1/17/09 Sat East Lemon Cays, San Blas, Panama.

The italicized text is more or less the ships logs. The other text was added in retrospect as comments or additions.

12/20/08, 2:30 PM, Depart Cartagena Colombia, anchor up, ran motor 20 min.

(Time, Position, speed, heading)5:30 PM, 10.22.65N 75.47W 5kts, 260’ Salsa was pissed off. The sails were trimmed for close hauled and yet the wind was now just behind the beam, nearly a reach, the wind vane’s reluctance and straining to steer gave the secret away. After trimming the sails speed went up to 6.2kts. Apparent wind around 15kts, some white caps 4-6’+ seas, light howling through the rigging and an occasional wave splashing into the cockpit.

I basically was able to turn off the motor as soon as the anchor was up. I had great wind for the sail to San Blas, 15kts, from the NE (the trade winds) and I was sailing a 200 mile course at 260’ (WSW) This put the apparent wind just behind the beam, nearly a perfect beam reach. The 6.2kts I was averaging was with two reefs in the main. I initially wanted to leave early so that I would have a full 48 hours (two nights and two days) to make San Blas, at the rate I was sailing I left late and was still going to get there very early (during the night) and would have to take measures to slow down for a morning-daylight arrival. Oh! As I’m writing this in San Blas I’m eating a nice bowel of fresh lobster pasta. You can get 5 or 6 small lobsters here for $3, throw that in some pasta with some milk or butter if you have it, garlic, onions, one can of mushrooms, mmm..

6:44PM, 10.21N, 75.54W, 265’ 6kts, why is it so hard to sail down wind sometimes!? Jib is luffing here and there and Salsa wants to round up into the wind, thinking about trying a third reef and full genoa, dunno.

The whisker pole should have solved this but it was getting dark and I didn’t want to have to wrestle it down in the middle of the night if the winds picked up. So I just lazily changed the course about 10 degrees to appease the jib gods.

8:25PM, 10.18N, 78.04W, 6kts, 265’, 163 miles to go, just passed the “Submarine Zone” for Colombia on the chart, no close traffic, just now accepting that there wont be any ‘girls’ to chase for at least three weeks while I’m in San Blas. Also just did the math, for a daylight arrival in two days I need to average between 3.7 and 4.5kts, rather than the 6kts I’m doing now for a daylight arrival tomorrow I need to make something like 8kts (impossible, I normally average 5!) Oh well.

The chart says something like keep a close look out for Submarines, and mentions that they may be submerged, how exactly am I supposed to watch out for submerged submarines!? I actually avoided this zone on the way TO Cartagena, but after being anchored next to the Navy Base for almost Four months I can see their Submarines come and go, they only have three that I saw anyway. As for the girl comment, it’s not like there aren’t ANY girls in San Blas, there just aren’t any cute, single ones. Severely lacking in comparison to Cartagena. On the up side you save all kinds of money in San Blas and it truly is beautiful here, been spear fishing almost daily catching more than my fill, and have spent well under $10 a week during the last three weeks, mostly on fresh veggies and fruit, and a $9 12 pack of coke.

12/21/08 1:05AM, 10.11N, 76.31W, 5.8kts, 265’ small vessel popping up on radar dead ahead 5.35 miles from me, now that it’s dark I cant see the waves I can hear them growling at me just before they splash into the cockpit and soak me (well only a few have). I don’t think the wind has increased so much as the fact that I’m further offshore (70 miles) so the waves always seem to grow bigger out here. All of the Cartagena freighter traffic (wasn’t too much anyway) are off the radar, just what looks like a small sailboat in front of me.

I thought I might even know the boat since one other guy was supposed to leave earlier that same day, and I also figured, knowing him, that he would be going a bit slower. None the less it’s always hard to take a nap when you know there is a blip on the radar screen dead ahead, even if it is 5 miles away and going about the same speed and course as you, making it almost impossible to get close to him anytime soon. As for the waves splashing into the cockpit, the conditions were rather benign, that or I’m just getting very tolerant of this kind of sea-state. I have talked to crew from much larger sailboats that just finished the same passage as me talking about how they got “beat up out there” when all I noticed was a little swell and a wet ride. The worst part is that as I’m sitting below typing this up in San Blas I think I just missed the twice a week veggie boat and I’m fresh out of onions, coke, beer, peppers, etc, ugh!

3:12AM, 10.08N, 76.42W, 260’, 5kts, got some sleep, was pretty tired.

7:30AM, 10.01N, 77.04W, 5.6kts, 101 miles to go (half way) got some rest last night and feeling better, huge flying fish in the cockpit but I just don’t feel like cooking him, maybe Ill try him as bate.

7:43AM, Bored and noticed that the small boat is now 4.4 miles away and I’m going a good bit faster than him now so I alter course to get a look since he wont answer the radio.

8:30AM, listening to the HF radio net, forecast is 4-7’ seas, NNE wind 10 kts today 20 kts by tomorrow. One reason I left Cartagena when I did is that I had loose plans to meet to good friends Henning and Erika on the sail boat “Two Captains” in San blas, I was at least able to get a hold of some mutual friends of ours and find out where in San Blas they were expected to be in any day. Yay.

9:03AM, 10.02N, 77.24W 270’ 6kts, Small sailboat is now only 2.2 miles away and still wont answer the radio, odd. I’m close enough now to see that it is definitely not my friend, it’s a much bigger boat, a ketch rig (two masts) and I’m amazed that they are going so slow, around 4kts.

Maybe they are like me trying to time a daylight arrival so they slowed down. Technically I shouldn’t be averaging over 4kts if I want to arrive during daylight tomorrow, I figure Ill keep going fast since you never know if things might slow down, even though that’s not expected, the wind is forecasted to increase. I won’t risk a night time arrival into San Blas so I’ll probably slow down some time this evening or tonight.

10:49AM, 10.02N, 77.24W, 260’, 6Kts, 82 miles to go!

1:00PM, 10’N, 77.36W, 260’ 5kts, 71 miles to go, now I should be averaging a max speed of 3.5kts, min of 2.5kts for a daylight arrival I guess I should try to slow to 3kts or so, somehow.

1:30PM hove to, just to slow down, make some food, rest, wow, it got so calm I could even open the forward hatch!!! Hove to with second reef and tiny jib, hove to I was making 1 kt at 180’, drank a beer.

2PM? 9.59N, 77.37W, 188’, .85kts, 69 to go, but I’m barely moving!

4:30PM, finished cooking and sleeping, time to close the hatch and get underway.

5PM, 67 miles to go, 260’ 6kts, now I need to average between 3 and 4.5kts, so I’m still a bit fast…

7PM, 9.54N, 77.46W, 256’ 4kts, headache, only 51.2 miles to go, finally put in a triple reef in the main to get the speed down to 4 kts so now my ETA for tomorrow morning will be during daylight. Also finally fixed a small leak in my kerosene stove (took about 30 seconds to tighten the nut, why didn’t I do it earlier in Cartagena?) wind is about 15kts still just behind the beam, a little rolly now with the shortened sail, the radar is acting up a bit not wanting to go into its standby mode but otherwise works and its nice sailing slow, this is almost perfect sailing weather.

748PM Ship at 6.22 miles relative bearing (RB 135’)

I often log ships even if they look far off and harmless just so I have their position marked and I can check the log in 20 minutes to roughly establish their course and speed determining if we are anywhere near a collision course. The way I normally sleep at night, at least for up to a few hours at a time. I set several alarms. One on the GPS that beeps if I go off course, another one for the depth finder if I’m closer to shore just incase I get into shallower water (I may set it to 200’ if I’m sailing coastal, this gives me plenty of warning before I hit a reef or an island, usually. Fortunately I’ve never had to have it go off to save my butt, I usually pay close attention near shore, and then slack off a bit with the navigation when I get 20 plus miles offshore. Finally I set the radar with a “guard zone” alarm. You can set it anywhere from 0 to 20 miles out to look for ships and it beeps if it sees any. It usually works best around the 4 to 10 mile range, and I usually tell it to look out about 10 miles, for one minute then standby for 15 minutes and then repeat the cycle, this saves power from running it continuously. The problem I was having was that it wouldn’t come back on from the standby mode that means I wasn’t protected by the alarm. I was able to still use it by not using the standby mode, just leaving it on, I had plenty of power anyway. I eventually fixed the problem by ‘resetting’ the radar to default settings so it’s fine now. The alarm works GREAT!! It almost always sees ships before I can, and always sees the ships I can see, so it has now proven to be a very reliable and useful tool. I don’t think I would get half as much sleep without it as I would want to wake up every 30 minutes or so to do a visual look. Now at night I wake up several times to check on things but I don’t feel a need to fully wake up and do a thorough watch for ships, the radar is much better at that than I am. It almost always picks up ships (even small sailboats) well before I can see them.

12/22/09 1:10AM. 9.45N, 78.08W, 4kts, 260’ Only 28NM to go YAY! Just ran a spot check.

I know, I didn’t make a log for like six hours, oh well, there just wasn’t much going on, I was probably reading and sleeping.

2:56AM, 9.43N, 78.14W 3.2kts, 250’, sleeping well!

4:06AM, 9.41N, 78.17.5W, 245’ 3.3Kts

5:00AM, 9.4N, 78.20.5W 4kts, 250’

7:13AM 9.37N, 78.29.5W, 4kts, 260’

11:30AM Hook down in Eastern Holandes Cays, San Blas, Panama. “The Hot Tub Anchorage” used motor 30 minutes, less than one hour the entire 200 mile trip. I´ll add pictures soon!

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