S/V Equinox

Living the Dream

This site was last updated 06/11/09 

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Trip Logs & Events 2009:

Embera Village

Panama Canal Transit

 

 

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UPDATE Friday Evening May 29

WE MADE IT
With no new dock rash on Equinox  :)!!!

Equinox made it through the Canal on Friday MAY 29th in one day.  This was truly a "Bucket List" event.  Thanks to our line handlers, John & Kathy from Mystic Moon and John and Shawn from Active Transport and our great advisor Roben Robinson we made a successful single day passage through the locks.  We are now on the Caribbean side, quite a transition from our home waters in the Pacific, where we have spent the last three years.  It was a long, exhausting but very fulfilling day.  We are now tied up at the Shelter Bay Marina where we will sit for a week then it's off to the Kuna Yala (San Blas) Islands.  

Here are some screen captures some folks were kind enough to send us.  The first shows us side tied to a tug in Miraflores Locks where we put out every fender we owned and the bottom shot shows us exiting the Miraflores heading to Pedro Miguel Locks in the backgrounds. 

Thanks to our daughter Jennifer, Deb Bennett and Jay Larson from AISI and Joan Palango from Panchita.   We actually did wave at the camera but who knew when they were taking pictures.   It's a good thing they don't have one of those roving photographers taking pics and selling them to you or we would have spent more boat bucks getting through. 

Embera Village

 

 

 

 

 

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, this past summer.  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 Mexico this season.  We then sailed down the west coast and began the Baja HaHa in October and are now on the Pacific coast of Mexico.  Just in case you wonder why we call the site S/V Equinox the S/V means sailing vessel. 

This is our third season of cruising.  While we love 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 plan on  leaving Mexico this season and head south and 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.  This year we hope to spend some time in El Salvador, Guatemala and Panama.  We had originally hoped to visit Costa Rica but we have heard too many stories from both land based and sea going travelers that the people in Costa Rica have gained a reputation for believing that if it isn't locked down securely that it is free for the taking.  We see no reason to visit such a country and hope others would boycott them as well.  Only if they see a drop in tourism dollars will they realize they need to solve this problem.  We have heard too many good things about the countries that we wish to visit to spend time in a country where we don't respect the people even before we get there.  Enough of my rant however. 

 

 

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

How to Contact Us

By Email:

By Radio

We will continue to use our terrestrial email address but will only look at them when we are ashore. 

We use a Gmail.com

Our name is

SVEquinox06 at the above address.

 

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 are also using Sailmail.  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 sailmail, we can't always get both. 

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 

Skype or Sat Phone

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. 

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.