On March 14 we left Curacao in the early afternoon, bound for the San Blas islands which belong nominally to Panama, and are located just to the east of the Panama Canal. This trip took us along the coast of Columbia, which was a body of water we had been dreading for a long time. When my brother John and his family circumnavigated several years ago, I would ask them every time I visited them as they went around, "What's the worst you've seen so far?" and always the answer was, "the waters off Columbia on our way to the Canal". The winds and seas here are notoriously big during the winter months, and gradually come down during April and May, but we couldn't wait until then because we needed to get through the Canal in April to have plenty of time crossing the Pacific during the good weather seasons there. Even when a particular month is known for lots of weather, there are times when the conditions are better, so we carefully watched the weather while in Curacao, waiting for a good weather window to make the passage. When forecasts made it look like a good time, we took off. I was still somewhat apprehensive because of an article I read a year ago about a boat that left Curacao about this time of year, in what they thought was a great weather window, only to have the snot knocked out of them a few days to sea - 40-50 knot winds, if I recall correctly, and humongous seas for many, many hours.

Our passage proved quite the contrary - conditions varied from winds in the mid-20s to ones so light we had to motor, and the seas, while sometimes quite rolly, were never more than Ursa could easily handle - maybe 10-12 feet. The passage took 4-1/2 days, the longest Bryan and I have ever done together, and all-in-all was quite a pleasant one, once the apprehension finally wore off. We had finally installed a lee cloth in one of the settees in the salon ( a piece of canvas about 2 feet wide attached below the mattress, then tied to the overhead to turn the bunk into a sort of crib to prevent one from rolling out of bed while sleeping) and netting over some of the cut-out lockers behind the settee cushions (to prevent stores from spilling out and rolling around on the cabin floor if we heeled over too much). These were things that we'd never found necessary before, although we have had a few cans rolling around the floor on rare occasions, but they seemed like very prudent steps now that we were really going to sea.

About 10 pm the first night we rounded the southern corner of Aruba and found comparatively quiet seas in her lee for the next several hours. While this was a blessing, we also found various confusing lights well out to sea that we stayed well seaward of to be safe. One set proved to be a large ship at anchor several miles from shore, another huge cluster a bit closer in did not appear to be a ship, and we could only guess that perhaps it had to do with an oil transshipment facility, although none was shown on the chart. On the radio we heard another yacht, behind us by about 5 miles, and much closer in to shore, being warned by a ship that it had cable out and that the yacht should reverse direction and go 8 miles south to stay safe. We were glad we'd stayed well away from shore and all the lights!

Sleeping that first night was very difficult - the noises of creaks, rattles and bumpy seas kept me from getting more than a bit of sleep - I'd forgotten how noisy a small boat at sea can be. I kept awake on watches by listening to old-time radio on my iPod (thanks, Betsy, for the help getting my iPod so well-stocked). We sailed northwest well off the shore of Aruba until we were far enough north to change direction more to the west. We'd been sailing so far with just the genoa out, as the wind had been consistently almost behind us. Once we turned more westerly, we put up the mainsail as well, and gave Lizzie, our Monitor wind-vane and virtual third crew, another try. We have had numerous problems getting her to steer properly, and have made several adjustments over the last few months trying to make her work properly, including changing pulleys, tightening and easing her lines, working at properly balancing the sails, and so forth, mostly to no avail. Finally that night she wanted to do her job, which she did even better once we discovered that when she got excited and her lines went taught they sometimes chafed against the bottom of our transom door. Bryan raised the door a few inches, and Lizzie said "OK! That's just what I needed to be happy!" Since Lizzie will only work properly if the boat's sails and rudder are carefully balanced (which means that if you take your hands off the wheel, the boat will sail itself in a straight line), we had assumed that Lizzie wouldn't work under headsail alone. Hah! She surprised us later in the passage when we were again under headsail alone, and worked better than she ever had under two sails! We think we finally have her number, although probably can make some improvements on her keeping a tighter course. But at least she no longer rounds up or down so far that she requires human intervention before tacking or gybing.

The last few days of the passage to San Blas we saw virtually no other traffic, and often had hazy skies that limited visibility. It was like we were the only ones left in a gray world, and could keep sailing on forever without seeing anything but rolling seas.

At about 8 am on the morning of March 19th we arrived at the Hollandes Channel into the San Blas islands, and made our way carefully between the reefs to a comfortable anchorage.