Admirals Log:
San Blas Islands
David and I spent a couple of weeks exploring the San Blas on our own so that we would have a better idea of where to take Mike and Debs, Paul and Sheryl.
While we were anchored off Green Island I was doing one of my swims around the boat (good exercise as one circuit is about the same as a 50m pool) when the painful German cruiser in the boat anchored behind us started yelling at me. I say painful because he kept coming to the front of their boat naked and shaking his "bootie" at me when I came out in the cockpit.
Consequently I completely ignored him and kept swimming. David was inside reading but when his wife started yelling as well he came out to investigate. There was a big crocodile swimming halfway between me and the shore!!!! There has been no record of people being bitten by them but they are known to attack dogs. David called to me and I must admit I didn't take to much time to get out of the water. I wasn't so intolerant of his nudity after that.
The pelicans were amazing here as well - dive bombing constantly into the water.
There are so many beautiful little atolls, some with one home on them but many just covered with coconut palms.
There certainly isn't any room for global warming and sea level rising!!
Coconuts are their main source of income and most islands are well tended with very healthy coconut palms. A kuni Indian that we spoke to said (I think) that they got around 45 cents per coconut.
We had an absolutely amazing thunderstorm while we were here as well. I was sitting in the nav station listening to huge long grumbling sounds of thunder with the odd loud closer crack that seems to vibrate the boat and praying that we don't get hit by lightning as 20 other boats have this year in the San Blas. Mind you there were lots of lightning strikes in the Rio -(one that disabled 7 boats at once!) and my prayers were always answered.
There's something cozy and exciting at the same time about being on the water, safe in your boat but so close to such raw power. We had one thunderstorm heading east and another one heading west with us in the middle so it's an amazing sight. Standing in the cool of the cockpit bathed a light spray but protected from the driving rain that is completely surrounding you is an awesome feeling. And then as the center of the storms passed it left everything eerily still, the water like glass with only a light shower sprinkling down on it, the distant rumble of thunder and flash of lightning reminding you that we dodged another bullet and get to sail another day. Two of our close friends have been struck and with no clear favourite in the two lines of thought of whether to just use nothing or try and earth an antenna at the top of your mast (both have failed) David has opted to not use anything, rather than have something at the top of the mast that might even attract a higher chance of being hit.
Paul, me Sheryl, Mike, Debs and David. They were so lucky - we had heaps of rain and thunderstorms before they arrived and it started raining as we took this photo as they were leaving but fantastic weather while they were with us.
The gang enjoying the sunshine.
David and Mike had an epic backgammon challenge going on while they were here. Brotherly competition and all that - Mike had been practicing on line before he came aboard!! David won on the last game by the skin of his teeth.
There is such a thing of having too much lobster! At least in my book. So after lots of lobster I was harassing David to buy some crabs off the Kuni Indians, which he finally did.
Well after having to cook them in boiling water one at a time (we had 4) - as they were so big - and getting only a small dessert bowl full of crab meat at the end of a long process to get the meat out of the claws - which included David bashing the claws with a small metal baseball bat - I agreed with David that they were more trouble than they were worth. Very tasty though!!!
So after dropping them off we headed back to Portobello for another provisioning trip - oh joy!!
While we were doing some jobs around the boat and waiting for Mark and Fiona and the boys to join us we had a very rare occurrence occur. We had a tropical storm/hurricane hit the coast of Panama. We had plenty of warning and moved to a more protected bay but still managed to be sideswiped (David and I managed to fend it off so it just clipped our port side) by an unoccupied yacht that dragged its anchor and was drifting rapidly down the anchorage. Its anchor caught again just beside us so that it swung just astern of us all night about a metre behind our dinghy. David stayed on anchor watch all night!! We didn't want to try and move in the dark in case its anchor had tangled up in ours and thats what was holding it.
We up anchored safely the next morning and moved out of the way.
The bay at Portobello that we had moved from had 25 boats go aground! Most were still there - well and truly stuck in the mud when we went back.
Mark, Fiona and the boys came to join us for Christmas and to help us go through the canal. Mark had already done it twice before.
We were so grateful that they were coming to join us for Christmas as it is not much fun during the holiday season to be on your own. And we knew that for the boys, just being with us wouldn't be as much fun as running around with all their cousins in Auckland.
Christmas morning - present opening! I am getting a bit ahead of myself though. First came our visit from David's new best friend - Tom! The Kuni Indian
He paddled over in time for afternoon drinks, stayed for dinner, and then when all of us had gone to bed and David finally got him to realise that it was time for him to go back to his little island it was well after 10pm. Remember cruisers midnight is 9pm!! AND it was Christmas eve.
Soooo after that epic evening, (it's not easy trying to talk in broken Spanish! David did very well!), imagine our enthusiasm when we saw him paddling out on Christmas morning just as I was serving out the crepes with bacon and maple syrup, or lemon juice and sugar.
We finally had to tell him we were moving to another island to get him to leave or he would have stayed for Christmas dinner as well. This was definitely not the type of Christmas day the kids imagined - nor us for that matter. All of us trying to communicate in a foreign language to a stranger in stead of playing games and having fun.