“What a difference a knot makes”

We are straddling the seasons as we wrap up our time here in the San Blas, which means you can be enjoying a lovely anchorage, snorkeling your heart out, enjoying a great sunset, and then the wind dies and you are attacked by gazillions of noseeums, who live to eat….you! They are said to feed only at sunrise and sunset but there is a high illiteracy rate for insects here and they did not read the handout. Usually there are very reliable NE winds (trades) of 12-15 knots that keep these anchorages very comfortable, providing both natural air conditioning and pest control. As the winds died out in the “Hot Tub” anchorage, these vermin chased us out to the more open anchorage of East Lemon where absence of mangrove allows for more comfort. On the way there we caught a nice dinner sized yellow tail snapper. After snorkeling and swimming there for a week
we returned to Eastern Hollandaise Cays for a goodbye dinner with our friends Mel and Jackie from “Feisty”. They took off for Curacao and while we are sad to see them go, we are glad they got the weather window they were hoping for to get some boat work done there. Then we hightailed it to the safety of East Lemon Cays again. Aside from being “safe haven” it is also a lovely place with excellent snorkeling ops and picture postcard beauty.

Before the noseeums ran us off, we discovered some great “new to us” snorkeling reefs in the East Hollandaise and enjoyed the bounty of the veggie boat from Miramar that made the rounds just before we weighed the anchor.

The time is coming for return to the “normal” life in San Francisco again, and we have sat sail for our base on the mainland. The wind kept changing directions all day long, but we safely arrived to Puerto Lindo under squalls and rain. This is like returning home, since we acquired some good friends who either live in and around Puerto Lindo, or other cruisers who use it as a base. So now it is a time for some shore leaves and preparations of the boat for our departure. We plan to arrive to San Francisco on May 15th.

There is a good “fish story” from our friends you may find enjoyable.

April 27, 2007Life is still good here.We had a very interesting day yesterday. We're traveling (or anchored as the case may be) with two other boats. One couple from Texas and another from Washington state and both of the guys are avid spear hunters. The women are all about matched on how long we can stay in the water so we usually take two dinghies so the ladies can come back when we get enough. We're snorkeling and free diving. Most of the water here is fairly shallow. Yesterday we all went out in the morning and picked a nice looking area to snorkel. Turned out that it was about 25 feet deep and then right up to the surface. Visibility wasn't all that great since we've had some pretty good winds the last few days.We all headed our own ways but shortly we'd decided it was just a bit too deep to be good. We headed back toward the dinghies and Sonny and Kay were waving and motioning us over to them. We got there and Sonny's saying he shot a snapper and it took his speargun down and he can't get it back. We look down and there's the speargun floating up out of a hole with the spear and all of the tether gone. Sonny had gone down a couple of times but figured it was about 25 feet and he just couldn't get it. Gene went down and it was all the way up in a cave with the fish still on it. I could see a very big grouper down on the bottom by the speargun and Gene headed down with me yelling "Don't shoot that! Don't shoot that!" He completely ignored me and came back up with a nice grouper that weighed in at 13 lbs. I was surprised that it was no larger than that but things are magnified in the water. Chris took the fish to the dinghy while Gene made two more attempts to get the spear out but wouldn't go into the cave so he came up and we decided to go get scuba gear to go after the spear and fish.We headed for the boat and the other four continued to watch Sonny's gun and snorkel around the area. We gave Gene's gun to Sonny. Monty had his Hawaiian sling and we were leaving them with a dinghy. We hurried back to the boat about 1 1/2 miles away, grabbed our gear, and headed back to the reef. We spotted the dinghy but no swimmers and then we heard them yelling and waving us over to the other side of the reef from Sonny's speargun. The first thing we comprehended was that Monty had shot a very big fish with Gene's gun and lost the gun. Now we have two to go after. Monty is yelling for us to bring another gun and a rope to tie to it so they can hold on to it. We send the gun and rope with Sonny and go anchor our dinghy and gear up. Monty goes down and shoots the fish again with my speargun but the line wasn't attached. I went down behind Gene and saw a huge fish swim around the corner with Gene. He chooses to say that he swam around the corner with the fish but I'm writing this and it looked to me like the fish was in control and very very big. Matter of fact he looked somewhat familiar and I think this is the fish that I saw earlier. He's got two spears in him and swam into a cave with Gene. I was right behind and tried to tie the line onto the speargun. About then Gene had a hold on both spears and was bringing the fish out all hugged up to him. We all got to the dinghy and Sonny climbed in. Monty and Gene got a rope thru the gills and pushed while Sonny pulled and got the fish into the dinghy. He's BIG!We all loaded up and headed back to the boats and did the same process again to get the fish on Queen Mary. We rinsed down and started gathering cameras, knives and all the paraphernalia needed to be a fish processing plant. The scales, tape measure and cameras were first on the list. Gene's fish weighed in at 13 pounds and Monty's at 83 pounds and was 50 inches. It took us several hours to get all the fillets in a bucket and the carcass chopped up to fit in the pressure cookers. The other couples went home for showers and to make rice and salad. We were a bit late for lunch. It was 4pm by this time. Gene filled our tanks and I started cleaning all the red off the fillets and cutting and bagging the fish. Chris has a recipe for fish sausage that we've all eaten and like so we're going to grind some of the fish today and make sausage and can it so we'll have room in the freezer for the rest. We ended up with two quarts of stock after we reduced it about 40% and about a gallon of cooked meat from the head and carcass. We ate the jaw meat from the big guy and one side of the smaller one. We decided this day was going to be very hard to top and we'll all have something to talk about when we're rocking away in the old folks home. I'll write more later.April 28 AMWe have distributed fish to everyone. We're the only ones with a freezer. We made about 2 gallons of fish chowder and had it for dinner with fresh bread with capers, onions, and peppers in it. Boy was that good. And Kay made peach cobbler for dessert. We still have 6 bags of about 4 lbs each in the fridge. Kay made two big pans of grouper patties. We made about 12 lbs of sausage and canned all but two tubes. We got 5 pints and 9 half pints of canned fish sausage. I guess we won't be short of breakfast meat for a while. We're all eating fish 3 times a day and really enjoying it. Gene & Brenda"

It’s been a while since our last post. We have been very busy selecting the prettiest anchorage in San Blas archipelago. As you can imagine it is very challenging appointment with a lot of responsibility that distracted us from the blog post schedule. We will announce the “official” results later. In addition there is only a very limited area where we can get telephone and Internet connection here.

Here is an update on “After You” sinking in 150 ft of water in January. She came back to “life”, salvaged by an enterprising Mark of sailing vessel “Melody” after spending a few weeks on the bottom. Miraculously he was able to start the engine, and transfer her to a safe anchorage, where haul patch and other immediate repairs are done. The skipper, who did not believe that she can be recovered, surrendered his ownership rights to salvage, and is now shopping for the next boat in Panama. I cannot even imagine damage the boat systems suffered being submerged for weeks in salt water, but structurally she is sound again and will probably be towed to Cartagena, Columbia for refit and sale. It is hard to leave this story without mentioning one of the key participants, a very colorful Irish lad by the name Derek of s/v “Celtic Dancer”. I came with him in his dingy to the site on a very first distress call from “After You” at 3 AM that memorable night. He is very enthusiastic, engaging, helpful, and fast-talking fellow. Unfortunately quite a few people including me can only comprehend what he is saying, when he slows down to exclaim “Shyte!” which made it interesting during salvage effort coordination. The legends started to circulate about all sort of disasters happening when he is around, and ugly rumors of “Larry the Leprechaun” following Derek and causing the mischief: the dingy flipped by a large wave while fishing with his girlfriend and another cruiser resulting in loss of fishing gear, radio, and mysteriously Derek’s swimming trunks; neighboring boat loosing an anchor without any reason, etc. Fortunately he had to return to work pumping oil in Kazakhstan, so we can breath easier, however I am really concerned about price of crude on the world markets now.

We celebrated St. Patrick’s Day at Kaimou Cays desperately looking for something green to wear, but since our clothes are very limited (for a lack of need) we had to emerse ourselves into bright green Caribbean water. I think it worked out OK. We were very happy to receive a note from the Lost Celts, Betty and Kevin, formerly known as s/v “Citation”.

While anchored in the “Hot Tub” (Kalugir Tupu island), we participated in another rescue from a reef incident. French catamaran “Babagnuff IV” of Outremer design and construction, lodged itself on a reef entering the anchorage at dusk. Alain, the skipper, broke a cardinal rule of San Blas navigation to travel inside the reefs only at full light, and paid for it with a scare and sleepless night. Since the site of grounding is not exposed to sea surf, the catamaran was happily pulled back into deep water next morning with only cosmetic damage to the hauls. Alain and Henry (the crew) invited all participants in the operations for a “Sundowner” celebration that afternoon; unfortunately we had plans to leave that day for Isla Tigre and did not witness the event.

We celebrated Passover anchored East off Isla Tuala in a company of Linda and Doug of “Que Linda”. Carol baked “Kosher for Passover” matzos under my official, but not very Orthodox supervision. They came out very well, even though I had to fight off Carol’s attempts to “foodify” them with Parmesan cheese and garlic – imagine “designer bread of affliction”. Doug, being the youngest aboard, had to impersonate a child to ask four traditional Seder questions. It came to him quite naturally which illustrate that you cannot always be young, but you can always be immature.

Well, now the drums please:

The prettiest anchorages in San Blas:

5. Uchutupu Dumat of Chichime Cays
4. “Potluck” Island known as “Swimming Pool” of Eastern Hollandaise Cays
3. Isla Nuinudup of Eastern Lemon Cays
2. Isla Kuanidup of Los Grullos Cays
1. Isla Tuala of Coco Bandero Cays

Disclaimer: any disagreement with these “official” rating should NOT be directed to us.