Another Day, Another Island

Nestor and Nomai for lunch on Maggie

An exciting landing!

Dinner at Nestor and Naomi's "house"

Sailing with Nestor - dugout with home made sail

Last Thurs the plan was to write this blog and then head off to another anchorage. But Nestor and his wife, Noami,  came by for a visit and stayed for lunch. It was a good chance to learn more about the area. He suggested some particularly beautiful islands to visit, which we have been doing. Later in the day he took Rob and then Bob for a sail in his dugout that can be fitted with 2 sails. They had fun despite a wet start.

Last Fri we had a good half day's sail to BBQ island which is part of the Hollandes Cays. Mostly you are anchored behind the reef so very windy and strong currents but not much wave action. My big mistake that trip was not checking that the forward hatches were tightly closed for sailing to windward. A mattress wet with salt water had us sleeping again in the cabin. Rob made water for 5 hours on Sunday and everything else got washed.

BBQ islands was a destination chosen to have a get together ashore with all the BPO and Pacific Odyssey boats on Sat. Ten of the 12 boats were there. This was the first time meeting the boats that came from the US so was a special day. The last boat from Martinique should be arriving today. There are between 2 and 5 people aboard each boat. It will take me a bit of time to get all the names straight. The island itself is small enough that you could walk around the shoreline in about 10 minutes. One end is being eroded by the sea with coconuts trees and roots in the water. One person lives there and charges $3 for your visit. For that he keeps it in pristine shape and it is beautiful.

We received our drifter buoy from Chapter 2. They brought 3 down from Florida. I'm sure they were happy to get some space back as they are quite large and heavy. They are for collecting weather information to help with forecasting. Ours will be deployed between Panama and Galapagos. After deployment we will be able to track its position.

Monday we sailed to the Coco Bandero Cays and are anchored between Tiadup, Olosicuidup, and Guarladup. Don't ask me to pronounce them. You need good light to see all the reefs and shallows around them. The electronic charts are quite inaccurate here. It shows us sitting right on the reef now. We'll get out in the dinghy today and do some exploring. The snorkelling is supposed to be good on the reefs. Some Kuna have visited and sold some much appreciated produce and beer. They also took a bag of laundry to do for us and sold us a few more molas.

Last night we had the crew of the other three boats here for happy hour drinks. That gave us some incentive to finally clean up the boat and, of course, we enjoyed their company. Afterwards we watched a documentary on the building of the Panama Canal. Quite the story! That will be the next adventure from here. We need to be at the marina in Colon by the 9th  for boat measurement on the 10th and transiting of the canal on the 14th and 15th. We probably won't have internet until then. We look forward to adding photos to these postings then and hearing from home.Hopefully when we get to Colon around Feb 8/9 we will get internet service and be able to download emails from our usual home accounts. So far we are only receiving emails on our boat email address. We are supposed to be able to access regular email accounts through our sat phone and have been working on this, but so far no luck. Hope things are going well.