16 August 2013 The Swimming Pool, Eastern Hollandaise, Panama
It was a horrible hot airless night, with the occasional thunderstorm and rain – we were both still tired when we got up. We had an overcast morning with the odd rain showers, so I got on with sorting and editing the hundreds of photographs that I've accumulated over the past two months while Glenys played her ukulele. She’s getting to grips with it now having downloaded lots of lessons and songs from the Internet while we were in Shelter Bay Marina.
We had a couple of large squalls with 30+ knot winds pass through during the day and in between the showers, four of the other boats in the anchorage left, leaving just us and “Gris Gris”. I’m glad that they stayed otherwise we would have been paranoid that everyone knew something bad was coming.
I spent most of the afternoon working on the battery charger. It’s finally stopped working after giving me some intermittent problems over the past few months. I was getting a failure message on the control panel telling me that there was a problem with the voltage sensing circuit. I disconnected the fuses on the voltage sensing wire and, although the failure light went off, the battery charger still wasn’t charging the batteries.
About a month ago, our friends Bonnie and Maury from “Smidge” gave us a 220 volt battery charger that they no longer need because their boat is all wired up for 110 volts, which I’ve been carrying as a spare. I removed our battery charger from the tight space in a locker underneath the chart table and then wired in our spare one. It was a bit of a mission because the battery cable connectors were too big to fit on the new terminals so I spent an hour, grunting and cursing while I hacksawed the connector to make them thin enough to fit.
Unfortunately, the spare battery charger wasn’t charging the batteries either. It’s a bit of a mystery – all I can guess is that there’s some problem with some of the wiring to the battery. I’ll have to look at it again tomorrow.
Tom & Julie from “Gris Gris” came over for sun-downers. They have been cruising Panama for over five years and have been in this anchorage for 2 months, so they know a lot about the area.
17 August 2013 The Swimming Pool, Eastern Hollandaise, Panama
It was a reasonable day today, but a little airless and we had a serious invasion of no-see-ums until I went around and bopped the boat with insect spray. I spent the morning catching up with writing two months of postings for my web site, while Glenys worked on deck cleaning our fenders which were filthy after our stay in Shelter Bay Marina.
Some of the local Kuna Indians came over in their cayuco and Glenys added to her collection by buying another mola. She’s only bought four so far, but we’ve only been in the San Blas four days and she can’t resist them – I’m getting worried…
I had another look at the battery charger and traced the problem to a loose connection. The thick positive battery cable was simply loose on a stud behind the 80 amp fuse. There was evidence that the connection had been heating up, so I was lucky that the battery charger is smart enough to switch off when it detected a high resistance in the circuit, otherwise I might have had a fire.
I cleaned up the connection with some emery cloth and tested the resistance of the connector, which was less than 1 ohm. When I switched on our generator, the spare battery charger kicked into life. I ran the water maker and charged the batteries for an hour to make sure that there were no other problems, then took out the spare battery charger and replaced our original battery charger, which works fine now. What a lot of effort for a loose connection.
Glenys mooched about in the afternoon having managed to burn her back in the sun during the morning even though she was working under our awning for most of the time. The sun here is extremely strong.
I had a go at adjusting the action on the fingerboard on my new guitar. It’s been buzzing when I pluck the strings loudly, so the strings are obviously too close to the frets. Using a set of feeler gauges, I found that the neck on the guitar was too straight – it should be slightly concave. I adjusted the truss rod to give me a 0.010 inch clearance in the middle of the fret board and the buzzing magically went away.
While I was at it, I checked that the clearance at the nut– it was okay being about the thickness of a piece of paper at the first fret. I also measured the action at the 12th fret and found that it was a little high – it should be 1/16” on the thin string and was actually 3/32”. All the strings are 1/32” too high, but I’ve decided to leave it alone because to adjust it I would have to file the saddle insert down and I don’t feel brave enough to do that on a brand new guitar. It seems to sound and play okay to me.
Some locals came alongside and sold us six small lobster for $7.50, which we had for dinner, which was a nice change.
18 August 2013 The Swimming Pool, Eastern Hollandaise, Panama
It was a Sunday, so we had a lie in and a day of rest. Glenys mooched about in the morning playing her ukulele, while I finally caught up on editing photographs and getting my web site up to date. All I need now is an internet connection so that I can publish it.
We had a bit of a scare just before lunch because a boat full of officials was going from boat to boat in the anchorage checking paperwork. Normally, I'm pretty good at clearing in and out, but I've been a bad lad for the last month. I should have cleared out of Shelter Bay Marina and then cleared into Portobello, then cleared out of Portobello and cleared into the San Blas islands in Porvenir. It’s all too much bloody effort and we've not had anyone check our paperwork for months.
When they came alongside, I went into their pirogue to do battle. I passed the first two hurdles because the immigration stamps in our passports and our cruising permit are all valid. However, when they asked for my clearance into Porvenir, I told them that I’d come from Portobello directly to here and not stopped at Porvenir. I told them in my poor Spanish that the Port Captain wasn't in Portobello and acted ignorant about having to go to Porvenir.
Fortunately, they were pretty relaxed about it all and just made me pay a fee of $35 to get a Kuna cruising permit that lasts for a month. One of the guys took a copy of my clearance papers, which I received in Portobello in June, and all seemed happy. They told me that I’ll need to get a zarpe from Porvenir when I leave, but I don’t think that I’ll bother – I already have clearance papers into Shelter Bay Marina dated 28 June and I’ll just rely on them.
Glenys made Lobster Bisque for lunch which was excellent and we continued to chill out for the rest of the afternoon. I spent a couple of hours reading up on the cruising areas on the Pacific side of Panama. We really want to get down to Ecuador as soon as we can, but the winds at the moment are coming from the south-west which will be directly against us. We don’t fancy bashing to windward for three or four days, so we want a back-up plan while we wait for favourable winds. We’re thinking of heading west towards Costa Rica, which should give us a better wind angle for Ecuador, but the cruising area looks to be a little challenging with not many secure anchorages unless we go up rivers.
I spent the rest of the afternoon messing about with Guitar Rig, which is some software which emulates an electric guitar amplifier. My new guitar is an electric-acoustic which means that I can plug it into an amplifier, so I had a bit of fun making it sound like a heavy rock guitar. I eventually got bored with that and tested the recording features which are pretty good, although my fingers turn to rubber as soon as I try to record something. Here’s my best attempt (Extract of Blackbird by The Beatles) – it’s very short. Now if I can just learn to play the guitar properly...
19 August 2013 The Swimming Pool to Coco Bandero, San Blas, Panama
We pottered about during the morning, while we ran the watermaker and waited to see what the weather would do. By eleven o'clock, the day had brightened up, so we upped anchor and motored over to the Coco Bandero Cays, stopping off at Orduptarboat. It’s a pretty little island with a couple of abandoned Kuna huts, but the anchorage is 13 metres deep between the island and an isolated reef. By the time that we’d put out 50 metres of chain, we decided that the anchorage was a little tight considering that the wind could come from any direction in a squall, so we had lunch and moved on.
We motored another few miles to the anchorage just south of Tiadup at the eastern end of the Coco Bandero Cays. This area has a collection of four small cays with anchorages dotted around in the channels between them. There’s a family of Kuna Indians living here.
On our first attempt at anchoring, we dragged – it felt like coral rubble. Unfortunately, there was a huge black squall line rapidly approaching from the north, so we didn't have much time to mess about. We moved a bit further north in the anchorage and thankfully the anchor bit straight away. To make sure, I put on my mask & fins and dived down to check the anchor – it was nicely dug into sand and weed. I just made it back to the boat before the squall hit us with torrential rain.
It rained on and off all afternoon accompanied by the inevitable thunder and lightning, so we chilled out reading and playing musical instruments. A local Kuna came by and asked us if we wanted any provisions, Glenys bought some nice tasting mango juice then ordered a pound of cleaned conch and some bread, which Serapio said he’ll bring over tomorrow morning.
20 August 2013 Coco Bandero, San Blas, Panama
We had an unsettled night, which started off with a huge lightning bolt hitting somewhere very close at about midnight, followed by rain and squalls passing through most of the night. There’s a gap in the reef to the north of where we’re anchored, which is letting in a small amount of swell. It’s only about a foot of chop, but is enough to slap against our stern as we swirl around when the squalls pass through – very annoying.
We had a visit from Lisa who is a Master Mola Maker and a transvestite. I've read that transvestites are fairly common in the tolerant Kuna society. Lisa had a reasonable selection of mola panels, but has been branching out to make other items such as handbags, beer coolers and even an iPad case from molas. Glenys was very good and only bought one mola for $25.
We went snorkelling around a small reef to the north of Two Palm Island, which is a tiny little sandy island with (errr) two palm trees. The snorkelling was good in clear water and a steep sided coral reef. However, there aren't many large fish and we didn't spot a single lobster – no doubt over-fished.
In the afternoon, Serapio arrived with the conch and bread. He’d brought us 3 lbs of conch instead of 1 lb and unfortunately, it hadn't been cleaned - only taken out of the shell. It took me well over an hour to clean and skin the six conch that we ended up buying – a real messy job. I don’t mind doing it when I get the conch myself for free, but I'm not too keen when I pay $3/lb. The bread was nice though.
Just before dark, we heard the soft “Ola, Ola” call of a Kuna Indian sat in his dugout canoe at the side of us. After a little confusion, Glenys finally figured out that Roberto lives on Tiadup and wanted us to charge his mobile phone for him. We've been told that Digicel, the local telephone operator, handed out a load of free phones a few years ago, but unfortunately, the Kuna Indians on these remote islands don’t have any electricity and hence no way of charging their phones.
We had Cracked Conch for dinner, which tasted very nice, but I still wonder if it's worth the effort.
21 August 2013 Coco Bandero, San Blas, Panama
We had another restless night because of squalls. It all started at about four o'clock, when I woke up because the motion of the boat had changed. When we went to bed the wind was coming from the north and now it was coming from the south causing the slight swell to slap under our transom. I saw a couple of flashes of lightning, so I dragged myself out of bed put our small chart plotter and satellite phone into the oven, which I believe will act as a Faraday Cage.
Ten minutes later, we heard the heavy pattering of large raindrops on the deck. I ran through a mental check list – hatches closed (yes), spray-hood up (yes), awning side flaps in place (yes), dinghy bung out (no). Damn! If we leave the bung in the dinghy it will fill up with water. I've worked out that every inch of water in the dinghy weighs 35 Kg and if it fills up completely, the water would weigh 400 Kg, which would be a major strain on our davits. I got up and braved the driving rain to remove the bung.
Towelled off and back in bed, I heard the wind increasing, pushing the rain over our spray-hood and down the hatch in our cabin, so I had to close our hatch. Then the flashes of lightning started getting closer with loud rumbles of thunder – it’s not easy to sleep on a boat sometimes.
We survived the night. It was overcast for most of the day with the occasional shower, so we had a day on board. I bought a new hard disk for my laptop when we were in the UK, so I started the process of installing software on it. It’s amazing how many applications I use on a regular basis – I have a list of over 30 applications to install. Of course, after a few hours, I needed to get access to the Internet to download and register some software, so I ground to a halt.
Glenys spent most of the day doing more research into places where we can go when we get through the Panama Canal next month and playing her ukulele.
Besides playing my guitar, I spent a couple of hours painting my calabash cockpit light – I've decided that I'm not an artist. It looks okay, but having re-looked at it this evening, I've decided that I still need to do a little bit more.