We have less than a week left in the San Blas before we need to leave for our haul-out. Our only concern remains gasoline. We gave Sergio about 3 gallons when he came by saying he had none to get home (a very common ploy, I have learned) and he never returned as promised (also common). We waited for three days in W Lemmons for gasoline and it was always, “Manana.” So now we are in the E Holandes, about 20 nm from Porvinir and 9 from Nargana (two places that have gas). The dinghy is down to ~1/3 of a tank with no extra. I still have a gallon or so in the hookah jerry can which I could mix with oil for the outboard, but then wouldn't have more for the hookah. Should we spend a precious day traveling to get gas? Running out would definitely NOT be fun and most of the snorkeling here requires a moderate dinghy ride. On the SSB net this morning, I checked to be sure that both Nargana and Porvinir had gas (they did), but Blue Skies came back and suggested I check with Mark on Melody as he often has gas for sale and he is in the E Hollandes but doesn't have SSB. I called him on VFH and he said he had 5 gallons left to sell. I arranged to pick it up n an hour. I launched dink, measured out 16 oz. of oil, and headed over to the Swimming Pool where Melody was anchored. Mark turns out to be quite an interesting character. For the past 10 years he has been living on a boat in the San Blas. Actually he has two boats that are lashed together at anchor. Once a month he sails (only one of them) to Portobelo where he has a car that he drives to Panama City. He buys ~120 gallons of gas, 200 gallons of diesel, and any groceries or supplies that anyone has signed up for him to get (for a fee, of course). Among the interesting things he has done with his two boats is step a mast right in the water! He put the injured boat between his and with a spinnaker halyard from each mast, lifted the broken mast up a bit, backed out the boat, and laid the mast down on his deck to repair. Once it was repaired, he reversed the process to step it back up. Good thing it is calm inside the reef! I bought his last 5 gallons of gas for only $4.75/gal. (The local price is now up to $5.50, but since he bought it before the big price jump, he still sold it at his usual mark-up.) We now have plenty of gas for BOTH the hookah and the dinghy, so “No Worries.” We did a couple loads of laundry this morning and made water at the same time so we are not too far behind on water. After lunch and after the sheets were dry (We didn't dare leave them flying in the breeze), we went ashore to walk on the beaches of Banedup. Now Banedup is a pretty large island and I suggested to Deb that walking all the way around might be too much, but she just kept on beach combing until we were more than half way around and so had to complete the loop. Looking at the chart, I figure we walked about at least a mile and a half in soft sand and that was if we had walked in a straight line, not back and forth across the beach, into the water, etc. Deb had clearly had enough walking by the time we got back to dink, but she did find lots of neat treasures. We were both hot and tired so when we got back to the boat, we got out the floaties and a couple of beers and cooled off Caribbean style floating behind the boat. Too late to snorkel / hookah today so that will have to wait for tomorrow.