October, 2005:

Well, two storms having gone by us in about a week’s time. Wilma passed us last week leaving a path of devastation behind it. And Hurricane Beta passed us well to the south last night, making landfall on Nicaragua. The storm was considerably smaller than Wilma, but a category 2 nonetheless. It’s breaking up over southern Nicaragua, though it can form back into a hurricane when its center goes over the Pacific.

Today’s Halloween, and I’ve got a couple of parties to go to, but thanks to what’s left of Beta, we’re being deluged with non-stop rain, so that may affect things somewhat. In the meantime, I’m just keeping dry down below.

So, gotta get this off my chest. Over the past week, more and more details have been coming out as to the true level of devastation that Wilma inflicted on Mexico and Belize. Both countries’ coasts have sustained a significant amount of damage, as most of us all know by now.

Isla Mujeres, Andiamo’s first port of call after leaving Florida last summer, was absolutely slammed. The storm lingered over it for more than a day, just pounding it. It was a direct hit, as it was on Cozumel, Cancun, and Playa del Carmen.

There were many cruisers and boats “summering” there, which made absolutely no sense to me considering the close calls last year. After going through Ivan last year on Isla Mujeres, I have no idea why ANYBODY would risk getting caught in a major hurricane.

But yet, some boaters are so unaware and I’ll venture to say rather foolish enough to choose to be there during the busiest hurricane season ever, and it’s not even over yet.

We know that island’s devastation was pretty complete and total. They will be without power and potable water for weeks, perhaps even months. Most of the island is beneath a foot or more of sand and mud. It is not pretty. What we don’t know is how the boats that were there fared out, presumably nestled in the lagoon, like Andiamo was last year. Because of the cutoff in power and communication, there is just no way of knowing yet.

I know I learned my lesson to not be that vulnerable during what I expected would be the busiest hurricane season ever recorded (and it is, and it’s not even OVER yet). You’d think that others would have learned too. Why people don’t learn how to respect hurricanes enough to take proper precautions and just plain AVOID THEM when they can be avoided is beyond me. The people on the island didn’t have the same choices and options that boaters did.

I wonder if the lesson was learned now. Perhaps at too high a cost this time? Who knows.

We’ll see next year about this time, how many boats insist on staying there through the summer. Ok, rant over.

In the meantime, things continue to get done as planned on Andiamo. A few medium-sized projects to go and things should be just peachy. I might get done with things so soon, that I might JUST be able to take a couple of weeks in November and head down to Nicaragua and Costa Rica to do some inland traveling. We’ll see what happens.

Oh, and some blog news! Thanks to Mietsie, we have some improvements going up on the site. Just some updated graphics, new pics on the header, and some other stuff. I just got tired of this look and having to see the back of my head every time I posted to the site, so new stuff!

And I’m installing an online photo gallery that will make it easier for me to post and manage my pics. This is why I haven’t made any new updates to my Europe photos. I just need to make a couple of cosmetic updates to the album, and we’re in business. So stay tuned!

Oh, and Happy Halloween!

Comment from: mietsie [Visitor]

We did it, yay!!!!

mietsie

x

2005-10-31 @ 16:37

Comment from: Bonnie Thompson [Visitor]

A certain “young lady” is trying to get in touch with you!

2005-11-04 @ 17:01

My first week back on Andiamo has been a relative success. The cats are still alive and staying with the boat (although Lucy has been dealing with some serious abandonment issues, which she’s taking out on me right now big time), the AC works again (THANK GOD!), Diesel’s back in business (I turned off the fuel line before I left, but totally forgot), and the boat is less of a mess than when I got here. Oh, and I got an outboard (don’t ask me what happened to my last one, please, I’m beggin’).

And, not entirely unexpected despite my exodus from the Caribbean this past summer/hurricane season, I still end up getting potentially introduced to a pretty ugly storm named Wilma, which just became a category 1 hurricane. She’s hovering right now off the coast of Honduras and Nicaragua. The Bay Islands are sure to feel at lease some of her wrath unless she takes a serious tack to the north and soon. So I’m a bit concerned about my friends in Utila.

Being that we’re up the Rio, things are pretty safe, we don’t have to deal with stuff like storm surges and big breaking waves. All we really have to deal with from a passing storm is heavy winds (which are heavily subdued by the surrounding mountains that buffer us from the coast) and lots of rain. Which can, as evidenced by Hurricane Stan about a week and a half ago, cause major havoc even far inland. So that was a bit sobering for everybody around here, hoping that the surrounding villages around Lago Izabal and the river don’t get hit with that kind of havoc if Wilma does come by too close.

One thing that this storm does tell me is that I’m going to just have to hang out in the Rio Dulce until the hurricane season is certainly done and overwith. I’ll only leave before the end of November if the weather conditions that nurture hurricanes have for the most part subsided. Otherwise, I stay right here.

Comment from: mietsie [Visitor]

So, what did happen with your previous outboard? 😉
mietsie

2005-10-20 @ 12:09

Comment from: MIchael Greaney [Visitor]

Yeah, Tony! What happened to the outboard? Is that the one that tried to kill you last Summer?

2005-10-21 @ 08:48

Comment from: Raf Truyers [Visitor]

Website looks great!

Hope to be part of this adventure soon again…

btw, I know what happens to Tony’s outboards! 🙂


cheers

Raf

2005-11-04 @ 05:33

It was a pretty uneventful night in Guatemala City. I needed to spend the night there, so I figured I might as well book a good hotel in the best part of town, which is Zone 10, or better yet, “Zona Viva”. They call it this because this is where all the cafes, clubs, discos and other nightspots are. My hotel was smack in the middle of the action. But me, I was just too damn sleepy, so I stayed in my rather luxurious room and watched HBO. I know, I know… There had been quite a bit of buzz around the city since the horrendous disaster that happened earlier this week when Hurricane Stan passed north of Guatemala. According to local news reports, as many as 1500 Maya villagers are dead after having their villages completely buried by mudslides and floodwaters. Many of the villages that were wiped out were on the mountains surroudning Lake Atitlan, one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen on earth.

Many tourists who were hiking from Panajachel were stranded in the mountains surrounding Lake Atitlan, and many are missing and presumed dead. In the city there are many rescue works and red cross volunteers scrambling into action, trying to get to the affected villages, located about 2-3 hours west and north of Guatemala City.

This is the 2nd time in just a few months that something horrendous has happened at a place that I’ve been to in the not so distant past. Not counting my hurricane experiences of last year! It’s chilling to think that not missing the wrath of horrific events is nothing more than a matter of good or bad timing. It’s all quite sobering sometimes. Through it all, I can only feel the pain and loss that these villagers must be going through right now. These are wonderful, friendly and simple-living people. Most survive day to day on almost nothing, and yet in my experience they are mostly happy and productive people. It begs the question, why them???

So, after sleeping for something like 11 hours, I had some breakfast, checked out and grabbed a cab to the bus station. The bus I was taking was the “Maya de Oro” line, which is the 1st class bus, relatively speaking. It costs about double the regular class bus, which is “Fuente del Norte” line (or as we call it, “Fuente del Muerte”, highlighting their less than laudable safety record on the road.). But, it takes about half the time to arrive to Rio Dulce.

If you read my previous postings about Guatemala, you’ll remember that we made the mistake of taking the Fuente Del Norte bus from Antigua to Rio Dulce when I traveled with Raf, Teresa and Lisa. I had NO problem paying the extra fare (which comes to about 10 bucks more), especially considering the fact that I was carrying thousands of dollars of boat stuff and computers with me.

So the bus ride went on without a hitch. Daniel, the current manager of Marios Marina was at Bruno’s dock to pick me up within a matter of minutes. And before I knew it, in all too surreal moment of anticipation and suddenness, I was back onboard Andiamo.

The first thing I noticed was that Andiamo looked alot like it did when I first bought her. Sitting in the weather, she had taken on the image of neglect and disorder. Of course, this was just on the surface, and because simply there has been no one on board keeping things up on the outside. The inside was surprisingly clean, considering I had everything covered up while I was gone. The cleaning ladies were taking the covers off every month or so and washing them, so they were pretty clean.

Now the question was how the cats were going to react to me being gone. Cosmo was the only one onboard, and he was rather nonchalant about my arrival, except for the fact that I got back with lots o’ treats, which have been missing from their daily routine since Daniel ran out of them more than a month before. Aretha was onboard in a matter of minutes of hearing the treats container shaking. She devoured a bunch of treats and took right off again. Lucy was hiding on Daniel’s boat, “Yankee”. Daniel pointed out that she had been spending alot of time on his boat, which didn’t surprise me at all. Lucy has always needed human contact, and considering Daniel was the only person she was seeing everyday, she naturally got attached to him.

All in all the cats were as expected, all healthy except for possibly having lost a little too much weight, which I’m sure can be attributed to having run out of canned food sometime ago, and only having dry food to eat for the last few weeks, which they are far less inclined to eat alot of. I did bring a supply of canned food, so that should get me back into their good graces. I got the AC working again onboard, so the nice cool boat should be a draw to win over the cats’ hearts and minds. We shall see.

So now I’ve got a slew of projects to do to get Andiamo back shipshape. First, lots of cleaning, then I need to get the port head back in service. Should be easy, though messy and thoroughly disgusting. Then, I need to have a diesel guy go over the diesel and at the very least try to figure out why it’s not starting. Hope it’s something simple. Then it’s on to the engine driven refrigeration, which I think has a bad clutch relay. Did I mention getting the boat cleaned up???

But it really does feel good to be back on Andiamo.

Comment from: mietsie [Visitor]

It sure sounds like a real coming home, and I’m happy for you, you make me smile,


CBM

2005-10-11 @ 13:54

Comment from: Mick Barry [Visitor]

Hi Tony. Good to see you finally make it back to Rio Dulce. Next time you are in Brunos, ask him to introduce you to Fito and Franz. I crewed with them from Cancun. They are still there at Suzanna’s.
Let me know your plans.
Cheers
Mick

2005-10-16 @ 19:48

Got to Guatemala City last night, after a quick Taca flight in Miami. Couldn´t get out of Miami fast enough. God, that airport SUCKS!

After doing a week in LA, I got to spend about another week in Florida. I flew back into Miami, and picked up my friend Steffen in Hollywood on the way up. He´s still working on his boat, but hasn´t been able to get much of his deck painting done on account of the nasty weather. So he figured what the hell. So he got onboard for Daytona. So it was fun getting Steffen acquainted with my Daytona friends, and he appeared to have a good time, which to me looked sorely needed, as he has been stuck on his boat in Hollywood without a car, and most of his dock neighbors gone.

I took advantage of this time to tie up some loose ends, and get some last-minute boat stuff which I was to cart back to Andiamo. After a few ok days despite the weather, it was time to head back to Miami yesterday. I dropped Steffen off at Hollywood, and made it to the airport with time to spare.

I should be on a bus to Rio Dulce by 10 AM. Hopefully the roads will be ok and I´ll make it. A hurricane struck north of Guatemala last week, bringing with it tons of rain, and nasty storm action. People have died, and many have lost their homes due to flooding and mudslides. Hopefully things have stabilized and I´ll be able to make it to Rio Dulce in good time.

We shall see, when you´re on the roads of Guatemala, it´s ALWAYS an adventure.

Comment from: Jodi [Visitor]

So glad to hear you’re o.k.! When I saw the news the other night, I thought of you right away. Hope all stays well and safe. Talk to you soon! :)Jo

2005-10-10 @ 13:35

Comment from: Bonnie Thompson [Visitor]

Try this E-mail, it should be the correct one. We are glad that you are safe and back with the “cats” Hawaii is just EIGHT days away!!

2005-10-28 @ 17:33