Pursuit

Everything is good. We have been cruising around the Bocas del Toro area since leaving the marina in Shelter Bay. It's really pretty around here, but a little more touristy. Bocas del Toro (mouth of the bull) or more specifically, Boca town, is where a lot of hippies and backpackers come to hang out, drink and smoke pot. So it's got that going for it. Tourism always seems to spoil the nice areas a little bit though. The prices go up and the attitudes go down. But it is interesting and fun all the same. We had a nice dinghy ride last night and went over to Baco town. We went around Isla Carenero on our way there because they are so close together and we wanted to check out a marina there for our friend Rooster on Lost Elvis. The island takes it's name from "careening," which in nautical terms means to lean a ship on one side for cleaning or repairing. It was on Careening Cay in October 1502 that ships under the command of Christopher Columbus were careened and cleaned while the admiral recovered from a bellyache (or a hangover).

I have been having more success with the forward-looking sonar. One night while sailing into Shelter Bay we hit something really big at night. There was three really loud bangs down the hull. I opened the floor boards and checked the bilge for holes. We weren't taking on any water, so I didn't think too much of it, although it was a little crazy, but once we got out of the water in the marina for the hull work I saw that the support for the shaft got hit and bent a bit. It was putting some pressure on the shaft and was just starting to wear the cutlass bearing down a bit. I was lucky that it happened just a few miles outside of Shelter Bay and we didn't have to motor far. If we did I would think that the cutlass bearing would have been too worn and would have needed to be replaced. So having the sonar working better is a good feeling. It requires a good solid power source, so I did some re-wiring and it seems to work good now. It takes a bit of time to be able to interpret it's data though. I had some good practice with it coming through the Crawl Cay channel yesterday. The depths are generally 60+ feet but they will instantly jump to 6 feet. The sonar sees that jump well in advance and gives me the opportunity to steer around it or find the channel through it.

Cheers to beers!