Welcome to the voyage of The Last Resort
We spent 18 months circumnavigating the Caribbean Sea and having a wonderful time. But the fun hasn't ended yet. We've moved back to our adopted home town of Dallas, Texas and will be posting updates of our activities to share with family and friends.
We've loved having you join our version of "where in the world is...?" and will continue to post articles and pictures of our quest to explore the world.
For those that may have missed the article the St. Petersburg Times did on our Caribbean adventure here's the link: http://www.tampabay.com/sports/outdoors/article1019149.ece
Please feel free to drop us a line at
jonvolmar@hotmail.com. or
caravolmar@hotmail.com with any questions about our travels. Thanks for tagging along. It wouldn't have been nearly as much fun without you!
Jon and Cara
The Last Resort no longer belongs to Cara and me, she was purchased by a couple from Canada and we closed on the sale on November 17th. A big thanks to several people, Al Pollak from Massey Yacht Sales for helping us find her in the first place and helping us find her a new home, Donny Muhelman who helped with all kinds of mechanical things before and after our trip and Dale and Kim for keeping an eye on her once we moved to Santa Fe.
We're now looking for a home here in the Santa Fe area and trying to get used to snow and general cold weather. There are new pictures in the gallery of life here in Santa Fe and the beauty that surrounds us.
Wishing all of you a happy holiday season and a very merry Christmas!
1977 41-foot Morgan Out Island ketch-rigged blue water cruiser with 4 ½-foot draft (ideal for the shallows of The Bahamas, Turks & Caicos, Belize and Pacific island atolls) seeking good owner(s) who will sail her into new adventures.
In the past year I’ve learned to live without. In Montserrat Jonny inadvertently dropped our gas grill adapter overboard necessitating weeks of cooking below decks until a replacement was found in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia. In Clifton, Union Island in the Grenadines we ran out of propane cooking fuel for the stove and dined for days on cans of meat and veggies direct from the tin.
A funny thing happens on the Caribbean coast of Central America north of Panama. No natural harbors exist in Costa Rica or Nicaragua, no manmade breakwaters or marinas have been created, few cities other than dingy freight ports dot the jungle landscape, a vast, shallow underwater shelf stretches one hundred miles eastward off the coast of Nicaragua, and no guidebook offers detailed waypoints for navigation making the Moskito Channel attempted by only the most intrepid sailors.
I sat staring at her sitting across from me on the local bus to town on the Dutch island of Curacao. I had been watching the woman for several minutes before I became aware of doing so. Many more passed before I determined why she so fascinated me. The woman had nicely trimmed, highlighted hair, French manicured fingernails and polished toenails. She wore a light coating of mascara and eyeliner, had an enormous diamond ring, a gold watch and several bracelets paired with a necklace and earrings. She looked chic in a fashionable skirt and matching top accompanied by sandals with a small heel.
Cara and I arrived back in the US on June 9th in Key West after a 360 mile, 61 hour sail from Isla Mujeres, Mexico. We are now in Maderia Beach at a marina getting our things together for a move to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Lots more articles and pictures to be posted in the next week or so and after that we will be posting stories and photos of our move to Santa Fe.
Read any author’s book about sailing and they all say the same thing: give it a year before you decide whether this life at sea is right for you before throwing in the towel and returning to land. While I always give deference to those who’ve gone before, I thought this advice seemed a little strange. Mainly because many years ago from the comfort of our couch in landlocked Dallas we determined this was for us. But that didn’t mean we had a clue what we were getting into. Truly, the experience has been an astounding string of eye-openers.
It lies on the Caribbean side of a narrow isthmus separating the two great oceans of the world. Strangely, to traverse the canal from Atlantic to Pacific, one travels east not west. Colón also marks a change in human settlement that continues north until one reaches Florida: the Caribbean side of Central America is less developed and under-populated than its counterpart on the Pacific so Panama City, the country’s capital, sits on the other end of the canal.
We stood outside the bank building in Colón, Panama watching a homeless man across the street bending over a large trash bin. It was a heart wrenching scene as he sifted through the remains of some food, a soda can, a torn piece of cloth. I couldn’t watch though Jonny appeared spellbound.
We had tried to think of everything – everything we needed from the mega shopping mart called the United State of America. All those pesky little, trivial items you take for granted at home because you know you can find them. You know the store, the aisle number and the shelf where each consumer good you need lives. Those things that – if you can even find them in the Caribbean – are exorbitantly pricey.
