemala in January and about went broke in the process, so we knew we had no plans to stop in transit unless we had an emergency, just thought we would enjoy the volcano landscape as we cruised by. However, the Guatemalan Navy decided they would stop us! We left El Salvador at 1 PM on October 31. The next morning we noticed a fair-sized Navy ship approaching from the west. They moved past us and then launched a small craft replete with men in full combat gear and black masks, toting automatic weapons, which pulled up beside us. Bill stepped out and spoke to them in English. It was apparent they wanted to board us, so we waited while they manuevered to allow one man to jump onto our swim step (above). Lt. Cordoba, a handsome young man who was fluent in English, examined our papers and spoke to us briefly about the reason why they stop boats- drugs, of course. He did not really inspect the boat, our honest faces allaying any fears that we were drugrunners!! Just another one of those 'interesting experiences' that have contributed to our adventure...

Back to Bahia del Sol~ One Last Visit in El Salvador

As it turned out, the hardest place to enter was the one place we wanted to revisit! The breaking bar outside of the estuary where Marina Bahia del Sol is located was calm the morning we were escorted safely in (above). Our number one priority was to pick up some tourist brochures and other supplies for our friends Bill and Jean who are busy promoting tourism to El Salvador. They will be coordinating a boat rally south from Puerto Vallarta next spring. Two big boxes later we had accomplished that task. We enjoyed visiting with local gringos we had met in January, among them Jan Turner, a Canadian who has built her home on Isla Cordoncillo, near the marina. Alice brought her a shoebox of school supplies for her English/Computer classes she teaches the island youngsters. She also hustled and made three new baby quilts for Jan to give to families in need (above).

We also contacted Elizabeth Scoville (sister-in-law to a friend of Alice's in Indio) and her family in the capital city. We enjoyed getting to know them in January and wanted to invite them to the boat. Her husband was working in the U.S., but she came with her mother, son and daughter. Bill took them out for a cool dinghy ride- above. After dinner, Alice rode back to San Salvador with them. We went shopping the next day and ate a delicious lunch mom Dora had prepared. Then we all rode the 1 1/2 hours back to the boat, after which they went to the beach. They even came down one more time before we left~ dear, dear people!

The day of our departure the bar was NOT nice to us, greeting us with a few 6-8 foot waves that made it feel like we were 'surfing the big ones'. Just one week after we left a terrible Pacific storm inundated tiny El Salvador, causing massive mudslides and flooding which took the lives of some 200 people...

Out and About in Costa Rica

Two day trips took Alice and Paddy two different directions: the first across Golfo Dulce by ferry to Puerto Jimenez, where we searched for the scarlet macaws famous in that area. We saw bright red dragonflies, birds and a crocodile in a mangrove swamp, and lots of butterflies- too fast to photograph. Another day we rode a bus into the interior in search of new sights. We were in Rio Claro, Palma Norte, Palma Sur, and Sierpe, where we ate lunch on the edge of the Rio Sierpe. By the time we got to the restaurant it was pouring rain- see it running off the tin roof, above. We visited with two American women who had just returned from a three hour river trip, where they saw crocs, and THREE species of monkeys- howler, white-face, and squirrel. In all the time we have been here we have never seen a monkey!!

Pavones, Costa Rica ~ a Neat Getaway

Paddy Landrum, one of our friends in Golfito, and Alice took off early one morning for a 2 1/2 hour bus ride to Pavones, world-known by surfers. This is NOT the high season, but we just wanted to get away. A city-type bus took us TO the river, shown above. We then rode a ferry to the other side and boarded a big old school bus for the rest of the trip! We even got to ride with the school children as they headed home- very early. Schools run double sessions so students either attend in the morning or the afternoon. Upon arriving, we looked around for a cabina, not wanting to spend the cost of a hotel. Many homes either have cabins for rent or, in this case, rooms had been added to the family home: check out all the surf decals on the fridge for patron use that was right outside our room ($30 a night). Although the town was very quiet and so was the sea, it was a very relaxing and enjoyable break.

WAHOO!

We'd been told that wahoo was a great catch, but we had never caught one. We lost three lures in Panama to unknown critters and we were suspicious they were wahoo strikes, so when we put out our lines the last time Bill made sure he used steel leaders. A while later, this fellow struck. Unable to bite through the leader, Bill reeled him in. But he got his revenge, biting a nice hole in our net as we hauled him aboard! You can see his head protuding in the above photo. Then we could see the rows of sharp, triangular teeth... later the same day Bill went to check the lines and found one with the lure AND the steel leader gone... somewhere there is a huge fish swimming about with a hook and leader in his mouth! Alice broiled a nice pan of wahoo steaks to share with our friends here. (FYI Wahoo is ONO in Hawaii.)

Up close with a Humpback!

Much of this latest trip found us on long rolling seas, with swells up to five or six feet- easily enough to 'hide' a small fishing boat from our view. We had seen so many logs amongst the ever-present flotsam and jetsam that Alice didn't think too much of it when she thought she saw a huge log off in the distance, appearing and disappearing... by the time she pointed it out to Bill the log had become a whale! She grabbed her camera, but never saw that one again. A couple of hours later, however, a whale surfaced just off our port bow and only a couple of hundred feet ahead of us~ it seemed to be having a feeding feast as it repeatedly dove straight down in the water. Bill stopped the boat, afraid of hitting it, and we then watched as it surfaced and glided across our bow, diving one last time and disappearing. As usual, the best shot is the mental photo we have when we first saw the big boy rolling in the water. By the time you pick up a camera, even though it is sitting right next to you, the moment is often gone!

One Scary Night...

Bill says he wasn't scared, and Alice wasn't ringing her hands, but the prospects of being adrift in open water for four hours (2 AM to 6 AM) without our engine was no fun. We had planned an overnighter from Islas Las Perlas to Bahia Honda in Western Panama. Rounding the point on the western edge of the Azuero Peninsula, Bill made sure he had the autopilot set and then turned the watch time over to Alice so he could get some sleep. At about 2 AM, she caught an odd odor and began to scan the helm controls, soon spotting the engine totally overheated! So she ran to wake up Bill, who upon opening the engine room hatch was met with billowing steam: turn off the engine! It turned out to be the culprit above: the belt for the raw water pump (a good one is on the left). Nearly all the salt water that normally cools the engine was gone, so it took about 20 gallons to get that refilled; then Bill put a fan in the engine room, gathered his tools, and went to work in a small, awkward, steamy space to take off the shredded belt and put a new one on. Meanwhile, Alice sat at the helm watching the GPS, depth finder, and radar to make sure that we were not drifting into shallow water. We did drift 3-4 miles BACKWARDS but remained in 220 feet of water, thankfully. Time for lots of prayers... we are so grateful for our Father in Heaven's constant care over us as we travel!