Costa Rica Fishing Report from FishingNosara

It’s October 2016, and the boats are on the hill and the houses sit empty, but the action never stops at Nosara Paradise Rentals and FishingNosara. Like all great franchises, we don’t rebuild…we reload!

It’s the rainy season in Nosara during the months of September and October, so this is the time of year when our team prepares for another great season.

At this point our fleet has outgrown our facilities, so this off season we’ll be breaking-in our new 30′ x 40′ boat garage.

After years of dodging rainstorms, laying fiberglass under tarps, and scattering our tools all over the yard it is great feeling to have a dedicated facility to perform our maintenance.

The garage also features a new bodega just for boat supplies; this way we aren’t mixing up boat stuff with Safari Cart supplies:

Great work by Deiter, Javier, and the rest of the staff in building this marine mecca!

Our flagship Wanderer is getting a major facelift this season…after 30+ years on the water the hard top is finally going away.

The wooden top has become waterlogged over the years, and the heavy glass windows are starting to show their age; in place of these fuel-hogging wastes of weight we will install a new aluminum top built by our friends at Custom Marine Jacksonville

Troy and the boys knocked us out with the quality of the top for the mega panga Harvester, so it was a no-brainer to let them loose on the Wanderer‘s new top…clearly Captain William is already thinking about how it will look:

Custom Marine has produced another masterpiece. Measuring 9 feet wide and 10 feet long yet weighing under 100lbs., this top is a marvel of marine engineering.

We had to build a custom crate in order to ship this thing…after all UPS doesn’t make a box this size!

The top is set for delivery this week and we will have it installed in plenty of time to start the new season.

Also, all of the cushions on the boats are getting rebuilt and restitched by jack-of-all-trades Marino who is quickly adding sewing to his deep bag of tricks:

We are fresh home from Nosara and are proud to report excellent progress on the refurbishing of the Wanderer. To recap, this is what the boat looked like this time last year:

As our boat-building prowess grew, we came to realize the awesome power of synthetic Coosa Wood: super light and super strong. Last October we pulled apart the entire cabin and rebuilt all the pieces out of Coosa:

This change saves an estimated 400lbs. or more. It took the whole crew jamming for a week, but the new cabin made the boat ride like a champ and drink a lot less fuel.

This year we are continuing to shave weight by replacing the heavy wood top with a sweet tower built by our friends Troy and Harper over at Custom Marine Jacksonville

First step was to strip off the old top and prep the interior for sanding/fiberglass work.

There was a noticeable about of flex in the sides of the cockpit once the hardtop was gone; the windows, window frames, and top acted as a stabilizing connection. Therefore we had to replace the strength with these Coosa Wood ribs on the sides:

Fortunately the shipping crate for the tower has left us with a bounty of 12′ 2×4 lumber, so it was easy to brace these while the epoxy cured and layers of fiberglass were applied.

We test-fit the new top so we could mark our holes and epoxy-sleeve them:

It was obvious that the rear edge of the tower was a few inches too low, so we installed 2 inches of Starboard to lift the rear up to a 6’2″ clearance:

Our clients anglers tend to be big guys so we don’t want anyone knocking their head, however our Captains and Mates are short so the rod holders have to be reachable. This height seems like the perfect compromise.

Meanwhile, Brian installed our new command console to complete last summer’s wood-to-Coosa transformation. Here is the new console:

 

You can see that the switches and gauges has to be laid our differently per Captain William’s specs; after 1,000+ trips in 6 years the Master Captain has a firm grip on how he wants the tools laid out on the Wanderer.

This week the crew in Costa Rica will gelcoat the Wanderer inside and out, then reassemble her for the water.

We are aiming to be ready to fish in the first week of November, so keep an eye on the FishingNosara blog and we’ll let you know once she is back in her rightful place in Garza Bay.

 

After a whirlwind two month overhaul, the Wanderer is back in the water and ready to once again sit on the throne as the King of Garza Bay.

While it was a fun challenge to re-arm this flagship for another year of battle, clearly everyone is ready to get back to fishing…escpecially Master Captain William: