I’m not going to post the log but rather give a few highlights. First there was the Dilemma as to when to depart. I don’t think most other boats experience the same issues since they have big motors and plenty of fuel they can pretty accurately plan their arrival time in spite of the wind or lack of it. I usually try to plan my passages so that I can sail all or the majority of it when possible. Now from Isla Grande to Chichime San Blas is about 45 miles. Even motoring at 4.5 kts were talking 10 hours, so for example if I left at the earliest feasible time to allow for visual navigation say 7 AM I would be arriving at 5 PM, just a little too late to see the reefs on the way in to the islands, and no margin of safety. I usually try to plan the arrivals to new islands (especially when there are reefs and shoals to be negotiated) for 4 PM at the very latest. This brings up the option of leaving around 6 PM but that would mean I wouldn’t be able to arrive for at least 14 hours to make a daylight approach around 8 AM so I would have to average no more than around 3 kts and have to sail all night. SO, my solution, imperfect as it may be, was to leave around 3 AM, giving me plenty of time to arrive before dark in San Blas. Only down side was that I would have to leave Isla Grande in the dark which wasn’t too bad since it was more or less straight forward and I had already sailed in once so I had a track on the GPS.

So, I was finally underway to San Blas around 3:30 AM, Dinghy stowed away on deck, and motor sailing along at about 4 kts, I can do 5 kts, almost 6, but slower conserves a lot of fuel and I had plenty of time plus I didn’t want to have to buy fuel before Columbia almost a month away. By around 10 AM several of the big fast boats that left the same area were almost caught up with me, and inevitably arrived to their destinations in San Blas well before me, no big deal. I managed to sail only a very small part of this trip, and motor sail maybe half of it. The majority of the time is was just the diesel getting us there. No fish, nothing exciting, but a nice smooth motor-sail in very calm wind and seas. I think I arrived in Chichime around 2 PM or so with plenty of daylight to spare. I took a picture of the anchorage from the guide that should be on the web site, basically its just two small islands and a reef, with one very tiny little island near the entrance. Tiny as in one or two palm trees, maybe 20’ wide. While I was a little nervous during the approach (as usual) once again it turned out to be rather straight-forward, no problems.

Within about 30 seconds of having the anchor down the local Kuna Indians have there dug-out Canoes paddled out to your boat and are offering local hand-crafts, fish, lobster, crab, etc. If you don’t buy anything they start a little begging routing, asking if you have any magazines, chocolate, cooking oil, rice, onions, the list goes on! Funny, I don’t think any of them asked for money. Chichime probably isn’t the nicest anchorage in San Blas but it’s easy to navigate your way in, and there is plenty of decent snorkeling, and the local Kunas are friendly enough. The area is small enough that I didn’t even deploy the dinghy, rather I explored the two small islands and one tiny one simply by swimming from one to the next. There are about 6 families total on two of the islands in Chichime with maybe 5 to 7 in each family, living, it what looks like a little palapa hut. More or less primitive, with no lights, electricity, most of them don’t have motors on their boats. A few did have cell phones, and on sunny days would paddle out and ask if I had enough solar-power to charge their phones, which of course was no problem. Then the kids caught on that I had a first aid kit so I would get a daily canoe of the wounded after a few days, typically cuts scrapes etc. Finally just before I left I even started getting pitchers, coolers, etc, things that needed glued or epoxied for repair, but over all considering that your visiting their islands I would say they weren’t too demanding. After several days of swimming, snorkeling and just plain relaxing I was off to another Island group, the West Lemon Cays, only a few miles away.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tagged with: • •

Filed under: sailing

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!