San Blas - April 2009

Icarian and crew are having a wonderful time in Paradise.The San Blas Islands have everything that we are looking for, lovely weather, amazing warm turquoise blue water, beautiful white sand beaches and reefs alive with coral and fish. Perfect!!
There are very few stores but we get vegetables and fruits delivered weekly by some enterprising Kuna's who provide this service. They load up their panga's with produce from Panama City and make the rounds of all the anchorages.
No lobster or crab though. It is April at the moment and taking seafood except for fish is not allowed. The ban runs March through May every year during mating season. We arrived just after it was in place and will leave before it is lifted so Brian is out of luck this year.

We had our friends Stan and Lynn (Homer's Odyssey) on board for a week. They left their boat in Panama City and flew into Nargana to see what life is like on the Caribbean side. It was great to show them some of our best spots and they are considering coming through the Canal next year.

The Kuna's main mode of transportation is a log dugout called an ulu. They can be sailed or paddled and we attended some fun races where any method of getting them to go was allowed. Cruisers were invited along to be ballast or bailers, whatever was needed and the course was around 3 small islands. Afterwards the Kuna ladies provided us with a typical meal of fish, rice and salad, delicious!
We have so far been staying in the western San Blas moving from island to island as the mood strikes us. At the beginning of May, we will likely start heading east before crossing to Columbia once again.
Hasta Luego!
Marilyn and Brian

Back in the San Blas

Icarian is back in cruising mode and it truly is wonderful.
Since we got such a late start to this cruising season we decided to retrace our steps back to the San Blas in Panama and enjoy the sights that so enchanted us last year. We spent most of February doing the final maintenance jobs on the boat and she is now in great shape.

The weather in Cartagena was sunny and very blustery and that seems to be what is normal this year. We set sail for the Rosario's, a group of Islands very close to Cartagena, on February 22nd and spent a week there enjoying the laid back atmosphere and waiting for a good weather window to cross back to the San Blas Islands. Each day the afternoon winds got up to 20 knots and the weather faxes told us that was as good as we were going to get.

We left 7 a.m. March 4th for the 176 mile crossing in building winds that sustained 20 to 25 knots all the way across. We had wind waves to 8 feet on our beam making it a very wet and rolly ride. We averaged 7 knots of speed and were in the San Blas 26 hours later. There has been a gale blowing ever since so we were very lucky to get here when we did.
Our passage was not without mishap, the captain suffered a stubbed toe, a sore head due to a flapping block and a perfectly good pair of glasses now in Davey Jones' locker and the first mate with her usual queasy 'first day at sea' stomach. Leaving the Rosario's we had a dolphin escort for about an hour. They could be seen rising in the waves right up to our eye level and looking like they were having lots of fun!!

We are now anchored in the Eastern Hollandes Cays in a bay locally known as the Hot Tub. We love it here and will likely spend a few days getting into relaxing mode. The weather is still blustery with short rain showers followed by glorious sunshine moments later. The waters are 83'F. and crystal clear turquoise in color. With palm trees, white sand and many reefs to explore, I think we should be able to fill a couple of months just fine.
Hasta Luego!
Marilyn and Brian