Lunch in San Ignacio

This morning I went into the village with Jaime and we bought some gas, I was pleasantly surprised that it was only $3.80 a gallon, that's the least we've paid for gas ever in the San Blas. So I took 15 gallons and Jaime 5. While at the central supply store for the island I also bought a bottle of 2006 Casillero del Diablo, a bottle of Chilean wine as a gift for Bryan and Debbie on Uhane. We're supposed to meet up with them in four or five weeks and they are transporting our two new solar panels from Panama City, so a bottle of wine should be a nice thank you gift. Then at noon all six of us from Bruadair, Nereia and Silver Sea went into San Ignacio for a catered lunch. Yesterday the restaurant told us they were out of food so we made arrangements with local Kuna lady named Gabsus for a catered lunch for today. We arrived and a table was neatly set and waiting for us. Our lunch was served by Gabsus and we each had a huge plate full of seasoned rice, lobster sautéed with vegetables and lots of french fries, the best I've ever had. As we ate lunch many of the young Kuna children peered into the windows watching us, I'm sure we were fun entertainment for the kids as it's a rare site to see gringos eating in town. Two of the boys and one girl put on a show for us singing and dancing. Outside tienda boys were playing jacks, something I haven't seen kids play in a long time.

Gabsus owns the tienda where we ate our lunch today. Four years ago after the loss of her five year old girl Gabsus began baking and selling bread saving enough money to open the tienda she has now. It's always been my favorite tienda on the island and conveniently located right across the basketball court. She sells everything from fabrics, threads, super glue, food items, beverages, flip flops and more. And she's very friendly and trying to learn English, though she did give David a lecture about not knowing enough Spanish considering we've been to this island numerous times over the past two years. David and Dan stayed after lunch to learn how to make bread, I hear the instructions went well.

While David was back in the village learning to make bread I returned to Bruadair and had three boys waiting for me. Aladio who visits us daily brought two of his friends today, Gediel Morales and Idonio Montero. I invited them aboard and gave them a tour of the boat, they were quite impressed and complemented saying we had a beautiful home. They enjoyed looking through various books but found the English to Spanish dictionary the most fascinating. Then they played with my camera and took quite a few photos of themselves, some pretty good. When David returned I had to tell the boys it was time to go, they promised to return tomorrow. David has a low tolerance for kids while I really enjoy them so I may have to keep the boys in their dugout tomorrow.

Yep, we bought more lobster today. As many times as we say we won't buy anymore it's hard to pass them up, today's was 15 for $3 and these were pretty good size ones. That price also included two crabs of about 1.5 pounds each. The gem was when a boat stopped by and offered us a four pound crab, the claws were as large as our hands! Not sure how we'll get that one in the pot but for $1 a pound we'll figure something out. As you guessed, we love seafood.

Lobsters and more

There are three species of lobsters here in the San Blas Islands. The spiny lobster is probably the most commonly known and can grow to very large sizes, we've seen them greater than five pounds at times, the largest we've seen was last year at about 8 pounds. For spiny lobsters less than two pounds each we usually pay a dollar or two each, over two pounds they run from $3.50 to $5 a pound and are typically sold to the lobster planes that fly in daily. The lobster divers will free dive up to 100' to collect the larger ones.

The second species is the spotted spiny lobsters. They look just like the spiny lobsters however their shell is coated with white spots and these are typically referred to as langostinos. Being a smaller species adults usually average six to eight inches in total length. For these we usually pay 25 to 50 cents each but sometimes get even better deals. They're the perfect size tails for snacking on. Langostinos are usually found in shallower waters. Both the spiny and spotted spiny lobsters are absent of any large claws like one would see in the lobsters from Maine.

The slippery lobster is the third species found here, and it doesn't look like a lobster by any means. It looks more like an over grown pill bug being rectangular in shape with a very heavy armor. We have seen them in sizes ranging from 8" to 14" and for their size they contain an abundance of meat. The flavor of slippery lobsters are a little different too, almost a cross of crab and lobster, excellent tasting. We don't see these as often as they typically live in much deeper waters but when we are offered one we rarely turn it down. Lobsters are excellent in almost anything including omelets, fajitas, Asian dishes or just with cocktail sauce.

The coral crabs here are also excellent and the males can have very large claws, sometimes larger than my hand. Normally we will pay about $1 or $2 for a two pound crab, four pound crabs usually go for $5 on average. Excellent for making crab bisque or crab casserole, and of course excellent when eaten right out of the shell.

Pulpo, or octopus, is also very popular among the Kunas and is usually offered to us on a regular basis however we're not sure how to clean or prepare it so we've always passed. Some of the octopus here are quite large. Fisherman also stop by daily here in the Eastern San Blas and typical offerings include snappers, groupers, porgies, tunas and mackerels. When we're not stocked up on crustaceans we usually will buy a fresh fish or two. We recently found out that some of the islands here have an excellent supply of clams which we haven't indulged in during our past two visits here but hope to do so this visit.

San Ignacio de Tupile

We went ashore this morning with Dan, Jamie, Pixie and George and walked around the village. It was amazing how many kids kept running up to me calling me by name. At the west end of the village we met a man that raises sea turtles and releases them when they're a couple years old. He is trying to revive the sea turtle population on his own. He had about a dozen turtles in his pen. Unfortunately we arrived to late for the basketball game. After walking and meeting a lot of people we inquired about lunch at the only restaurant but they were out of food, and it wasn't even noon yet. But we did make arrangements for lunch tomorrow with a Kuna family who will cook us a typical Kuna meal with lobster, rice, lentils and vegetables for $7 a person. Should be fun. There was a Colombian trading boat at the public dock so I inquired about buying gasoline. He has plenty so I'll go back and get some tomorrow. With the lack of sun and wind we've been having to use our Honda generator a lot to keep the batteries up so we've been going through our gas quickly.

This afternoon Dan and I went snorkeling. It was pretty good and while I saw a lot of very large snappers and mackerels I didn't shoot any as we have a lot of lobster on the boat. Lunch today was lobster tails and cocktail sauce. I know, you're feeling sorry for us right now... One of the guys brought buy huge crabs today but we'll wait until tomorrow before we buy any, looking forward to some of David's crab bisque. Our snorkeling today was on the outside of the reef. The Caribbean is amazingly flat right now so it was nice to snorkel the outside of the reef with no swells whatsoever.

After dropping Dan off on his boat I returned to Bruadair where Aladio was waiting for me. He's the boy that visited with us back in April and hung out on our boat like it was his own. He brought me three plantains as a gift so I gave him two magazines. Since I was still in my swim suit I wanted to take a look at the hull to see where the log hit us and to make sure we had no damage, so I put on my snorkel gear and dove in the water. Aladio jumped in my dingy and put on my spare snorkel gear and swam with me. We were competing to see who could dive the furthest and had a lot of fun, we swam together for almost an hour. Tomorrow he has to go to the fields on the mainland with his father to work the farm, and they leave at 5am. Then he returns at 10am for school but said he would be back again in the afternoon to swim some more. He's a neat kid, friendly and never asks for anything.

Not sure what's for dinner tonight but I suspect it'll have lobster in it.

5 Years

It was November 8 2004 when we untied our docklines and sailed out of Kemah Texas for this adventure of a lifetime. Five years, where did the time go. It seems like it was just yesterday when we sailed by the Kemah Boardwalk with family and friends waving to us, the most nervous day of my life. But what a wonderful five years it's been traveling from Texas along teh Gulf of Mexico to Florida and on to Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and Colombia. Full of adventures, memories and new friends. I'm feeling less of a novice today and more of a seasoned cruiser. It's a good feeling. Who knows how many more years of cruising are ahead of us, David and I are still in agreement that we'll continue cruising as long as we enjoy it, and so far we still enjoy it.

And I forgot to mention in yesterday's post about our crossing from Colombia to the San Blas Islands, just as we were south of the Rosario Islands along the Colombian coast we hit a submerged tree about two feet in diameter and 12 feet long. First hit was on the bow then as the tree swung slightly it hit again on the port beam. After the hit I had to go through the boat inspecting for integrity and making sure we weren't holed and taking on water. Fortunately all was well but I need to get into the water today and inspect the hull and make sure that we don't have any structural damage.

It's been busy on the water today as basketball players from various villages have been coming by water taxi to San Ignacio for a day of basketball games. We're headed in shortly to walk the village and watch some of the games. Last night David used some of the lobster and made lobster fajitas with Spanish rice and beans. Very good.

Anything but ordinary

Normally our crossings are simple and occasionally we've had some excitement along the way but this trip from Cholon to the San Blas Islands was anything but ordinary. Upon leaving Colombia we had a small counter current of about .3 knots slowing us down but not considerably. Once further offshore the counter current became stronger slowing us down at times to less than 4 knots causing me some concern as with an average speed of less than 5 knots we would have arrived to the San Blas after dark, a dangerous thing as we would not be able to see any reefs or shoals. But as luck would have it the second half of the trip the currents turned in our favor and overall we averaged 5.2 knots.

Not far off the Colombian coast a while Egret landed on Bruadair and settled in under the boom for a short while for some rest before taking off again. A small brown bird with an orange breast landed on the boat Friday morning about 40 miles off the coast of Panama and stayed for three hours before taking off. He moved about the cabin top mostly napping and at one time did a full preening of his feathers.

As is usual for this passage between Colombia and Panama we encountered a few small squalls which usually take about 15 minutes to go through and provides us with a nice fresh water rinse ridding the salt from the boat, at least temporarily. And when we encounter a squall the winds usually pick up, sometimes up to 25 knots. But at half past midnight, 30 minutes into my off watch nap, David woke me asking for help. We were just entering one of the largest squalls that we've ever encountered which according to radar was 10 miles long and about 9 miles deep. We had a reefed mainsail and staysail up. What was not ordinary about this squall is the winds picked up to a sustained 35 to 40 knots with gusts peaking to 65 knots of wind. We were the lead boat and radioed back to Nereia and Silver Sea which gave them enough time to prepare. Aside from the strong winds the building seas were crashing in on us from every direction spraying water everywhere and at times drenching us as if we were in a swimming pool. I took the helm from David and he went below and grabbed out safety harnesses and tethers, we quickly attached ourselves to the boat in the cockpit. With the winds above 35 knots we were definitely overpowered and we were healed over so far with the rail in the water. We were both scared and concerned but kept a clear head and made the best decisions we could. What we should have done was shorten sail but I decided it was too dangerous for one of to go forward and take down the staysail or put a second reef in the main sail. Knowing that we could replace a sail but not one of us the decision was made to ease off on both sails to spill the wind, causing our sails to flog heavily at times. Why the sails didn't shred is beyond me. For over an hour we steered by hand trying to work out way out of the squall but it was slow going. The storm was so strong that it tore Silver Sea's BBQ off of their rail and tore Nereia's two wind instrument indicators off the top of their mast. Fortunately for us we didn't suffer any casualties. What we did decide is that at some point when we can afford it we need to get a roller furling unit for the staysail so that we can safely reduce sail from the cockpit. They're not cheap and we would have to buy a new sail, but some things just need to be done.

Then as to make up for our exciting night mother nature shined down on us at sunrise. With clearing skies and a beautiful sunrise behind us the seas were flattening and winds shifting to our beam. It was a wonderful sail for the last 40 miles, it was like being in a vintage convertible driving down an open road with no traffic and with someone special sitting next to you to enjoy it with. And to top it off we saw two pods of pilot whales headed in the opposite direction, our first whale spotting since leaving Texas.

Just when we started entering the shoals near San Ignacio de Tupile the sky opened up and down came heavy rain, visibility in front of the boat was only about 50 feet. Fortunately we had a track of our trip on our chart plotter so we slowly weaved our way in through the shoals. Because of the reduced visibility we decided to drop anchor in flat waters about 100' off the coast of mainland Panama and only a half mile from San Ignacio. Within 30 minutes of dropping anchor Alfrenzo paddled by and stopped to say hi, he remembered us from our previous visits and after a brief conversation we bought 10 lobsters for $5 and he was on his way back home. A great way to be welcomed into the San Blas.

This morning we raised anchor and moved closer to the village while we had clear skies. Some kids and even a couple adults have paddled out to say hi and even asked if Ashley was still on board. Later today we hope to go ashore, but there's always tomorrow!