On Tuesday, 6th May, we were up just before 7am, to leave the marina and set sail. We were fully provisioned and Pete just had to nip to the gas station to replenish his beer supply and grab a cheap bottle of gin. Trini was up on deck, next door, to wave us off. The engine went on at 0740 hours and we switched all the instruments on. The autohelm controller was bleeping and saying 'no pilot'. It had done this before, so Pete went into diagnostics and ran the self-test, which usually resets it. This time, it didn't work. Perhaps it was damp, after all the rain, or struggling to fix a position in the marina, after being inactive for so long. Pete decided we would leave and sort the problem on the way and we slipped the lines at 0755 hours. We slowly negotiated the reefs, removed and stowed lines and fenders and headed around Linton Island and the autopilot came on. There was a slight blip five minutes later but then everything was ok. There was no wind to speak of and not much swell, so we wouldn't be able to sail, which had been expected. Our fuel tank was full and all of our spare diesel cans were full too, in anticipation of a long time under engine. It was warm and sunny, so with engine and solar power charging the batteries, we switched on the watermaker. It wasn't long before we could see ships, in the distance, coming and going from the Panama Canal, at Colon. A couple of swifts kept landing on the boat and were trying to get into the sailbag to make a nest. Pete shooed them off and eventually they got the message that they weren't welcome, sweet as they were.
Under engine, we were only doing between 4.5 and 4.7 mph, which was painfully slow. The DC to DC, which controls the power going into the lithium batteries, was also getting incredibly hot, so at 0940 hours we switched it off to cool down. By midday, we were monitoring ships passing through the separation zones offshore of the canal. We would be passing south of the separation scheme and through the area where many ships were at anchor, waiting for their scheduled passage through to the Pacific. We had originally planned to anchor in the Chagres River, 7 miles west of Colon, for the night but we changed our minds and decided to do our night sail tonight and continue on to Isla Escuda de Veraguas, a remote island off the coast. We let people know about our change of plan, so they wouldn't unduly worry about not hearing from us. We were sure to lose phone signal as we travelled further from the shore. At 1240 hours, we had 118 miles to travel to the island, which is known for its beauty and peace.
After lunch, we backflushed the watermaker and turned the DC to DC back on, as it had now cooled down and the lithium batteries were down to 13.25, about 80%. We started to feel a slight breeze, about 30 degrees off to starboard, so we raised the mainsail, to create some lift and we had another half a mile per hour of speed. We had now cleared all the anchored ships and there were no more vessels in sight. The breeze started to strengthen, so we put the foresail out and turned off the engine. We were sailing at last, with 8mph of wind and travelling at 5.7 to 6.0 mph, a vast improvement. It was a lovely day, offshore but there were dark clouds over land and we could hear thunder. Then we could see the rain coming down on shore and Pete said he had seen a fork of lightning too. We agreed that we had made the right decision to continue through the night, rather than spending the night at anchor, up a river, in the jungle, with stormy weather. There were a lot of logs in the water in this area, probably washed down the river during the torrential rain that we had suffered in the last couple of weeks. There was also one large, unidentified, green object, which we managed to avoid.
By 1715, the engine was on and we were motor-sailing, as the wind had dropped off too much to sail. Pete topped up the diesel tank with 40 litres, to keep us going through the night. We switched the hot DC to DC off again. After tea, we dropped the sails, as there was no wind and they were flapping, the sun had set and it was starting to get dark. There was thunder and sheet lightning all along the coast. At 7pm, Pete went to bed and left me to do the first night watch. The sea was flat and it was pleasant sitting aft on the starboard side of the cockpit. We were registering 1.5mph of true wind behind us, so from the east. All of a sudden, I smelled wet earth and I knew that something was happening. Sure enough, the wind veered suddenly to come from the south at 10mph. Five minutes later, there was a massive fork of lightning on the land, which made me exclaim. It was so big, bright and direct and it scared the pants off me. I have never seen fork lightning like it and not when there's sheet lightning around. Once I had calmed down enough, I let out a reefed foresail, on the starboard side, to take advantage of the breeze. At 9.15pm, with everything calm, I was very happy to hand over the reigns to Pete for a couple of hours. I dosed occasionally while Pete had an uneventful watch, only taking in the foresail when the wind dropped off again. He had seen no lightning at all and when I relieved him at 2345 hours, we were motoring at 3.9mph, with an adverse tide. Pete stayed up to chat for 10 minutes before falling into his bunk. No sooner than he had done that, the sheet lightning started up again, in the distance. I wasn't too worried until, five minutes later, I witnessed another very direct fork. Twenty minutes later, I heard a change in the engine noise, so took off the revs. Three times I put the revs on and off and the noise was there. We had something around the prop. Pete heard the revs going on and off and emerged to find out what was wrong. I said I thought we had something round the prop and that we might clear it by putting the engine in reverse. Pete listened to the engine, agreed and put her hard in reverse, which fixed the issue and then he went back to bed. Soon there was sheet lightning coming from the north, as well as the south and the sky was pitch black everywhere except behind us, where I could still see a faint glow from Colon. We were heading between two storms. The lightning eased somewhat as it passed overhead and then it disappeared completely, to be replaced by a 12 knot wind, on the nose, followed by torrential rain. Because of the poor visibility, I increased my 360 degree lookouts to every 10 minutes. I was happier with the rain and no lightning, to be truthful. Eventually the rain and the wind eased and I settled down to complete my watch until 0245 hours. This time, I definitely slept, while Pete had yet another uneventful watch, until 0600 hours. The night was almost over but we still had 35 miles to go to the island.
At 0620, I switched the DC to DC back on, having noticed that the engine battery was overcharging. I didn't want it to overheat. I saw rays of sunshine emerging from the dark clouds behind me and felt happier. There was heavy rain to the north and as it closed on us, it pushed the wind up to 15mph on the nose and our SOG went down as low as 2.2mph. There was nothing I could do. I didn't want to increase the engine revs, with the DC to DC getting so hot. I watched the plotter and wished hard to see a 3 at the front of our speed and then, as the wind started to ease, an occasional 4. At 8am, Pete got up and 5 minutes later we had sargassum seaweed round the prop, dislodged by putting the engine in reverse again. Gradually, as the tide turned in our favour, our SOG increased to 5mph. At 9am, I went to bed, mainly to pass the time but did actually sleep for almost 90 minutes. When I awoke we could see the island on the horizon, 15 miles ahead. We decided to make water again, to use some of the power the engine was producing but although the pump was running, we were getting no water pressure. We would have to investigate when we were at anchor. A large pod of dolphins joined us around 11am, swimming and jumping in the bow wave and for once it was calm enough to go up to the bow and watch them. Dolphins often arrive when you are facing or have faced adversity and they really lift your spirits. From there, everything went well and we arrived at our destination before 2pm. The water was clear and shallow and the bottom was mostly sand, with the occasional rock. There were only two other yachts anchored along the two miles of the bay and we were well spread out with lots of privacy. We anchored with 2m under the keel and just far enough offshore to feel a gentle breeze and hopefully avoid any bugs. The island is stunning, with golden sand beaches in little coves between sandstone outcrops, with a backdrop of dense, green trees and shrubs and no mangroves.
We had lunch and a swim, swimming out over the chain until we saw it disappear into the sand. The anchor was dug in really well, so we could sleep easy tonight. There was no phone signal so we were unable to let anyone know we had arrived but hopefully people would realise why. The issue with the watermaker turned out to be an airlock, which was resolved by backflushing the system for 30 seconds, so we were able to make water in the afternoon. It was very hot and sunny, so we had regular dips in the sea to cool off and put the sun awnings up. We ate our chicken dinner sitting on the starboard side of the boat, to avoid the sun. Another yacht arrived just before dark and we went to bed as soon as it was safely anchored. We left the hatches open and enjoyed the light breeze and the sound of birds and there were no bugs. I was awoken by thunder at 0330 hours and could see sheet lightning flashing in the distance. I powered down the mobile phones and put them in the oven with the tablet and the handheld VHF. We were now stern to the island but far enough from the shore. Pete awoke at 0410 and went up into the cockpit. We were now surrounded by sheet lightning and it was very low, under the clouds. It started to rain heavily, half an hour later, so the hatches had to be closed. You couldn't see twenty metres from the boat. Eventually we slept and we didn't wake until after 9am, too late to motor the 55 miles to Bocas, without potentially arriving in the dark. The closer, Bluefields anchorage, 30 miles away, was too deep for us to anchor without the windlass to pull up the chain. Although I was concerned that people might worry that they hadn't heard from us, we decided to stay another night.
The weather was quite cloudy and it was clearly raining on the mainland. The biggest yacht from the anchorage had gone but another, smaller yacht, had arrived and dropped anchor east of us. We went ashore in the dinghy, to explore the little coves and beaches, before it became too hot. The sea was quite choppy inshore but we managed to beach the dinghy without getting too wet. There were a couple of shallow, cool, freshwater streams, probably as a result of the heavy rain but you couldn't follow them far due to the thick undergrowth. We didn't see any wildlife other than birds but we did find turtle tracks, leading round in circles to an egg nest. We returned to the boat, swam and relaxed on board.
In the evening, we sat on the foredeck to take advantage of the breeze. Just before dark, a Dutch yacht arrive, dropping it's anchor a good distance from the shore. The lightning started again, including an amazing pink fork. We put the electronics back in the oven, lifted the outboard engine and dinghy, took down the anchor ball, removed the sun awnings and turned on the anchor light. There was a starry sky and we were closing in on full moon. We spotted the plough, which was upside down, compared to how we're used to seeing it in the UK. At 8pm, we hit the sack, setting the alarm for 0550 hours. Just after midnight, we had rain and the lightning flashed again for two hours from 3am. I heard thunder but it was well off in the distance.
The alarm went off and we were ready to go by 0600 hours. We would have breakfast on the run. It was a cloudy morning with a very light breeze, as we made our way out of the anchorage and into deeper water, before turning west. We motored over quite a few large rocks but nothing shallow enough to bother us. At 0625 hours, we set a course of 300 degrees and set the fishing line to trawl. Within 10 minutes, the reel was screaming and Pete reeled in a lovely rainbow runner (part of the mackerel family, we think). We tried to land it in the bucket but the fish was too big and kept jumping out. Then it caught its tail fin on the rail and it escaped off the hook. Pete let the line out again, while I went down below for the landing net. By the time I returned, to the cockpit, Pete was reeling in another one. The landing net did its job and we had a lovely fish for gutting and filleting. The line went out again and we raised the mainsail to provide a little bit of lift and half a knot of extra speed. Behind us, we could see that another yacht had left the anchorage and was also heading towards Boca del Toro. At 0740, we caught another, slightly smaller, rainbow runner, landed it and Pete set to gutting both fish and with the power from the new inverter, vacuum packed the fillets.
All of a sudden, the wind speed and direction display went blank. The transducer is at the top of the mast, a vulnerable position and we had occasionally had issues with it before. We assumed it was damp, or the connection shorting, after all the rain. There wasn't much wind and we could see the courtesy flag flying, so it wasn't an issue on this trip. Thirty minutes later, the autohelm started playing up again, bleeping and saying, 'no pilot' but then coming back on again. However, the outages quickly became more frequent and prolonged, until I had to take the helm. Next, the depth disappeared momentarily off the plotter above the coach roof. Were all these issues related to damp? Then, Pete spotted that the rev counter for the engine was flickering up and down between 1500 and 2000 revs, although the engine sound wasn't changing. Could that be the belt slipping, after we had removed it to move the alternator and access the heat exchanger, back in Linton? The other, larger yacht, had been slowly catching us and by 0850 hours, it was parallel with us, about 200 metres away, having given us a wide berth. Consequently, we didn't exchange greetings. As the yacht pulled ahead, we lost all data to the instrument heads in the cockpit. The charts were still visible on the plotter but the position, course over the ground, heading, depth, boat speed and AIS data had disappeared and it didn't come back on. Everything other then the depth was still being shown on the chart plotter, down below, above the chart table. The instruments upstairs are slaves to the master plotter downstairs but nothing other than the chart data was being communicated, although all the heads had power. Pete checked the light on the autohelm compass and it was no longer green, which was bad news. I continued on the helm, using the manual compass alone, while Pete phoned Chris at Kildale Marine, in Hull. Pete and Chris ran through some diagnostics and Chris thought that we may have a problem with the alternator, given the overheating of the DC to DC, the overcharged engine battery and the rev counter issue and that this could potentially have fried the instruments or the cables. However, the instruments run off the house batteries, not the engine battery and we hadn't allowed the house batteries to overcharge. The other possibility was a lightning strike, which could have damaged the alternator and the instruments, cables or ports.. It wouldn't have to be a direct strike, just a lot of lightning in close proximity, or a secondary strike (a strike on another yacht nearby, that had transmitted through the saltwater). As often is the case, while we were feeling despondent, we had a visit from a pod of dolphins. Now we needed to manually helm, under engine, for the remainder of the day. The breeze disappeared and we dropped the mainsail, removing most of the shade from the helm position. I had been on the helm for about 90 minutes, so Pete took a turn for half an hour, before we settled into 15 minute stints. If you weren't on the helm, your job was to monitor the plotter down below. Every so often, our position moved on the plotter upstairs, suggesting that there was still some limited communication between the master and slave. At 1145 we had to change course to avoid a ship, although it was our right of way. Luckily we didn't have to divert into too shallow water. After four long hours, we were on approach to the marked, buoyed channel to reach Bocas Marina, on Colon Island. We booted up the tablet and used Navionics to find our way through. There was no sign of the navigation buoys. Navionics was reported as accurate around the Bocas del Toro but you are never sure whether your GPS position is 100% accurate on the tablet, so a lot of care was required. The final approach, through the shallow water between the island and the reef was particularly unnerving without a depth gauge. Pete took the helm and I stood on the bow but the water wasn't clear enough to see anything. We called the marina on the VHF and they allocated us a berth and said they would be on the dock within five minutes, to meet us and help us in. They said that we could choose a portside or starboard berth and come in bows or stern to, as we liked, as there were two berths available, side by side. Fenders needed to be low and we mooring lines were required on both sides, front and aft. We negotiated the narrow gap between a large, blue yacht, on the hammerhead and a small island of mangroves and we could then see that the moorings were like those in Amsterdam, with a very short pontoon and two piles, which had to be lassoed on your way into the berth. At 1650 hours, we were safely moored up. The office was already closed, so there was no rush to check in. We switched off and headed straight to the bar for a much needed beer, not caring that we were hot, sweaty, burned and probably smelly. Showering could wait!