Our trip as told by our Simrad NSE Display

 

Our trip started in Nargana in Eastern Panama (San Blas Islands). The first three days took us from Nargana to Esnesdup to the West Lemon Cayes and to Porvineer (Click on map for larger view and see burgandy line). On day four we went from Porvineer to Portobello (burgandy line) and on day five we left Portobello and arrived in Bocas on day 6 (see red line). 

 These are screen shots taken from our one year old Simrad NSE-8 Multifunction display. On the chart we are the solid black vessel icon. In the above screen shot we are leaving Portobello and can see three container ships heading to the north and northeast of us. These targets are aquired using our Simrad NAIS300 Automatic Idendification System (AIS) transponder. Water depth is shown on the right side of the screen, notice that the water temperature is 75.6 degrees.

 The above shot shows a container ship (Ever Diadem) that will be passing across our bow. The extension line in front of the icon represents the vessels course, the end of the extension line is where the vessel will be in 10 minutes. So the ship will be crossing our bow in 10 minutes and our extension line shows that we will be a fair distance from his position in the same 10 minutes.

 The above shows the information we receive from Ever Diadem's AIS signal. Its a very large ship at 968' long. Our closest point of approach (CPA) is 1.46 miles and our time to closest approach is almost 13 minutes. This ship was headed to Charleston.

 Here's the data on Hercules Leader

 Lots of ships just to the north of the Panama Canal. Here we are watching Hercules Leader to make sure he changes course to pass our stern (he does).

 A lot of AIS targets around the Panama Canal, not surprising considering the amount of ships that transit the canal every day.

 Hercules Leader's course now showing that he'll pass our stern

 Couga was our most challenging ship. He acknowledged out position and told us to stay on our current course and heading. However he failed to change his course and we remained on a collision course for 20 minutes until I called him again with our position. Finally understanding that we were a small sailaboat (he was looking for a large ship) he changed course as we were safe to continue on.

 Couga finally changing course to our stern

 The above radar screen shows numerous AIS targets at the entrance of the Panama Canal (towards the center of the radar scope) as well as targets inside the Panama Canal (towards the left hand side of the radar scope). It was need to see boats actually transiting the canal.

 Most of the ships closest to us were at anchor

 Here we are watching the US Coast Guard following us. On the chart screen the Coast Guard cutter (large ship) is the large red target furthest behind us. The smaller red target between the cutter and Bruadair is the launch approaching us with the boarding party.

 All of these targets are rain squalls and there were quite a few behind us. On the radar scope the darker the color the more dense the rain. So where it is light blue or yellow the rain is light but where it is orange and especially red the rain is very dense. We use these colors to identify a path through the weakest path in the squall if we can't go around it. On the chart display all targets including rain shows up as one solid color despite its return strength.

 We think we're going to go between these two squalls ahead of us .....

 But the squall keeps growing until its one large one, so we punch through it at the narrowest point

 But it keeps growing into one large squall and we're stuck in the middle of it. Fortunately there is no lightening and the fresh water really does good to wash the salt off the boat. At this point since it is dark outside and visibility is nill with the rain we are now "flying IFR", instrument navigation only.

 Here we are approaching Crawl Caye Channel, the eastern entrance to the Bocas Del Toro area. The red you see is the radar overlaid onto the chart display. We have one MARPA target, a catamaran that is being tracked by our radar (black circle with extension line near the center of the chart display).

After our crossing from Portobello we spend our first night in the center of Dolphin Bay. To the west of Dolphin Bay is a bay known as the Dark Lands. Actually, the expats and gringos here call it the Dark Lands, the locals refer to it as Buena Vista (beautiful view). It is truly one of the most beautiful bays in this area and one of our favorites.