We have been enjoying the time of adventuring around Cayos Cochinos and experiencing new things. One day we took a trip over to the ranger and scientific research station, as well as going to the Garifuna island and having lunch. And, in between our adventuring, we focused on boat projects. Check out our video to see what we discovered about the islands as well as a boat cure all!
NEW TO OUR CHANNEL? We are Eileen and Brown Councill. Welcome to our channel and a glimpse into our life adventure! 2020 was a year of uncertainty and change (for all of us, right?), but we overcame the challenges and decided it was time to chase our dream, to sail around the world! Did I mention that we had very NO sailing experience? Before leaving Qingdao, China, our home of 4 years, we sold almost all of our earthly possessions and started our international search to find the right sailboat that we would call "home." After 5 months of unanticipated twists and turns, we found what we were looking for, a used Leopard 44' Catamaran located in St. Lucia.
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Back to blown away where every day we have a new project to work on.
Anti-boat problem vaccine.
After a few days in the anchorage we were ready for an adventure.
Our first stop was Kyle Maynard's scientific research center and the home of the park rangers.
Other than the visitor center some beautiful palm trees and cabins there was just not much to see.
So off we went to the island of Chachuate, the Garifuna settlement.
Over the years this small island with wooden houses built to the edge of the waterline
and no electricity has become a tourist destination for anyone visiting the area.
The Garifuna men are all fishermen and the women have small restaurants to serve lunch
to the tourists. They also sell fresh baked coconut rolls and sweet coconut treats.
The locals invite you to walk around their sandy streets before sitting down for a traditional
lunch of fried fish plantains and rice. The lunch costs ten dollars.
The Garifuna are a mix of people from West Africa, the Caribbean islands and Central Africa.
The British brought the Garifuna to Roatan at the turn of the 19th century.
Five thousand Garifuna started the journey but only half survived the voyage and Roatan
island was too small an infertile to support them all. So over time the Garifuna petitioned
Spanish authorities so that they could be relocated to the mainland and other Spanish
colonies. This is why there is a smattering of Garifuna settlements across the Caribbean coast
into Nicaragua, Belize and Honduras.
Goal here is to find dinner. Lost at sea. And dinner. After a beautiful day exploring the
islands and snorkeling we were invited to dinner at the home of an American couple
Bruce and Shannon on Cayo Grande. Wow what a view.
We don't like it when our friends leave do we? But they have to go back to the mainland to fix
their paperwork and visa so we're gonna see them in about a week after Christmas. Back to
blowing away where every day we have a new project to work on. One of the real neat things is where
you live on our boat so things that come up we have more of a tendency to fix them because they
affect us on a daily basis. And over the period of several years we've made many modifications on
the boat and one of them is this power cord which has both our location beacon as well as one of our
solar panels up top here. We'll show you that. And we had to drill a hole through the bimini through
the fiberglass and when water drips through here because it comes underneath the panel which is
right over here and then drips through here and then in turn the water drips all the way down
here and all over here so needs to be fixed. We've got the time to fix it and the stuff
I mean and the caulk and the tape so today we're going to fix it. So what I've done is I've started
off taping this up with painter's tape so that when I fill the top with caulk and we're going to
use either 4000, 3M 4000 or 4200 it'll stop right here and hopefully not come through the conduit.
So let's go up top and see what we're looking at and see what we have to do to get the caulk inside
this hole to prevent any future leaking of water. We've got to get the solar panel off and we've
never done this so hopefully this is going to be a nice smooth job before the sun gets
really high and hot. This 355 watt LG panel is covering the hole. The hole's underneath here.
We have caulked all the spots up there. It's not going to leak again. We have caulked each screw
before we put it in to make sure nothing goes through the screw holes and then we'll just
need to clean up the caulk which is the most disgusting thing about this whole thing. It just
I've come up with a cure that will solve all boat problems. It is the anti-boat problem vaccine and
I have created it. It's worth $10,000 a shot but your boat when I give it to you will no longer
have problems. Don't you want one? Yeah we take Bitcoin. We take Venmo. So what we're doing here
is we are trying to fill up the cracks with Captain Tolley's. I've done this several times already
and you have to have multiple applications. That's what we're doing.
You don't stab yourself with Captain Tolley's because that wouldn't be that wouldn't be very
good. After a morning of boat work we needed a bit of fun so we jumped off the back of the
boat to snorkel in a new area and we found the macro pot of gold. Another perfect day in paradise.
The sea was calm, the sun bright, and the wind light. This would be the last one like this for
a while and we could not anticipate the challenges we were going to face in the coming days.
