Today we met up with the ARC team to formally enter
Panama at Porvenir island, the administrative centre of the San Blas
group. There is a reef at the entrance to the lagoon at Porvenir,
but this was well marked for us by what Bertie termed a "failboat".
Someone who trusted their GPS too much and didn't use "eyeball navigation"
to avoid the reefs.
This boat has been on the reef for three months but
as you can see it still has flags flying, bimini up, radar dome
and mainsail in its sailbag. Apparently the boat has a
Panamanian owner and the Porvenir authorities are looking after it while
it is "on the hard".
After check-in we motored over to Chichime Cays for
an ARC get-together with a pot-luck (everyone brings something along)
lunch, which was surprisingly well provisioned given all the food had come
from St Lucia. The Kuna's provided coconuts with rum poured in and
there was a group dancing and playing the pipes. Andrea bought a
mola to hang on the wall in
Anastasia.