There won’t be any more blue salt water for Bumfuzzle, the well-traveled 1984 Grand Banks 42 owned by Patrick Schulte and his wife, Ali, for a while. The boat’s now on the definitely green and fresh water of Rio Dulce in Guatemala, surrounded by a steamy tropical rain forest, and they’ll stay there for the rest of the hurricane season.
The Schultes and their children, Ouest, 9, and Lowe, 7, cruised down to Mexico from Key West six months ago. When we last checked in with them in April, they were heading south from Isla Mujeres, looking for a change of scene. They spent some time in Roatan, in the Bay Island of Honduras, diving, enjoying the beach and stocking up with groceries because, as Patrick wrote on their blog, “we knew it would be some time before we saw aisles packed with food like this again.”
Then, two weeks ago, they headed west before dawn for Guatemala, but not before Patrick wrote, “A shoutout to Ali for doing a quick visual inspection of the engine compartment before we left and noticing that I had left the cap off the oil fill on one of the engines.”
With the engines running properly, the Schultes nailed a weather window and cruised at their normal 8.5 knot speed across flat seas about 100 nm to Livingston at the entrance to the Rio Dulce. They anchored out and woke up the next morning to 25 knot winds and spray shooting across the top of the fly bridge. The entrance to Livingston is across an unmarked river bar, but they made it across and checked in to Guatemala.
After that, “cruising up the river was fun,” Patrick wrote. “Thick towering green all around and a slow-moving river running 60 feet deep. It’s such a drastic change from normal cruising grounds. And man, does it feel good to run fresh water through the engines; you can almost hear them thanking you.”
The river opens to a lake and the town of Fronteras, with a dozen small marinas; it’s a popular spot for cruisers to wait out the hurricane season. The Schultes tied up at a slip, found some old friends, and decided to take advantage of the low labor costs by ordering some varnishing work on the boat.
They have been traveling, on land and on the water (including sailing around the world), since they quit their jobs in Chicago in 2003. A commodities trader, Patrick runs a financial writing and mentoring business from the boat. Right now, they’re happy where they are. “Guatemalans are always fantastic people and their country is beautiful,” he wrote.
They also celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary. Patrick wrote that they never would have imagined the way the last two decades have turned out. “Amazing what taking just one or two lefts onto the dirt roads, instead of a right onto the highway, will do,” he wrote. Read more: http://bumfuzzle.com
