LOG
From the Caribbean to the Panama Canal

 

February 11, 2010

After spending a night at our deserted island we were joined by Bali Blue and next morning we were invited to join them eat some Mahi Mahi for lunch, they had caught the fish the previous day, it was delicious and Carol amasingly still had some salad to go with the fish. In the afternoon we both sailed across to an island and reef called Caobos Cay. Bali Blue joined us for a couple of drams in the evening.

Next day we set off for Chichimie Cay and we caught a large Yellow Fin Tuna on the way. We were sailing along at 6.5 - 7 knots at the time and had to quickly slow the boat down. We invited Bill & Sue from Camomile to join us for dinner and they helped us fillet the Tuna. We got nine large steaks from the fish so it did us and Camomile for 2 days. It is really great to feast off fish we have caught and hopefully we will repeat this fairly often.

The next day we returned to Porvinir to check out with immigration and we also visited a couple of small islands occupied by Kuna Indians. We were shown round one of the islands by a guide who showed us his house and told us a lot about how they live. They all seemed to be very contented to live their pretty basic and very traditional lives, but you have to have doubts about how long they can maintain their lifestyle.

On Friday 5th Feb, we set off for Portobello (58 miles) and anchored opposite the town. On Saturday we went ashore for a BWR briefing and a lunch. This was the first time we met with some of the boats joining the rally in Panama, our numbers have now swelled to 30 boats. Portobello itself is pretty run down, but there are lots of really nice properties and restaurants outside town and we really enjoyed it despite the poor reputation it has. (Portobello  Pictures)

On Sunday we had to get down to Shelter Bay Marina by lunch time to get the boat measured and inspected for transiting the Panama Canal. There are lots of regulations and formalities but some of the officials are fairly laid back and friendly and we had no problems.

The canal crossing is a real logistics nightmare for the BWR organisers. Each boat has to have a skipper and four crew to act as line handlers. We all have to have 4 125ft ropes to allow for the boat going through on it's own and to have the ropes reach both sides of the canal. Each boat also has to have a Canal Advisor on board and as the transit takes 2 days, it is a real problem. It also means each boat has to be able to feed 5 crew plus the advisor and to sleep the 4 crew. BWR  have to schedule crew from other boats to join the boats scheduled for each day.

We went through on Monday/Tuesday and had a really good trip. Going through the lock we were rafted up to Mercury Rising and Fai Tira. We were in the locks with a 600ft cargo vessel, which is relatively modest by the standards of the Panama Canal, they can handle up to 960ft x 103ft Panamax carriers. There is a third set of locks being built at present, due to open in 2014, which will handle even larger vessels. We went through the 2 upward locks on Monday afternoon and then tied up to a very large buoy for the night. There was a bit of a party which seemed to congregate on Enchantress, but it really wasn't our fault. On Tuesday we motored 30 miles through the rain forest to get to the downward locks and got through into the Pacific by early afternoon. We anchored in a bay looking across a causeway at the amazing sight of Panama City. It is a skyline of very tall skyscrapers. Our only problem happened at the first lock when the Panama Canal guys threw leading lines on to the boat, these are thin lines with a 'monkey fist' at the end which we had to attach our large 125ft lines to. The 'monkey fist' went straight through our front doghouse window. This window had been replaced at some time and clearly wasn't toughened glass.

Poor Susan had to get up early next morning to be driven back to Shelter Bay to help another boat do the transit. I have had to stay with the boat and ensure it is safe. I do have a list of jobs to do, including trying to get the front doghouse window repaired.

It is difficult to believe that we are now in the Pacific and we are really looking forward to this next stage of our adventure.

(Panama Pictures)

January 31, 2010

Well what a trip. We didn't say beforehand but this was one of the legs we were most nervous about. The leg from Bonaire north of Venezuela to San Blas in Panama is known with 2 nicknames - The Northern Cape Horn and the Animal. The issue is partly the way the Columbian coast line affects the weather system and partly because there is an eastern current running close to shore in the opposite direction from the trade winds, which can build up enormous seas.

We, by a combination of good judgment and luck managed to miss nearly all the horrendous conditions some of our BWR friends experienced. We decided to leave Bonaire on the Sunday, along with 3 other boats because the weather window looked right to us and because we were ready to leave. Other boats were delayed because they had decided to go to the Tobago Cays prior to Bonaire or wanted to spend longer diving in Bonaire, but we decided we preferred to have more contingency. We also decided to set a course, which kept us well off the Columbian coast (>120 miles) and we stuck to this course even though it added at least 100 miles to the journey compared to a direct course. All of this was consistent with the advise we had.

A lot of the other boats experienced 40+ and even 50+ winds and 20-30 ft waves, either because they didn't sufficiently take note of the advice or they were unlucky on the timing of their journey. A number of the boats suffered 'knock downs' where the boats were knocked horizontal and water was sweeping into the cockpits, and one boat had 3 knock downs.

We had a very spirited sail doing over 160 miles each day, although it was pretty tough sleeping down below at times due to the violence of the waves hitting the boat. At no time did we feel in danger, and we were amazed at hearing on the SSB radio the experience other people were having. We had to slow down on the 4rth day because we were arriving in the dark and the reef strewn San Blas islands is not the place to go into in the dark. A few of our friends have already had really bad experiences with landing on reefs and we did not want to join the reefers club. We eventually hove to outside the San Blas Islands for 9 hours until daylight and went in to Porvenir on Friday morning. We started to feel almost guilty about our relatively pleasant trip and this has increased as more boats have arrived with scary stories.

One of the most amazing story is not really related to the weather or wave conditions. On Miss Tippy, a beautiful Oyster 56 boat the skipper, Brian was hit on the head when his spinnaker pole parted from the mast and fell down on top of him while he was on deck. He was knocked unconscious and his wife and 3 young children managed to drag him back into the cockpit and divert to Porto Rico and get him to hospital. Brian had a large gash in his skull but he has recovered and they amazingly managed to get to San Blas Islands yesterday morning to rejoin the rally. When they arrived lots of us, ok including me, had a tear or two in our eyes, to see them rejoin our BWR family. Last night all the BWR boats in Porvenir (12 boats) went together on shore for dinner and drinks and over half of the then came back to Enchantress 'for a wee dram'. It was a really good, but a bit of an emotional night. The meal was pretty basic, but it only cost $5 per head!!!

Porvenir is an amazing island, it is only about 1/3rd of a mile long, but it has a runway with daily flights, a hotel and 2 restaurants, although only one seemed to be open at a time. It all dates back to the 2nd world war and the US airforce base that was here then.

We have now moved on to other San Blas islands and are currently anchored off a small, uninhabited island, with palm trees and a couple of reefs to snorkel over. Susan says I will never be Jacque Cousteau, but even I really enjoyed snorkelling over the reef and seeing the vibrant colours of the fish and the coral and rocks.

With the difficult leg to San Blas islands now behind us we are really looking forward to spending a few days here and then getting to Panama and on to the Pacific. Both the boat and us are in really good shape ( if you ignore my beer belly ) to tackle the rest of the adventure. (San Blas Pictures)

 

January 26, 2010

We left Bonaire at 9.15 on Sunday morning and headed Northwest. The advice for the leg to the San Blas Islands in Panama is to head up to the 4000 meter depth line and then follow this until you pass Venezuela and Columbia and then head down to San Blas. Off the Columbia coast you can frequently get very large and steep seas. We are following this advice and are now (Tuesday evening) over half way and almost at the point for heading Southwest to San Blas.

We have had some really exciting sailing with strong winds (25-30 knots) and pretty large seas (walls of water passing under the boat). We did 150 miles in the first day and 175 miles the second day - a new record for us! Oscar (the WindPilot) has done all the steering, but it needs a little help when we are hit by heavy waves coming from the side. We have been soaked a few time with water coming into the cockpit, once it went right over the cockpit hood/dog house - but we quickly dry off in the sun! The wind has been a bit less today so we won't set another record today.

Susan has been wearing the electronic sea sickness watch that Scott & Kathy brought out and it has worked really well, although she does have an allergic reaction to wearing the watch.

We have had a couple of problems so far. I noticed that the spinnaker pole connector to the mast was coming apart. We had to quickly reef in the sail and lower the pole. It turned out to be a missing split pin so was easily fixed, but could have been nasty. We also had a problem with the fresh water supply, there was no water coming out of the taps, either we had a blockage or we had lost 2 tanks of water. The seas were too rough yesterday to check the system so I ran the watermaker and filled up 6 five litre bottles with fresh water for use with washing etc. When I checked the system today I found that one of the fresh water valves was blocked. It was partly a small bit of plastic and partly a manufacturing fault with one of the hose tails on the valve. I managed to fix the problem so we have running water again.

January 21, 2010

We had a really good sail down to Rodney Bay in St Lucia and anchored out in the bay outside the marina. It was really nice to revisit Rodney Bay and we had the amazing experience of bumping into John Lawrence, who sailed with us on Pinball when we travelled back across the Atlantic in 2004. John has been working and located in places as varied as South America to Spain and was about to move to Australia, but just happened to be in the Caribbean with his boat and was in St Lucia for 2-3 days. We stayed in Rodney bay for a couple of days, celebrated Pete's birthday on Fia Tira, and then sailed down to Vieux Fort in the very south of St Lucia as a stopping off point on the way to Bequia. It was quite a tough sail as we were beating to windward but we got there at mid afternoon and anchored in the bay. We expected the anchorage to be very quiet but it filled up as the day went on and was quite busy by the end. We even had another Scottish boat come in with a couple from Arbroath. They had been in the Caribbean for 18 months.

By starting from Vieux Fort we had a really good sail down to Bequia and did the 49 miles in 7.5 hours. We had a bit of a reunion in Bequia as we joined up with a couple of boats in the anchorage at Admiralty Bay, we hadn't seen for a while as well as most of the boat we had been travelling down the Caribbean with. Eight of us went out together and had some really nice Red Snapper. We really liked Bequia and the main town of Portsmouth, which had some really quaint buildings and walkways. We got the boat ready for the next leg which was Bequia to Bonaire, a small Dutch island off the coast of Venezuela.  (Bequia Pictures)

Most of the BWR boats were going South to visit Tobago Cays to do some diving, which the area is famous for, but we and 2 other boats decided we wanted to head straight for Bonaire and have a bit more contingency in our time to get to Panama. We left Bequia about 10.0am on Sunday 17th and set off on our 420 mile trip across the Caribbean Sea. Straight away we had really good sailing with the wind almost directly behind us. We had put up our twin headsail rig, with the two poles, before we left the anchorage so just had to unfurl our headsails and we were set. We started using our WindPilot about 10.30 and it worked extremely well. This was the first time we had it working on our trip as it was jamming when we tried it in the Atlantic and I serviced it in Antigua. The WindPilot (Oscar) did the steering all the way to Bonaire and coped with pretty fresh winds and sometimes quite big seas, this gives us considerable confidence in our ability to do the rest of the trip 2 handed. We had a great trip to Bonaire and achieved a run of 162 miles in the second day which is near our record so far. We had to slow down a bit on the Tuesday night so that we wouldn't arrive in the dark. With our twin headsails we sail at night with our steaming light on so that we can see that the sails are filling correctly and it is a very surreal feeling at times sailing along silently with the Windpilot steering and the sails high lighted against the sky filled with thousand of stars, it can be very beautiful.  (Caribbean Sea Pictures)  We decided to go into the Bonaire marina rather than pick up a mooring outside as it was still quite windy and the moorings could be a bit uncomfortable. You are not allowed to anchor in Bonaire as they want to fully protect the coral. We are now doing some more jobs in the boat and getting it ready for the next stage which is ~ 750 miles across the Caribbean Sea to the San Blas islands off the coast of Panama. We will leave on Sunday and expect the trip to take 5-6 days.  (Bonaire Pictures)

January 10, 2010

We changed our minds about our next stop and decided to join a number of other boats in Prince Ruperts Bay in Dominica. We had a really good sail although we were close hauled all the way. The initially found it difficult to make our course but then the wind direction changed as we got into the acceleration zone at the top of Dominica and we manage to sail almost right into the anchorage. We arrived at 1230 and had just anchored when Pete from Fai Tira contacted us to see if we wanted to go on a tour to a waterfall in the mountains at 1330. We of course said yes and had a wonderful afternoon initially on a minibus tour then a 3 mile hike through the rain forest to a waterfall, where we all got in the 'refreshing' pool at the bottom of the waterfall and some of the guys were brave enough to jump in from about 20' up. We then went to a variety of other locations and everyone (Jackamy, Blue Magic, Lucy Alice, Fai Tira and ourselves) all thought that Dominica was a great place to visit. The next morning our boat boy, Albert took us and Phillis from Briet on the Indian River trip. It was a very different trip from the waterfall and much more of a sedate look at the large variety of trees and foliage along the river, but was very interesting and we were shown where some of the scenes from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean 2 were filmed. In the afternoon we set sail for Roseau at the south of Dominica and picked up a mooring buoy along with 4 other BWR boats. We all took a water taxi then taxi journey into Roseau which is the capital of Dominica. We went to a really good fruit and veg market, which seemed to be open all night on a Friday and restocked on a number of essentials. We then went for dinner and had a pretty good meal of Mahi Mahi with West Indian sauce!!. (Dominica Pictures)

On Saturday 9th we had a great sail down to Fort de France in Martinique, for most of the 48 miles we were sailing at between 6.5 and 7.6 knots. It was quite boisterous, but exciting sailing with lots of warm water coming over the deck, the sails and us. We anchored close to Fort Louis in Fort de France along with Lucy Alice and Briet, unfortunately Briet had got their propeller caught on a lobster pot ropes, which had rapped round their shaft. They managed to motor into the anchorage, but Duco then had to spend an hour in the water trying to free up his propeller. He didn't manage to fully clear the problem so on Sunday we contacted Blue Magic and Jackamy, who have diving gear on board to see if they could come and help. They are clearing the problem as I write this blog. We are hoping for a quiet night tonight after helping Lucy Alice test out their rum punch skills yesterday, but with 6 BWR boats in the anchorage it is probably unlikely. We all plan to sail down to Rodney Bay on St Lucia tomorrow and help Pete from Fai Tira celebrate his birthday. It is just like having a very large family.

January 06, 2010

We left Antigua on the 3rd and motorsailed down to Deshaies on Guadaloupe. We anchored beside Blue Magic and Jackamy who had sailed down there on the 2nd. After a couple of beers on Blue Magic we desided to join Blue Magic and Jackamy in travelling down to the Saints islands on the 4rth. We had good winds down the side of Guadaloupe but it was right on our nose, so we had to motorsail most of the way to get into the anchorage before dark. We anchored in the main bay of the biggest island, the Bourg des Saints. It is a very French and very pretty island and we had an energetic walk up to the fort which is also a museum and has lots of interesting background and artefacts about this historic region from the French and British naval points of view. It is quite a contrast to the likes of Antigua where the history has been allowed to fall into decay. We had a nice meal ashore last night, but I found out that the main course of the meal I had was octupus - at least we didn't confirm this until after the meal, I was to frightened to ask during the meal.

We will set sail from the Saints tomorrow and plan to sail overnight to Martinique.  (Guadaloupe & the Saints Pictures)

 

This page was last modified on:
March 21st, 2010