Yesterday was exactly 12 years ago that I pulled “Fleetwood” out of Gig Harbor on the trailer to Alameda, California. It was the Thursday after Ash Wednesday. Little did I know what lay ahead. It started one of the very best periods in my entire life. I was 68 and it was more a joke when I added: “Around the World before 80 Years” to my e-mail letterhead. I have just changed it to: “Around the World before at 80 Years”.

I may not get away from here until Wednesday, when the wind and sea conditions are to return to normal after two weeks of very strong easterlies. I am still hoping to make a stop in Boca del Toro, about a hundred miles up the Panamanian coast. But then probably make a straight shot to Cancun and fly out to San Diego by the 26th to celebrate my 80th birthday on the 28th (Mardi Gras) at my oldest son’s home, with the rest of my 5 children and their partners. I am expecting approval by the US coast guard for a 12 day visit in Cuba starting on the 15th of March. That’s all the time I am allowed under the current regulations. Then I plan to head south to Jamaica, Antilles and Cartagena, Colombia. Park the boat there and hop on the bus to Tierra del Fuego, making frequent stops along the way. Then work my way north and east again in the Caribbean from November. I’d like to go up the gulf stream to New York next year summer and make the “Great Loop” into the Saint Lawrence and back down the Mississippi.

I have uploaded another YouTube video of my second bus trip from Puenta del Sol into Chinandega, Nicaragua on  January 10. It has some interesting market scenes and a bull chase by a local Vaquero.

Yesterday I rode my shiny folding bike into the nearby jungle reservation and the ruins of the 16th century Fort San Lorenzo on the Chagres River. I had hoped to show some Toucan and Parrot pictures but I was too late in the day for that.