Passage to Panama

While we had a wonderful time in Bonaire, it was time to move on to the beautiful San Blas islands off the coast of Panama. The route took us passed Aruba and over the northern shores of Venezuela and Columbia. The reality is most of my sailing over the last 30 years has been day sailing with few overnight passages. so it was time to learn, and challenge myself to something new. The passages have been both exciting and challenging. It takes 2 days to get used to the broken up sleep and finally getting to place where you are able to get good sleep even though its 2 to 3 hours at a time. The hardest thing is the heat as all hatches are shut and no air conditioning is on so it can be 85 to 90 in your cabin but does eventually cools down towards morning.

Typically whoever is on the 1500-1800 watch starts to prep dinner for all on board. The photo below shows some of the degree of difficultly

Issy has done a great job of precooking a number of passage meals that are frozen and can be put into a pot to make it easy for all to help with dinner. Even more amazing is the provisioning that she has done where we will not be able to get to a market for over 2 weeks.

Irish Blessing has a surprise birthday party for Harry on January 24th. Issy prepared brownies, Cullen made a sightly inappropriate birthday card that we all signed, and we decorated the cockpit to the birthday boy’s delight.

On the passage, we had a combination of medium to high winds and great speed. We consciously went pretty far north to avoid a high wind area off the coast of Columbia. A number of our fleet went through that area to visit Cartagena, some experiencing 40 to 50-knot winds, luckily all arrived to their destinations safely.

I have now discovered the 4 stages of ocean passage making. Stage 1: Excitement about leaving and getting ready to go Stage 2: I’m exhausted, hot, anxious, what the hell was I thinking Stage 3: Starting to get some sleep, maybe we are not going to die Stage 4: OMG, we are almost there, so excited to dive in the water

The dolphins and sea life are absolutely amazing. While we have often had dolphins swimming around the bow, we have never had them jumping 10 feet in the air as to say welcome. Without the passage you don’t get to experience the outside wonder and the moonlit passages at night can be hypnotic and quiet.

The scenery in San Blas is absolutely stunning. Feels strangely like French Polynesia. The locals travel in dug out canoes and come to your boat upon arrival to welcome and see if you would like lobsters and or fruits and vegetables but more about that in next blog about San Blas.

Whats amazing is that we are in the middle of the ocean anchored behind an atoll reef with waves pounding 500 yards off our bow but because we are protected by the reef it is actually as calm as if we were at a dock. Time to go explore San Blas.