Fishing With Chris

They don’t call it “Tico Time” for nothing. An hours turns to a day, a day to a week, a week to a month and so the story goes.

The fact that the week originaly needed to complete the additions and changes has now turned into over two is just par for the course. We are after all in a third world country and it is obvious why it’s third and questionable how the country rose to it’s current third world rank. I have learned to believe in de-evolution.

If you have nothing better to do, go check out some Costa Rica scuba diving tours.

Things went ok for the most part this past week in San Jose, let’s hope the coming week goes as well. The boat is almost ready and the shiny new Yamahas should be mounted by mid week and with a little luck the boat could be here in Quepos by next weekend. Since we are in Costa Rica and things hardly ever work out in the planned timeframe, we’ll give it 3 weeks.

Last nights wether was more than expected and riding to the pier this morning i saw some of the damage. There were 2 50-60 foot sailboats lying on the beach as was one of the “BlueFin” boats. The “Bendicion” was another boat that broke loose from its moring and ended up on the beach but was removed last night. Another 2 boats, the 30′ “Golden Marlin” was on the bottom and the 24′ “High Tech” was upside down. That is the fishermans nightmare, I’ve been there and i don’t wish it on anybody.

So tomorrow afternoon we’ll be meeting at the Costa Boats (San Jose, Costa Rica) showroom to hopefully purchase a new boat. I met with Mateo, the owner, and his staff last week and looked over a 2 year old 25′ “Samara” that we were able to agree on what I think is a pretty fair price for the boat in its condition. Additionaly Mateo agreed to handle a few of the blemishes and shine her up a bit at no charge.

The plan is to get to the showroom and then head over to the workshop where they are touching up the minor details and get an idea of how fast they are moving. If all goes well, they have it about done and we will move on to the motors.

With a little luck, by friday we at least have decided on what to put on her…1 big one or two smaller ones. There are pros and cons to both, the most obvious is with the one big motor if something breaks, you aren’t moving. Enter the “kicker motor” option which pretty much just hangs a few thousand dollars off the back of the boat with the hopes of never actually needing to use it. And should the need arise to return on the “mini” motor one day, it will be at a whopping 5-6 knots. That’s a six hour ride from 30 miles, leading into the thought of 2 usable motors. Twin motors have long been the standard among outboard boats in Central america because of the remoteness and risk in being afloat with a broken single motor. This is less of a concern here in Quepos with more boats out there and better odds of contacting help, but nothing’s guaranteed.