We have hauled ¡Pura Vida! out of the water several times to work on her bottom, but it has always been done by a boat yard with a sling crane. These beastly contraptions place two or three enormous straps under her hull and gently lift her out of the water. The crane then moves to […]
Author: John-Michael
Pacification
We finally did it! We crossed the isthmus through the Panama Canal, affectionally called the big ditch, into the expansive Pacific Ocean. Despite having read a ton of blogs and guides, there were quite a few surprises in store for us. The crossing alone was quite the experience. It required extensive prep, and coordinating several […]
Double The Fun (Double The Madness)
It has been an exciting, crazy year…and it is only mid-April. The madness started at the end of 2021, when we made a life-changing, yet impulsive, decision. After being struck by lightning in 2020 and having close calls with hurricanes from 2015 to 2018 aboard ¡Pura Vida!, we decided that we no longer wanted to […]
Something Is Burning
“Something is burning” are three of the most frightening words you can hear someone say on a cruising boat. Those are the exact words Kimberly yelled out a couple of minutes after we had started our engine. She then ran to the cockpit and shut the engine down while I reached for the fire extinguisher. […]
Our Cruising Quinquennial
August 9, 2015 was a regular Sunday in New Orleans. It was expectedly hot, humid, cloudy, and the summertime sluggishness had settled over the city like a smothering blanket. It did not feel like a special day for us, yet it was arguably one of the most momentous days of our lives. After our morning […]
Back for Seconds at the Buffet
After over four years of wandering through the Caribbean and exploring dozens of islands and hundreds of anchorages, you would think we are used to the excitement of arriving at a new locale. The thrill, however, never wears off. Each place can be so dramatically different in culture, landscape, language, food, customs and immigration procedures, […]
The Pura Vida Life
After two months living in the mountains of Cartago, Costa Rica, at an elevation of 1,200 meters (4,000 feet), we changed scenery for the hills west of San Jose with a magnificent view of two volcanos from our backyard. We chose the new rental house for its location offering us a relatively short drive into […]
Bungle in the Jungle
Before we knew it, we were hauling ¡Pura Vida! out of the water and it was time to leave Panama. Hauling out is never an easy or relaxing process, as you see your home and all its contents unceremoniously lifted from the sea and set to rest, unnaturally, on dirt. They call it “being on […]
Fleeing Zeus’ Wrath
We had spent five months of absolute bliss exploring the islands of the Guna Yala (San Blas), but it was time to move on. We were ready to leave for a couple of reasons. The main one was that we had exactly one month before our scheduled haulout of ¡Pura Vida! in early July and […]
Guna Yala – The Cruising Life
There is no way to write a single blog about the Guna Yala land and waters, and the Guna people, and do them justice. So we will break this up into three parts. This is the third part: the sea and the cruising life. The remoteness and simple lifestyle in the Guna Yala make it […]