Anduril Sailing Blog: Ass to Asshole and Away

Under sight of God, or at least the facsimile of him thereof, we waited and suffered his wrath. In other words, while we were at anchor in San Juan del Sur it mostly blew like hell. One day it blew so hard we could not leave the boat and had to babysit in case the anchor dragged. Probably there was nothing to worry about. Anduril is equipped with very good ground tackle. For those of you not versed in boating lingo, that means our anchor and chain are all of good quality and unlikely to fail or break loose in a blow. Still, when gusts are hitting 50, the wind is moaning in the rigging and the boat is tacking back and forth on the anchor line, heeling over hard enough that you have to brace yourself down below – at those moments into the mind creeps doubt. So instead of doing a much looked forward road trip into Granada we babysat the boat.

When we felt resentful about being stuck on the boat in San Juan del Sur we could look out at the great Jesus statue on the hill and say him, that’s the one that is causing all this trouble. That creature of many names: El Papagayo, Horned Man, La Banshee, Diablo. Wait; say some, your iconography is backwards. But if something can be praised it can also be criticised and we just aren’t the religious types. No great god protects or punishes us, nor seeks our mortal souls. The truth, our truth, is that it is just the wind blowing. Yet when the wind blows adverse, it is more fun to blame someone. So we do. So we did. We blamed El Papagayo. On Thursday morning the wind finally seemed reasonable enough for us to leave.

Another complication was that to leave San Juan del Sur we needed exit paperwork and the officials at the Port Captain’s office were helpful but confusing. Authority figures, just like gods, can be that way. We visited the port captain’s office three times. An exit Zarpe was helpfully produced bearing the wrong date. In truth, with the wind blowing we had no idea what date would actually be the correct one and we decided that no one would ever care about the date written on a Zarpe. More troubling was the emphatic advice from one of the uniforms at the port captain’s office that we didn’t need an exit stamp in our passports. That sounded wrong, but if the Man says it’s good, that’s good, right? With Greg about to pull up the anchor Thursday morning, Alice expressed new doubts. Our friend Pamela had sent a “be careful” message. Alice decided we needed one more try at the port captain’s office to make sure.

As it turned out, the better Man was actually a Woman. Who would guess that hidden in a hallway of the local fish plant dock there is an immigration office. The woman that worked there was friendly, competent and had a working computer. She also had all important government issued stamps – official stamps for papers and official stamps for passports. Stamps are important down here. Never forget it.

We did have some fun in San Juan del Sur. A beaten up panga serving as water taxi roams the anchorage and is available to be waved down and to take you ashore. The various drivers of this highly utilitarian boat are all ridiculously competent and in any weather whatsoever are able to effortlessly feather up to either dock or boat and let you on or off. Ashore are restaurants and all manner of commercial services to tend to the various needs of attractive visiting swimwear-clad surfer dudes and alto-dudes. We were able to buy provisions. Provisions included bottles of wine. Bottles of wine are also important down here. Never forget it.

Everything important now having been attended to, we hoisted anchor and sail and pointed our bums to wind. For sailors, bums-to-wind is always better than the alternative of faces-to-wind. Sailing away from the harbour, japing at El Papagayo on the hill, it was our bums that had the last word.

The trip from Nicaragua into Costa Rica was a perfect and lovely five-hour, nearly 40 mile sail. Rounding the headland of Cabo Santa Elena and weaving our way through the Islas Murcielagos, the winds were favourable, the seas were slight and until we approached our anchorage at Bahia Potrero Grande, we never even considered having to turn on the engine. Nice. Maybe God was smiling at us after all. Or maybe humans are ineffably stupid and superstitious. Either way, sometimes it is a wonderful life.

Greg & Alice