Wednesday, 17 February. We had so much fun yesterday that we decided to stay another day and do more hookah diving. We made two runs. In the morning, We went to the East of the cut and again anchored dink inside the reef and launched the hookah. We swam out through a different cut, too small for a boat, really more of a canyon between mountains of coral with the intention of swimming out around to the right and back in the big cut to circle back to dink. The dive was amazing. Deep canyons with sandy bottom between huge formations of coral. There was mostly button coral – it looked like new growth covering what appeared to be much older dead coral. There were scattered formations of elkhorn and staghorn coral, and the soft coral was astounding. Huge formations 10-15' tall. Fans, trees of branching soft coral of every description. After some time, I realized we were probably at least 40' deep and should head back to shallower depths at least. I went up to look about and found that we had swum/been carried by a current nearly straight out from dink. We were no closer to the large cut, but we were quite a ways indeed, off shore. We took a different route back (It was impossible to tell as the coral formations were a jumble of canyons and side canyons such that no route was obvious. I kept the sun behind my left shoulder and we arrived back at dink without incident.) After lunch, we decided to go again, but this time to swim out the big cut and then around and back in – this time keeping track of our course and the current. Again using the position of the sun, we swam at about 30' rising to 5' over the masses and back down to 30' in the canyons. It was great fun. We found a good sized lobster that I thought I could catch, but even though I grabbed him way back on his antennae, they broke off and he escaped. (He will grow new ones and live to tell the story.) Deb collected a big conical sponge that she had been wanting and several more shells, sea biscuits, and a broken off piece of what looked like a tube sponge, but was now hard coral. When we arrived back at dink, Deb was still raring to go, so we went back out and circled to the left this time. About the time I was looking for a break in the reef to return back inside, the hookah died. I recognized it immediately and motioned Deb to surface. We were only about 20' and the expansion tank gave us plenty of air, so there was no problem. The hookah had been running perfectly since I filled it with new gas, BUT that was 2 ½ long dives ago and – sure enough – the tank was dry. We hooked our weight belts to the tube and swam it back just outside the breakers until we got to the cut back to dink. Back at the big boat, I refilled the tank, but it wouldn't start. In the process of trying, I broke the pull cord. I drained the “sludge bowl” and found lots of sediment, so I resolved to tear down the carb and clean the jets (This is the one weak point of the Honda engine, the jets clog if you leave old gas in it and this gas had been over a year old.) I had to remover the engine from the “tub” it floats in, then remove the pull start and replace the cord. (Fortunately I had some the right size – I have LOTS of spares.) Then I removed the float bowl, the float and the main jet. The secondary jet is supposed to “drop out” from the hole where the main jet was just removed, but, of course, it didn't. As I was “tapping gently on the tube” to encourage it to fall out, I accidentally hit one of the legs that supported the float and snapped off the plastic. THAT is a part for which I did NOT have a spare and I somewhat doubt there is one in Panama, though Honda engines are pretty common so there might be, but certainly not in the San Blas. I have this great plastic super glue made by Locktite that I bought in the states and it works great. It is a two step process where you pre-treat the plastic with what looks like a magic marker, wait a minute, and super glue it together. Hopefully that will work for this part. There is no real stress on it, but it is immersed in gasoline which is a great solvent. I treated both pieces of plastic only to find the super glue had all dried up. And I could not find more. Well, “New Skin” is a cyanoacrylate, and I had some of that. Maybe that would work. I again pretreated the plastic parts and glued them together with the “New Skin.” It seemed to hold. Finally I cleaned all the jets and reassembled everything, but decided to let it sit overnight before subjecting it to gas. Tomorrow, I will try to fire it up and see how it goes. Stay tuned! Three more boats arrived during the day, all anchoring out quite a ways, but one cat is anchored in the sandy cut that we need to use to get out tomorrow. Depending on how he is hanging, that could be “interesting.” Hopefully he will swing so that it won't be a problem. For now we are still snug in our little harbor well away from the maddening crowd!