As I was saying…

So…as I was saying before being so rudely interrupted, Costa Rica is beautiful and it’s enticing us to explore but Marce and I were overwhelmed with the work of spec’ing out a new rig and finding expert vendors and riggers. I mean what do I know about mast sections and moments of inertia? To me it’s like art…I’ll know it when I see it. By the time I see it, the mast will have been cut into two sections so that it fits into a 40-foot container with the splicing kit installed, the Schaefer in-boom furler fitted to the mast, and the boom vang fitted as well as a hundred other things I don’t know enough to even start worrying about.

I’m not much for waiting about and with so much to do the thought that both engines are questionable was driving me crazy so when the same name kept surfacing as a good mechanic I called him up and in an hour and a half Robert, who I was warned never smiles, isn’t interested in where you’ve been or where you’re going or even how long he’s been in Costa Rica, had one engine fixed and Beladonna’s alternator pulled and, as expected, found the regulator to be shot. He sadly looked up at me while motioning toward the poor, cooked, year-old starting battery and said you’ll need a new battery. Taciturn doesn’t even come close to describing this Hungarian who just wants to fix what’s broken. I’d had to fill up that smoking battery six times while on our nonstop motor from the Galapagos. It got so hot I moved a fire extinguisher so it would be handy, just in case. The good news is that I’d gotten Robert to say more than six words which I was told I would not be able to do.

After a flurry of emails to our insurance company we felt sufficiently on top of things that we decided we could take a day off and…what else? Climb the hill next to our anchorage and grab a photo with some altitude.

Dear Escapees I’m sad to say, we couldn’t take the unrelenting heat and grade of the trail up to the national rain forest.

This place is hot, steep and even though it was paved, it was paved in this strange Costa Rican stuff that features rather large rocks and stones that are rough on the feet and legs. Well, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. After our Escape Velocity capitulation, on the way down we stopped by a mountain stream running down the mountainside and soaked our overheated heads in the cool clear water.

I could’ve stayed there for quite a while but in true Costa Rican form we could see rain clouds stacking up over the ridge to windward of EV.

Back onboard we found that we were too tired to make it to the Banana Bay Bar for happy hour, but not too tired to miss this photograph of a flight of macaws noisily climbing, two by two, up out of the jungle.

Too tired to even make dinner so it’s leftover night aboard Escape Velocity.