Since I have been remiss in posting blogs of late, this could be longer than usual. I want to catch you up on things.

First of all, besides being lumpy and generally not fun, the last part of the delivery from USVI to El Porvenir, San Blas was fairly uneventful. We gybed a bunch of times in futile attempts to “just get there”. It seems the last 100 miles of any passage seems to take an infinite amount of time and you never seem to get there!

Bus, alas, we arrived at El Porvenir on Monday morning, almost 7 days to the hour. I had estimated 7 days, but even I was surprised at how exact we were! We tried to plan our arrival: 1) during the day so we could make our way through the reefs, and; 2) early Monday morning so we could hook up with Laura’s husband, Jerry, who was expected to arrive on the 0730 from Panama City.

As it turned out (and it is a very long story!), Jerry was lucky enough to leave on the Tuesday morning flight. So that gave the four of us (Laura, Ruth, Will and I) a chance to catch up and clean the boat up before his imminent arrival. We immediately announced our arrival by trying to anchor right in the middle of the San Blas runway! El Porvenir is such a small island that the little 18-seater plane has to come in low over the water and touch down almost as soon as the island/runway starts. So when we tried to drop our anchor right smack dab in the middle of the approach, well, we were quickly waved off. Way to go, Einstein!!

It has been a ton of fun to have Jerry and Laura aboard (for us anyway….you might want to ask them to get their slant!!). There are lots of stories to tell and share. But the weather has absolutely sucked. We haven’t seen this much cloud cover since, well, since we left Seattle! We are all blaming it on Jerry – he brought it with him! And the rain! My God! I had no idea. And this is supposed to be the dry season!! We filled up one 5-gal. bucket in about half an hour! The five of us have spent a more-than-expected amount of time in the salon playing Mexican Train Dominoes!

But this archipelago is something else. It is so beautiful; so remote; so primitive; and so pristine. The reefs create an entire ‘river system’ from a navigation perspective that meanders for miles and miles and leaves me totally lost! I am glad we have our cruising guide or we would be high and dry on some reef by now!

The Kuna Indians that inhabit these islands and have some governmental autonomy from Panama have managed their homeland like few other nations. They have left most of their islands uninhabited and in their natural state. Where they do inhabit an island, they build it out completely. It is some ancient form of planned development that would make the EPA and most governments cringe with envy.

While there are a few powerboats that deliver goods and water to some of the islands, most of the transportation is done with walking and dugout canoes. I suspect that most Kunas are restricted to their individual island, with occasional forays to neighboring villages/islands. Kunas are not allowed to marry outsiders, so they are able to keep their way of life uncompromised, though it does open up the possibility of inbreeding.

We did some snorkeling yesterday and it was quite ’different’. Instead of seeing the usual array of colorful fish, we saw huge (and I mean, HUGE) starfish, several different manta rays, and a shark. I can’t tell you what kind of shark, other than it wasn’t white!! But it was about nine feet long and laying on the sea bed taking a nap. The rays are cool. When we first snorkeled over them they were all hiding under a thin layer of sand with only their tails showing. But when we returned for a second look, we noticed two dark eyes on each looking back at us! Gulp!

I was snorkeling by myself later in the day and got a chance to see no less than three rays swim past me. One was some kind of spotted or leopard ray. Another was black on top and white on the bottom and as it moved its wings through the water it looked simply awesome.

The plan from here is to hang for another week here and then make our way over to Colon on the Atlantic side of the ditch. I gotta get there in time to hopefully file my taxes and then begin the arduous task of completing paperwork for our canal transit.