Turtle Rescue | Sailing Zingaro shorts

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

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Hauling out the boat in Costa Rica

beaching the boat

After beaching the boat for two days straight (3am-2pm) there was just too much wave action to get the bottom painted.

hauling out in Costa Rica

So we bit the bullet and paid $900 for a week on land. Lots of work to do, paint, repair, straighten the bent rudder and bent port strut (that is not perfect from last haulout).

While James is working on the boat, Kim is just travelling back from Berlin to Costa Rica. Arrival in San Josè: this evening. 🙂

One day in San Blas | Sailing Zingaro Ep26

We continue our journey to Panama, but not alone! With five guests we explore the San Blas Islands. A grounded ferry, coconuts en mass & scary storms: That’s what you are going to get with the 26th Episode of s/v Zingaro!

Fellow cruisers warned us about the storms here building up very quickly and very strong, but we were still pretty overwhelmed by the power that came out of nowhere!

We introduce you to the San Blas Islands and the people that call them home. The Kuna.

Don’t be sad about not seeing enough from the ‘San Blas Ferry’. We will come back and give you a good look at it.

With love from Berlin
-Kim

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¡Adios Cartagena! | Sailing Zingaro – Episode 25

Dancing, with tears in our eyes… ¡Adios Cartagena! We’re leaving this dirty, cheap & wonderful place. But not without cruising the streets at night one last time.

Of all the places we have been on our journey so far, Cartegena stands out. So much culture offer during the day & the night and so many young people that build up their life just the way we do in Berlin or California, withstanding the troubled past and presence of their country.

So proud and so free.

We are thinking about visiting Colombia again, on our way to Ecuador. Just to see the differences between the coasts… We’ll see…

Hope You have a great week!

Greetings from Berlin, Kim

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The ONE time a catamaran SUCKS

When trying to find a place to HAUL OUT on the pacific coast of Central America.

Why? Because I want to copper-epoxy the bottom of the boat. It’s greener (no ablative paint to fall all over the coral), it’s easier to clean (no ablative paint in our skin), it’s stronger (no ablative… you get the picture).

marina-pez-vela

BUT it’s been the biggest PITA! Listen to this BS:

So I went to the only marina that could fit me in Pacific: Marina Paraiso (Panama): They wanted $3500, and I couldn’t live on the boat, or WORK on my own boat. Lol. Right.
Marina Puerto Amistad (Ecuador): They sent us a semi-reasonable quote, told us they could fit us, then 1 WEEK later, when we were just about to leave, told us sorry, they messed up, can’t fit.
Marina Puntarenas (Costa Rica): FINALLY! Called them from Panama, they can fit us, at a great price! Yay! So we sailed 250nm and…. oh… oops… they measured wrong. 7m wrong. Morons. Seriously wtf.
Marina Pez Vela (Costa Rica): They can definitely fit us, the manager offers me $500 off if we promote the marina! Sweet. Go to do the paperwork… they require FULL COVERAGE INSURANCE. Ever try to insure a 34 year old home built boat travelling through Central America? Not going to say it’s impossible, but I haven’t found a way. It’s kinda funny, I have to explain to everyone what Airex foam is… I should just lie and say fiberglass.

So… looks like I’m holding on to the 3 gallons of epoxy I purchased for this job. Guess I’m going to have to beach her and paint her. At least it’s cheap. I’m just so sick of the paint. I have to clean the bottom every two weeks here. No shit, it’s pretty crazy. If I let it go a month there’s some big ass barnacles.

There’s one other option. Marina Caldera which isn’t really a marina, as much as a piece of land with a crane. I’m wondering what will happen if they drop my boat… Plus it’s $70/day. Damn rich guys charter fishing for Marlin here. That’s the entire Pacific coast moneymaker. Every damn boat here. Using 200gal/hr of diesel fucking up the environment for a unicorn fish.

Ok. I’m done ranting. Now I’ll suck it up and figure out how to do this by myself. Get ready for an interesting video!

-James

PS – The image is Pez Vela. See the fishing boat at the bottom? I’m anchored between him and the wall. Can’t get internet, but easy to flag down a fisherman to take my boom in to get welded… more on that later.

PPS – I’m really not trying to be a downer, it’s really nice here. Cost Ricans are some of the most helpful people in the world. Super cool. Just needed to vent. I keep getting comments that I complain too much. Well those guys need to try to find a marina to haul out a 6.1m wide cat. In Spanish.

The thunder rolls… Lightning strikes sailboat | Sailing Zingaro – Episode 24

We get hit by lightning off the coast of Colombia. Worried that the sailboat might be hit again, the first mate sails Zingaro back to Cartagena.

We show you how bad the damage was and what survived. Looks like we are going to have a lot of work to do. At our current estimate the damage ran us just over $1700. Ouch.

Also we’re back to the usual vida broka! Sunken dink and boat-work wherever we look! We still have the portable dinghy, but by now we really are ready for a change.

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Aid project with a Colombian school | Sailing Zingaro – Episode 23

This is a very special one for us. After we visited the family farm (Ep 22) in Colombia, one of the brothers set us up a special show at a local school for inner-city kids affected by the drug cartel.

In this school a big part of the learning is art – specifically the native songs and dance to Colombia. We got to see how they make their instruments and got a great example of their talent. The costumes were all made or purchased by the students themselves or their families.

We were so touched, that we decided to pledge our video’s earnings to them! We are going to give them 100% of the proceeds of this video, plus whatever we can raise! This is going to a great place, and just this little amount will be an amazing help for these kids. It will allow them to buy new instruments and costumes, and travel to show their talents (something they REALLY wanted to do).

If you’d like to donate directly please send to this link: paypal.me/sailingzingaro
Please put “School” in the description, and we’ll make sure to get it to them.

Hope you like 🙂

-James & Kim

Sailing Zingaro Live from Costa Rica

Want to sail around the world? It’s not as easy as it looks …

Cruising is HARD!!! In this stream we talk about the hard parts of cruising, our sailing plans for the next months, and we have a special interview with another captain that sailed with us for two weeks, a Q & A, & we also respond to some YouTube comments at the end of the show.

[Streamed live on Jun 25, 2018]

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We tour a farm in Colombia | Sailing Zingaro – Episode 22

Do you see the SIZE of that thing?! There’s something in the water in Colombia … 🙂

We get invited by a local to his family farm, so we leave the boat at anchor and take a water-taxi, car-taxi, & 4wd jeep to one of the most biodiverse places we’ve ever seen. Wow they sure do grow everything mega-sized here. Join us on our private tour of a Colombian finca.

You guys may recognize Raphael from the last couple videos, he is a business owner we met in Playa Blanca (about 4 hours south of Cartagena, Colombia). We took him on Zingaro for a week or two, and in return he invited us to his family ranch in Cordoba. What a cool place.

We think this is the best EP so far! Kim did a great job editing this.

-James & Kim

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Livin la Vida Broka (5): Rigging with Dyneema | Sailing Zingaro

How to install synthetic standing rigging on a sailboat, how to splice a deadeye, and discussion of the pro’s and con’s of steel rigging vs synthetic.

In this series of Livin la Vida Broka, I take you step-by-step through changing out my 1×19 steel wire rigging for synthetic Dyneema rigging.

You can’t find this anywhere on the internet, it took me a long time to get all this information, then put it to use, learn from the mistakes, and ultimately make this video.

I’m proud to put this out. It’s the only one of it’s kind. Between this and the last video it’s everything you need to replace your standing rigging with synthetic, in one easy place.

DISCLAIMER: This is an example of how I changed MY rigging, please refer to professionals for specific installation procedures, BEFORE touching the rigging on your boat.

**PATRON ONLY OFFER: If any of you want to replace your standing rigging, I will be your consultant free of charge. Contact me through Patreon. I have relationships with Colligo Marine, the rigging dr, and can get you dyneema at a reduced price. 🙂

Much love!

-James & Kim

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Made it to Costa Rica!

So, the journey up to Costa Rica was… LOUD. We motored more in three days than we have in the last 3000 miles combined. Started off beating into 15kts – Zingaro was doing great! We were moving at 8kts or so for the first 4 hours, storms forming all around us as we headed out and they headed in towards land. Got some really cool videos of that.

Then… dead. 3kts for the next two days. We had to motor so long I ended up freaking out at 5am and we drifted for a couple hours as I contemplated buying a trawler. 😀

We shut the motors down to eat, and sunsets, but we basically had to motor the whole way up here less 7-8 hours. It was a 52 hour journey.

We’re getting moored at the yacht club that I called from Panama, verified the size of the lift, and reserved a spot to get hauled out. But they gave me the wrong Information: We don’t fit in the lift!

Options:

There’s a huge yard for the big fishing boats that can haul us right near here: for $200/day!!
Sail back down 100 miles to the only 100T travel lift in Central America (and pay ~$800 for the haul out, plus yard fees). Trying to get a quote has been difficult.

So we’re kinda stuck, but this is boating. I’m really glad I speak decent Spanish now, I’ve got some locals helping me out. Nice people here.

Lastly, coming to Puntarenas to check in was 100% the right thing to do. We sailed an extra 150 miles to get to the Port Captain with the most experience, because we didn’t have proof of yellow fever vaccines. Turned out we didn’t need them, but the other guys asked for them and the Port Captain told them it wasn’t a real law and we didn’t need them. Woohoo!! May have gone differently in a smaller port. We heard of people being turned away!

Stay tuned for an update on the yard, going to buy epoxy now in the capital city 2 hours away. 🙂

– James

Costa Rica – the world’s first decarbonised country?

Carlos Alvarado, Costa Rica’s new President said: “Decarbonisation is the great task of our generation and Costa Rica must be one of the first countries in the world to accomplish it, if not the first.”

The small country in Central America is well-known for its environmental commitment: Costa Rica already generates more than 99 percent of its electricity by using renewable energy sources.

That`s great!

The most populated island on earth | Sailing Zingaro – Episode 21

Join us as we discover the small, packed, island Santa Cruz del Islote (Colombia) – the most (or second-most) densely populated island on earth! We meet the local leader of the youth environmental club, meet some of the people that live here on the island, and see what there is to see on this small crazy place.

You’re in for a surprise too, Kim and Lucie made a music video at the beginning of this episode.

Let us know what you think. 🙂

-James & Kim

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Goodbye Panama! Off to New Shores!

Today we are leaving Panama for Costa Rica (this time for real!). We are looking back on 8 months full of adventures, doubts & challenges. The last weeks and months we couldn’t wait to get out of Panama to see different countries, but when we checked out we asked ourselves if we really had seen enough … All of the sudden it seemed as if we had so much more to do here!

And YES, there are tons of places yet (by us) unexplored places even here in this relatively small country. And yet it is time for us to leave, because there is a whole world to be seen. I guess it is like that with traveling. The more places You get to know, the more places you learn to miss.

Ahoy!
-James & Kim

The Place to be in Colombia: Tintipán! | Sailing Zingaro – Episode 20

In this Episode we find Tintipán, the most beautiful place we’ve seen on our travels so far. There’s a lagoon in this island that has one of the most dense photo-plankton occurrences in the world. Seriously it’s one of the most amazing underwater experiences. We both got naked and jumped in at night, with no moon, and it looked like we were on fire.

Unfortunately there’s no camera that will pickup this light, so it was for our eyes only (we tried). You’ll just have to trust us on the description.

We spearfish, actually Kimmi speared her first fish here in Tintipán, we sail and try to finally find a place with clear water. Haven’t had that since the Cayman Islands!

Love you guys! Hope you like!

– James & Kim

Become part of the crew via PATREON …
Get the Zingaro CREW t-shirt …

Just arrived: Mermaid Kimmi shirts …

Break it. Bail it. Fix it. Sail it. Our new Zingaro crew-shirts – designed by Kim! Aren’t they cool!?

New Zingaro Crew Shirts

Sailing Zingaro’s Fundraising Campaign

Every purchase goes toward a watermaker for Zingaro, so we can check out some of the more remote areas of the world (Chile, Easter Island …). Water is our limiting factor at the moment, and with your help, we’re going to fix that! James will make his own 12v 5A homemade watermaker for ~$1800, and of course make a how-to video to share with everyone on YouTube.

Sailing Zingaro Crew Shirts are available in various styles and colours. Take a look at bonfire.com/germaid/

Livin la Vida Broka (4): The Dyneema Video

A complete how-to on Dyneema. This video took me awhile to make, but I’m proud of it. Been waiting for a long time to put this one out. Here is a great addition to the LVB series. Everything one needs to know about dyneema, including:

What is Dyneema
How to make the 2 splices you need to know
How to make soft shackles, which are ~$1 to make, and could save your boat
20 places it’s used on my boat

Hope this is useful to everyone. This really is my favorite part of this blog, sharing my knowledge with everyone. If you have a sailboat and don’t know how to use dyneema please do yourself a favor and get acquainted. Having a few extra shackels lying around will help you (as you’ll see in the vid).

Much love!
-James

Selma Fids: https://goo.gl/hVW7QG
1/8″ Dyneema spool: https://goo.gl/Y3hw6H

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Girls make the best crew | Sailing Zingaro – Episode 18

Girls took over Zingaro! We are exploring Colombia with our Brazilian friend Idé. She’s never been sailing before, so we wanted to introduce her to this beautiful wet world! Since Kim was on the boat long enough now, she captained the boat for a few days while James enjoyed himself. Leaving Cartagena was a good idea. We really missed the beach and some clear water …

After so many things going so horribly wrong we really needed to have some good times. And so we did!

Enjoy our 18th episode.

Captain & James 😉

MUSIC by the Fabulous NOA & the Black Loops

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Bye Bye USA!

We’re leaving back to go to the boat!!! We’re both a little homesick, and super exited to get back to the Seca Islands (Panama) to spear and swim.