Well 2018 has been a busy year of travel and the best news, we are grandparents. Evan James Langel was born on August 29th and is healthy, happy boy! 💙
We left Guatemala at the end of December and arrived in Placencia, Belize on New Year's Day. We stayed in Belize until we had a weather window to get to Roatan and in April we made the passage to West End, Roatan. We did some diving in West End, then came up the Fantasy Island Marina in French Harbor. We then went to Hawaii for the birth of our grandson. Here are a few highlights.
Guatemala
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| A side road in the town of San Felipe. |
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| A friend of ours, Josha and his mom. We gave him the hat 😀 |
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| Our friend Patric, s/v Southern Mist, before he left for Switzerland. |
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| Mike finally got his quadcopter drone. Check the link at the end of the post to see his footage. |
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| The beautiful bridge path at Tortugal Marina that leads to the road. |
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| Another bridge at Tortugal. |
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| One of our favorite restaurants, Kangaroo's, beautiful place. |
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| Before we left Guatemala we took Ka'imi out on Lake Izabel to test all her systems. |
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| Castille de San Felipe is a fort that sits at the top of the Rio Dulce and the mouth of Lake Izabel. |
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| Hanging out on the pulpit. |
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| Another favorite restaurant, Casa Perico. Enjoying with good friends Susan, Patric, Gaby, Charlie and Jerry. |
Belize
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| We enjoyed the January blood moon in Placencia Harbor. |
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| Fishermen coming home. |
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| The waters in Belize can be so clear. This picture was taken from the deck of our boat. |
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| The island of Ranguana, the last we see of Belize as we head out the cut on our passage to Roatan. |
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| Zoey on passage, not too excited about it. 😟 |
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| West End, Roatan harbor. |
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| West End beach. |
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| Mike making new friends. 😂 |
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| Zoey loving being at anchor. 💕 |
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| Another beautiful sunset. |
The USCG Eagle is a 295 ft. training cutter that is the only active sailing ship in US military service. She dates back seven generations of ships to 1792 when US coast guard used its first ship – ‘Revenue Cutter Eagle.’ The Eagle was originally christened Horst Wessel in Hamburg in 1936, after a Nazi hero, in the presence of Adolf Hitler. She trained German sailors until WWII broke out and in 1942 she was armed and patrolled Baltic Sea. After the defeat of Germany, Horst Wessel was won by the United States in a drawing of lots with the Soviet and British navies and given to the US Coast Guard. Since 1946 every single new US cadet undergoing officer training has begun his or her career by learning to traverse the seas the old way, by trimming sails and scrubbing the decks.
We visited the ship with our friends Deborah and Chris. We found out about the free event while we were having beers at the Booty Bar in West End. We were sitting next to some of the the cadet crew and they told us about it. Very nice ship and crew!
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| Of course we must end the day with beers. 🍻 |
French Harbor, Roatan
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| Deborah crewed with us on our passage to French Harbor. |
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| The water is so clear and the beaches beautiful. |
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| Zoey chillaxin' again. 😎 |
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| Fantasy Island has three monkeys left a baby and two adults. The baby played with us a bit, but the mother bit Kim in the ankle. 😖 |
The Garífuna people trace their ancestry back to a slave ship that wrecked on the reefs off the island of St. Vincent (Lesser Antilles) in the early 18th Century. As a result of intermarriage, the Garínagu (this is what the Garifunas call themselves in their own language) are a mixture of African, Arawak, and Carib genes. When the British took over Saint Vincent after the Treaty of Paris in 1763, they were opposed by French settlers and their Carib allies. The Carib eventually surrendered to the British in 1796. The British separated the more African-looking Caribs from the more indigenous looking ones. Five thousand Black Caribs were exiled to Roatan, but only about 2,500 of them survived the voyage. The village of Punta Gorda in Roatan was the first Garífuna village and remains today.
Once a week on Sunday they perform a show of African drums and their own unique dance, the Punta. It was very exciting.
CLICK HERE for some of Mike's drone footage.
It has been a fun and exciting year, next post will share some pictures of our grandson Evan 👶💕
Cheers Kim, Mike and Zoey.
