Schooner Rig

We are still in lock down and this week they are back tracking with this lock down thing. No one can leave there homes on Sunday again. Everything shut down and you have to stay where you live all day Sunday. We may can fly out of here July 16th but we need to get from here to the city and to do that we need written permission to travel in a cab now. To make it worse we have been told we may not be able to come back when we want to. Our boat will be here in Guatemala and all we can do is hope it is okay being here for many months where we can not come back to see about it. What are processions we own any way. If some how they are taken away they are just gone and if we are safe life goes on. If we leave and can’t get back for a long time is that losing procession of our boat and our boating life style for a while. We were robbed in Belize and they took most of what we had worked hard for years off our boat. We are slowly buying what we need back a little at a time. Cruising on our boat is not the only life we have. We have a life back in Kansas and there are things we like to do out there when it is “so hot” here in the Caribbean. If we just stay here because they may not let us back and lose that part of life we have in Kansas. Is that a part of our good life we just lost. “It can always be worse.” There is a boater that came in here that lost his mast and sails out to sea in a storm. Now like the rest of the world he is in lock down as we are here up the river where we are. Safe now as I said before but not able to leave with his boat even if they would let him leave. Low on money and big on troubles he found us. If you are money hungry and aggressive in this world you can make people like this hurt even more and if you are that type of person it can put money in your pocket. It’s not our way. He found two used mast from a man here that savages boats and the boat “yards” here all wanted $400 US per mast to stand the used mast he bought back up. Pam is helping too and she is a real sail maker, not some one with a little “Sailrite house hole sewing machine” and books they sell saying you can make your on sails. So we are helping him with the sails too. We have worked on and made sails the bigger part of our lives now. A lot of places we have lived the marinas have had me do rigging for them and we have a rigging locker full of old used rigging parts. Our boat is a home built boat we designed and built ourselves and I tell people it’s a wooden boat with a steel hull. That’s “not possible” but it does have the feel of a old wooden schooner. Even our mast are home built and wood. “We” designed our boat from old schooner that were the work horse of the sea back in the day. To solve his problem of standing his masts up we laid his boat along side our boat and used our mast to stand his mast the way they did in the old days. No expensive crane needed. His boat is a Tom Crovin gazelle and was junk rigged. We have been looking and buying used sails to be cut up to make sails for him. We are now designing a sail plan to change his rig to a schooner. All this is a dream we dreamed for a long time come true in a way being in the Caribbean helping a fellow sailor through his troubles living a cruisers life. Using what we have learned over our long life. Using the old ways to stand his mast. Using what we have learned about sail making over many years taking 2 or 3 sails and making and entirely different sail. If the grade and weight of the used sails are the same most of the time you can’t see they are savaged sails made for other sails we call Frankenstein sails or bone yard sails. If all goes well we will have a “little” money in our pocket when we finish. We do charge some and he will be able to go on his way someday maybe with out being hurt twice. Hurt by the storm and then really hurt by the cost of his repairs if he had people with no convince getting to him. Using the old ways where boat people helped each other is not the way now. Maybe that is why he found us. For what ever reason he did find us. The adventure goes on.

Boat just arrived to stand mast.

main mast standing

Both mast standing

Schooner rigged

Food boat that comes by three days a week now.

Guatemalan Updates

We are counting down the days until we fly out of here and back to Kansas for a break in this lock down here in Guatemala. It’s hot here and you can do very little of what we came here to do being a cruiser living and traveling on our boat. We just stay here every day and bide our time working on the boat.  We will leave the boat here if this works out in the marina and fly back maybe July the 15^th. It’s the first flight we could afford out of here and it’s going to be a hard trip if they don’t “cancel it”,  three different planes. Long lay overs and we don’t know how we are going to get from here to the city and the airport some 5 hours away if they don’t let the buses run again. If you live on a boat and the boat is setting out in the sun as they do, the daily temperature inside the boat is higher than the temperature outside in the shade.

TOO TOO HOT!

If you have ever set out in a car in the sun you know what that’s like. Every boat down here is wrapped up in shade cloths trying to keep the temperature down. We have the Pamela Ann covered some but it’s hot inside the boat during the day and most of the night. We have been working under a paliapa with a tin roof and it is open on all sides but the heat comes through the metal roof. We have big fans running or it would be impossible to work there. Most days at 3 in the after noon it’s near or over 120 degrees working under in the shade of this building. We have been able to find groceries through all this but it’s Central American food. Chicken, eggs and most of the time some tough local pork. The local beef is just not any good and we can’t eat it no mater how thin you cut it. There are lots of vegetables on the street to buy but it’s what they can not ship and sell or what won’t sell some where and they ship it here. Large heads of cabbage. Roma tomatoes small potatoes that won’t make the week so you need to buy them daily. Shelled corn is always available and sold by the liter. People here live on corn. The more indigenous the more they eat corn and every one eats corn tortillas.

Corn by the liter

We buy corn as I have said in our blogs to grind and make our on grits we call pioneer grits. Through all this it has slowed the street preachers down some. They ride the 3 seats vans they uses as buses they call colectivos from town to town and have there spots on different days where they stand on the street and preach all day. There are no vans caring people from town to town running in this curfew. This women is here every week and doses her preaching in Spanish with a mike and loud speaker. I only get a little of what she is saying but she can cry on command I can see that. She will stand there screaming in to her mike in her crying voice for hours and people will come by and give her money.

Woman Preacher

Every where down here as in most places of the world where tourist go you will see people begging for money. This is still here a little but not so much as it has been. Maybe the no transportation to town is slowing that down too or maybe it’s just harder on every one making money the way people have been. I never make pictures of beggars so you want see any here. We have a little guy that has helped me on our boat for years when we come in here helping us now after I hurt my back and he says there is “no work” here for the unskilled worker. Maybe karma will pay us back some day as this is putting us on a two way street. One way is we are getting things done that I can’t do in this heat and this is helping us. The other is hard on us with us working hard cutting corners to find a way to pay him each week but this is helping him we hope and his family get through all this. On what we won’t make pictures of this to can go a different way as what we try to catch with a camera sometime. Pam and I have tried to make pictures of the beautiful large blue butterfly here now and have failed again but seeing them is enough to make us realize we are here on our boat we dreamed so long for we built ourselves in the Caribbean and even in this lock down, “Life is good.”

Guatemala Lock Down

We are still in lock down here in Guatemala but it is getting better. They let stores open this weekend. It’s hot here and we are working on our boat in this heat. It’s hard to work out in this sun. We don’t know when or where we may go with our boat if this ever opens up. Most people leave their boats here and fly home where they can handle the heat in the summer and are gone by now. We were to fly back to Kansas months ago but they canceled our flights and locked every thing down. You could still leave but it would cost you plenty and we don’t have plenty. We have a flight maybe in July if they don’t cancel it but it going to be a hard trip with 3 different flights and long lay overs to get to Kansas. Last week I said I was for-filling a dream and was fixing a dug out-canoe for a kid here. She has been on the go every since.

The kids here as they do every where have very little knowledge of what the grown ups are doing in the world. As I said we are working hard on our boat and it’s terribly hot. It’s better if you can find any shade. Working under a tree on a part for our boat I saw a baby parrot running under my feet. I picked it up and it bit me. Pam gave me a glove and we went to the caretaker here. He saw the baby parrot and stared saying my baby’s parrot. I gave it to him and with in the hour it was back under my feet. The kids were all gone some where and when they came back the baby parrot stayed with them.

I have put in a lot of our blogs that I look each day for something to make my day better. This is what makes my day better most days. Watching the innocents of childhood the way they live here and cold Pepsi in a bottle like the old days when Pam and I were kids.

Still in Lock Down

We are still locked down in Guatemala and this is making life more difficult. Talking to people that have lived in countries where the government is in control of your everyday life, this Shut Down feels like what they say socialism is like. Saturday and Sunday every thing is in full shut down for the week end and you can not go anywhere or do anything again. Nothing open but the police are out. In town through out the week people are in large groups there waiting to get what they need before the lock down starts every afternoon at 5pm and stock up what they need for the week end. We have food and what we need for the next few days but the power has been out. We have a good generator and we filled up our gas can with gas not knowing what to expect with all this going on . I have never been a smart person but how could this help stop a virus? All this is forcing more people together and hurting people that want to work. Here in the river near town where our boat is there is a good size group of people from around the world that came here mostly on boats and now live here year round never going anywhere for long. Maybe leaving every 3 month for a few hours crossing the border to clear up their passports then coming back. It’s the law here you can only stay 90 days and you have to leave. Remember it cost you the leave and to come back. You have to pay the government to come and go in all these country. With us not being able to go see anything here and staying on our boat we are getting it ready to leave when the time is right. From now to late November storms and Hurricanes are out there in the ocean like monsters that can develop anytime and get to you before you can find shelter. Most cruisers come in here and leave their boat all summer in yards to get away from these storms and go home where it’s maybe is a little cooler. Its really hot here and hard to deal with the heat some days. We were to leave our boat here and go to Kansas when this virus hit and everything got out of hand with what it cost to get out of here if you can even find a flight. We have a flight maybe to go back to the states on the 15 of July but they keep changing it. We will be on 3 different flight and maybe on one of those trips where you can see the clock making laps before we can sleep. We have other problems like how to get to the airport with no bus running. It’s over 5 hour ride from here to the city. My Grandmother would tell me to watch what I ask far. Pam and I dreamed for years about traveling and what it would be really like. We have had a few trips so hard we said we would not do it again maybe like the one coming up flying back but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.

Tim trying to add a little more life to a canoe

Today I fixed and old dug out canoe for the workers here in the marina. Remember I said Pam and I dream of doing this for so long a time. Years ago repairing a dug out canoe was a dream. As I put in another blog I welded up a grid here for the people here not long ago to cook on and open wood fire. We have puppies and lots of baby ducks and a weaver bird is making a nest on our outer bow-stay. We are leaving it alone they are so beautiful. We are not going anywhere and their babies will be long gone before we can go. They weave their nest in to what looks like a basket hanging there and can weave it so tight it want slide down the cable they build it on.

Weaver Birds at work

Like a lot of cruiser that have left there boat here to go home for the summer. We have a life in Kansas if we can find a way we can afford to get there but for now we are here looking at ways to enjoy the life we have here. Last night just before dark bugs we haven’t seen before stared hatching out and were all over our boat. There was nothing we could do and then birds stared coming eating the bugs. Our boat now was covered with birds. Within a short time it was over and bugs and birds were gone. Where but here can you see things like this. To our friends in Kansas we will be there for some part of the summer. Maybe?

One of the fat puppies

Baby Ducks