In the footsteps of Drake (Cartagena - Panama)

When checking in or out of a country, our preference is to do it ourselves: I’m something of a tight wad, and Capt. Chez is really clever, so generally it’s achievable and works out quite well for us.

In Cartagena (which is now just a glow behind me on the horizon) by law, you have to engage an immigration agent - a first for us.

José, our agent, was an efficient, but not overly chatty guy. All in all we shelled out approx $400,000 Colombian Pesos to him for the various immigration/customs fees and the service he provided.

This incidentally is the same figure ($400,000 pesos) initially demanded by Sir Francis Drake from the Spanish in 1586 when he captured the city and held in to ransom. His asking price was not what was eventually paid: the Spanish countered with a lowball offer of $25,000. Sir Francis, showing he wasn’t one to be trifled with, responded by setting fire to large parts of the city… which speeded negotiations no end.

We left there this afternoon, a couple of days after our originally planned departure. The reason for the delay: The fridge died.

We managed to track down a local refrigeration engineer via the Cartagena cruisers WhatsApp group (a miracle in itself). Antonio, who turned out to be excellent.

I met him at the marina dock, took him by dinghy out to our boat on anchor. Once there, he soon diagnosed the issue, told me the fix (a new compressor unit), and the price: 2,800,000.00 pesos ….that’s seven times what Sir Francis Drake ransomed the city for! Antonio sourced the part, supplied, fitted, tested and got our fridge back up and running by the next afternoon. Thankfully very little food was spoiled, as we hadn’t done much of our provisioning by that stage.

The rest was taken care of this morning. We visited 3 well stocked supermarkets and loaded up with good quality fresh food. A task, on the face of it simple, but one which hadn’t been possible for us throughout our time in the Caribbean islands.

Left Cartagena an hour or so before sunset this evening (to hopefully get to to the San Blas islands in daylight two days from now). Cartagena is yet another location we’ll be leaving with very fond memories - a wonderful city.

It helped that despite Colombia recording the highest rainfall of any country in the world, it has remained hot and sunny throughout. Only raining once during our 10 day stay.

I’m writing this at 10pm the same night - the wind has been steady, around the 20knot mark, with only an occasional gust above that to keep things interesting. The swell is once again fairly large (+5m) and on our hind quarter, as it has been almost all the way from Grenada. There’s not much moon to speak of tonight, and the little sliver of crescent there was, has just dipped below the horizon in the West. This leaves me (Chez is pre-shift ‘sleeping’) with the sound of wind, fast rushing water and star speckled darkness all around.

Chez relieved me at 3am ish, after reportedly spending her sleep time just rolling around on the bed with her eyes closed. I then did the same, as she took over watch in the rolly conditions. I must have slept for some of that time, as I woke up at 8am and headed back on deck.

Wind had dropped a little during the night - still whipping us along nicely though with just the genoa flying.

The deck is littered with flying fish this morning: 21 of them.. a new record! (Edit: 22… one was hiding behind the swab bucket)

Leaving them on deck in the sun to start getting smelly is not an option: they are one of the worst smelling things in the sea …second only to an anchovy’s bottom!

I take a slow crawl around the deck collecting them, hanging on for dear life as the now 5 to 6m tall waves roll the boat from side to side. Made it back safely to the cockpit after repatriating them all to the deep.

Wind remained constant and within our happy range throughout the day, and as I write this shortly after sunset, we are on good course and time to arrive into the San Blas islands as it gets light in the morning.

…and as if by magic: it’s morning and little clumps of palms are visible way off to our Portside. From this distance it’s hard to distinguish them from a tanker or a distant city… but I’m assured by map and by wife that they’re islands.

The smelly fish kamikaze count on deck this morning was 18 of the poor little things - that’s 40 in total who’ve landed on us in the last two days. Also a raucous bird something like a tern flew into the rigging at shift change last night (edit: Google tells me it’s a Royal Tern) - shining the torch down the deck I saw it sitting sulking by the shrouds. It’s gone by morning - flown off or washed over. The only evidence of its visit: a flying fish spine, picked clean cartoon style that it’d left on deck.

The seas remain big and behind us - we caught a snippet of the local radio Net on the VHF this morning - A South African wannabe DJ advised the current waves are at a height of 20 - 25ft, (6-7.5m) glad we’ve been able to stay on their good side!

Panama welcomed us in with a visit from a few dolphins playfully arcing in and out of the water around the bow - our first for months

Anchored and checked in to Panama on a small idyllic island: El Porvenir. Protected by reef, surrounded by clear turquoise water, which lightens towards the islands shore. We tied up next to a dugout canoe on the small dock and headed off to check in. As we approach some officials lounging around in the palm shade outside their office, give us a ‘be there in 5’ smile and wave.

They’re friendly and helpful, our only hurdle to a seamless check in was the power on the island being off for 20mins… so no printer. All good, we head across to another island in the dinghy to try and get a SIM card. Manage to eventually get one after being helped by a local Kuna Indian lad and his mum (?) to buy one and set it up.

Although both quite tired, we now just want to flop, but need to get ourselves to a more suitable anchorage for the night before the forecast increase in wind this evening.

We head the hour over to a small group of islets: The Lemon islands. They’re a little hairy on approach, with only a narrow gap in the reef to let us in. There’s also a wreck of a large fishing boat sticking out. Just to remind you what happens if you don’t stay in the middle of the channel when entering. Once we are in, we anchor on our second attempt and have a chance to look round.

Imagine, Robinson Crusoe laying in a hammock eating a Bounty bar - well he’d fit right in.

Delightfully perfect low lying sand rimmed islands with palms are dotted all around us.

I dived on the anchor, but couldn’t see so returned to the boat.

Chez chooses then to tell me that she’s read that there’s saltwater crocodiles in the water here.

I’ve just about got my head around the possibility of a shark encounter …but those prehistoric dragons terrify me.

Overnight - as predicted the wind rose (and rose and rose) to gale force. At one point around 3am the anchor alarm went off (this tells us if we stray too far from it). This usually happens, not when we drag, but when we’re at a dinghy dock, and have take the anchor alarm phone with us by mistake). Action stations for a short while, until we realise that; Yes: we do seem to have dragged anchor, but that we’ve also reset and now seem to be anchored once more in the continuing howling wind.

I stayed up for an hour or two to make sure of that, and we remained well set. Come morning, we are indeed in the same position as last night.

It’s sunny, but a bit blowy to explore, so I opt instead to dive in and give the rudder and hull a little scrape - small barnacles having developed down there during our time in Colombia. They come off easily enough with a scraper, and as an added bonus: no sign of crocs while I’m down there