Mar Marina Rio Dulce 15:39.4N 088:59.7W

Five Islands
John & Sue
Fri 5 Jul 2013 01:03
We are now docked at Mar Marina, which is located not far from the bridge in the Rio Dulce. We moved from Texas Bay to the marina district yesterday afternoon. We initially attempted to lift the anchor just before 1pm, but the windlass refused to do its thing, so we spent nearly 2 hours trying to sort out the problem before we finally got under way about 2.45pm. One benefit of this later departure was the afternoon breeze set in about 30 minutes after we left so we were able to raise the genoa and motor sail and eventually turn the engines off and sail at around 4.5 knots nearly all of the way into the marina zone. We dropped anchor alongside Arwen just off Monkey Bay Marina at around 5.30pm.
This morning we had to meet Raul, our agent who is organizing all of our paperwork, at Ram Marina. We then headed over to Mar Marina which is one of the few marinas which still has a berth available. After having a look around we decided to take the second last available berth and moved Five Islands across here at 2pm. The bloody windlass refused to work again so after trying a few things I hit it a couple of times with a hammer (percussion maintenance) and it decided to get on with the job. It wasn't one of our best docking efforts ( it involved two attempts and a mooring line falling on the water, later retrieved with a fishing lure) but we eventually made it with no damage. So for the first time in 6 months we are back in a marina, but this one only costs about 30% of what we were paying at Shelter Bay. The marina is quite nice, good facilities, but most boats are unoccupied so it is a lot quieter than Shelter Bay. We have just come back from dinner in the restaurant and we were the only ones there. Today is US Independence Day, and all of the US contingent are having a knees up at Mario's Marina so that probably accounts for the quiet time tonight.
Tomorrow morning we will head over to Arwen and give Jens a hand to go up the mast to check on a few things and then he will come and give us a hand to do the same thing. Our wind instrument is on the blink and we are hoping it may just be the connection at the top of the mast, so the only way to find out is to head on up there and have a look.

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