Trip Logs & Events 2009:
Embera
Village
Panama
Canal Transit
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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
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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
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 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.
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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
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:
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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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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