Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Category: Cruiser Connections

  • Parts

    For the last few days we’ve been building a list of parts we need for a few projects on the boat so that we could go out on a single mission and acquire as many as possible in a single effort. In the morning I was able to figure out how to make my TV Link feed to my chart plotter so the parts necessary to make that permanent were added to the list.

    We went ashore and first visited the Abernathy marine store right by the dinghy dock and picked up some replacement dive boots as mine are falling apart and a bit tight. We then grabbed an English speaking taxi driver to go shopping. The usual deal around here is $10/hour running around town. It’s a pretty good deal as you get a translator as well as someone who knows their way around town. After four and a half hours we managed to get everything on our list bar some copper foil plus a whole bunch of things we saw and realized we needed.

    A nice surprise along the way was bumping into Steve & Trish from Curious in one of the stores. They’re currently berthed in Shelter Bay in Colon and are due to transit next Sunday. It’s possible we’ll bump into them in Las Perlas. We also received a nice call from Gerald and Dianne from Whiskers who had recently bumped into friends of ours on Bristol Rose and Jackster in the San Blas. Jacksters will be transiting in February so we’ll have to wait until the mid-Pacific to meet up with them again. Bristol Roses are whizzing through on the World ARC so we have a chance to see them in Las Perlas too. If we miss them there they’ll be way ahead of us as they’re on a pace to reach Australia by August.

    Back on the boat I tested the 4 gallons of distilled water we’d bought. It was no better than our water maker water so that was a waste of money. As we wanted to do a battery inspection we used the bypass I had installed a few months back to run our on board water through a second time to make nearly pure water. After one cock up and a lot of mess we managed to make just under a gallon of battery water at the expense of a whole tank of on board water. Worse still I didn’t realize we’d used the other tank with recent washing so we were down to almost nothing. We managed to get the water maker going but with difficulty as the water outside was thick with crud and it kept clogging our primary filter which we put in new just a couple of weeks ago. Yach. We did check all the batteries and all was well. All the voltages were good and none needed any water so that was that.

    During our taxi outing we had spotted and Indian restaurant and had picked up a card. We decided to eat there in the evening. The food was more like the Indian food in the US – nice but too salty. And a bit too expensive. Nevertheless, we’d have regretted not going.

    What else. We have heard that our sail is fixed. We’ll meet Enrique today to hand over the cash and he’ll pick it up. He’ll do our paperwork to clear us out tomorrow morning and hopefully he’ll be back to the boat in time for us to leave to Las Perlas. Otherwise we’ll be off early Thursday morning. All we have to do before then is fill the freezer with food (today) and load up with diesel, including all our jerry cans as this will probably be the cheapest diesel this side of New Zealand.

  • Hanging around the Western Holandes

    We had another interesting day here in the Western Holandes. In the morning we extracted all the hookah gear so that Sam, Annie, John and I could spend some time underwater. First we had to get everyone weighted up correctly so they were neutrally bouyant and set up all the gear. That took quite a while. Then we were off. We first descended to the sand 40 feet beneath Dignity to make sure we were all ok. We then kicked off towards the shore. Unfortunately we set off in a bit of a wrong direction causing the hose to tangle with Dignity’s port rudder. Helen had noticed this and had been frantically trying to avoid a tangle but to no avail. When we found we could swim no further we ascended and I swam back to untangle things. We descended again and headed back to the reef by the shore.

    Although the visibility was not brilliant we had a pretty good dive. We saw a variety of fish and soft corals including two lobsters sitting side by side. I did not have my speargun with me so they remained off the days menu.

    Back on the boat we tidied up and had lunch. A little after I dropped Annie off on the beach so she could have a walk around the island and read on the beach. We then moved Dignity to find a spot with more breeze. I put us in a sandy patch between the islands but Helen was not comfortable there with reefs on either side of us. So we moved back towards and next to Whiskers. It was definitely better aboard with a nice breeze running through the boat and having the wind gen turning again.

    Helen, John and I then took the dinghy ashore for our walk around the island. We bumped into Annie who was just finishing her walkabout. This is a beautiful island with one small Kuna village on the eastern end comprising 8 or 9 huts. Eventually we made our way back to the beach where Annie was reading and we all headed back to the boat.

    We’d invited Whiskers aboard for a final dinner together so we were under orders to clear all the days play gear away. Having done that I went for a snorkel on my own in the channel between the two islands. I didn’t see a great deal but I did see a nurse shark which is always a highlight.

    Dianne and Gerald popped over around 6pm. Dianne brought some tasty snacks which were followed by Helen’s chile con carne with fresh, fresh bread.

    We’ve decided not to move the boat to the Lemons but to stay one more day here before leaving the San Blas. Each time we move eats up half a day so we want the make the most of our last few hours in the San Blas. We may use the hookah again today and we may send the kids up the mast on the bosuns chair for a sky view of the island. This evening we’re planning to do a night snorkel before the moon rises.

    Tomorrow we’ll be off at dawn to head back to the Linton area. Beyond that we’ll have a day in Portobelo then a couple of nights by the Chagris river which is jsut a few miles from the canal.

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  • Western Holandes Cays

    First day of the new decade saw us all waking a little tired and, at least in my case, feeling a little worse for wear. I took a couple of bags of trash up to the morning fire on BBQ island. There’s a cruiser who has been there for years who grooms the island every morning burning all the fallen chaff from the trees. It’s not his island but he does this all the same. He is letting grass grow across the island too. It makes it look nice and feel nice to walk on but chatting to Gerald while burning trash I learned the other other side of all this. The kuna are a bit pissed at him for doing this. They think, and are probably right, that burning the fallen palm fronds is killing the island. The natural state of the islands is to let the fronds rot into the ground providing nutrients for the trees still standing and growing. This is not happening. BBQ island may be a little paradise now but one day it will become lifeless.

    After dropping off the trash we immediately set sail for the western end of the Holandes Cays. We had the sails up in lightish winds on flat seas. This enabled us to have lunch of soup and bread on the move. We arrived shortly after noon.

    John and I went for a long snorkel while Annie and Sam took to the shore. We’ve found the best reef snorkeling so far. Being on the leeward side of an island which is also protected from the north by the reef we find a lot more fish diversity and fragile coral. We are also protected from the current that was raging through the swimming pool area. That being said there is a bit of a surge which makes snorkeling the reef extra interesting as it pushes us in and out through the channels in the rocks – a bit nerve wracking though when surrounded by fire coral. I had my speargun with me while snorkeling and at one point saw a long pair of lobster tentacle poking out from under a rock. I shot the lobster between the eyes but ended up disappointed as it was quite a small one. Back on the boat we didn’t cook it but used it’s flesh for bait on hook left hanging over the side of the boat. This morning there is a fish on the hook but it’s unfortunately dead. If it’s an eater we may cook it up. I’ll leave it there until the kids are awake so we can look at it together.

    Dinner last night was home made pizza – very tasty even though it welded itself to the tray.

    Whiskers are here too. We’ll be saying au revoir soon as our paths will separate and it’s not clear when we’ll next meet. It could be somewhere on the west side of Panama but my guess is that it will be in French Polynesia somewhere. We’re both heading to New Zealand by November and following roughly the same track and timetable. We were going to stay here just for one day but we’ve decided to stay one more day as the place seem popular and we weren’t in the best state to enjoy things to the maximum yesterday. Today we may even get the hookah out.

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  • Christmas Eve in The Pool

    We’re settling into a nice slow rhythm here in The Pool. In the morning Fernancia, a Kuna “master mola” maker came around selling his wares. He had three buckets of molas to show us. He pulled them all out one by one so we could see each one. Then, as he returned them to his buckets we picked out the ones that we found appealing. We ended up with a rather large pile which we had to whittle down further. Then came the price negotiation. The prices have gone up over the last few years as the Kuna react to the ‘market’. Sadly cruise ships now turn up in the area from time to time and the popularity of molas has grown so they know what they can get. Nevertheless we stuck to buying some of the more detailed molas. These will turn into treasured memories of the trip. Annie managed to acquire three to her liking too.

    With John’s help I managed to do a project. I installed a bridge (ordered from the US) between the Raymarine boat instruments and our Garmin chartplotter. From the bridge we also ran a serial cable to the navigation station. Now that the Garmin chartplotter can receive information from the digital compass the MARPA functionality is now enabled. That allows us to track the speed and direction of radar targets. Useful for tracking squalls and ships that don’t show on AIS. The flow of information from the Garmin to the Raymarine equipment now seems better too. This may improve the ability of the autopilot to follow the charted route rather than a given direction. Finally, it now allows the wind data to show up on the computer. This should now come through on our position updates.

    I spent a couple of sessions out on the reef looking for lobsters/crayfish. I managed to catch a couple at the smaller end of what is worth catching plus one much smaller still. Their tails went on the grill later in the evening as an appetizer to our Columbian steaks (mahi, mahi for Annie).

    Around 4pm I put out a general invitation to folks nearby to join us on the beach of BBQ Island for sundowners at 5. A few folks turned up for a pleasant chat. Among them were Whiskers, Rosie and Jim from Sojourn (who we shared Thanksgiving table with in Cartagena), Saphire, Changing Spots (who we met on the island tour in Grenada), Steve and Trish from Curious (heading out to Pacific next year) and a few others.

    After our BBQ on board we did a little star gazing. We were able to spot Andromeda but it was weak due to the moon being near. We also took a look at the craters and mountains on the moon as well as Jupiter and it’s moons. We finished the evening watching the end of the first Pirates movie as noone made it to the end the previous evening.

    MERRY CHRISTMAS

  • Cayo Holandes – The Pool

    Ready to set off we changed all the plans we had and decided to join Whiskers at “The Pool” in the East Holandes. Again – no wind to speak of so we motored the 10nm there trailing lines in the hope of catching something.

    Arriving at “The Pool” we found a number of boats there as this is one of the most popular spots in the entire San Blas. And for good reason. The place is divine. I’ve used superlatives in the past to describe places like the Tobago Cays but this place puts them into the shade. The only downside is the sea life is sparce and shy.

    Gerald from Whiskers popped over to say hello as soon as we arrived and shortly after we took lunch. After a brief rest all but Helen took off in the dinghy to find the “tunnel” we’d heard about. We did indeed find it. Below the water there was a tunnel with plenty of gaps to the surface. Along the surface was a channel which could be traversed to a point. Unfortunately the current entering the lagoon prevented us reaching the outside reef. I did manage to spot another shark coming down the channel towards me but both of us used the encounter as a trigger to turn around. Perhaps we’ll go back and explore with the scuba gear.

    We spent well over an hour exploring the inside of the reef. We saw a few interesting creatures including a large parrot fish and a very large puffer fish.

    Back on the boat it was back to relaxing. Sam and Annie took a walk around BBQ island. Later, Dianne and Gerald showed up for a few drinks which turned out, as ever, into a few more.

    Most went to bed but Sam, Annie and I stayed up to after 1am chatting and looking at the stars.

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