Eaten by bugs (In paradise)
28 October 2010 | Holandes Cays, San Blas, Panama - 09.35N 78.40W
Ralph
The snorkeling by Miriadiadup was excellent. The coral was very alive and varied and it started in deep water and came right up to the shallows right beside the island. A spotted eagle ray swam within 20 feet of met, which was a little unnerving, but pretty cool. There are not that many fish on these reefs. Lots of parrot fish, but the other fish you see are small and there is not many of them. You do see a few small snappers and grunts, but I think overfishing is the culprit. We also saw a school of what I think are squid. They hang out in pairs and there was a group of about 22+ of them hovering in the water. They have large eyes compared to their body size and they swim backwards. I tried to startle them to see if they would squirt out some ink, but I guess I was not scary enough. We did not find any more conch or any lobsters, which we were hoping to have along with the conch Karen found the day before.
For lunch we had smashed plantain and cracked conch - Violent names for delicious food. After lunch we lifted anchor and headed to another anchorage called the swimming pool over at the east end of the island chain. It was a little tricky getting in, but the light was good and from behind us and we had no problems. There are three other boats here that we met at Shelter Bay - one of the good things about that place. This anchorage is protected by a couple of islands and a barrier reef. You can hear and see the waves crashing on the reef and it makes for a pretty nice setting. We had a very nice bug-less evening as a nice breeze was blowing. At around 2am we had a hard rain shower then then wind died out completely and then the bugs moved in. For about an hour they were ferocious, so we had to close all of the windows and hatches that do not have no-see-um screens on them. It made for an uncomfortable night.
The plan is to stay here until we are to leave for Cartagena and right now it looks like the weekend will be good. We are now thinking that we leave on Saturday night and should arrive in Cartagena early Monday morning. The real problem for doing this passage is guessing what speed we will be able to maintain. If we could average 6 kts, the trip would take 30 hours, so we would not have to leave until Sunday morning, but if we can only make 5 kts (36 hours), then we would arrive after dark on Monday and that would be NOT GOOD. The ideal would be to leave at 1 or 2am, but getting out of here would very tricky. We will see