7 September 2013 Yansaladup, San Blas, Panama
It was a pleasant day with hardly any wind – you never know what is coming with this weather. Yesterday while sailing, I noticed that we have dark patches on the seams of our genoa, which looked suspiciously like mildew, so we pulled out both foresails and inspected them. The stay sail is fine and looks very clean, but the genoa definitely has some patches of what looks like mildew. It’s not too bad, so we left the sails out to dry for a few hours and we’ll give it a good cleaning when we get to Shelter Bay Marina.
We didn't do much for the rest of the morning – I messed around with working out how to play some new tunes on the guitar, while Glenys read her book. In the afternoon, we went for a snorkel to the north west of a small sand island, which was very good – it's a nice reef dropping down to 12 metres. There were lots of snappers swimming about and we saw a couple of big Nurse Sharks again. I also spotted a small shoal of Glassy Sweepers, which we haven’t seen for ages.
We went to “Nuwam” for evening cocktails and to sample the fish that Robert caught while trolling over the reef yesterday.
8 September 2013 Yansaladup to the Swimming Pool, San Blas, Panama
It was a beautiful sunny day, so we left early and motored across to Naguargandup Cays. We had a look at the anchorage close to Salardup, but most of the area is over 15 metres deep. There are some 3-4 metre deep areas, but they were too close to the island for my liking in this unsettled weather. We tried to anchor further out on two 6 metre deep patches, but both of them turned out to have coral heads and we didn't want to anchor there – a 30 metre length of anchor chain would have caused devastation when we swung at anchor.
We gave up and headed across to the Swimming Pool on the Eastern Hollandaise, catching a small Bonito on the way. We anchored next to Gris Gris, but unfortunately, the wind was swirling us around and we ended up a little too close to them. There was no danger of hitting them, but I felt that we were invading their “personal space”. By this time, another boat had arrived and took up the other anchoring place, so we decided to live with being a little close.
We snorkelled around the boat in the afternoon, and I spotted an Atlantic Torpedo which is an electric ray capable of giving out a 220V electric shock. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me. The no-see-ums arrived with a vengeance in the late afternoon and, despite burning a mosquito coil, they were voracious - Glenys eventually told me off for swearing every time that I was bitten.
After dinner, I heard the sound of fish splashing, so I rigged up a piece of tuna on a jig hook and managed to catch a reasonable Snapper and a huge 10lb Black Jack. Having fought it for five minutes and bringing it on board using our landing net, I then had to spend 30 minutes gutting and filleting the damn thing, which was hard work at nine o'clock at night.
9 September 2013 The Swimming Pool, San Blas, Panama
I had a very restless night worrying about how close we were to Gris Gris. A thunderstorm passed through and, although I knew that we had enough separation, I just HAD to get up and check that we weren't going to hit them. First thing in the morning, to my great relief, the yacht on the other side of us left, so we were able to move and re-anchor an acceptable distance from Gris Gris – I’ll sleep better tonight.
For the last few days, we've been discussing when we should go through the Panama Canal and we've finally decided to spend another week here in the San Blas and then start to head towards Shelter Bay marina. I've got a few things to sort out when we get there and Glenys wants to re-provision after depleting her stocks here, so we'll probably spend a week in the marina and go through to the Pacific in the first week of October. It's a scary thought that once we're through the Canal, we're committed to carry on and sail around the world...
Glenys got out her sewing machine and took over the saloon. She did some minor repairs to our big awning and replaced a zip on one of the side flaps for the bimini. I kept out of the way by going snorkelling around the anchorage trying to find an Atlantic Torpedo to get a photograph, but no luck. I did manage to spot a few Southern Stingray and a couple of Yellow Stingrays in my travels.
It was very hot and airless in the afternoon, so we hung around in the cockpit gasping for air and jumping over the side every so often. Tito, the local Kuna came over in his dugout canoe with his wife and their two grandchildren and relieved us of a $10 anchoring fee. It’s the first time that we've had to pay for over a month so we were happy to pay it over.
Glenys finally succumbed and bought a bead bracelet for $5. It’s made from a long string of glass beads, which is tied around the wrist and held in place by half hitches – it was interesting watching the dexterous way that the lady tied it on.
We invited Tom & Julie from “Gris Gris” and Frank & Gretchen from “Infinity” over for sun downers and swapped fishing stories.
10 September 2013 The Swimming Pool, San Blas, Panama
It was another hot airless day. Glenys had another go at sewing, but soon gave up because it was so hot down below. Frank from “Infinity” came over and gave us a big fillet of a 20lb Pompano that he speared yesterday, which was nice of him.
In the afternoon, we went snorkelling on the outside of the reef to the east of Tiadup. There’s an old wreck of a yacht up on the reef and we found a gully with a drop off in-line with the wreck’s stern. It was very exposed place but there was hardly any swell and the visibility was good. We didn't see many large fish, but I managed to find a couple of lobster. I caught a nice 2 lb one, but the wire loop on my snare snapped before I could catch the other one.
A huge thunderstorm built up over the mainland in the evening and gave us some welcome wind and clouds, so we had a pleasant meal of lobster in the cockpit with no insects to bother us.
11 September 2013 The Swimming Pool to Coco Banderos, San Blas, Panama
The day started off nice and sunny, so we motored across to Rio Diablo to go shopping. As soon as we’d anchored off Corazon, I picked up a reasonable internet connection and started to download three weeks’ worth of email while we went into town. This is the third time that we've been here, so we soon trotted around the few tiendas and bought what we could find – onions, flour, corn flakes, beer, wine, etc. Once again, the liquor store was all closed up and we had to go and find the owner in his house to get him to open up.
Back on the boat, we went through our emails and sent some replies – it was mostly spam with a few emails from family and friends – nothing urgent. Just after we had our lunch, a big squall pushed its way north off the mainland and brought torrential rain for an hour and a half, so we hunkered down and waited for it to pass.
There’s no piped water on the two islands, so the Kuna men go up the Rio Diablo with their dugout canoes packed full of barrels and containers to get drinking water from the river. While it was raining heavily, I watched a constant stream of Kuna paddling stoically past us on their way to the river – this minor spectacle really emphasised the basic way of life in these islands. The people on Nargana have electricity and there is a plethora of satellite TV dishes, so why on earth don’t they sort out their water supply?
The rain eventually dropped to a light drizzle, so we took the opportunity to dash over to Coco Banderos and anchored in our usual spot – we've definitely been in this area too long. There are a few backpacker boats around, but it’s fairly quiet in the anchorage.
12 September 2013 Coco Banderos, San Blas, Panama
I did some admin in the morning – catching up on my web site postings and sorting out the spare part for the generator. We've been running the generator using a jumper cable to bypass the faulty earth relay for two weeks now and I've been having a sporadic email conversation by satellite phone with Panda Fischer. I've finally managed to get a firm quote out of the German head office and have ordered it to be sent to Shelter Bay Marina by UPS. Hopefully, it will be waiting for us when we get there in a couple of weeks.
There was a bit of confusion because the USA distributor told me that the earth relay was no longer used and should be bypassed, whereas the German hot line told me that it was necessary and I should buy a new one. It’s an expensive little item at 200 euros, but I trust the Germans – the American distributor is pretty useless as I found to my cost back in July last year, when the Americans messed me about for weeks over a heat exchanger.
We went snorkelling on the reef just by the bow of the wreck of a freighter to the north of the anchorage. It’s a good spot. The reef drops off to ten metres and has quite a few fish darting about. We even saw a large 2-3 foot long Grouper, which didn't hang around long, darting into a cave and disappearing - I guess that it’s grown so big by running away at the first sight of man.
Glenys for some unknown reason, got it into her head to make Lobster Ravioli - even making the pasta dough from scratch. It seemed a lot of effort to me, but the results were very, very tasty.
13 September 2013 Coco Banderos, San Blas, Panama
It was a nice sunny day, so I persuaded Glenys to do some more videos for our “Meli Kalikimaka” Christmas card. We scooted off in our dinghy and shot some footage on a couple of deserted islands with palm trees and some more back on Alba. It’s quite complicated this film-making business. We’d already recorded a reasonable sound track, so we played the track through an MP3 player and sang along and videoed ourselves in various locations.
Having taken thirty minutes worth of footage, it took me most of the rest of the day to edit it into a one minute video. We both think that it looks okay, but I’ll hold final judgement and have another look in a month’s time and see if I’m still keen to send it out. I remember a film called “Confetti” where one of the couples getting married played guitars and sang folk songs at their own wedding – real cringe-ville. Am I strong enough to take the mocking?
It was very hot in the afternoon, so we took a break and went snorkelling. We tried a couple of places, but there were lots of small jelly fish around, so we gave up, went back to the boat and swam over to a reef at the edge of the anchorage. It’s only shallow, but pleasant enough. I spotted a Snake Eel which was pulling shells and pieces of coral from some poor creature’s hidey hole in the sea bed. Once it had removed the entrance barricade, it slid into the hole – all three feet of it. Very creepy…
14 September 2013 Coco Banderos to Yansaladup, San Blas, Panama
It’s Saturday again and the wealthy Panamanians arrived in their power boats, jostling for position at eight o'clock. By ten o'clock, we’d had enough, so we motored for 20 miles to Yansaladup. I love this anchorage – the holding is good and there’s only two other boats around. One of them is “Infinity” who we met in the Hollandaise a week ago. Gretchen has trained her cocker spaniel dog to stand still on the front of a stand-up surf board while they take it to the beach for a walk. She gave us a go on her board and, while I could handle it, I can’t see the attraction – far too slow for my liking.
We went snorkelling and circumnavigated Palm Island, which had a very nice reef. There were thousands of small, two inch long, Sharpnose Puffer fish – I took about forty pictures, but the little devils are so small and flit about so quickly that I only had two that were half decent. I need a better camera because the shutter lag is far too long on my Canon G11.
Some Kuna fishermen called by and sold us a couple of 2 lb lobster for $10. Glenys steamed them and shoved them in the fridge for tomorrow because she’d already got some chicken to use up. We had a delicious Chicken Curry with Pineapple – I love the West Indian flavours.
15 September 2013 Coco Banderos to Yansaladup, San Blas, Panama
It was a restless night. At two in the morning, I awoke sweating in the airless cabin and turned on my fan. Ten minutes later, we had over thirty knots of wind while a huge thunderstorm passed to the south of us along the mainland. I was glad that “Infinity” are anchored a hundred yards away because it gave me a point of reference to check whether or not we were dragging our anchor. We were fine, but I still had to sit up in the cockpit for quarter of an hour until the wind had dropped below 20 knots. It was difficult to get back to sleep after that.
It was an overcast and thundery day, so we stayed on board. Glenys got on with cleaning the heads and her galley while I kept out of the way and played on my laptop all day. I spent hours creating a pdf version of Glenys’s cookbook. It’s surprising how long it takes to format a document so that it looks good. I've only managed to get about half of the 80 or so recipes into the pdf, but it looks great on our iPad and I’ll publish it to our downloads page.
It remained miserable into the evening, so we decided to watch a movie with our Lobster Pizza. Unfortunately, our clever media player wouldn't send a video signal to the LCD projector. I managed to get it working using a composite video lead (with poor quality), but the HDMI feed isn't working. I’ll have to test both devices when I can get my hands on TV and DVD player which have HDMI connectors – it’s a real challenge to sort things out when we’re so isolated.