We went ashore to the Bahia Ballena Yacht Club and had a nice fresh fish dinner. On Saturday mornings they have an organic produce market next to the yacht club. We went ashore and stocked up. It was the best market I'd seen since Mexico. We returned to the boat, pulled anchor and were on our way to the next spot by 10 am.
Our next stop was Isla Cedros another very protected anchorage. We dropped anchor by 4 pm and relaxed. There were a few other power boats at anchor near shore, but it was very quiet. We slept well and had decided to go to Puntarenas the next day to see if we could buy a new anchor. When we pulled in we were surprised to see Dick on Mentor. His wife Cindy go off in Playa de Coco and he was leaving the boat in Puntarenas for two weeks to fly back and join her. Sadly, her father had passed away before she arrived.
We told Dick where we had been and he said he'd had a fishing pole stolen off his boat in Isla Cedros a few days earlier. Another sailor had an outboard stolen. it was locked on board and he was sleeping in the cockpit when they came aboard and took it! Talk about BOLD! So we were pretty lucky to get away with all of our gear.
Puntarenas is NASTY. It is shallow, so we called for the free panga from the Costa Rica Yacht Club, but it never came. We had the list of TWELVE way points to get in, so Tom plugged them all in to the GPS. At one point the depth sounder showed NO water under the keel, but we made it in. The yacht club was pretty tired looking, but they did have tight security. We'd used our dinghy to go ashore, then took the motor off and locked it aboard and used a heavy chain to lock the dinghy to the boat.
The security guard stopped by and told us that it was "unsafe", so we had to winch it up too. Once an hour the guards came by in a panga with a big search light, needless to say I did not sleep very well - wondering if it was security or robbers! We went to town early the next day and found the marine supply store - all they had were two "toy" anchors. We couldn't get out of Puntarenas fast enough!
We sailed to Punta Leona, an nice protected anchorage for the night, and left at first light the next day. The next night we anchored at Punta Quepos. It wasn't as protected and was a quite rolly. The next day we'd planned to go the 6 short miles to Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio. It is supposed to be amazing - full of wildlife and a "must see" park. I'd had a fever the night before and we too weak to spend a day hiking so we passed it by. We decided to head for Bahia Drake - a day sail away instead.
Tom was starting to feel better and we had favorable wind that afternoon. It was going to be tight making it into the anchorage before dark. Tom wanted to keep going to Golfito. I told him I wasn't well and didn't think I would be much help with night watches. He said he could do it alone, and so we continued on. I slept up in the cockpit and enjoyed the evening breeze. We arrived at the entrance to Golfito at first light on 1/20/11.