Off to the San Blas

We are now sitting at anchor, our boat is a mess, but more importantly the wind generator is humming away making electricity and the light breeze has cooled the boat down.

Leaving Red Frog was a bit of an ordeal, what else is new. We went to start the motor, no click. No click? No cranking?...... No problem, we remembered the feeding of wires for the wind generator passed the ignition. Pulling back the engine panel revealed the loose wire and the Perkins, perked up very quickly. Then we backed out of the marina and noticed Cypraea was a bit sluggish. Maxing out at 1.3 knots, we decided we needed to clean the bottom sooner rather than later. We thought we could pass on the $80 fee and do it ourselves. So we turned the corner out of Red Frog Marina and set the hook. Donning our snorkel gear Jennie and I had the bottom cleaned in 30 minutes. When we took off for town we gained 4 knots in our cruising speed. an hour later we were setting the hook. To celebrate we went for dinner at El Ultimo Refugio and had a wonderful meal to cap the day and fuel up for dive class the next day.

 

The next three days were great fun. For those of you who have not tried scuba, try it. We did our PADI open water dive course, and got to dive some pretty awesome coral reefs, though they were a bit over fished. The course was informative, and Jennie and I were lucky to pretty much have our own instructor for the course. The other girl kept having important hangovers to cure and was postponing her diving. It was a lot of stuff to go through in 3 days, and we were exhausted after. On the last day we dove for 3 hrs under the water.

 

Now Jennie and I are busy cleaning and provisioning for the San Blas. Most of the stores are closed this weekend for holidays, and every boat in Bocas seems to be moving Panamanians back and forth from the mainland. The next weather window we will be off, hopefully. We will have pretty spotty internet, so expect few posts, but I will try to accumulate and add our stories when we get back to civilization. Pictures too!!!