This afternoon we had a pot-luck cocktail party for the young Dutch girl who is sailing around the world alone. Of course, at only 15 (not 13 as previously mentioned), she could not partake of the cocktails, but there were lots of aps for everyone to enjoy. Laura on Guppy (cruisers are always known as first name on boat name No one seems to use surnames.) turned out to be a rather personable young lady. She plans to take about a year for her circumnavigation which at least gives a bit of time to see things along the way. Assuming she accomplishes her goal, she will lower the record age by about a year (current record is 17y + 1d). The whole thing still seems both foolish and dangerous, but 15 is miles better than 13 and she does have a lot of experience. At the party we also met many cruisers from all over. Several expressed interest in Bocas and a couple may even be interested in leaving their boats there while returning to their home country – certainly a lot cheaper than Shelter Bay. It was a fun evening. The beach was quite a sight with 20 or more dinghies all pulled up side by side. All the cruisers chipped in and bought Laura a Kuna blouse with beautifully done molas front and back. It will certainly be a most appropriate rememberance of the San Blas for her. To get to the party, we sailed from W Holandes to E Holandes. The W. Holandes was getting pretty crowded anyway with 7 other boats there by morning (one actually arrived during the night!). We weighed anchor and were under way by 9:30 with a single reef in the main and full gennie. Wind was about 90* of the port and we were sailing 7-8 kts. in 18 kts of wind. Until, that is, we got out of the lee of the island. Then the wind jumped to 20-23 kts. I reefed in gennie a bit and we continued to make ~7 kts. in nearly flat waters because of the reef that extends the full length of the Holandes. As we wound around some of the more Southerly islands in the chain, we got up to 60* apparent but still sailed quite comfortably and speedily. As long as you're behind a reef and know how to reef (pun intended), this kind of wind is great! When we got to E. Holandes, we planned to anchor behind Banedup, also known as Bug Island for its sand flees that can come out to close anchored boats when there is no wind. Not a problem today! Fortunately, we found a nice open slot between the many boats anchored there. As we sailed up the slot we discovered why it was empty -the depths held at 50-60' nearly to the very obvious shoals that looked like a narrow section of sand with coral on each side and were obviously quite shallow. We edged slowly into the wind until we got to ~20' depth (measured just ahead of the keel which is about in lin with the anchor windlass) with our bow nearly on the shoal. We dropped 150' of chain and fell back. The anchor bit immediately and we were well set. We added the kellet and another 40' of chain before the bridle as we were now back in 50' of water. When I dove the anchor, I could follow the chain all the way in except for one spot where the sun beams into the water actually obscured my vision. The anchor was very well buried in soft sand only about 20' from where the bottom rose to 5-6' – not enough that we would have run aground, but too shallow for comfort. The “coral” however, turned out just to be grass so it would not have been an issue after all. I swam around a bit on the way back to the boat, but could not find any interesting coral on this side. There is a small patch on the other side that may be interesting, but we'll check that out tomorrow. Back at the boat, Deb & I use the floaties tying our ankle to a line from the boat so we could float (with sunglasses and beers) behind the boat enjoying the warm sun and cool water at the same time. Soon it was time to shower off the salt and head in for the party.