November 1st – November 7th: Providencia, Columbia
After our overnight passage, we were tired, so we settled in for some much-needed naps. I woke up around three in the afternoon, and I heard the guy in the small sailboat to our starboard whistling at us. I was a little disoriented, but then Rosé got up and she saw what he was whistling about. A powerboat that had been anchored off of our starboard bow was heading ...
September 2nd – 3rd, 2014: Shelter Bay Marina – Bocas del Toro (Red Frog Marina)
Free from Shelter Bay at last, we decided to skip the intermediate stops and cruise straight to Red Frog, an overnight passage. The weather forecast was good, but after sunset, we started to get some squalls and a lot of lightning. The seas picked up and were on our beam. We have hydraulic stabilizers, but the starboard fin had been v...
Lightning strikes: maybe once, maybe twice
The one thing that really scares us, and most cruisers, is lightning. There is little you can do to protect your boat from it. You can add a lightning attractor and give it a path to the water, but there’s still no guarantee that you’ll escape damage. Similarly, you can be hit and have little damage. The most common damage is frying the electronics. Our cruising friends on Second Wind...
July 2014: Shelter Bay Marina
Journey to the Free Zone
As we entered July, we decided that we would spend the summer based in Shelter Bay (there was something about that swimming pool) before heading north to Bocas del Toro for the rest of hurricane season. We really wanted to see the San Blas Islands, so we decided that while we were waiting for our next shipment of batteries to arrive, we would go there for a cou...
Panama Canal crossing
May 24th - May 29th: Isla Contadora to Taboga Island
We first went to the moorings at Taboga Island. Our friends from Neko had called both marinas and the Balboa Yacht Club off of Panama City, and all said that they had no space available. We decided to join them at Taboga, which did have available moorings. Taboga is about ten miles from the canal entrance in Balboa, and we had read abou...
May 3rd, 2014: Marina Pez Vela - Playa Dominicalito
We woke up early Saturday to prepare the boat for cruising, topping off the water tanks and hosing all of the dead flying ants off of the deck. The long rain had brought them all out, but quite a few had drowned on the decks. I went to the office to check out and pick up our national Zarpe. Of course, it was sunny that morning, so we were sweating profusely. I was lucky enough to catch a...
