January 2008

January 21 2008
Location: Bocas del Toro, Panama
Nautical Miles Traveled: 0

Wow, what a busy month for us. We’re just about ready to make our departure from Bocas del Toro and hope to take some time getting to the San Blas Islands where we would like to catch up with some old friends. Ideal stops along the way would be the Chagres River, Colon, Portobello and Isla Linton. We were wanting to get to Cartagena Colombia quickly as we’re two months behind on our boat survey for insurance purposes, but last week we met Tracey on Land Fall. He and his beautiful wife just pulled into Bocas and he’s a certified marine surveyor. So if we can arrange it we’ll have Tracey to do our survey here in the next week. Our new Lofrans Tigres electric windlass arrived but unfortunately we can’t install it right now. We need to have a custom made stainless steel bracket made for it so that it will fit properly over our bow sprit. Cartagena will be an ideal place to get it done. Our four gallons of bottom paint and three gallons of primer arrived as well. We’ll need that for our bottom job in Cartagena as well. Everything is coming together nicely and we hope to be underway shortly. Then we’ll have some new and exciting things to add to our Ship’s Log. By the way, thanks for all the emails asking how we’re doing and where we are. It really is hard to find different ways to write about the same thing over and over. We sure didn’t expect to be in Bocas del Toro this long but with so many interruptions the timing to leave just wasn’t there until now.

Last week we invited our new friends from Boisterous over for dinner. Paul and Lora are sailing on their Cheoy Lee 41 sailboat with their five boys (yes, five). The boys range from 3 to 14 years and are a great bunch of well behaved young guys. I’m not sure how they all stay sane all the time but we really enjoy their company. So Paul, Lora and the boys came over for a few hours. David made fish and rice and green beans. Lora made some brownies and also brought over some garlic bread. Before everyone got out of the dingy Lora gave me the bread. I put the bread up on deck and then helped everyone out of the dingy. We made our way down below, enjoyed great conversations and excellent food. It wasn’t until I was helping everyone back into the dingy after dinner that we noticed the garlic bread still sitting up on deck. Oh well, there was more than enough food anyway.

(Warren, William, Paulie, Henry, Parker, Paul and Lora)

William and Henry, the two older boys, have been great fishing buddies. We’ve fished off our boat, their boat, the dingy and from the docks in the marina. Unfortunately we’ve only caught some small ones but maybe we’ll catch the big one soon. After dinner the other night and before leaving William, Henry and I caught a really nice Crevalle Jack. There were so many around the boat feeding heavily on small bait fish that all it took from us was a small unbaited hook.

We’ve also had some really big boats pull into Bocas del Toro recently. Cruise ships have now become a regular sighting around here, usually anchoring not too far from us. This is one of the bigger ones that came in this month. The cruise ships pull in only for about four hours then get going again. While these cruisers may see a lot of places in such a short amount of time, how much do they really get to see?

Our regular seafood supplier hasn’t’ been around for a month now but a new guy has started making rounds in the anchorage. He comes through once a week with all sorts of fresh fruits and vegetables. This day we bought some great grapefruits at 10 cents a piece. Here in this photo Boisterous is making their purchase while some of the boys check out the space in this large dugout.

When we first arrived in Bocas del Toro many months ago it was a nice, quiet anchorage with very little going on. Now, as tourist season is high, we see much more activities. Jet skis, party boats and even small catamarans make their way occasionally through the anchorage. Nothing annoying though.

Bocas del Toro has been a great place but it will be exciting to be back under way and making our way to new places. Be sure to check back in a couple weeks just to make sure we actually left! Oh, and for all you experienced fisherman out there if you have any good tips on landing grouper or snapper on a rod please send us an email, our tactics aren’t very productive so new tips would be appreciated.

January 29 2008
Location: Bocas del Toro, Panama
Nautical Miles Traveled: 0

Today Tracy from s/v Land Fall came over and did our insurance survey. He’s a certified SAMS surveyor so we took advantage of his services while we could, there are no other certified surveyors anywhere near us. A marine survey is a complete inspection of the boat including electrical, electronics, rigging, structural and so on. A surveyor inspects the boat to make sure all systems are compliant with regulations and notes any deficiencies and also notes the current market value and replacement value of the boat. So Tracy spent almost seven hours on Bruadair and did a very good job on the survey, we were very pleased and highly recommend him to any cruiser. We had only one issue come up, we needed to add a GFCI outlet on each of the two a/c electrical circuits. That will be an easy and inexpensive repair. We were also pleased with Tracy’s comment about our boat;

“Bruadair” is an extraordinarily well crafted vessel that displays a history of meticulous maintenance by a knowledgeable owner and relatively light use for her age. Additionally, she has been updated over the course of the past year with numerous top of the line electrical and navigation systems that have been professionally installed. The boat was exceptionally clean and only a very small amount of water was found in her bilges. She was a pleasure to survey. Overall, this vessel is well suited for her intended purpose of coastal cruising and Caribbean Cruising.”

Now that our survey is done we’re ready to get moving. After checking the weather for the coastal passage East to Colon it appears that we may be stuck in Bocas for a short bit longer. While the winds are light the seas are high so we’ll wait until they settle a little.