We sailed out of the Colon harbor under party cloudy skies with some pretty choppy 6 ft swells but with 18 knots of wind had a pretty nice sail for about 4 hours and dropped anchor in Portobelo. Discovered by Christopher Columbus in the 1500's but named in the 1700's by the Spanish, used this protected little bay as their primary port to load their Spanish galleons with their stolen Inca gold and "taxes" and take back to Spain. Sir Francis Drake and Henry Morgan were quite active here in pirating these ships as they made their way down the coast. We were anchored right below Forte San Fernando with cannons aimed over our bow towards the harbor entrance It is still very much the rainy season here in the Caribbean as it rains pretty much every day, on and off with 2-3 hour periods of sun so we could at least get to shore and explore the Fort. Ready for some clear blue waters, we set sail after a day for our next stop...Punta Macolla. Another nice sail with 7-10 knot breezes off the stern quarter but with again, some lumpy seas, we stayed with the main sails, instead of pulling out the assymetric from the back berth! We didn't like the looks of our 1st choice for an anchorage in Green Turtle Bay...too many barely visible rocks with a charted 3 meter little bay behind them, so headed alittle more east around the point where the waters were pretty protected from the big swells and a beautiful little beach in the forefront of our first real sunset. The water is definitely bluer over here! 1st order of business...A SWIM!!! 85 degree water...ahhhhh. This is only the stepping stone to the San Blas Islands..... We only spent one night here (a bit rolly at 3am) and now with almost no wind on our nose, it's motoring time! We will make the 1st island...Chichime... in San Blas about 3:00 this afternoon! . More later...once we get to paradise!