After having Namani moored at the Balboa Yacht Club for a few weeks now (which included a trip back to Germany), we decided that we may as well do our remaining boat jobs somewhere at anchor. So we slipped our mooring this morning and took off for Las Perlas, an island group about 40 nm SE of Balboa/Panama City. With a forecast for light northerly winds we feared we might be motoring the whole stretch. Against expectations we did have a really nice sail however, close reaching in about 15kn from the NE. We even got to enjoy the company of 10-12 spotted dolphins who played in Namani's bow wave for a while, and we did see a whale breaching. At about 5 pm we dropped the hook in the lee of Isla Contadora, enjoying the increased length of our new anchor chain (we swapped our old 35 meters of 10mm stainless steel against 75 meters of 5/16" galvanized high-test/G4 - Adrian on Attilla got a good deal on the old chain ;-)



It sure felt good to be sailing again and even Namani seemed happy to be under way again. Now we plan to spend 5-6 days in Las Perlas while working the job list. As the saying goes: "Cruising is about fixing your boat in nice places"... If all goes well we will be leaving for the Galapagos by the end of February. Stay tuned...