Trip Logs & Events 2009:
Cartagena
Columbia
Email
address at Uuplus.net see below
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 Welcome to our Web Site!
Welcome to our sailing home page.  We
are Hank and Betsy Martin, formerly of Auburn California but now
residents of Bothell, WA where our daughter lives. We began our
dream of sailing for a few years in the summer of 2006 and are still at
it. We purchased an Island Packet 440,
hull No. 22 , that we took delivery of in July 2006. We spent the
summer in Canadian waters getting to know Equinox up in the Gulf Islands,
what a great place to cruise. Our only regret was we didn't get to
spend more time there. This seems a typical regret, as we prepare
to leave Cartagena, Columbia this season.
This is our
fourth season of cruising. While we loved Mexico we have decided
that it is too easy for the boat to get rooted in these waters. So
it is with mixed emotions that we left Mexico in 2009 and headed
south to visit Central America and go through the Panama Canal to
expand our horizons. Undoubtedly we will return to Mexico but who
knows what the future will hold.
We arrived back on Equinox on Nov. 3 for
two months where we will spend Christmas with our daughter Jennifer then
continue on with our adventure. When we left this summer we flew
to Puerto Vallarta to pick up our car then drove to Tucson to spend a
week with Betsy's college roommate Judy, from there we visited
her sister and brother-in-law Marge and John in Las Vegas. Then we drove on up to our old stomping grounds in Auburn where we
are lucky enough to have friends like Gary and Liz who let
us stay in their house that is for sale. Next it was on over to
Kauai (no we flew, still using those freebie United Miles) to
visit Betsy's other sister and brother-in-law Vida and John .
Back to Auburn for a few Dr. visits, then we drove up to visit another
college roommate of Betsy's, Carol and Len in Ketchum, ID.
Are you getting a pattern here? It looks like we have friends
about a days' drive apart :). Next it was on up to Gary and Liz's house in Lewistown,
Mt.
 where we make our annual delivery of goodies from BevMo
and of course spend some fun time in a great place. Check out the
Elk we saw, Gary was upset this was in a no shooting zone and the Elk
seem to know it. From there it was on to our daughter Jennifer's
house, well actually our "official" address in Bothell, WA, where it is
always fun to spend time with her and get some daddy & mommydo projects
done.
This season we will leave Cartagena with a heavy heart as we have had a
wonderful time in this lovely city. We will return to the San Blas
Islands to take up where we left off last year, relaxing, reading,
snorkeling, fishing, renewing old acquaintances and making new ones.
Hopefully we will hold down the mola purchases to a dull roar but look
forward to lobster, crab and conch again. Our friends Gary and Liz
will visit us in the San Blas where we hope to spoil them with the
island life. We welcome any of our friends to contact us and come
on down as they say. We plan on leaving the
San Blas in early spring and heading up to the Columbian Islands of San
Andreas and Providencia. From there we will head over to the Bay
Islands of Honduras and possibly up to Belize before we head into the
Rio Dulce in Guatamala, where Equinox will stay for hurricane season.
We hope to do a fair bit of inland travel, taking in the Tikal ruins and
a few weeks of language school.
Tune for further adventures of the nomadic Martin's.
The most frequently updated part
of this site is the Trip Logs portion. Last year we added a Road
Trips section as well as a Food
section. All of the most recent
stuff is shown on the left and highlighted in yellow. Enjoy and
please give us some feedback if you like the new Food section. We have placed photographs of our
adventure throughout the site, that are in thumbnail format. If
you wish to see the photo in greater detail you can do so by double
clicking on the photograph.
Trip Logs
We had intended to update this webpage frequently but as they say the
best laid plans! We are new at creating WebPages so bear with us
while we learn. Our first site was created with MS Publisher but
we felt it limited us too much so we have switched to MS Front Page
2003. Now as we publish this site I've found that MS is no
longer publishing Front Page and have issued a new set of web authoring
tools with different functionality. Such are the trials and
tribulations of trying to keep up when away.
In the future
we hope to keep this site updated
so our friends and family can keep track of our adventures. Maybe then
they will recognize we are not nuts and want to join us. Throughout
these pages we have included hot links to other sites we reference,
where we recommend their services. We have joined the fraternity of
John and Amanda’s graduates to fulfill our dreams of casting off the
dock lines and going for it. More on our training can be found on the
“About US” page.
Here is Betsy sailing in
Alaska during the summer of 2005
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How to
Contact Us |
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By Email:
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By Radio |
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We will continue to use our
terrestrial email address but will only look at them
when we are ashore.
We use a
Gmail.com and now have signed up for
Uuplus.net
service.
Our name is
SVEquinox06
at the above address'.
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For
those of you who know about
Winlink, we are both hams
and receive HF email when the internet is not available, as you
know we cannot accept attachments while using Winlink so please
keep the messages short, but we would love to hear from you. We
were using Sailmail but that will expire in April. You can send us mail care of Sailmail.com, our
name there is WDD3066 at the above address. If you do send
us an email when we are out sailing please use both winlink and
the Uuplus address' we can't always get both.
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Ham Band:
We both hold a general class ham license and will be using our
ham radio our call signs are as follows:
Betsy
KE7HTI
(Kilo Echo 7 Hotel Tango India)
Hank
KE7HTJ (Kilo Echo 7 Hotel Tango Juliet)
In case you were wondering we took one of Gordon West’s classes,
a grueling 3 days and passed with flying colors, even the
dreaded Morse Code section. You can find more about Gordon West
here.
 Betsy
and our friend Ollie Cordray with a their new General Class Ham
Licenses and a surprised Gordon West. We actually passed
the dreaded Morse Code section ????????
Ships Radio Call Sign
(Marine SSB or VHF):
WDD 3066 (Whiskey Delta Delta 3066)
MMSI #:
367123390
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Skype,
Cell Phone or Sat Phone |
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If you who haven't heard of
Skype you are missing out on a fantastic way to phone home.
Skype allows you to make a phone call to another computer or
phone number from anyplace you can get a decent internet
connection for pennies a minute. From Mexico we call the
US for $0.02/min. Our Skype number is:
- SVEquinox06
- If you need to get in
touch with us in an emergency get in touch with our daughter and
she can give us a call on our Sat Phone.
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Cell Phone:
When we are in port or frequently at anchorages
we have a cell phone.
- In Columbia our
cell phone number is (from the US) 011-57-312-619-2772
- Here is a really
handy link to figure out how to call other countries:
Including Columbia's confusing cell phone prefixes:
How to
call abroad.
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Snail Mail |
Where Are We? |
You can send us mail at the
following address, we only receive it however when we visit the
states or a friend or relative visits us. Junk mail is
tossed.
Hank and Betsy Martin
11852 NE 162nd Lane
Bothell, WA 98011 USA |
When we are sailing we try to file position reports on a daily
basis on Winlink. Try clicking here on
FIND US
or you can go directly to
Winlink and
type in Hank's call sign, KE7HTJ in the find window and you will
be show our location. Once you have gotten to the map that
shows where we are click on the satellite option in the upper
right had corner and you may get to see where we are in great
detail depending on the Google map coverage. |
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