And thanks for all the Xmas and new years’ saludos! I hope 2009 is a good one for all of us!

The TV crew and Karen hard at work filming at Chichime

So while we’re in Panama City after finishing our latest trip last week, I get an email from a Kiwi/British TV crew that was on their way to shoot Panama for a Travel Channel UK show called “Julian and Camilla’s World Odyssey”.  The producer, Camilla (who’s also one of the show’s hosts), tells me that Panama’s tourism board dropped the ball on them, and they were now without a plan to shoot Panama, much less San Blas.

Camilla had found Andiamo via some posts on the Lonely Planet forum, and asked me if I’d be willing to take her and her crew along for a sail around San Blas so they can get some footage and do some interviews with the local Kuna folks. Turns out we actually had a sail planned for that weekend with some guests, so we could make it work.

So we had them onboard for a weekend, and showed them around San Blas. Luckily the weather cleared up rather nicely for the most part, and they were able to get some great footage. Karen and I also had to take part in a tense negotiation with the Kuna Chief on Isla Porvenir to get them a permit to shoot San Blas and get a rare interview with the chief. Karen then acted as translator for those segments.

We also had along a Czech couple, Josef and Milushka, who had already arranged with us to do a sail earlier in the month. So needless to say it was a great mixed crowd. We had a great time with the crew, and Karen even got to man the mike boom (as you can see in the pic above)!

They got some great footage of sailing on the Andiamo and even interviewed us! So hopefully some of that footage won’t end up on the cutting room floor. We’ll see sometime this summer when their Panama episode gets aired in UK and Europe on Travel Channel UK. Camilla told me she’d let me know the airdate and send me a copy of the episode. So we’ll just have to stay tuned for now…

I will have some great pics posted on the Andiamo gallery and some fun video of Karen doing the translation of the Kuna Chief’s interview once I edit it a bit. It was a lot of fun, and very flattering that a crew like these guys would want to sail with us! So thanks alot, Camilla, Julian, Ian and Tom for a great experience and a fun time!

So without further adieu…

Chris Pozzo - Chris is my best friend. We’ve known each other since I was 13 and he was 12 when we were a couple of catholic school punk-asses. We go back a long way, and have experienced dark chapters in our lives almost at the same time. Namely, losing both of our parents in the same two year period among others.

We are vastly different people. He being more of a homebody and not having much of a knack for adventure. And I being a polar opposite of that. Nonetheless, the friendship continues to thrive well into its third decade.

He has been incredibly helpful on so many logistical fronts, I’m almost ashamed to not have mentioned him sooner. He takes care of so many of my US-based chores that I would literally not be able to do this whole Andiamo thing were it not for him.

Not to mention that he has opened his home to me, and literally given me a bedroom at his house. So for all this and more, I thank my best friend Chris. Now if I can just get his ass on Andiamo for a spell (I’m working on it)!

Elvis Castro - Elvis is the ONLY diesel mechanic worth hiring in Cartagena. When Andiamo’s engine literally drowned in seawater last summer, I was lucky enough to get him to handle the rebuild. Yeah, it took eight weeks instead of the two he promised, and we did have to do another partial rebuild after the oil pump that he didn’t think needed replacing died on me. But he did follow through, and he got Andiamo back in the water, at a fair price, and he stuck to his guarantee. So thanks Elvis!

Ceci Barsallo - I met Ceci last year in Bocas del Toro when she was vacationing with her teenage daughter. She was gracious enough to give me her contact info in Panama City. Since then, our few meet-ups and her time and effort to get me familiar with Panama city have been both incredibly generous and invaluable to me. She’s a great friend to have in Panama City. Many thanks Ceci!

Sandy and Sherry from “Namaste’” - A couple of Texan cruisers that I’ve known since my Rio Dulce days. Since then, we’ve met up in Bocas and Cartagena. They’ve been incredibly helpful with needed parts for Andiamo, among many other favors. A huge gracias to the both of them.

Benjamin and Roberto from the Hostal Holiday in Cartagena - These two guys were instrumental in helping us put together our first few trips out of Cartagena for Andiamo. They continue to support us however and whenever they can. We can’t thank them enough.

Dino in San Blas - Dino is our main Kuna guy in Carti’,San Blas. He will literally take care of anything we need for Andiamo. He does everything from coordinating our passengers’ transportation within and to/from San Blas, to helping clean and maintain Andiamo during our downtimes. Meeting him has been instrumental in our building what we consider a very special relationship with the rather insulated Kuna people. He’s also instrumental in enabling us to cruise and keep Andiamo in San Blas like few other boats can. He has never let us down, which is a HUGE thing in these parts. He has gone out of his way to get us out of self-inflicted jams even when the odds were against him. We cannot express our appreciation for his friendship and dedication enough.

And finally…

My lovely dearest Karen - Here’s someone who didn’t even particularly like boats (or cats) when we started hanging out last spring. Yet, in a short period of time, she became a key player in getting Andiamo sailing again, and in organizing her trips. She is now Andiamo’s key logistics person and keeps the boat more organized than I ever did or could. There is absolutely NO WAY I could have done all that we have in the past few months without her. She’s a most welcome (and beautiful) ray of sunshine in my life. I can only thank my lucky stars for staying persistent enough with her to even give me the time of day (it wasn’t easy I’ll tell ya). I can only hope I can return the favor to her in a way that will give the same value to her life.  So a big muchas gracias Karen, y muchos besos tambien.

That’s it for this year! I hope I got everybody!

Here’s a cool clip of one of the biggest dolphin sightings Andiamo’s EVER SEEN! Luckily, the battery was charged, the sun was all good, and I managed to get some great footage. Oh, and wait for the AWESOME aerial breach by two dolphins (one is a baby). That’s NOT something you see every time. Enjoy!

Ah yes... this is what it looks like from afar...

For the past almost five years, I’ve wanted nothing more than to get some decent shots of Andiamo undersail, but from AWAY! That’s not asking too much is it? I mean, how hard can it be? Yet, for some unknown cosmic reason, it was never able to happen. Until NOW that is!!

Earlier this month, as we unceremoniously sailed back to Cartagena after experiencing some motor trouble on the way to Panama (that’s putting things mildly),  we were finally able to get some great sailing shots before sailing into the harbor. Many thanks to Mats of “Da Capo” for doing the honors.  So check them out on the gallery via this link!

Why you ask? Well, for one thing, I get asked all the time by readers what books they should read to prepare themselves for cruising. I also get asked for my opinion about other boat-related stuff as well. So, as part of the “Shameless Plugs” section’s strategy, I shall seek to render my opinions and advice about books and other products, AND direct you to the best deals for them online, which is almost always Amazon anyway.

I invite you to check out the store, and be aware that I’ll be adding lots more items and reviews as we go along. Also remember that I’ll also be linking to other shopping sites and resources under this category, and making recommendations for those sites as well.

So what are you waiting for? Go to The Andiamo Store now!

Oh yeah baby... New and improved...

Well, between having this temporary downtime, and being locked out of my Pokerstars account (apparently, playing from Colombia poses a security risk, they claim to be sorting it out… ), I finally found some time to get the rest of my Andiamo site projects going! I know, I know… it’s about time!

So please do take a few minutes and surf around to check out some of the new additions made to the blog and the site, which include:

1. A new guestbook which is intended for Andiamo’s passengers and crew so they can share their experiences right here on the site. If you’re a site visitor, please leave a comment!

2. An events calendar which will work as an online schedule showing Andiamo’s planned movements and trips. Hope people who are looking for sail/travel dates and locations find this handy. Please give me feedback on this!

3. Online status indicators for both Skype and Yahoo, so if you see me online and want to ask me something, give me a shout!

4. Social bookmarking for easy sharing linking of any blog posts you may like. You’ll now see a little “share this” link at the end of each post or page. Please free to share or bookmark anything on this site.

5. I’ve started updating my blogroll, which is LONG overdue.

And there’s much more coming! I’ll be adding a cool links/book database that I think will be a great way to suggest sites and things to check out, other than the blogroll. I’m beefing up my interactivity between this site and Twitter and Facebook, among other social sites. I also will be putting some energy into making Andiamo more media-rich with cool video footage, enhanced galleries and more.

So please check it all out, stay tuned, and DO give me your feedback on what you think of the new site additions!

One good thing about Andiamo’s engine deciding to take an implosion break was that it got me back to land in time to watch the 2008 election unfold. And what a sight that was indeed! It was the antithesis to the disastrous, horrific and just plain criminal events that unfolded on that fateful Tuesday of November 7th, 2000. For as infamous as that election was, this election shall be FAMOUS, if not more.

If you had asked anyone, even just a year ago, if they ever thought that a black man, particularly a mixed-race black man with an arabic middle name, who was born in Hawaii, raised in both the United States and Indonesia, who scored #1 in his class at Harvard Law School, would have even a minute chance of EVER becoming President of the United States. I’ll bet that if you didn’t get a hearty dismissive laugh, you’d get a sure “NO FRICKIN’ WAY” in response.

Yet, it happened. In less than three months from now, Barack Obama will be president, as the world already knows. It’s such an amazing paradigm shift that I can hardly believe it. This is big.

As a now long-time expat, I greet this news with awe, relief (that the Bush-Rove-Cheney dictatorship is FINALLY over), and just a strange passionate glee that I haven’t felt about America in a long time. See, when people I meet on my travels ask me what I think about my country, I tell them that America used to be a shining star. We USED to be powerful, positive force that brought the world forward. In recent years, however, I have not been able to say that, and that hurt.

I suspect that at the very least, my sentiments about America will change for the better. It has already, considering that it was even possible for this election to happen. Despite all the problems that seem to be plaguing my once-great country, I have more hope now that the tide will turn and things will get better. Slowly.

My moderate, libertarian sensibilities nudge to me that Obama may shift things to an overly liberal direction in the country’s currently cold and oppressive climate. While I may cringe at this, I’ll also venture to think that maybe, just maybe, a good hard pendulum swing to the left isn’t such a bad thing. We’ve been leaning so  hard to the right for so long, and a socially oppressive right at that, that a bit of a swing to the left may be just what we need to get things equalized again.

In any case, it’s nice to have something to feel good about America again.

The Andiamo's beloved Perkins Diesel, "post-rebuild"

That’s right, previously unbeknownst to me, there is another chapter to what I thought was a long finished saga. Since the apparent success of this engine rebuild between June and August of this year, we’ve completed 7 trips between here and Panama. The engine has run virtually flawlessly save for an annoying minor oil leak that cost me about a quart of oil each trip.

On our latest run to Panama from Cartagena, things seemed to be fine. We were motorsailing at a brisk 6.5 knots out of Cartagena, virtually on schedule to arrive in San Blas. We had five guests on board for the trip, and all seemed to be fine. At sunset we broke out some cervezas to salute the coming night of sailing.

Then, there was a noise.

The engine, which a minute ago was just humming away nicely at a low RPM, started making this horrendous metallic clacking noise. The minute Karen and I heard it, I told her to put the motor in neutral while I went below to check it out. By the time I opened the hood, it was too late. The motor locked up, with smoke billowing everywhere. Not good.

By the time all was said and done, it was clear we were going to have to sail back to Cartagena. We were just a little over 40 miles away and I could get repairs done there. I broke the bad news to the guests. So I came about and set sail back, hoping that the wind would hold up.

Ironically, with the brisk winds and the current, Andiamo was skimming along at 7 knots or so. Too fast now. It was now nighttime, and going into the harbor with just sails at night was a risky proposition. There was a lot of shipping traffic at this time in and out of Boca Chica, Cartagena’s other entrance. So, I reduced sail in an effort to slow Andiamo down enough to give her a good arrival time after first light. Still didn’t work, we were still cruising along at almost 6 knots. Too fast yet again.

With all the shipping traffic, I decided to cut north and hang out there for the rest of the night. There was a bit of storm activity south of us anyway, so heading north would get us away from that. It proved to be a good move, and kept us clear from shipping traffic the rest of the night.

Heading back was a bit of a problem since by morning time, the wind had died out. So we bobbed in the water for a good couple of hours until the winds picked up. From that point on, the winds stayed with us long enough to get us into the harbor under sail. I have to admit, it was kind of nice to see that I can still navigate Andiamo in tight quarters only under sail. Hadn’t done that in awhile.

So after bidding our regretful goodbyes to our guests, we got Elvis onboard to have a look. He clearly wasn’t happy with what was going on. Particularly since he knew he was going to have to guarantee the rebuild we’d just completed just a couple of months back.

The next day, he was onboard opening up the engine, trying to ascertain what happened. Ultimately, it turned out that the oil pump had failed and in a short time, the oil pressure dropped to nil. This resulted in a major breakdown. This was a point of contention between Elvis and me during the rebuild. I thought the pump should be rebuilt or replaced, and Elvis didn’t think it was necessary.  Luckily, only a few key parts suffered, and would have to be replaced. There was some damage on the engine block that would need to be repaired as well. While this was all bad news, we all breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that things could have been much, much worse.

So after an interesting two days getting the engine dismantled and off Andiamo while at anchorage, it’s back in Elvis’ shop. We’re awaiting parts we hope to have this weekend. Elvis should have her all closed up and back aboard Andiamo within a few days after that. Andiamo will be on the move again, and soon.