S/V Equinox

Living the Dream

This site was last updated 01/28/10 

Home
About Us
About Equinox
Trip Logs
Road Trips
Food
Favorites
Photo Gallery
Feedback

New:          

Trip Logs & Events 2009:

Cartagena       Columbia

Email address at Uuplus.net see below

 

Home | About Us | About Equinox | Trip Logs | Road Trips | Food | Favorites | Photo Gallery | Feedback

 

 

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. 

We are now members of Facebook Look us up, you know the names!

 

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 and now have signed up for Uuplus.net service. 

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 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. 

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, Cell Phone 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. 

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. 

 

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.