The Caribbean side of Panama attracts a type of tourist few other places see: seafaring backpackers. That there pic of the West Holandes anchorage in Panama's San Blas islands, is a view of several vessels that serve this subset of the adventure travel community. In fact, The Fox was the only boat in this view,…
Yeah, we spent about 2 weeks of March, 2011, in the San Blas islands on the eastern (Caribbean) side of Panama. I'll just get it out of the way right now and put up this cliche photo of the exotic white-sand San Blas coral island with the happy native happily paddling his sailing cayuca to…
We had a long dry spell without Interweb connectivity. We sailed from Panama to Georgia with hardly the opportunity (or inclination) to post. So now I'm going to catch up, starting in Panama and moving forward the way we did in reality. Now, where did I leave off…? I'll start with Panama and one part…
The weather forecast for this trip – July 9-11, 2011, looked good: SE breezes generally in the 10-15-knot range, with calm seas making for a nice easy downwind sail. The thunderstorms, which during this time of year are automatically forecast to occur daily (whether they actually do or not), had disappeared. The sky was white…
Departed Stuart, Florida on Friday afternoon, July 8, 2011, intending to quickly fuel up and then wind our way out the St. Lucie River on a rising tide. The goal was to arrive at the shallowest area at the highest tide: The Crossroads, 7-1/2 miles from Stuart, where the shallow and shoaling St. Lucie River's…
Yeah, not much posting lately and zero pics. What a stupid blogger. We arrived in Stuart, Florida, on Friday, May 13. Did one uncomfortable 51-mile day offshore from Ft. Lauderdale to West Palm Beach, pounding thru head-seas with a frisky Gulf Stream current shoving us right into the tall chop. Lots of water on deck.…
Apropos of absolutely nothing, here are three small things that make the boatin' life easier. 1. Stern or mast reflectors. It is generally very bad practice to enter an anchorage at night, but once every 15 months or so we've found ourselves having to do exactly that. We've always had a choice of entering a fairly well-charted anchorage with a…
Yesterday, 3/11 was 1st sunny day on Dark Side (Caribbean). Arrived at Chichime Is., 09deg.35'N/78deg.53'W. All San Blas anchorages have far more boats than we were used to on the Pacific side but snorkeling visibility=great. No big fish seen, just 1 spotted eagle ray but the usual small reef fish are here in brand-new species,…
"Hey, Dude – thanks for replacing the impeller. The engine sounds really happy now." "Yeah, it seems to spitting a lot more water out of the exhaust. It's all good." "I'm going to take a picture of the disintegrated impeller and all the bits you removed from the engine. I want to write a blog…
3/9: This morning at 0700 we saw calm seas and light breeze in Portobello Bay, despite the forecast for area winds getting into the high teens/low 20s – which for exiting Portobello and heading north and then east means steep, choppy seas and not much fun. So, we took advantage of the flattitude and promptly…