Sailing North after the Panama Canal | Sailing Zingaro – Ep 32

Close your eyes and hold on! Shipping lane crossing at night, no fresh food, no water.

On our search for a boatyard we spend seven days sailing the southern Coast of Panama. The wind was in our favor most of the time and we had a blast. But our range without a farm and a watermaker on the boat is limited, so we had to eventually end our trip in Boca Chica.

This part of the country is only rarely visited by cruisers, since most people rush through the Panama Canal and head right for the Marquesas. Barely anybody even bothers exploring this side of Panama. We don’t mind being alone, but that makes it hard to find facilities like a boatyard or even a lift for our cat.

The Sail Fail | Sailing Zingaro – Ep 31

The $7,000 sails don’t fit. We have trouble adjusting to them, and trying to beat to weather with them for the first time was a nightmare. We altered course and downwind sailing with them worked fine.

The roach on the main is far too big to fit through the backstays. Even double reefed it hits. I’ve since installed running backstays, but this issue is still not solved. Now I can use the sail double and triple reefed, but fully up there’s not enough clearance.

The following days we spend exploring the Pearl Islands in Panama and make coconut bowls. We find that a good activity to relax…

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Berliner Banause packt aus: A Young Berliners First Impression on Cruising


Lucie tells You about what it is like to be traveling onboard of Zingaro. After entering the crew, she go interested in cutting, filming & editing as well, so she used our common footage to try it herself and she came up with this masterpiece!

She thought about starting her own Youtube channel, but it’s just TOO MUCH WORK! So we decided to publish it here. All credits go to her since SHE edited this Episode! Thank You, Lucie!

Lucie on Instagram: @berlinerbanause

Babes, Boats & a Bummer you missed this Party | Ep30

Kimmy strikes again with a bad ass video. We finally reveal the new sails to the rest of the world. Did You think this day would ever come?

🙂 We take our loved and abused old sails down and receive our new Sails. Don’t miss the festivities. Grab a glass of Champagne and join the party! 🙂

Thank You to everybody that made this happen! The project Zingaro picked up on speed since then. EASTER ISLAND is now on the horizon. We would have never thought that, when we entered the pacific…

Next Episode we will take You to the pearl Islands and ohhh the trouble with the new sails. The luck didn’t last for long…

James & Kim

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Livestream about Dyneema, Synthetic Rigging & Boat building

Coming to you from the USA! Today we had a livestream with Luke Berger, owner of Kraken Structures Synthetic Rigging. We talk about Dyneema, and are showing examples of different ropes available, where they are best used. Also boat building, making money underway, and cruising plans for Zingaro…

You want to know more about syntetic rigging with Dyneema? Please watch our video How I made my rigging strong!

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Look what I found in the engine room | Livin la Vida Broka

The engine room is definitely my favorite place on the boat. Join me for a maintenance video on rebuilding the water pump on my 1GM10 and find out WHY.

I was doing some maintenance on the diesel, and I found THIS in my engine room! It’s AMAZING! Ive always wanted one! What a beautiful day. Hope you guys like the engine maintenance video!

Hope you guys like!

Much love from James & Kimmi.

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Season 1 FINALE | Sailing Zingaro Ep 29

The girls take the catamaran through the Panama Canal! We get some new linehandlers, struggle to get diesel, and finally get through the canal to the Pacific! What an adventure it has been so far.

As we say goodbye to the Caribbean ocean, we reflect on the memories we’ve made, the troubles, trials, and friendships. It’s hard to say goodbye, but exiting to start a new adventure in the biggest ocean on the Planet: Season 2 – PACIFIC.

Making this episode and looking back on the TWO YEARS we have spent cruising has touched us deeply.

Hope you guys love this episode as much as we do!

We look forward to sharing some completely amazing adventures with you in the Pacific Ocean. Wait till you see some of the off-the-beaten-path places we’ve been. Stay tuned…

Thank you to our Patrons for the support and everyone who had supported us on this amazing journey!!! We love you all.

-James & Kim

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Want to meet up Sailing Zingaro in CA?

We are flying up to the States for a month. James’ brother is getting married and we are going to visit the SPECTRA WATERMAKERS manufacturing facility and show you guys INSIDE and pick up our new watermaker!

Greetings from Ecuador

We’re going to be in San Diego and San Francisco! So We’d like to schedule meet-ups to meet YOU GUYS, drink a beer with you, and say thanks!

Meet up in SAN DIEGO: Harbor Town Pub in San Diego on the 15th of December at 6 o’clock
1125 Rosecrans Street San Diego, CA 92106

Meet up in SAN FRANCISCO: Bay View Boatclub in San Fransisco on Jan 4th at 6 o’clock
489 Terry A Francois Blvd, San Francisco, CA 94158

Sea Stories, bad advice, good beer. What more can you want. Bring anyone who’s ever dreamed about sailing the oceans… so we can talk them out of it over a cold one. 😉

Hope to meet some of you! Have a great holiday!

-James & Kimmi

Panama Canal – The Cheap Way (pt. II) | Livin la Vida Broka

In this episode we cover cost of the panama canal, how to pay, where to go, with maps to show you the way! This is the absolute cheapest way to do it!

We put this together as a help to future cruisers on exactly what needs to be done to get through the canal. We wished there was something like this when we went through, so we made it. Thanks for making it possible, and supporting us through this adventure.

Hope you like !


SIDE NOTE: When we’re editing some things just don’t fit, and some things need to be cut out, and a lot of it is uninteresting… We want to put out quality videos, informative, and entertaining, not 30min of random taping. That’s why we’ve split these up like this. These videos are part of our Livin la Vida Broka series. The next video will be an Episode (numbered in the series) and have more “entertainment factor”.

-James & Kim

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Transiting the Panama Canal (pt. I) | Livin la Vida Broka

What to expect and how to prepare … We cover anchoring in the flats, form 4405-I, scheduling to get measured, and the river Chagres! It’s a cool how-to with a bit of how-it-was.

This is the absolute cheapest way to do it, and we cover costs in part 2. We think it’ll be one of the better series on how to get through the canal. Hopefully it helps someone down the road.

-James & Kimmi

Currently: Exploring beautiful Ecuador

After cruising up and down the Ecuadorian coast we want to visit Ecuador mainland. James is going to climp Chimborazo (6,267 m) and Kim is going to visit Ecuador’s Amazon Rainforest – one of the most bio diverse places on the planet.

New crew & same old sails | Sailing Zingaro Ep28

🙂 Finally! We’re back on track with the episodes 🙂

Another Berliner joins the boat: Lucie (Kim’s friend from Berlin)! She will be on the boat for a few weeks, helping us through the Panama Canal, and generally being awesome. In this episode we provision the boat, and sail from Puerto Lindo to Colón to get measured for the Canal.

Unfortunately we lost about 4 months of work with a drive failure – but guess who had some of the footage: LUCIE!!! She saved us! She rocks! We love you Lucie! ❤

You can imagine how difficult it was to download over dropbox all the footage she had…

Much love!

-James & Kimmi (& Lucie 🙂 )

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Cruising Ecuador

After a lot of work we decided to go back to what we do best: Sailing! In the last few days we found a bunch of great spots on the Ecuadorian coast. We’re very much in love with this part of the world!

Kim is hoisting the Ecuadorian flag

Sailing Zingaro | Kim is hoisting the Ecuadorian flag

Just now, James is preparing the fish that he speared at a lonely rock 4nm off the coast. We’re so glad we stopped there! Check our current location!

We decided to ‘work’ our way back up the coast. It is a great ride, because the Humboldt current is carrying us and the wind is in our back. What a change after hundreds of miles of pure beating into the weather!!

We’re not going north only for fun though, we are having a friend do some woodwork for us and we have to organize a new dinghy motor up there. Paddling was a great work-out, but it’s time to extend our range a little on that thing.

Wish You guys all the best!

Kim

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Dyneema #3: How I made my rigging strong!

I received a comment (rather harsh to tell you the truth) about my failure to use the correct toggles in my Dyneema installation videos. Well, turns out the guy wanted to help, and sent me a whole box of goodies.

We went back and forth for over a month, with measurements, drawings, ideas, and here’s the culmination of that work.

Watch how I took my synthetic standing rigging to the next level! I explain everything I did to upgrade my synthetic rigging, what tools are required, and where to get them. Then a step-by-step installation process.

Special thanks to Kraken Structures for the equipment and instructions. I think we’ll be seeing more of Kraken …

Contact Kraken: facebook.com/SeaMonsterStrong

Synthetic Rigging by Kraken, Running backstays and softshackles

New chart table is coming

Currently we’re in Bahía de Caráquez (Ecuador), taking Zingaro apart! All of a sudden we’ve got quite a bit of space here. We removed the fridge and gave it to the local dockhand. He didn’t have one.

Now we’re going to design a chart table / editing table that fits in right where the fridge was. We have to find a very space-economic design for a desk with an integrated chair. We only have about a meter of space. Any ideas?

Space for a chart table

Sailing Zingaro | We’re taking our boat apart! All of a sudden we’ve got quite a bit of space here!

No fridge anymore … ?

Seriously, a propane fridge is a horrible idea for a cruising boat. It’s hot (in an already hot place), it’s heavy (extra parts for the propane system), and the #1 reason: it uses an entire 20lb propane tank in 2-3 weeks. Usually on cruising boats a tank of propane lasts 3 months. Plus when you ran out of propane there was no warning, everything just went bad, water all over the floor …

Unfortunately there are no 12v fridges in Ecuador, and a 100% import tax – it would cost around ~$2000 to get one here. Not having refrigeration sucks, but we’ll deal with it. We are happy it’s off the boat!

Soldering the VHF Connector

My boat was broken into and someone cut my radio cables when he tried to steal my radio. Fortunately the guard caught him just as he was trying to escape and he dropped it. I needed to re-solder the antenna cable, so used this opportunity to make a video to show YOU how.

Not many people know I used to work for an audio/video company in LA. They specialized in equipment rental for commercials, and I was their only tech. So I did everything: Cables, building circuit boards, repairing resisters, all of it. I learned a ton on that job…

…and I’ve soldered a few things in my life.

Soldering my PL-259 connector to RG-8x cable was super easy. And I think this is an essential skill to have on a cruising sailboat, you need to know how to fix your radio.

Hope it helps. Much love!

-James

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Turtle Rescue | Sailing Zingaro shorts

What we found 130 miles out to sea will shock you. While sailing to the most remote island in Central America, these sailors come across a turtle caught up in a fisherman’s long line. We jump in to help the little guy out.

Join us on our longest journey ever! 1,000nm from Costa Rica to Ecuador via Isla Del Coco …

Please make sustainable fish choices. Go here: Good fish guide: mcsuk.org/goodfishguide

Become Part of the CREW via PATREON: patreon.com/svzingaro

-Kim & James

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Crazy sailing to mainland Panama | Sailing Zingaro Ep27

This episode we finish our charter, say goodbye to our new friends, and explore mainland Panama. We really liked it here, and stayed for quite awhile.

When we left the beautiful San Blas, we got caught in some serious weather on our passage to Puerto Lindo.

We’re running out of food, fuel, and sanity on this most difficult passage. We’re here to tell you, this is not a passage for the feint hearted, we saw lightning right next to the boat, waterspouts, and rain rain rain. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel, we made it to Panama on a beautiful day.

Thanks for watching! Hope you like!

-Kim & James

Get the Zingaro CREW t-shirt: www.bonfire.com/germaid