Alone again
12 March 2017 | San Blas Islands
Mark
Eric & Lynda are off on their adventure. None of us were prepared for the scene at Carti this morning. Starting about 6:00 and increasing after 7:00, water taxis started arriving at the port - empty for the most part, occasionally loaded with passengers. When we went in, it was a mob scene. Water taxis everywhere, literally hundreds of people coming and going. I managed to tie dink up at a (relatively) safe spot on the large concrete dock, unloaded Eric, Lynda, and their luggage and went to look for Tito. Eric and I both assumed we would recognize him after meeting him yesterday, but there were dozens of guys that could have been Tito. We were early. I inquired and, No, he wsn't here, but he would be. OK, we'll wait. About 8:30 (the time of their reservations) a man who definitely was not Tito called "Parker". I went and spoke with him. Tito had been delayed by traffic but would be here about 9:00. No problem, reservations were secure. Traffic? On the only road through the jungle between Panama City and Carti? I would have thought that weird except that SUVs were rolling in at a rate of one every couple minutes. The parking lot had 20-30. Each arrived with a load of passengers, discharged them, loaded up with new passengers and was off again in record time. The whole scene looked like chaos, but was actually carefully orchestrated. There appeared to be 3-4 'companies' that orchestrated their own particular vehicles - both the SUVs and the water taxis. The arrivals were some Gringos, some Panamanians that appeared to be on holiday (?for just the day?) with coolers, bathing suits, and umbrellas, and some were Kuna. Those leaving were mostly Gringos. Finally I different guy asked for "Parker" and said he would take them to a different Port to meet Tito and then take the trip to Panama City. We loaded their luggage, said our good-byes, and they were off. I had a bit of a problem getting dink off the dock alone, but it all worked out and I made it back to the boat and Deb. We decided to just shoot for Nargana (~20 nm) where we knew we could get water. It should be a nice sail. The winds are supposed to die later today and be fairly light for a couple of days before the Trade Winds return. We want to enjoy the calm weather to do some snorkeling and be ready to leave when the Trades return as we should have good wind but fairly flat seas. The sail to Nargana started out great - close reach at 5+ kts, all up. But the wind faded as predicted. 5 kts, 4 kts, 3 kts. Need to start one engine and motor sail. Wind down to 4.6 kts (our speed is 4.6 kts.) Take down sails and motor. Some wind returns. Roll out gennie and shut off one engine. We made it to Nargana by 3:00. I took our garbage in to Frederico and arranged for him to bring 100 gallons of fresh water first thing in the morning. The panderia did not have 'pan dulce', much to my disappointment - it had been very good. So tonight we are anchored in Nargana and can use all the water we want as we will refill tomorrow. WE have onnly used ~10 gallons of diesel so we don't need more. Hopefully we can fill the water tanks in the AM and get off to a nice deserted island to snorkel. It has been great having Eric & Lynda with us, but it is also nice to be alone - just the two of us. It has actually been a long time since we had the boat all to ourselves as the last 3 trips were all with friends/family, so this is nice.