It Has Been A Long Time!

Welcome to our Blog. Our latest entry always comes up first... 
Click this link if you want to start at the beginning:
FIRST BLOG ENTRY
If you want to start at the beginning of our trip:
START OF TRIP
If you want to see the story of our trip from South Carolina
(where we bought the boat)
 to Lake Ontario Click this link:
  SOUTH CAROLINA

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It has been a very long time, but since we left Shelter Bay we have had virtually NO INTERNET!  We are in the San Blas Islands in the south east end of Panama.  

On November 5th we sailed from Shelter Bay 21 nautical miles to Portobello, Panama.  This community is the home to 4 forts that its said were built to protect Panama's gold in days gone by...  

Most of the forts have disappeared but what remains was great fun to explore. We anchored in the main anchorage within view of the town.  Our first impression was that many of the boats here don't look like they have moved in a very long time.  

We spent a couple of days and checked out the small town and found the local yachty bar called Captain Jacks...  And yes, there really is a Captain Jack who lives on one of the boats that hasn't moved for a very long time....

From Portobello we made our way to Linton, Panama.  This is not much more than a very small village and a safe anchorage for boats making their way to and from the San Blas Islands.

It was here that we had our first medical problem on our trip...  Shelley twisted her wrist in the night and when we got up in the morning, it was hurting so bad we hired a driver to drive us to Colon abut 2 hours away.We spent just over 2 hours in the hospital where Shelley was treated with an IV, x-rays, and a visit with the doctor who decided it wasn't broken but sprained bad enough that he put her in a half cast....  All this cost us $145 plus $100 for the driver and car.  I'm pretty sure this would have cost more at home...

It is now a few weeks later, and Shelley is healing up really well.She only wears the cast at bedtime and yesterday started swimming again...

From Linton we motorsailed to the East Lemon Islands in the San Blas.  What a beautiful place!  It was here that a few other cruisers helped us get our SSB radio working properly.  After months of it not working, it is nice to be able to communicate over long distances again...

After a day or two, we moved from the East Lemons to the East Holandes Islands where we anchored in the "Swimming Pool", a popular anchorage with crystal clear blue water and palm tree covered islands.

A tough day at the office!

Dinghy repairs...

This guy had a really bad day.....

A Kuna home

We met up with our good friends, Bob & Anne from s/v Baloo and Bob and I have gone spearfishing almost every day since...  We have eaten tons of fish in the last week!  Yesterday we caught a 16" Lionfish that weighed almost 2lbs!  WOW!

A Typical FEAST!

My hunting buddy, Bob

Lionfish

The biggest one yet!

Because we are so isolated from everything out here we must burn our own garbage.  This is something that cruisers seem to do together.  We meet on a beach and burn our trash.  We have taken up the task of ridding these otherwise pristine beaches of the tons of plastic trash that has accumulated.  While burning this may not be a perfect solution, it seems better than leaving all this junk around to scar the environment forever...

We found a whale jaw

From time to time we are visited by Kuna Indians who come to our boat in their ulus (dugout canoes) and sell us everything from lobster to vegetables, to beautiful Molas, which are hand stitched art.  Shelley has 6 of these so far.

This is how we buy chicken!

Veggies!

Molas!

We leave you this week, by saying HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all our American friends!
Cheers!