Many cruisers choose to sail past Costa Rica because it is well known that it costs a fortune to clear in and out.  Despite this, we’ve decided to visit Costa Rica since it is supposedly an unbelievably beautiful country and also cheap to travel around in (we would get smarter).  According to the pilot books, there are over 120 anchorages on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, unfortunately, most of them are not suitable for overnight anchoring due to high swells, winds etc. 

We contacted an agent (the recommended way to get checked in) and ask him for a quote for clearing us in.  He replied and both of our chins hit the deck – he wanted $900.  Yep, $450 per person.  That is worse than robbery.  We didn’t tell him to go to hell (as we should have); we just said no thank you.  We’ll figure it out ourselves.

Our sail down the coast of Nicaragua continues as before, when there is a sea breeze, we are under sail.  When it dies, we are running the engine.  Early the next morning we reach Golfo de Santa Elena, a huge bay right at the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica.  Once again, our old friend, the Papagayo wind shows up.  But it is moderate and since the swells are from behind the beam, we can make a clean run across this giant bay.

Coming from the north, we should clear into Costa Rica before anchoring anywhere.  We’ve been told by many other cruisers that the Costa Ricans don’t care if you spend a night or two at anchor in Elena before checking in.  This is not exactly legal, but everyone does it and no one ever gets a fine.

The other cruisers here think Elena is paradise.  Yes, it is a calm quiet bay surrounded by impressive hills and mountains, but it is nothing compared to the real paradise – the Marquesas in French Polynesia.  It is in these situations that Carsten and I feel that perhaps we have become jaded, sated with too many impressions from unbelievable parts of the world.  We are certainly more difficult to impress than we were several years ago.  We are not tired of our sailing life or our very privileged lifestyle, but we have turned our noses homeward and perhaps it is not as exciting to sail homewards as it is to sail outwards into grand adventure.  We have long talks about what it will be like to be a landlubber again.

Five of the boats from Puesta del Sol (Nicaragua) anchor up in front of Playa del Coco.  The five skippers hire a panga to take them into the beach.  Rumors here say that leaving your dinghy on the beach is inviting someone to steal it or else everything that might be on board (oars etc.).  Since we are splitting the taxi-panga five ways, it is cheap.

Clearing in here requires that everything be done in exact order:

1. Port Captain
2. Immigration
3. Customs (taxi to the airport and wait for several hours for a customs officer to take time to do the paperwork.  They will only work for boaters when there are no airplanes landing)
4. Bank (here you have to pay a $20 fee for clearing in.  You pay at the bank because the Port Captain does not accept money or credit cards).
5. Port Captain to show your receipt that you have paid the $20.
6. Back to a beach restaurant for a couple of cold beers to relieve the stress

Total cost for all this was $80 (panga and taxis).  So Carsten and I saved $820.  Enough that we could afford to buy a couple of more beers.

The Playa del Coco anchorage is rock and roll.  Vinni and I like rock and roll, but as music, not as swells that toss Capri around.  Early next morning we sail the five nm to a marina, Marina Papagayo where the weather forces us to stay the next three days.  Thankfully, we joined Panama Posse, a Regatta where the boats just sail as they please.  We would never join a Regatta, but there are a lot of savings at marinas, Agent for Panama Canal and much more.  So the $300 entry is quickly earned.  Had we known just how much we could save, we would have joined earlier, but still.

Costa Rica is the wealthiest country in Central America.  This has apparently lured any number of criminals to the country and theft is an enormous issue – especially since penalties are lenient.

We found that despite our pilot books, Costa Rica is not cheap.  Tourism, especially here in the northern end of the country has exploded.  Canadians and Americans have discovered Costa Rica and are now coming here for their beach holidays instead of Hawaii.  They consider Costa Roca more exotic than the very American Hawaii.  This tourist growth has caused prices to go sky high.

We are weathered in so we want to explore the country.  Prices for rental cars are really high – $150 per day because the government insists on renters having to buy outrageously priced insurance.  We wanted to visit some smaller towns that are supposed to be older and quaint.  But we found out that the tourists have discovered the three towns, Grecia, Sarchi and San Ramon.  They are overrun.  We checked the hotel prices and even 2 star hotels are charging $3-400 per night if you want air conditioning.  Air conditioning is a must if you want a good night’s sleep.  A simple trip to visit these three towns, that lie close together would end up costing something like $2000, not including food.  We really doubt that the experiences we will have visiting them can compete with what we have seen elsewhere on our trip.  The more we thought about it the more we realized that there really isn’t anything in Costa Rica we haven’t seen before.  We’ve seen it and seen much more of it.  So instead of spending all that money we decide to sail southward to Golfito, the last harbor in Costa Rica and where we will clear out.

One hundred miles south, we drop the hook for a night’s sleep at Bahia Ballena.  There is a small fishing village here, obviously authentic and therefore worth a visit.  Unfortunately, our pilot book warns that you should always leave someone on the boat here or else it will be robbed while you are gone.  The book also notes that you should chain your dinghy with heavy chain when on shore or else it will be gone when you get back.  So much for Bahia de Ballena.

We planned to stop at Bahia Drake (name for Sir Francis Drake) the next night but the gods of boat maintenance decided it was not to be.  A couple of hours after leaving Bahia de Ballena we hear our bilge pump start up.  Hmmm.  Not good.  Carsten sticks a finger in the water to taste it.  Salt.  Shit!  That means we have a leak from the ocean in somewhere.  If it had been fresh water it wouldn’t have been such a big problem.  Ok, other times the leak has been from our propeller shaft seal.  Investigation proves that once again this seal (called a Blackjack) is the culprit.

Blackjacks normally have to be changed every 800-1000 engine hours.  We changed it in San Carlos before we splashed and we should easily have reached the Panama Canal where we could haul and change it again.  We only have about 450 hours on the engine since it was changed.

We are not worried (yet).  We know where the water is coming from and usually, the blackjack leaks very small amounts.  You can easily sail a couple of hundred hours on the engine with a leaking blackjack.  The bilge pump easily keeps up with the leak, starting every twenty minutes and running for a minute or so.  The sea breeze shows up and we set sail, kill the engine and expect the leak to stop.  It usually does when the shaft is not turning.  Hmmm.  The bilge pump is still pumping merrily away every twenty minutes or so.  Later the sea breeze and we start up the engine.  The time between the bilge pump emptying the bilge gets less and less.  First every ten minutes or so, then every five minutes, then every four minutes.  Every time it starts, it empties the bilge of about one liter.  The pump is still staying ahead of the ingress, but if this continues, soon it will be pumping non-stop.  Then it will not be able to keep the bilge empty and we will start flooding the boat.  The stress level rises between us and we are not happy.

Right after the pump first started, we decided to sail directly, non-stop to Golfito and haul Capri so we can change the blackjack.  Carsten carries spares for everything so of course, we have an extra aboard.  We simply don’t understand why this one has crapped out after only 4-500 hours.  The last time Carsten bought blackjacks, he could not get the original Volvo blackjacks and had to order some Chinese made.  These are not of the same quality as Volvo’s.

Since we have Starlink, Carsten can contact the marinas in Golfito and reserve a haul out.  Oops!  Turns out that neither marina has haul out facilities.  Actually, there is no place between Chiapas, Mexico and Panama City to haul out.  Bad news.  Very bad news.  What do we do?

Carsten has heard that it is possible to change the blackjack while the boat is in the water.  The problem is that when the blackjack is removed, the shaft opening is open to the sea and water comes in.  Hmmm.  The other issue is that Carsten has heard that this can be done.  Apparently, someone told him that they had spoken to a sailor who knew someone that had been at anchor with another boat who claimed they knew someone who had done it.

Hmmm.

This night the watches are more than hard, psychologically as we hear the pump start up every couple of minutes.  Our muscles tense up until we hear it stop.  Phew!  That means the pump can still stay ahead of the leak.

Look at this:

Carsten and I are both very nervous about trying this.  Changing the blackjack can be difficult while on land, doing it while in the water multiplies the potential difficulties by a factor of X.  Changing the blackjack means getting into almost impossible work positions (like everything on a boat) that would give OSHA a heart attack.  Our nerves are not calmed when we hear that there are crocodiles in the water (ok – Carsten will the one in the water son I’m not in danger of getting eaten, but I don’t want to see Carsten ending up as some croc’s lunch).

No, that was not a joke – there are crocs in the water here.

Are we having fun yet?

Damned right we’re having fun!

We tie up at the dock in Golfito and Carsten checks in with the harbormaster asking, are there really cros here?  Yes indeed, every morning a big one swims by on its way to the fishing pier a couple of hundred yards away.  When they clean fish there, it is free breakfast.  He says it is not a big issue, he goes in the water frequently to clean boat bottoms and once a year there is a swimming competition across the bay.   No need to worry sir.

Hmmm.  Well, he can say that – he’s not the one under the boat.

Now that we are docked and not moving, the bilge pump only starts up every five hours or so.  Good, then we have time to plan what we are going to do.

The harbormaster tells the next morning that he has heard there is an American who is trying to start up a boatyard a half mile away.  Maybe he can help?  We march right on down to talk to him.

The owner is gone, but his foreman is there.  The boatyard is just getting started and the foreman says they can lift Capri – no problem.  We look around.  We are not impressed.  We ask him to show us the crane he intends to lift with.  It turns out he doesn’t have a crane big enough, so he is planning to use two cranes, one at either end of Capri.  Once out of the water, the two cranes will drive over to the concrete pad and Capri will be on supports.  We asked him how many times he has done this.  Well perhaps once before, maybe.

Not on your life are we going to risk Capri like that.  Two cranes try to match speeds etc over bumpy ground?  No way.

So we are back to square one.  Carsten has to change the blackjack while Capri is in the water, crocs or no crocs.  Carsten sits down and makes a plan, including drawing several pictures for me so I understand exactly what is going to do.  This calms me down a bit since now I understand what will happen and in what order.  Carsten also searches YouTube and while he can find some videos, none of them show this kind of blackjack so they are useless.  Carsten has changed the blackjack while Capri was the hard several times, but never without issues.  Every cruiser knows that “no repair goes as planned and nothing on a boat takes the allotted amount of time, expect the double or triple time”.

Next morning, the harbormaster comes by with a hookah we have rented.  A hookah is nothing more than an air compressor with a very long hose and mouthpiece.  This allows the diver to go down as much as ten meters without having tanks buoyancy control vests etc.  It makes work under a boat much easier.  Carsten will use this when he goes under the boat.

Carsten gets everything ready on Capri.  First, he finds and lays out all the tools he thinks he may need, the he loosens the shaft/engine coupling and tries to push the shaft backwards so he can remove the coupling.  No go.  The moves backwards a couple of centimeters and then stops.  Ok, he thinks that perhaps when he mounted the zincs on the shaft in San Carlos he probably mounted them too close to the cutlass bearing and that means the shaft can’t move.  No problem.  Get into the wetsuit, fire up the hookah and jump in the water

Along with the crocs.

He dives down but comes up right away.  The problem is not the zincs.  The problem is that there are barnacles on the shaft preventing it from sliding through the cutlass bearing.  Just like a doctor in an operation he says, “scraper” and I hand him a scraper.  He dives below again while I turn my head in every direction to see if there are any crocs about.  A few minutes later Carsten comes up having cleaned the shaft.

The axle now slides back without any issues.  Off comes the coupling.  The new blackjack has been greased and is lying ready.  Carsten jumps back in the water with a handful of bubblewrap and screwdriver.  He packs the bubblewrap in around the shaft to block water ingress into the boat.  No panic yet. 

Also no crocs – yet.

Carsten has promised me that if water starts pouring when he removes the old blackjack, he will reinstall it and figure out some way to stop water from coming in the through hull.  Carsten goes below and while I look down in the bilge, I ask “are you ready to change the blackjack?”  I’ve already done it he replies.

Wow!

Now everything just needs to be done in reverse order.  The blackjack is fastened with a clamp, Carsten dives below and removes the bubblewrap, the coupling is remounted, the shaft pulled forward and the coupling and shaft mounted on the engine.

How hard can it be?

Everything done and everything double-checked.  No water ingress.  We fire up the engine and go for a test sail around the bay.  No water.  The area below the blackjack is dry as the Sahara.  Back to the marina.  Carsten is the hero of the day and I allow him to don his Superman t-shirt and parade around the marina (just kidding).  But he gets a beer (well, maybe two) and later we have G&T’s and a good dinner at the marina restaurant.

Believe it or not, the next day we have a weather window and we get ready to leave for Panama.

Carsten is up early and starts the clearing out process.  First Immigration.  4 minutes after walking in the door, he is out again with stamped passports.  Ok, life is good.  Taxi to the airport for Customs.  Hmmm.  Nobody home.  She will come at 11:00 he’s told.  He waits.  No Customs.  She will come at 1:00.  He comes back to Capri and takes another taxi out at 1:00.  Customs is there.  Now to the bank and pay the $20.  Then to the Port Captain.  He manages to get in through the door, before they throw him out saying, the police are coming and are going to search the office for illegal transactions.  Meaning no Zarpe.

Back at the harbor, our harbormaster calls the main office in San Jose the Capital.  They say, no the office is open and I should go back.  Still not open.  Call San Jose again.  They keep insisting the office is open.  But the police have closed it.

Total confusion.  One of the clerks at the harbormasters office is also a clearing in agent.  She says, “I can get you cleared out on the computer, just takes a few minutes”

A half hour later, we take in our lines, back out of the slip and head for Panama City and the Panama Canal.