Gannirguinnitdup
24 February 2010 | Gannirguinnitdup, San Blas
Mark
Tuesday, 23 February. Now that is a Kuna name. It is also a fantastic island! The morning broke dead calm with the sea like glass. We motored and made water (or thought we did more later) about 6 nm. from Niadup to Gannirguinnitdup. This uninhabited island sits on its one stretch of reef about 2.5 nm. N of Tigre. It is surrounded be reef for 270*, but the opening to the S has a nice sandy spit about 12' deep which makes the perfect anchorage. Totally protected by the reef, but over sand in water so clear you can spot sand dollars on the bottom without difficulty. We anchored easily, watching the anchor hit the sand and stretching the chain out behind it, but then we moved just a bit so that with the kellet down we were still surrounded by sand (we had drifted out of the spit and were over grass so it wasn't as pretty). We were settled in by 10:30 AM. It was already hot and the sun was blazing, so we left the watermaker running and floated for a while behind the boat on Ron & Cynde's floats we are definitely going to need to get a couple of these. When I came out of the water and checked the tank, it still read just over ½. Checking the watermaker control panel, it had not gone off on safety, but the green Pure Water light was not illuminated either. It turns out that the filters were clogged to the point where it could not generate the pressures needed for pure water, but the back pressure was not high enough to kick it off on safety. Four hours of running a 20 amp watermaker for nothing! Grrr. I changed the filters and we were back in business. There was enough sun to run another 3 hours before we had to shut it down. Before lunch, I did a quick snorkel around the sandy area, found two conch and a nice stretch of reef that was an easy swim from the boat. After lunch we fired up the hookah (ran like a charm!) and found a couple more conch and enjoyed the reef. Not the best we have seen, but nice fish including one large grouper (3+ feet long). Too bad I didn't have the spear gun no, actually it was just as well. He would have been hard to land and it would have taken the two of us weeks to eat him. As we were finishing our dive, a powerboat came and anchored a safe distance away, but closer than we would have liked, right behind us. Fortunately the wind shifted as evening arrived and the breeze fell back off the mountains, so they ended up in front of us and we didn't have to look at them.