Chillin’

Sunday was another of those days where we really didn’t do much. We did go out for a little exploration in the dinghy but we didn’t go too far because the motor was losing it’s rhythm. Not quite sure why but I suspect something to do with the fuel line. I need to keep an eye on this and also not go too far from the boat lest we have to row back. We went up the canal to the north of us and looked at the anchorage just north of us in case the southerlies pick up and we need to move. On the way back we stopped off to look around a pretty restaurant / hotel on the bank of the canal. I had half hoped we may be able to walk inland but it seemed the whole place was setup to be accessible from the water only. One of the workers tried to sell us some souvenirs but we declined taking only pictures before leaving.

We found the nutcracker we thought we’d dropped overboard the night before so the search and rescue mission was called off. There was some fish activity with a large school of small fish being harassed by larger predators. The small fish would jump into the air en masse to escape being eaten and sometimes would end up on the lower steps at our stern. I tried fishing using the dead ones as bait for a bit and caught just one larger fish which I returned.

The rest of the day was spent reading.

We do intend moving the boat around to the north side of the island where we can hopefully go ashore. Our intention is to head back to Cartagena on Wednesday morning. Looking further out we expect to head for Panama around the middle of the following week, ie the 9th of December. That should get us anchored off the coast during the weekend sometime so we can take a bus into Colon on the following Monday. Hopefully we can clear in and initiate the formalities for our canal transit on the Monday. Later in the week we’ll have to move to Colon for the boat to be inspected. Once this is done we’ll be free to head back east in order to meet up with the family on the 20th close to Portobello.