Five Islands - Still at Texas Bay (Burnt Key)

Still at Texas Bay (Burnt Key)

Five Islands

John & Sue

Tue 2 Jul 2013 17:45

We are still at anchor at the entrance to what we have been told is now called Burning Key Marina, previously La Laguna Marina and before that Texas Bay Marina. Whatever its name it is a lovely spot. On Saturday after catching up on a bit of sleep we picked up Jens and Dani in the dinghy and went for a bit of an explore of the area. There are 4 inlets here which all have various numbers of yachts either moored or tied up to small jetties, and a number of quite impressive looking houses, most of which have thatched roof's. A lot of them are built over the water. We noticed one place which had 5 or 6 yachts out the front and motored over to have a look. That is how we met Casey, an 25+ years cruiser who ended up here about 7 years ago and stayed. He is a wooden boat builder, house builder, and is in the process of building a wooden framed 1957 model seaplane in his workshop. He can't fly but is going to deal with that when the plane is completed. He has built his workshop and small cabin in a really beautiful and protected inlet and builds houses and repairs boats. He built his own wooden yacht many years ago and then set off around the world and on the way spent about 6 months in Australia. He then set out for PNG where he was washed onto a reef somewhere near the old Misima Gold Mine during a storm. He ended up nearly a mile up on the reef, and it took him a month to winch his way off and make his way to Misima where he spent 2 months repairing his boat before continuing on his way.

We are thinking that we will leave our boat at Casey's while we head back home instead of leaving it in one of the marinas in the main marina district. On Sunday we went for a bit more of an explore around the area in the afternoon and ended up having dinner on Arwen with Casey and a friend of his. Casey asked us if we would mind taking his friend back to the marina district on Monday morning using Casey's launcha. We wanted to have a look around there and do a bit of shopping so it suited us just fine. It took around an hour to get to Bruno's Marina, which is right under the bridge. We went for a walk down the main street of Fronteras and checked out the place. We found a good supermarket and stocked up on some fresh fruit and veges. We then had a bit of a look around some of the marinas before heading over to Monkey Bay Marina to catch up with some german friends of Dani and Jens. Most of the good marinas seemed to be full.

This morning we all headed off to the hot springs about 2 miles from here, just back into the gorge. The springs actually seep out directly from the bank of the river. We spent a pleasant half hour or so sitting in the very warm but slightly smelly water, while some tiny fish kept Jens and Sue amused by constantly nibbling at the skin on their feet. Tonight we are heading in to the marina restaurant for dinner and to use their internet. We can get internet out on the boat but it is incredibly slow and struggles to download some emails, so hopefully tonight we will be able to access them all. Jens and Dani intend to move down to the marina zone tomorrow for a while to get some materials in preparation for storing Arwen here for the next 6 months or so. Then they will come back here and prepare the boat and then leave it at Casey's place. We are starting to look at the list of work we want to get done and it is a long one. A lot of the work will have to wait until we get back from home when we hopefully will have all of the parts we require.