Adventures with David & Gail

To Colombia, again! - We have been in Panama now about 3 ½ months, including our trip back to Miami for the boat show. We entered on the eastern end of the country in Obaldia at the border with Colombia and have traveled the length of the country along the coast until we are now in Bocas del Toro near the border with Costa Rica. We have toured the coast, sailed the islands, visited inland and had some great experiences. But it is time to move on.

First, we needed to get out of the marina. Red Frog Beach Marina is very nice and it's easy to get comfortable. Some people have been there for years. But we needed to leave Panama and wanted a few days of exploring around the area before we left. So, on the 13th we said good-bye to all on the docks and cast off for a quick sail around the islands for a few days. We had heard a lot about Lagoon Palos and Lagoon Parros (Dolphin Bay) from other cruisers and decided to follow their lead.

We headed out of Bastimentos toward Bocas Town and turned south. We pulled out the sails and had a very comfortable cruise around the north end of Isla Cristabol. This is a large, lightly populated island south between Bocas and a small peninsula of mainland Panama. Very pretty and lush. We were headed to an anchorage called Rana Azul (or Blue Frog - there actually is one, I think - not just a play on words about Red Frog) with a nice restaurant and wifi! But we couldn't actually find the place and the anchorage looked iffy. So we opted for plan B and went to find Cynde's House located in a small inlet between the two lagoons.

This was much easier to find, easier to anchor and much more protected from the north winds. And she is famous for her powerful wifi signal, too! Very important. We met a couple, George and Juanita who turned out to be Mike and Kay's fiends, also anchored off Cynde's but they had actually bought a lot from her and were there to work their property. (A lot of ex-pats are moving to Panama.) They introduced us to Cynde as well and got a tour of her house. She is a recent widow and the house is actually for sale. It is completely off the grid with solar panels and water catchment for her needs. But the house is very large and well appointed. Definitely not a cabin in the woods.

We also took a dinghy ride around the lagoons and found Rana Azul as advertised but tucked back out of sight and hence the difficulty to find. But they were only open two days per week so we would not have been able to eat there if we had found it.

Equally interesting in the lagoon, we found hundreds of jelly fish. Most were the common Moon Jelly Fish which we see all over except they were large and there were hundreds. And among them were an even bigger jelly fish we think are called Cauliflower Jelly Fish. Big and beautiful on top with long tentacles but ugly underneath. Very interesting up close from the dinghy.
After two peaceful nights out away from everything, we needed to begin the process of clearing out of Panama in Bocas Town. We weighed from Cynde's and went to anchor off of the Bocas Marina, close to town and close to some of our friends. We cleared out with the port captain and met another couple, Doug and Linda Simms on "Aquadesiac", also clearing out from Bocas Marina to San Andres, the same place we were going. We struck an agreement to buddy boat with them and leave early the next morning.

We met our friends Mike and Kay Heath, Chuck and Deb Eldridge and Mike and Linda Odom for a goodbye lunch in town. So nice of them to come in to meet us. And finally, with WD all buttoned up for the trip, hitched a dinghy ride into the marina for dinner and to say good-bye to a few other friends there. Mike and Kay, who we met in Chub Cay in the Bahamas on the third day of our trip, have decided to stay and Mike is actually going to be the Assistant Manager at the marina for two years. See, I told you it was easy to get comfortable in Bocas!

We were off at sunup with Aquadesiac to San Andres, Colombia. There is nothing to see on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica except Limon and it is not recommended to stop there. I wanted to go to the Corn Islands of Nicaragua as it is supposed to be beautiful but again it is not recommended or deemed safe. Plus the winds angle just isn't right. So even though we bought the flags, we were going to skip these two countries. San Andres is the recommended stop for those going north to the Mexican Riviera or even turning toward Cayman or Jamaica. It is 200 miles from Bocas so we planned a two day trip.

Doug had plotted a course that he had received from his routing service that would take us ENE about 100 miles to clear the coastal currents and pick up a wind shift. Then we would turn WNW toward San Andres. It would add about 50 extra miles to the trip but the timing would be about the same.

As we cleared Bocas Channel and were pulling out the mainsail, as we have done hundreds of times over the past 10 years, something jammed and jammed big time! First, the out haul shredded. This is the line used to pull the sail out. We had replaced it in St. Thomas and had luckily saved the old one. We dug it out and reran it through the boom. Then we tried again several times. I even got out the boson's chair and went up the mast a little to see what was wrong. All this while we were motoring out into the ocean swells! Well, nothing was budging. Finally, the inhaul line, the one used to pull the sail back in, snapped. So, we were officially without a mainsail for the foreseeable future. We would have to make this trip on the head sail and engine. (A side note here - we just heard from our friends on Flying Fish. They lost their mast and whole rig off of the Bay Islands in Honduras. Don't know the details yet. Makes us feel very lucky!)

We motored with the jib for about 18 hours until midnight and turned north. The winds were nice at 15-18 kts and the seas were relatively smooth with 6 foot swells, but still north easterly. As the wind finally shifted east, we were able to ease the jib and turn off the motor. We saw speeds over 9 knots with an over the ground speed of almost 7 knots. If the current had been with us, we really would have been flying!

50 hours after weighing in Bocas we were anchored in San Andres. The trip was uneventful but long. We have several other long legs between stops still coming before getting back to Key West so we will try to break up the distances as we can. Stay tuned!