Greetings from the Rio Dulce (still)!

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

How has it been roughly two months since we've last sent you all an email with videos & pictures?! I guess we've been having a little too much fun to sit behind a computer screen. It's incredibly hard to be motivated to "work" when you have books to read, the ukulele to play, boat projects to work on, and friends distracting you with Margarita Mondays. In any case, we finally have a video

Episode 4: A Month in Belize

Since our videos are quite behind, we also put together a very quick glimpse of current life here in Guatemala with a video postcard.

Video Postcard of Guatemala

Life on the Rio hasn't changed much since we first got here. A few boat projects are underway. We are currently adding more solar panels. For our friends and family that know our boat well, yes, more solar! As if 1100W weren't enough?! Given we're fully electric, you can never have enough free energy. We've been filming our progress on the project, so when we have some time, we'll put together a video for you all. It's interesting trying to find everything you need here on the Rio, not to mention transporting it all back to our boat. One thing that's made the project possible is pulling the boat into one of the local marinas for a short time. This gives us more space to work with and a small workshop for welding & grinding.

As far as other boat projects go, you probably remember we blew out our main sail on our passage from Texas to Belize, which we hand-stitched with fishing line. After laying our sails out in his loft, the local rigger, Tom, who also does sail repairs, determined our sails weren't really worth attempting to salvage by re-stitching them. The material was pretty worn out, which wasn't much of a surprise to us. We didn't replace the sails when we bought the boat 3.5 years ago and wanted to get a few seasons out of them, which we did. So 'Tom the Rigger' (everyone here goes by their first name and profession, such as Diesel John, Carlos the Welder...), measured our rig and helped us order new sails. Getting anything shipped into Guatemala isn't exactly easy, but they should be here soon and we're pretty excited!

Otherwise, we're still filling our days with hobbies we each enjoy. One new activity we've recently taken up is tennis. There is a tennis court amongst the overgrown jungle and palm trees here at the marina, if you can believe it. It's been a great way to exercise and just something fun to do in the mornings before it gets too hot.

We have been incredibly fortunate to have made a lot of great friends here. Becca had been craving a 'ladies night', so she invited some girls over to Vagari for a night of wine and cheese. She met them individually at yoga, margarita monday, or just a random occurrence and thought "Hey, we're all 30-something, female, and live on boats in guatemala... surely we should all meet each other & hang out". Over lots of wine, laughter, and dancing under a disco ball, 'The Salty Bitches' were formed. When you only have a few months at best to cherish a friendship before you all sail off in different directions, fast friendships are forged. Through the ladies' friendship, the spouses have started to get together too and have guys night. (Postcard above of The Salty Bitches and their men).

As far as what's in our future, we think we'll stay put in Rio Dulce for another month or so while hurricane season comes to a close. After collecting our sails, we'll start to closely watch the weather and find the right time to make a crossing over to the Bay Islands of Honduras (Utila, Roatan, and Guanaja). We heard the diving/snorkeling is amazing! We're ready for that blue water and island life again.

As always, send us updates. We thoroughly enjoy reading your emails and hearing about your lives. We miss you all and wish you all well.

Much love,

Keith & Becca