01/19/2012, Porvenir, Kuna Yala, Panama
This was our big jump to get out to the islands so we were up early in order to make the 45 miles in daylight. These islands are surrounded by reefs so approaching them at night is not advised, and once you get here you see numerous wrecks up on the reef to remind you of how dangerous these islands can be. We were once again worried about being able to hold our course and make it in one tack, but we were pleasantly surprised and were able to sail the whole way. We arrived around 3:30 which was perfect for light conditions and watching for the reef areas. Porvenir is the check-in area for Kuna Yala so we stayed here for the night even though the anchorage was a bit rolly and checked in with no problem the next morning. So now we are cleared to go out and start exploring this amazing archipelago. The water is layered in shades of blue and turquoise and the beaches have the finest sand we have ever seen. There are small islands everywhere and navigating can be a challenge. Thank God for GPS and a good cruising guide.
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01/18/2012, Panama
Two days after we originally planned to depart Portobelo the winds finally gave us a bit of a break. We were able to sail all the way to Isla Grande which will be our jumping off spot for the San Blas Islands or Kuna Yala as the Kuna Indians refer to it. We were not too happy with the anchorage here since it was extremely rolly all night long, and this place must have lots of howler monkeys because we heard them a lot. Since this was just a one night stay we didn't bother to go ashore.
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01/14/2012, Portobelo, Panama
I wanted to post pictures with all these entries, but after trying to send with this slow connection I've had no luck. So I will add pictures when I have a good enough connection. We arrived to our first anchorage on our way to the islands after a 23 mile trip from Shelter Bay. It was blowing about 20 knots the whole way right on our nose, but we were able to hold our course by motorsailing which made us happy. This is a very nice anchorage in a large bay with about 20-30 boats. We had no problem finding an anchoring spot and looked forward to exploring this historic city. The bay was named by Columbus and means beautiful port. This is also the resting spot of Sir Francis Drake who died here of dysentery and is buried at sea somewhere outside the harbor entrance in a lead coffin. His exact location isn't publicized because word is that the English want him back, but Panama isn't giving him up. There are 3 forts located in strategic spots around the harbor built by the Spanish in the 1500's to protect all the gold and silver that came here from the plundering that was done in other parts of Central and South America, mainly Peru. We had fun exploring the remains of these forts, and there is even an old section of the road and bridge which was used during that time. Other than that the town is a quiet place without many restaurants or tourist luxuries.
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01/13/2012
Ok, I guess we are ready after about 10 days of cleaning, updating equipment, relearning systems, and lots of provisioning. The weather looks okay for our departure tomorrow Jan. 14. So we will cut the ties to the marina and make about a 20 mile trip over to Portobelo where we can anchor. We always look forward to that. One of our challenges so far has been problems with our computer and now downloading pictures so I may not be posting many pictures after this with my blog. We will be spending time in a fairly remote area and internet connections will be tough to find so we have to do our postings from the HAM radio. Once we get to Cartagena, Columbia we will have better internet. I'll still take lots of pictures, but I'll just have to wait to post them until later.
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01/06/2012, shelter bay, panama
We have been back on the boat for the last 4 days and are finally launched and in the water. It has been a lot of work getting things working again and cleaned up, but we are getting there. I still haven't taken any pictures and by the end of the day am pretty exhausted so my blog entries will be short until we start having time to relax. Tomorrow we take the half day trip into town to get some food. When things slow down I'm going to be making the switch to a new blog at http://www.svwanderlust.blogspot.com/. It is a work in progress at this point so be patient. More to come.
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I finally got through all my pictures and have them labelled and loaded into the photo gallery. I'm sure there are more pictures than most of you even want to spend the time looking at, but it does tell the story of our whole trip.
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