Grenada – Bonaire – San Blas Islands Panama

We left Prickly Bay Grenada realising that this would be the point we complete our circumnavigation. Although we started in Greece, the planned route avoiding passing Yemen and Somalia up through the Suez Canal, takes us back via South Africa and The Caribbean again. Ironically at the start of this journey we avoided another piracy problem by staying well off the coast of Venezuela. Unlike Yemen and Somalia, Venezuela is a country we would have liked to visit, but regrettably the break down of law and order in some areas, and reports of attacks on yachts have made it a no go area. We took a diversion en-route to our next stop and sailed well off the coast. When we left, the trade winds were blowing from a more South Easterly direction so that meant a good downwind sail as we headed North West from Grenada.

 It took us three days to get to Bonaire a distance of 400 nautical miles. We had a really good sail and even caught a 9kg Dorada fish on the way.  Our watch system is:

 21:00 - 00:00   Caroline, because Michael gets sleepy early

00:00 - 03:00   Michael, because Caroline needs to sleep by then

03:00 - 06:00   Caroline as she is nearly always restless in the early hours

06:00 - 09:00   Michael because he is an early riser and Caroline is a good stay in bed morning sleeper!

During the day we do not have set watch system, one or both of us keeps watch.

It is not permitted to anchor anywhere in Bonaire, yachts must use a mooring buoy or go into the marina. We took up one of two remaining free mooring buoys next to the cruise ship docks and the very popular Karels Bar. This was convenient for the town but, especially as it was carnival weekend, very noisy at night.  There was no choice; we had to join in! The carnival parade the next day was very South American in style, lots of colourful, flamboyant costumes, feathers, glitter and dancing to the very loud music. We met some interesting people in Bonaire including several other yachting couples going the same way as us.

Bonaire is a Dutch island and a municipality of The Netherlands although not part of the EU. They all seem to be linguists: Dutch is the official language, Papiamento the spoken language, Spanish as there are many workers from South America and everybody speaks English.  The island has just under 16,000 inhabitants, is mostly flat and is surrounded by pristine clear water making it a very good place to snorkel and go diving. We hired a scooter and discovered a fantastic blue water lagoon on the East side of the island and an inland lake with flamingos.  The docks can accept two cruise ships and some of them are huge, one holding 3600 passengers and about 1200 crew! That means the tiny island of 16,000 has on some days 6000-7000 tourists visit the small town of Kralendijk.

Michael fixed the water-maker (makes 35 litres an hour fresh water from sea water) and Caroline prepared lots of passage meals in advance for the next stage of our journey. A good choice, as Michael is not a good cook and Caroline’s knowledge of pressure intensifiers is not that good. Unfortunately after making over 200 litres of water, the water maker developed another problem in that the brushes for the primary pump motor wore out and a replacement set are now being sent to Panama to await our arrival. They should have arrived with the pressure intensifier but DHL managed to break the packaging box and lost them. In fact our spare parts from Sicily, where the water maker is manufactured, had an interesting journey getting to the next island Trinidad before someone put it on a plane to Amsterdam and then to East Midlands Airport! It crossed the Atlantic three times, went to Venezuela and Panama three times each before finally arriving in Grenada. We are still waiting for an explanation from DHL!

We left Bonaire for the 737 nautical mile journey to The San Blas Islands which are a located just off the coast of Panama about 80 miles away from the entrance to the Panama Canal. Again we took a North Westerly heading, before turning East to avoid a gale blowing off the coast of Columbia. Although we avoided the gale, it was still a rough passage with winds gusting up to Force 7, which is classed as a ‘near gale’.  The trade winds that blow across The Atlantic and through The Caribbean all finally end up hitting the coast of Columbia and Central America. This causes a build up of huge waves and the area is renowned for offering sailors a roller coaster passage to Panama. Some of the waves were monstrous and certainly not for the faint hearted! One huge wave knocked one of our lifebuoys and our extended danbuoy (a sort of floating pole with a flag on it as a rescue aid) off. We thought it would be a good chance to practice a ‘man overboard’ rescue drill. We decided however, in the huge following seas, it would be too dangerous to try and recover it, so left it to float away. The frightening thing is; it was out of sight within less than a minute of being washed overboard. This equipment is supposed to help locate and assist a person who has fallen overboard. But in seas like that, stay clipped on and make sure there is absolutely no possibility of falling overboard. Just don’t go there!

We also lost our ability to send and receive e-mails at sea. The Iridium Satellite phone and Internet system was not working.  Michael tried for hours messing about with the configuration, but to no avail. We had to wait until we could call the company from Panama. We were able to use the SSB HF radio (a long range short wave radio set) and made contact with an American yacht UNISON and asked them to send an e-mail to son Paul, saying we were well and what had happened. They kindly did this for us. It put our minds at rest as if the rescue items washed overboard were found, they were marked with the name of the yacht and our international registration number!

We caught what must have been a big fish, (really, it must have been at least this------big!), it broke the line under tremendous strain and that was the one that got away! After a fast passage of just over 4 days, on late on Saturday afternoon 28 February we reached The San Blas Islands and anchored off the small island of Porvenir. This small island surrounded by reefs, with palm trees overhanging the white sandy shoreline really was a ‘tropical island’. We both had a feeling of great excitement: This was Central America, Panama and we were most definitely on our way. As we are a dry boat on passage, a few cold beers went down very well!

Michael & Caroline

Golden Spirit of Islay