San Blas to Colombia

After a quite night in Linton and the sun started to peak over the dense jungle’s canopy on top of the hill we snuck out of the anchorage. We had little to no wind at first but with all the thunderstorms forming along the Panamanian coast the wind started to fill in to a nice 18 knots and had a wonderful and fast sail to Chichime. Fast was good then as soon as we were securely anchored a pretty good squall hit us with winds up to 35 knots. This is definitely the time of daily thundershowers, the rain we don’t mind so much, it’s the darts the angry clouds throw towards and around us we don’t like, but when they are over we love the fresh and cool air.

When you see a foot like this in an approaching  cloud

you better get ready for some strong wind

Enjoying our fresh brewed coffee and a quite morning, Sid mentioned that an ulu was already approaching, a bit early for 7 AM. The head of a young Kuna girl popped up over the lee cloth peaking right into the cockpit, Where are her manners and our privacy! She was forgiven right away then as soon as she saw me she yelled ‘Manuela”, wow, she still remembered my name from our 2 day’s stay 2 months ago! Melina, her sister Princeline, Calisto (not sure if he is the father) and the adorable grandma Sipu hung around quite a while to chat with us, didn’t even try to sell us anything which was nice for a change. They were so excited to see us again they came by at least twice a day to chat. Of course there is always something Kuna’s want, so we gave them some reading and sun glasses and they put in an order in for nail polish for the girls, cardboard box for Sipu, a T-shirt for Calisto, a tarp for their thatched roof and powdered milk. To our surprise Sipu gave us each a necklace she had made, that is unusual for Kunas to give presents they take them but rarely give them.   

By the way Gaby your “Gabydup Island” is still here and we had Mama and baby dolphin play around the boat in the early morning, what a treat.

The joy of boating! We tried to send some emails out but learned that our SSB was not tuning at all therefore we were unable to transmit, always something to repair.

The other joy having sunset visitors

No joy the following morning to clean up the mess LOL

Three days later we motored to Banadup in the East Lemons and we anchored pretty much in our old spot. While in the process of anchoring a little boy stood on the beach in front of his hut waving and screaming ……uela. “Did you hear that”, Sid said”, he’s calling you!” – “Nah”, I said and pointed at the Kuna in the water next to our neighbor, “I think he’s calling “abuelo” his grandpa cleaning our neighbor’s boat”. But then again the kid was looking straight at us so I waved back at him and he started jumping up and down yelling “Manuela, Manuela”, wow a 7 year old boy remembers my name, I am impressed and flattered. An hour later the boy with his parents paddled their ulu out to Paradise, warmly shook our hands and told us how happy they were to see us on their last day on the island. All the San Blas islands are owned by individual families and each family rotates the guardians every 3 months. Their time was up but they assured us they would be back in November.

It was actually fun watching the changes of the guards the following morning. A big panga loaded to the hilt with people and all their belongings landed on the beach in front of the Kuna huts, where the family leaving was standing amongst all their belongings piled on the beach. The family exchanged a few words then the women went right to work and moved all their belongings onto the island. While then the women of the leaving party moved all their belonging into the panga the other women moved everything into the hut. I have no idea how they kept their stuff separated as everything is packed into the same plastic containers. The women worked their butts off schlepping everything into the boat including huge and heavy bags filled with coconut. The guys kind of just stood around letting the women do all the heavy stuff. Then when all was loaded we got a good chuckle out of them first chasing the dog, then the cat and the funniest the chicken. All took about 20 minutes and you would think after not having seen your relatives you would sit together for a while and chat, nope they barely said goodbye to the new family but they did wave to us as they motored by and away from the island.

We couldn’t pass up the waist deep water again on the little sand spit of one of the island where we found clams last time. Wanted to make sure we had left some behind and sure enough we found enough for a wonderful dinner again. After claming we went to the resort island for an ice cold beer to find that the friendly old man now wasn’t so friendly anymore and he had raised all his prices by a third.

Our second night September 1^st, we had thunder and lightening all night long it was a noisy night but stayed off shore and away from us but it did leave us with a cloudy and misty day. Due to Hurricane Irene up north the air was sucked out of here and pulled the ITCZ (Intra Tropical Conversion Zone) up which was all the lightening we saw.  

We were suppose to meet Roberto in San Blas on his backpacker run on his boat Manatee, but after postponing his trip for a fourth or fifth time we decided we could not wait any longer to deliver his new alternator in Cholon. 

We calculated that our 200 mile trip would take us anywhere from 40 to 48 hours and to time it right to arrive sometime after daybreak we decided 3 PM would be a good time for departure. We left behind the beautiful coast of Panama with clouds building up rather fast, some were towering clouds fully built to explode into massive thunderstorms. We watched them head out to see where we were going but realized that they headed in a NW direction and Paradise into a NE direction and were hoping that we missed them all. It came close but we never did get any rain or thunder but the clouds did send us some 15 to 18 knots of wind which we fully took advantage of sailing with 6 to 6.5 knots towards our next destination. 6.5 knots is fast for us and we realized at this speed we would arrived at 11 at night and that if it kept up we would eventually have to slow down as it was not an option to enter the reef in Cholon at night. But the wind only lasted as long as the thunderclouds did then the motor had to help as 2 knots would definitely get us behind schedule. We had a spectacular sunset with all the left over clouds. A tired booby managed to land on the bow of Paradise and settled in for the night. 

 Sid took the first watch and a few hours later as I woke up he told me about this huge cloud exploding with one lighting bolt after another right in front of us, he assessed where it was headed and figured if he changed course 30 degrees to the north we might miss it. Good calculation on his part we did miss this cloud which was very active, but what we didn’t expect was behind that cloud was another cell, then another and yet another before we knew it we were in the middle of storm cells getting pelted with heavy rain and darted with lighting bolts, some hit so close to the boat we could feel our hair rise and smelled the ozone, it was not fun, not to mention we didn’t get any sleep for over 3 hours. Poor Booby was pelted by the rain but he staid through the night. 

After fluffing his feathers he took off. The interesting thing was the bird sat always with his head into the wind. We hoped he would land again the following evening but no joy.
What a relief it was to finally manage to get out of these angry clouds and were thankful that at least the sea was calm and the 4 to 6 foot swells we had prior were all knocked down by the rain. Irene had still her pull on the ITCZ and there was no escape from it. The rest of the trip went smooth we had wind enough to sail without motor on to just motoring but the sea stayed calm and the sky clear for the second night. On the second morning as the first sunrays blinked over the horizon we could recognize the Rosario islands and at 8 am we snuck through the entrance to the calm bay of Cholon. Hello World gave us a heartfelt welcome as we motored by their boat and later on that day spoiled us with a good cup of tea and coffee on their boat and we caught up on our adventures. But first we anchored, had a big breakfast and took a good nap.

You would think all the rain we had in Panama would keep the boat clean, absolutely not, it just moved the dirt from one place to the next so we decided it was time to visit a marina to give Paradise a well needed bath. Club Nautico was out of the question since it is first of all a very crappy marina and second of all gets waked all day long by the many pangas. We opted for the Manzanillo yard which has some med-mooring slips. Here we are scrubbing Paradise and I tell you a lot of scrubbing it is. Everything inside out is getting cleaned including all the walls which you can watch how the mildew grows. 
Talking about a bad hair day!