Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

We’ve anchored for the day in the SW corner of Isla Parida ready for a 3am start for Golfito. This is a very pleasant little bay with a few beaches and clear waters. We all went out for a snorkel shortly after arriving. Helen high tailed it back to the boat when she thought she saw something wiggly. Coming into Boca Chica she saw a couple of the sea snakes around here and is getting more and more put off. John and I ended up on one of the beaches where there was a small but deep streamlet just begging to be dammed.

We’ve just been for another snorkel in the bay. This time I left my speargun in the dinghy just to see if this we mean I would see a lobster. I did!!! So I left John marking the place and swam back to the dinghy to fetch the speargun all the while reckoning the thing would have buggered off by the time I returned. Upon getting back to John I prepared the gun, dove down, found the lobster, took aim and pulled the trigger. I’d left the safety on so I turned it off took aim again and fired. This time the lobster exploded into fragments of shell and not a lot else. Turned out it was a long dead lobster and all the insides must have been eaten away. All that was left was it’s intact but fragile shell. Oh well. What we do for excitement.

As I said we’ll be off in the morning. The forecasts call for more next to nothing winds which means we may have to motor all the way to Golfito. Hope we don’t but it’s likely. Maybe we’ll get a land breeze in the morning off the peninsular that’ll allow us to sail for the first time in a while.

Boca Chica turns out to be a bit of a one horse town, make that a one donkey town. Surrounded by a few nice restaurants, hotels and some plush private homes scattered around. In the afternoon we dinghied into ‘town’ where there was no real dinghy dock. We tied up to the fishing dock as best we could and took a look around. Being before 3pm the main shop was closed. We found a small kiosk open and bought sodas to cool us down. Heading back we found a bar selling beers for 50c a bottle so we quaffed one each before heading back to the store by the fuel station which was now open. There was little there so all we went back to the boat with was a couple of loaves of bread.

Back on the boat we did a little more internetting, the main goal was to understand the situation with yellow fever vaccinations and Costa Rica. They have issues with people coming from Colombia and the online official information doesn’t make it clear how long you need to be away from a country before it doesn’t matter. Looking at the medical information the disease manifests within 3-5 days so on that basis we should be ok. John has his card but we don’t have proof so hopefully the official position is in line with the medical facts.

Later in the afternoon the open internet connection had a password put on. Perhaps our uploading and downloading activities had been noticed and this was the response. This helped us make up our mind to reach Golfito in Panama before the end of the week.

We spent the evening in the Boca Grande hostel/hotel restaurant. It’s a pretty cool place overlooking the bay. We met up with a young couple, Kevin and Maiga, with whom we got chatting and eventually brought back to the boat to show around and spend some more time together. We ended up on the deck looking at stars as the night sky was pretty clear.

Today we’re out of here. We’ll head to Isla Parida. It’s only about 12nm away from here but it gets us out of the channels and hazards allowing us to leave early tomorrow for Golfito.

This is a quick update to say we’re in the Bay outside Boca Chica and are back connected to the internet. Pics for the last couple of weeks are on their way. Click on ‘Recently Updated‘ to catch up.

John and I decided to use a couple of tanks of air and go scuba diving in the morning. As ever, it’s the preparation that takes far more time than the dive but time is what we have. The point we chose was at the east end of Isla Pango, just over a mile from where Dignity was anchored.

The dive itself was interesting. Mostly at 45 feet but descending to a colder and murkier 70 feet at one point. I decided to turn back early because I was a little concerned about some changes in current I felt. Good thing we did as the current became quite strong by the time we reached the dinghy anchor.

After lunch we cleared all our gear away and moved Dignity around to the north side of Isla Cavada. Here there is a posh resort if you can call it that. What it is is a few expensive tents. We’ll have to look it up to see what it’s all about. The surprising thing was was that we could pick up an internet connection. Unfortunately the signal was poor and we accomplished little using it. We could have moved the boat but we’re 99% certain we’ll get a good pickup at Boca Chica later today so we left the internet for another day.

John and I went out for a long snorkel. Helen stayed behind having received a report from John along the way of seeing a sea snake. The water in places was almost too warm. We swam up to and crossed a nearby sandy isthmus between two sections of the island and continued our snorkel on the other side. Our sea snake and lobster count (dive and snorkel) was coincidentally identical and so for another day we had no lobster for dinner.

We were treated to a georgeous horizon touching sunset over the isthmus right between the two sections of island.

A simple day. In the morning John and I took the hookah out for nearly two hours. Waters were nice and clear and we saw lots of fish. No lobsters. The air tube which holds the dive flag fell off but we were able to find it by towing John through the water behind the dinghy and covering our tracks. In the afternoon John had a ride up the mast to take pics. That’s about it for the day.

Today we’ll head round to the north side of Isla Cavada ready for tomorrow when we’ll set off in the morning for Boca Chica.

There had been a little rain the previous night, the first we’d seen in a long while. The preceded a warm an muggy day.

Our first excursion was ashore to the nearby beach to follow the trail starting at the stops by the tiki hut. The trail was a mixture of manicured sections (it looked like) interspersed with sections where it was not so easy to see where the path led. The path went up and down several times which with the careful steps we had to take when the footing wasn’t so secure built up quite a sweat. At one point we reached a fork in the path where it looked as though one option took us broadly back towards the boat and the other further along the island. We took the ‘further’ turn and eventually found ourselves in a delightful little lagoon/bay on the other side of the island.

We loitered here for a while with all of us spending time in the water to shed heat. On the way back we took the other path and found that it did indeed lead to a beach that we could see from the boat. To get to the dinghy though we had to clamber over some rocks that separated the beaches.

That was the morning. In the afternoon we dug out the hookah and set it up. We again headed off to the small island NW of us this time exploring it from below. I did see one lobster in the same place and probably the same one as the previous day. It was way to small to capture though.

Helen’s underwater sickness kicked in and she was good to last until we got back to the boat. John and I stayed in the water for another half hour to scrape barnacles off the bottom. More and more it can be seen that Grenada Marine did a very bad job of the paint work as some areas are already down to the primer while others look as it should. I’m now wondering if they even used all the paint we left them. We now know why other cruisers watch the yards while they do the work.

Just before going to sleep the weather turned. The wind picked up and it began to rain hard. Hopefully this will mean some of the moisture has been taken out of the air.

Hoping to be able to make us of some wind in the day we set off at 6am, before sunrise. The wind was under 5 knots and behind us so there was little point raising the sails. The upside of there being no wind was that the seas were pretty flat with waves measuring a few inches rather than feet. Coupled with exceptionally clear water we were treated to the sight of a couple of lone dolphins who, for a while, swam ahead of the boat seeming to swim in air.

We did put out two trolling lines, both with the same favourite lure (green/yellow squiddie with red stripe) but with one modified to have some shiny foil attached. We landed yet another mahi mahi, this one 11.5 pounds, on the modified lure. We found space in the freezer for two more filets. This mahi mahi managed to tangle itself up with the other line which took a lot of undoing.

The wind remained under 5 knots up until about 30 mins before we arrived in Islas Secas. By that time it was not worth the bother of raising the sails so we motored all the way in to an utterly delightful spot just north of Isla Pargo.

The waters looked clear and the temperature was showing an almost too warm 95F. We were all soon in though swimming round the small island to our NW. While not crystal clear the waters here are by far the best we’ve seen so far here in the Pacific. The number and variety of fish is amazing. We’re seeing fish we’ve never seen before. Again, the basic types we’re seeing are similar to the Caribbean but the species are clearly different. One of our favorite fish are the trunk fish. Here we are seeing bright yellow varieties for example that we’ve never seen before. Great to witness the marvelous and inspiring results of evolution.

We lost touch with each other while swimming. John and Helen swam to a beach nearby, and explored there. I couldn’t find them and got a bit worried about the possibility they could be in trouble even though I knew it was likely they’d gone off somewhere. I eventually found their fins/flippers on some rocks by the beach so I knew they were ok. They’d found a path mentioned by one of the guides but didn’t go all the way along it saving that for another day. On the beach was a tiki hut of some sort. Later, it looked like a couple were receiving a private vacation night on the beach set up by an assistant. Perhaps this was set up as an out of the way personal night on a beach far away from everything else. Well – they had to put up with us in the area.

We’ve definitely found a place we can rest up for a few days. As far as we know this is not a park where fees can be levied on us like the last spot. The island to our north, Cavada, is private and we’re not supposed to go ashore there. But there’s plenty of other places for us to explore and chill out.

In a few days we’ll head north to Boca Chica where we’re pretty sure we can pick up an internet connection and catch up things. From there we can access the town of David for more fresh provisions. We also have the option of heading inland to Boquete where we can hike up to the top of a 10,000 foot volcano from which we’re supposed to be able to see both the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.

As daylight increased yesterday we saw that our position in the channel between the islands was about the choppiest (unlike the previous evening) so we made a quick decision to shift the boat a little further to the north. This was a little better but still not comfortable. However, it bought us time to explore the beach on Isla Jicarita.

Before we were able to lower the dinghy a park vessel came by and started asking questions, in Spanish. Knowing that stiff fees could be charged for anchoring in the park I went through charades to explain we needed sleep and would be on our way to Isla Secas the following day. They gave us consent for this and went off. We don’t really know what we agreed to but it seemed ok.

John and I visited the nearby beach leaving Helen who preferred to stay aboard the bumpy boat and read. The beach was fairly interesting. We followed a dry river bed into the island a short way before returning. Pictures were taken.

Once we’d returned to Dignity we up anchored and headed around to the north of Jicaron where we found a more comfortable anchorage.

Having had lunch along the way (some great home made french bread rolls) we all went ashore to explore the much larger to be found at this new location. We found three small streamlets (two of which we dammed). In the jungle we could hear howler monkeys from time to time. The place was deserted and had to be one of the most picturesque we’ve been to if not the most. Pity we didn’t take our cameras ashore. We found a nice long stick which we used to bring down four coconuts which we took back to the boat. We were able to open one from which we were able to drink the water and eat the meat.

Not wanting to attract any nasty fines we set off this morning around 6am for Islas Secas. The wind has failed to exceed 5 knots so we’re motoring without sails. The currents haven’t been too bad yet although we’ve had about half a knot against us. With a bit of luck we’ll get some wind later today to assist otherwise we’ll just motor all the way there. We are hoping to find somewhere that’s good enough to stay for a few days and relax – hopefully Islas Secas will be it.