Off to Panama

Icarian is enjoying the last few days at anchor in Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador. We have very much enjoyed our stay here. This is a very beautiful country and we would not hesitate to recommend it to everyone.
Our yearly maintenance is complete. Icarian’s decks have received a full refit with new seams, new plugs and a complete sanding to make it look like a newly laid deck. The heads have been rebuilt and new bilge pump to name just a few jobs Brian managed to fit in this year. Marilyn’s task has been to ready the below deck storage to take on supplies for approximately 3 months of staples.
We are setting sail on November 14th, 2007 and heading for Panama City.
Expected duration should be about 5 days. Our first order of business will be to book our transit date to go through the Panama Canal. We are hoping to get December 12th as our niece Kelsi is flying down to transit the Canal with us. We hope this works in with the powers that be.
In Panama City we need to provision as we have never done before.
Our destination is the San Blas Islands of Panama and stores as we know them are non-existent. We will hopefully be able to trade for fresh food with the Kuna Indians but other than that we need to be self-sufficient. We have done lots of reading research and can hardly wait to enter a world so different to any we have visited so far. There are more than 340 Islands in this chain so that should give us lots of destination options. We also hope to be in Cartagena, Columbia when the rainy season starts again next June.
We have changed from our web-site this season to another format, which will allow us to update you more regularly via e-mail as to what we are up to. We will plug pictures into our blog whenever we have Internet coverage.
So we are off!!

Pictures: A waterfall outside Banos, the flower market in Cuenca, and a massive cathedral in Cuenca which took up a whole city block!!

Bring on year 4!!

It is mid October and Brian and Marilyn are all set to return to Ecuador and Icarian. Our daughter Melanie was wed to James in Vancouver on October 6th and the wedding was a huge success. Marilyn made the wedding dress (a real labour of love) which turned out to be just what the bride wanted - a huge relief! It was wonderful to be part of this special event and so satisfying to see everyone so happy.
Weddings mean getting together with family and friends and we really got to enjoy everyone this year.

While Marilyn was home with her sewing project, Brian was doing maintenance on Icarian. Her teak decks are now in good shape with all the plugs replaced and hopefully sealed.Some mechanical maintenance was also in order and now we are set for another year of cruising.
Our plan is to be back on board by about the 20th of October where we will spend a few weeks getting all the systems like the fridge and freezer up and running again. We will need to do a major re-provisioning with a departure date around mid November. Our plan is to once again head towards the Western Islands of Panama as this route has proved to be very favourable. Then on to Panama City where we will start planning our transit of the Panama Canal. Hopefully this will happen about mid December and we can celebrate Christmas on the Caribbean side.
We plan to spend most of this cruising season in the San Blas Islands, which number over 300, and then summer over in Cartagena Colombia next year.

So that is it from here. We are excited to be on to year number 4 and will keep you all posted as we go.
Happy Cruising!

PS...yes that is black steam puffing out of the volcano just outside Banos, Ecuador