The Voyage of the Masayita

All good adventures begin with a touch of serendipity. This one was no exception. I'd been hearing of Bob Means for years. He, like me, was building boats, but on the Atlantic Coast. "The Dale Dagger of Puerto Cabezas," I was told. I finally met Bob through email while I was in Managua helping online with the Hurricane Mitch recovery. He was looking for help leading an advanced studies group from Oxford University through Nicaragua. Did I want to tag along and see the Atlantic Coast?

Once in Puerto, as the locals affectionately call it, we found one of Bob's boats was being way underutilized. In fact, it had been stolen and was now submerged in muck. Ever since Bob had heard of my tourism and boat building project, he had wanted to hook me up with one of his boats. Given the state of the boat, it wasn't too hard for him to persuade the owner (World Relief) to sell it to me.

I thus became the proud owner of a 32-foot Vietnamese style sampan. She's powered by a Perkins 4-107, and I named her Masayita, which I told my friends meant "oil slick" in the Miskito Indian language. Even those who should know better fell for it.

I'd been up and down the Rio San Juan the year before with a film crew shooting a documentary on the transit route of Cornelius Vanderbilt. I was fascinated with the river and with the possibility of following Vanderbilt's route to San Juan del Sur with my own craft.

What an adventure! Take the Masayita down the Atlantic Coast and then up the Rio San Juan, cross the lake and pull her out on a trailer in the Rio Sopoa for the 45 minute trip to San Juan del Sur and the Pacific Ocean.

I was fascinated with the river and with the possibility of following Vanderbilt's route to San Juan del Sur in my own boat.

You shouldn't go unarmed down the Caribbean coast in a boat. I didn't own a gun, so I hired one.

The process of readying a boat for a long sea voyage is a combination of brute physical labor and an incredible metaphysical thought process when you project yourself in the future and using all your past experiences, try to prepare for what is going to go wrong. You can only take the process so far. If you prepare too well you spend all the money on stuff you hope you'll never need.

One thing I knew I needed was a gun. You shouldn't go unarmed down the Caribbean coast in a boat. There are too many people too willing and able to take what is yours from you if you're not prepared to defend it. I didn't own a gun, so I hired one. I needed a mechanic familiar with the diesel engine, and I wanted a gun. So I hired a mechanic who came aboard with a 9 MM in the top drawer of his toolbox. The fact that his name was John Wayne didn't detract from the sense of safety he provided.

I also hired as crew Richard Lambson, known as Kokie. Kokie's mother is a Miskito Indian and his father is a black man from Jamaica. He speaks English, Miskito, Spanish and Creole. A good hand and a typical Costeño who likes his music and quality hammock time.

We loosened the dock lines on a Sunday afternoon and began an adventure in true African Queen style, put putting down the Wawa river. We reached the mouth of the RioWawa in a little less than two hours. We left with the tide and had a good ebb pushing us along. Masayita was doing an honest five knots according to the GPS. We took the longer but safer North Pass through the bar at Wawa. It takes an extra half hour but at the beginning of a long trip you don't need to bash up the boat and crew trying to save time.

The quaint Costeño custom of draining the engine oil into the bilge and then pumping it overboard had left the entire boat smelling of oil and diesel.

The trip down to El Bluff took 25 hours. The sea was pretty rough, even for the Caribbean. The wind was blowing out of the East, and we were headed South, putting the swell on the beam. It gave the boat a real nice roll that got the oily bilge water sloshing nicely up the cabin sides. I spent the greater part of my off-watch hours on my hands and knees scrubbing the bilges.

The quaint Costeño custom of draining the engine oil into the bilge and then pumping it overboard had left the entire boat smelling of oil and diesel. I looked like I'd been drug through a tar pit after the first day.

The island and Cays to the North of El Bluff looked uninviting in the gray stormy weather. I knew better. They are some of the least visited and most pristine places in the Caribbean. Full of surf, I might add. The boat handled the rough seas very well and the Captain and crew were very pleased with her performance. The Captain of the Port at El Bluff was not. He wouldn't let us leave port for two days because he felt the sea too rough.

While in Bluefields we ran into the kind of girls Carlos Mann warned me about. He told a story of ending up in a shower with three girls.

On the way into El Bluff I found a perfectly good left hander peeling off the point. El Bluff is an island at the mouth of the River Rama. It has served as a port ever since people first sailed the Caribbean side. There's a rollicking sea-going feel to the place. We partied one night with the crew of a shrimp boat who had been to sea for a month and were heroically trying to spend as much of their $400 in wages as they could. We left early in case it got

The next day John and I took the motor launch into Bluefields. The alternator was acting up and I was hoping it was simply the amp gauge misreading. While in Bluefields we ran into the kind of girls Carlos Mann warned me about. He told a story of ending up in a shower with three girls. "Geez Carlos, that doesn't seem so scary to me?" I said He explained that the girls were so aggressive that by the time they were done with him it wasn't fun any more. "It hurt," he said.

We steered clear of the Atlantic Jezebels and got the amp gauge. It turned out the gauge was fine. At least now we were sure the alternator was stuffed. We left El Bluff early in the morning and passed outside of several more palm fringed Cayos and anchored under the lee of Monkey Point by 10 am.

Monkey Point would serve as a perfect location for a castaways movie. The anchorage is perfectly calm and the palm trees overhang the water. The local residents paddled out a dugout canoe and took us ashore for a tour. There we found a group of people who live almost entirely from what the sea provides and what they grow. A perfect place to return to the simple life.

We left Monkey Point at 10 pm so we could arrive at San Juan del Norte at first light and high tide. It was a weird, cloudy night. It was really easy to get completely disoriented when the clouds obscured the stars. My four hour watch seemed to last all night.

The barra -- sand bar -- at the mouth of the Rio San Juan is pretty hard to find. There are several, and the local lobster fisherman use different ones as conditions change.

The barra at San Juan del Norte was worse than John had ever seen any on the Atlantic side. In fact it was the worst bar he'd ever seen. I myself had spent hundreds of hours at places just like this one only we didn't call them bars, we called them surf spots. We hailed the first ponga we saw, and he offered to show us the bar. The one he took us to looked completely unmakable. John told him to go first. He reconsidered and said he'd take us to another one that was deeper.

Another ponga showed up and it turned out later that a successful fisherman in San Juan del Norte sent him out to lead us in. He is opening a hotel restaurant complex called Pariso del Virgin. John got everyone's attention when he started to put on his life jacket. You could see the white all around Kokie's eyes. When he asked for his wallet I thought it was because he was going to pay the guy who was showing us the way in. He said he wanted it on his person when he crossed the bar.

The pongas that led us blazed through between waves and waited for us in calm water on the inside. Masayita does 5 knots and that's all. Most breaking waves move at 20 knots. We just had to go for it and take what came. It went pretty well. We just missed a set wave and it broke under us. We surfed the soup most of the way across the bar.

The next wave was only about three feet and we caught it, surfed down the face and broached to at the bottom. The lip broke right over the coaming and into the center cockpit. My surfing instincts took over and caused me to do a head dip as the lip came over the rail. We made it. If we would have arrived 30 seconds earlier I think the bigger set wave would have raised a little more hell with us. At the time I figured it would have rolled us but now looking back, with a whole river's worth of experiences, I think we would have just gotten "wedder," as they say on the Atlantic Coast.

The lip broke right over the coaming and into the center cockpit. My surfing instincts took over and caused me to do a head dip as the lip came over the rail. We made it.

Help came in the form of the game warden from Marena. He wanted to see our papers and wanted to know why we were fishing in a biological preserve.

The port captain gave us a map of the river and then led us out of town using a secret channel that saved us an hour or so. We chugged up the river for hours till the light gave out. We pulled up to a nice river front ranch house and spent the night.

We were at it again at first light. Late the next day, after religiously following the map the port captain gave us, we hit a rock. I drove the boat closer to the bank and we hit another rock. And another and another. We turned around and tried to retrace our path, but the boat was not up to fighting the current.

Before we could ease past we went up on a rock and stuck fast. Forward, reverse nothing worked. We were in deep water all around except for the rock which was stuck amidships. We tried to pole the boat off using a long Mahogany 2 by 2, but that only made it worse.

I passed a very bad night. I chanted myself to sleep: "I will not be defeated. I will not be defeated; I was fully prepared to swim a line to shore or die trying. We were up early and spent a half hour trying to get off the rock, but only succeeded in getting ourselves up higher. Help came in the form of the game warden from Marena. He wanted to see our papers and wanted to know why we were fishing in a biological preserve. We pointed out that we were, in fact, stuck and not anchored. It took them about 20 minutes to get us off.

We were then led to the proper channel on the other side of the river. There was a bottleneck where the current outpaced the speed of the boat. We were going backwards, right for a rockpile. John eased her over to the bank and we found a little nook in the current and tied to a bush.

The old little Perkins was hot as a pistol. We told the game warden we'd wait till somebody big enough came through who could give us a tow. We waited all morning. About the time John Wayne was tearfully calling for help, and Kokie was deciding which of us skinny Gringos would best fit in the stew pot, a ponga from San Juan del Norte showed up.

He had the size to pull us through, but he felt he didn't have the gas. It was obvious he also didn't feel he had the experience either. I asked him to send down Torneo, a guide from El Castillo I'd used last year on my first river trip. Around 2:30 pm, the game warden and his local guide showed up and offered to pull us to calm water if we paid for gas.

It took them 15 minutes to get us through the rough water, and we were on our way. Padro, a professional guide, showed up shortly thereafter and said he'd come to rescue us. We hired him to guide us to El Castillo and tow us through the rapids.

About the time John Wayne was tearfully calling for help and Kokie was deciding which of us skinny Gringos would best fit in the stew pot, a ponga from San Juan del Norte showed up.

The fort was built to protect Granada from Caribbean Pirates who would come up the Rio San Juan to rape and pillage.

The river is really pretty easy to navigate. Young boys run their fathers' pongas up and down. You just need to do it a few times. This was my second trip on the river, and just since my first trip it has changed enough to make a guide mandatory.

When we got to the rapids at El Castillo you could see the river was at least four feet higher just 100 yards ahead. The rapids were 100 meters of white water boiling over shallow rocks. There is a channel, a gap between the rocks that permits passage, off the one side and we took that.

The whole trick to the rapids at El Castillo is to get upriver enough so as to have room to shoot the gap. The river is flowing so fast here that you are going to go sidewise quickly. A mistake here means bouncing over the rocks with four feet of water pushing you. El Castillo is a river town built below a pretty well preserved Spanish fort. The fort was built to protect Granada from Caribbean Pirates who would come up the Rio San Juan to rape and pillage.

It's a beautiful place full of history and without doubt worth the trouble to visit. There are three hotels in El Castillo varying in prices from 25 cordobas ($2.00) to $35 US dollars a night. That night we celebrated our success so far. Kokie drank the first beer I'd ever seen him have and he opened up and told some war stories. It turns out Kokie was conscripted by the Sandinistas and fought the Contras in Bonzana, La Libertad and Puerto Cabezas. He even got a watch from Humberto Ortega for the bravery he showed defending Bonanza against 700 Contras with just 125 men (75 of whom survived the fight).

The next morning we headed on up the river toward the Sabalo rapids (locally called El Toro). The local guides filled our ears with stories of shallows and exposed rocks. I'd been through the Sabalo rapids called locally El Toro last year so I knew what to expect, so we went without a guide.

When we got to the El Toro we saw one of the few remains of anti-American feeling I've seen in five years in Nicaragua. It was an American flag hung upside down on the front porch of a river dwelling. They had also used the wood from a USFDA sponsored anti-guesano program sign to build their outhouse. We asked which side of the river the channel was on at the first house. The women waved us over to the other side. On the other side we pulled up to the bank and enlisted the aid of a twelve year old to guide us through.

The subtlety of Nicaraguan hand signals was completely lost on me. It has something to do with the direction the forefinger is first wiggled that signals which way to go. Kokie had to translate. We made it through and dropped our guide off in Sabalo and rewarded him with 20 cords, which made his day. .Sabalo is a good source for all the woods harvested in Nicaragua. I even saw a goodbit of balsa there.

The port town of San Carlos was a few hours up the river yet. The river along this stretch is still pristine and beautiful. The water constantly erupts with leaping Tarpon and Sabalos. The river is alive. It was along this stretch I saw a boat of Tico, or Costa Rican, fishermen with three 90 pound Tarpon last year. This is where I'd love to have a houseboat and a skiff and just hang out and let the river flow by.

We were waved into the municipal dock on our arrival to the big city. They started charging us right away for tying up to the dock. The closer you get to Managua the more that kind of stuff happens. A short, fat self-important little bureaucrat charged us 70 cords (about $6.50) for a temporary navigation permit even though we were most definitely in transit and therefore exempt. We put John on the airplane back to Managua in the morning and Kokie and I prepared to bring the boat across Lake Nicaragua the next day.

When we got to the El Toro we saw one of the few remains of anti-American feeling I've seen in five years in Nicaragua. It was an American flag hung upside down on the front porch of a river dwelling.

The trip to the Archipelago de Solotiname took two hours. There are 255 islands, and the feel of the place is really special. We cruised around several of the smaller islets and I was enchanted with the possibilities of returning here to spend a few months exploring. The place is exploding with fish, and the islands are rich and vibrant.

On the final leg of the trip to Rio Sopoa we elected to follow the southern coast of Lake Nicaragua. I'd never seen this part of Nicaragua and was amazed to see quite a few large homes and obviously successful ranches. A guy could spend years exploring this length of lake shore.

Once out from under the lee of the Solotiname Islands the lake starts getting pretty rough. By the time we got on the other side near Cardinas the waves were overhead and white water was occasionally coming into the boat. This is no place for the unprepared or for boats of weak construction.

We found the Rio Sopoa and now I was back on my home turf. For once it felt good to know the channel and where the rocks were. We tied Masayita up to the same tree I'd used last year to tie my skiff for the summer in the Lago Nicaragua.

It took two weeks to get the trailer ready to bring Masayita to San Juan del Sur, but here she sits. We have about four more days on her paint and caulk job, and then we'll give her a taste of the Pacific. She's a perfect boat for exploring all the hidden nooks and crannies of the Nicaraguan coast line.