So we left the Swimming Pool.  The wind picked up to 25 knots and was gusting 30+.  We could have moved into the lee of one of the nearby islands, but we were all ready to move.  And with the wind at that level, the best spearfishing was off-limits as the swell was massive.

Familiar Places

We had a brisk sail to the West Hollandes, where we anchored in one of my favorite spots.  We were well-sheltered from the wind for the first night (and had enough to keep cool), but within a day the wind had switched and we were back in the wind-tunnel.  Not entirely a bad thing, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the depth we had to anchor in – it was a little deep for my comfort.  Despite that, we held just fine in the wind-tunnel.

The swell and current were too strong to let us get outside the reef for the best spearfishing and freediving.  We even tried leaving the dinghy inside, and just kicking out to the outer reef – no dice.  The current was ripping, the waves were crashing, and the wind was whipping.  It was worth a shot…

We stayed inside the reef and dove the wall directly next to our boat, which we did just off the mothership – no dinghy required.  There wasn’t much home, but it was nice diving.  On the inhabited island we visited the local Kunas, picked up a love letter for delivery to Chichime (really), and had some laundry done.  Then Lisa and I took hammocks and books to one of the other islands and read, where we met a hippy-Kuna who needed some varnish.  Not a bad day.

Supplies

The next day, the veggie boat came by – and we bought the important stuff:  eggs, fruit, and beer.

Supplies

We had fallen into a routine:  wake up, drink coffee/eat breakfast, then immediately plan the day’s meals.  Cooking was all we talked about, and we kept talking about options until we all got really excited about one.  Then we cooked it.

Luke and Lisa baked almost daily, and when we ran out of flour it was a genuine travesty.  So much of a travesty, that we bothered one of our anchor-buddies for some more flour.  We knew a couple of the boats in the anchorage – but not well enough to really be “friends.”  We chose a big Leopard catamaran because we knew they were Italians, and Italians always have pasta and flour.  Always.  We chose correctly and went home with enough flour to bake another pizza.  Winning.

With flour, there was pizza, bread, pancakes, and crepes.  We ate and drank like kings (and a queen), in a really beautiful place.  But even with that, both Luke and I were getting anxious to start moving again.  While San Blas is really beautiful, really nice to sail in, and truly a paradise – it lacks the epic spearfishing and the occasionally nightlife we’d prefer.  For chartering, just hanging out, or running backpackers – San Blas is a really epic spot.  But I’m not doing that right now.  Right now, I’m sailing around looking for cool spots with big, dumb fish.  And it’s highly-likely that I’ll be back in San Blas for Hurricane Season, I’m not convinced there’s a better spot for that on this side of the world.  So we started talking about where-to-next…

Chichime Again

Lisa had a job coming up and her options for getting to said job were quickly diminishing.  The job was in Chichime, we were about 9 miles away and there was 25 knots of cross-wind.  Her last option was a kayuka (local Kuna dugout), which would have been a very, very wet/rough ride in those conditions.  I caved and we decided to sail back to Chichime.  From anchor up to anchor down it was an hour and a half.  We made great time.  There we hung with Gary, Geoffrey, and saw some friends.  Rachel and Ariel from One World came over from Yansaladup.  Lisa, Luke and I brought hammocks, books, and beer to the Chichime – where we posted up for a couple of hours.  We also met the saltiest guy I’ve met yet, appropriately named Capi Chulo. So salty that he even had the peg-leg limp.  True story.

And then we were bored again.

And we had no water.

And we were out of almost every food item.

No beer.  No rum.  Again.

So we sailed out of Chichime – toward Soledad Miria, where they have something resembling a dock that we could nose S/V NOMAD up to and refill on water.  While we were at it, I sent Luke to buy some rum, some beer, and some Coca Cola.  The necessities.  Luke’s Spanish (though improving) is something between non-existent and horrible, so I was genuinely curious how he’d make-out on his shopping adventure.  He made it back, which was the important part.

Water-filling in Soledad Miria

When we were finally done filling our water tanks, we cast off lines and motored away from Soledad Miria.  We had two choices:  a 20 minute sail to Gunboat Island to spend the night or a longer sail to Porvenir to resupply and think about whether we were heading to Colombia.  We chose Porvenir.

Having learned a bit about this anchorage previously, I anchored much closer to the supplies.  We did most of the resupplying that night, before the sun went down.  A productive day.  The problems started the next morning though…

 

Familiar Places

The Swimming Pool

So we left Green Island with a German hippy onboard (Lisa).  Hippies are always good for a case-study, mostly because I can’t quite grasp the mentality – but I do try.  And the sailing thing is pretty close to hippiedom.  And there are many a sailing hippy.

The good news is our German hippy knew how to cook and clean, and she’d been working on boats for the last few months – which took some of the burden off of me. Luke’s idea of food continues to be popcorn, cookies, and sometimes he splurges and cooks rice.  Though he has taken to baking quite nicely – fresh bread and pizza is a real luxury out here.  In fact, he’s done so damn well at bread and is so fond of pasta – we began calling him Luigi.  The name stuck.

There was no wind for our trip to the Swimming Pool.  So we motored for a couple hours.  I didn’t mind though, because the lack of wind meant we could get to the outside reef and get into the best spearfishing San Blas has to offer.  When we arrived there were no less than 15 yachts anchored there.  We dropped anchor, setup our trampoline-tent-thing, and Luke and I decided to dive.  The diving was phenomenal. We saw nice Dog Snapper, Permit, Cobia (Ling), and Horse Eye Jacks.  Naturally, most of the fish were skittish.  I pulled out every trick in the book – but they insisted on staying just out of range, and just within eyesight.  Though staying within eyesight wasn’t all that impressive as the visibility was probably 100 feet.

Shortly after getting in, I shot a nice Dog Snapper and stuffed it in my wetsuit for safe-keeping.  To date, stuffing them in my wetsuit or keeping them on the shooting line of the speargun has been a solid technique – but I’ve been spoiled.  I’ve been spoiled because there aren’t many sharks where we’ve been diving in San Blas.  Of course, this time there were sharks.  A larger-than-average Bull Shark was the first to show interest, following me around and making a fairly consistent effort to get behind me.  Nothing too worrying, but enough to make me lose the Dog Snapper while I was spinning around trying to keep the man in the grey suit in sight.

I’m pretty sure said shark ended up with said Dog Snapper, as I noticed it missing but wasn’t able to find it. Meh.  I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over that.

The taxman left, I kept diving.  Next up was a bunch of hole-hunting to replace the lost Dog Snapper.  Then came the Horse Eye Jacks.  A fairly large school.  I stuck one of those, and he promptly went apeshit.  Which promptly brought in the sharks again.

This time a Grey Reef Shark, which are arguable as dangerous as the Bull Shark.  This one was much more brave/curious than the preceding Bull Shark, and certainly wasn’t intimidated by me swimming at him.  At this point the sharks were telling me I needed to drop fish off in the dinghy rather than swim around with them.  I took the hint: I dropped the fish in the dinghy.  Then I saw an Ocean Triggerfish, and wanting to have enough fish to trade – I shot him.  The damn Grey Reef Shark started harassing me again.  We had enough fish to feed our crew for a couple of days, and with the constant harassment by the sharks – I called the dive and we went back to the mothership.

Cleaning fish in the Swimming Pool

After cleaning the fish I found we had more fish than I originally thought. The good news is that we had plenty of Americans in the anchorage – meaning that I could offload some fish and have an excuse to go freediving and spearfishing the following day.  I cleaned the fish, bagged it, and took it to our closest neighbor (the yacht Away) who was ecstatic.  They asked if we needed anything.  We were in a desperate way for pancake syrup.  They had a ton of pancake syrup. Excellent trade.  I can’t tell you how happy that made my crew – after a few days of non-pancake mornings, stuff gets weird on S/V NOMAD.

The next three days were very similar.  We spent the days cooking, relaxing, diving, swimming, and did one day of full day-drinking – using the kayak as a floating bar and the surfboards and lifevests as floating seats.  Fun.  I missed taking a picture of our kayak the next morning – clear evidence of the previous day’s nonsense.  Those kinds of pictures explain things much better than I can with words – the whole “picture worth a thousand words” cliche comes to mind.  This one will have to do – note the shadows on the sand under Luke and Lisa.  Awesome.

Day drinking in paradise

Our last day of light-wind we went for another freediving and spearfishing adventure outside the reef.  Lisa chilled out onboard and made some coconut jewelry stuff. I was honestly impressed by her work.

Luke and I hunted together almost the whole time.  We tried a couple of different spots, saw some decent fish, but were having trouble putting big fish in the boat – they were actively avoiding us.  I was checking holes and caves right beside Luke when I heard him shoot.  Then he yelled at me, then I saw what he shot.  He made a pretty epic shot on a large Dog Snapper – putting the shaft through the front of the fish, right between the eyes, and going back through it’s tail.  That is a perfect shot – the fish is dispatched immediately, and with both it’s tail and head on the spear it is completely immobilized. Awesome.  I was really stoked for Luke, but we were back to a very common conundrum:  what do we do with all this fish?

Snapper in the Swimming Pool

Europeans, Stories, and Scotch

It was early, so we went back to the mothership and tried to trade fish for beer in the anchorage via VHF.  We haven’t managed this yet, but we did meet our new neighbors – all young European guys, on a 32 foot monohull.  They were having trouble finding fish, so we gave them some.  That went over very well.

The following day they came to spearfish with us, but at this point the wind and swell had picked up so much that we couldn’t get outside the reef.  So we anchored the dinghy inside and kicked against the current for awhile to get outside and find fish.  After a couple of hours of kicking against the current, I was far enough outside the reef that I was seeing fish.  Including another very large Cubera Snapper.  He wasn’t fond of me, and quickly took his leave. I trailed him until I saw him duck into a hole, but when I dove down I quickly saw what I expected:  his hole was, in fact, a huge maze of large caves with more entrances and exits than I’d ever be able to cover. So he was gone.  This kind of thing is pretty predictable, but one of these days a big Cubera will make a mistake and he’ll be dinner for an anchorage.

That evening our European neighbors cooked us a lobster pasta, brought some excellent single-malt Scotch, and some nice cigars over.  We ate and drank like Kings (again).  Then we started into storytime.  One of these gents told us about his time in Cartagena, including his escapades with a local pirate and the pirate’s girlfriend.  It’s tough to put into words how hard we laughed.  And, well, the story probably isn’t fit for public consumption.

That night we retired pretty late, but managed to con our European neighbors into giving us a couple of pounds of flour, if we agreed to make fresh bread and French Toast for the following morning.  That’s a real treat out here, and so the exchange was fair.

Our breakfast was delayed, and I reckon we’d be correct in blaming the empty bottle of 15 year The Glenlivet.  But eventually we baked bread and then cooked French Toast.  The guys came over, ate, then left the anchorage, but we spent the next day recovering, cooking, relaxing.  But, all good things come to an end. The end of our Swimming Pool vacation was directly correlated with an increase in wind.

The Wind is Back

When the wind picked up we decided to leave what is now my favorite anchorage in San Blas – the Swimming Pool.  There’s something about a place that has crystal clear water, white sand beaches lined with palm trees, and good spearfishing.

Next stop:  West Hollandes. We knew a couple of the local Kunas on the islands there – one is a master Mola maker, Prado.  Prado has a thing for young gringos with long hair, but he’s harmless.  The other Kuna bossman in the area is Julio. Older and pretty straight-edge, not allowing them to sell beer on the island.

So early in the afternoon, we picked up our anchor and motored out of the Swimming Pool toward the West Hollandes.  We raised the main and put out the Genoa, but with a bad wind angle I decided to motor rather than tack all across San Blas.  It’s a good practice to run the engines every so often as well.  So we motored, again, despite the fact that we all really wanted to sail.

The Swimming Pool

It’s been awhile.  We were outside of cell service and then took a little vacation.  It’s funny how even when you’re not “working for the man” you feel the need to take a break.  I felt the need, we took a break.

Well, we said goodbye to our friends on Fishers Hornpipe.  And we resupplied.  And we filled the water tanks.  Now we’re sitting in Green Island.  We’ll be heading to The Swimming Pool shortly – where we hope to put some fish onboard, get some boat maintenance done, and enjoy some cave diving.

Moving On

Andy and the crew onboard Fishers Hornpipe left Chichime three or four hours before we did – heading to Nargana (same as us).  When we finally got everything tied down, I had resigned myself to not catching them.  But the wind-gods were with us.

We motorsailed for about an hour, but other than that we sailed those 20-25 miles to Nargana.  We lost wind a couple of times, and we never topped 6.5 knots – but shortly we overtook Fishers Hornpipe.  We both wanted shots of our boats under full sail, so I eased up next to them and the cameras started flashing.  Then the board shorts were removed and there were white asses across the whole deck of Fishers Hornpipe, pointed our direction.  I’ll spare y’all that picture.  Here’s my chariot, underway. She’s a pretty girl.

S/V NOMAD underway

Luke and I motored into Nargana when we lost wind, but Fishers Hornpipe stuck it out and sailed all the way into anchor.  By the time they arrived, Luke and I had concocted a plan:  to buy the island out of rum, and sell it back to Fishers Hornpipe for a profit.  As they anchored, I drove by in the dinghy to explain that it would be futile for them to go to shore in search of rum.

Onshore our plans were foiled by, surprisingly, a large stock of rum.  Much more than I could afford.  So we settled for veggies, beer, and a moderate amount of rum.  Then we took the dinghy up Rio Diablo, which was tricky but scenic.  Check it out:

Rio Diablo

 

More Rio Diablo

When we made it back onboard NOMAD, Fishers Hornpipe had changed plans; originally they were going to sail with us to The Swimming Pool, but they decided to take advantage of a weather window and sail to Providencia ASAP.  Which meant that we’d be parting ways forever.   Which meant that we needed to have one last party.  And party we did.

The whole crew from Fishers Hornpipe came onboard NOMAD, where we cooked, talked, drank, and lied about fish for several hours.  At some point in the wee hours of the morning we hugged and shook hands – and the crew on Fishers Hornpipe retired. Luke and I were asleep immediately.

The next morning Andy woke me up pretty early.  He had decided that he wanted the leftover solar panels I had replaced a few months ago.  I dug through the boat, found them, and sent him off to Providencia with a little more solar capability.  We were a little bummed to see them go, but stoked for their next voyage – which would take them from Porvenir (San Blas), to Providencia, to Isla Mujeres, to Louisiana.

Luke and I spent that day recovering and doing a bit of cleaning (funny how quickly a boat gets dirty during a party).  The following day I went back to the island looking for some hard-to-find stuff:  pancake syrup, parmesan cheese, olive oil, etc.  I found exactly none of that.

Moving to Green Island

By this point we were both sick of being in Nargana, so we got things together and headed out for a super-quick sail to Green Island.  We were there before we knew it, and both were itching to sail a little bit more.  We dropped our anchor about 15 feet off the shore of a beautiful, deserted, island.  Then we got hammocks, beer, and burnable trash together and headed ashore.  We burned our trash, and drank beer in hammocks.  It wasn’t a very stressful evening.

Palm trees, hammock, beer, and NOMAD – all in one photo

We came back, Luke made pizza (using a rum bottle to roll the dough), and we ate like kings.

Rum-bottle pizza

 

Early the next morning we went for a dive, hoping to find lunch on the reef.  We were very disappointed.  This was my first time in Green Island, so it’s possible that we simply need to find other spots – but we dove multiple areas that looked very productive on the charts, and there was nothing home.  I did take a small lobster, and we ate him for lunch; but it was hardly a full-meal dive.

Then boat-cleaning started in earnest.  I enjoy having the boat clean, but honestly don’t get a kick out of cleaning it.  That said, Luke cleaned decks while I cleaned inside and now we have a boat that looks less like two surf/dive bums are living in it. Bueno.

Shortly after our little cleaning adventure, Lisa, Corta, and Rafi showed up on two boats.  They came by and invited us to have a beer on the beach.  We happily joined them.  Lisa had some time off, so we decided she’d jump onboard and sail to the Swimming Pool with us for a mini-vacation.  With Luke, Lisa and I onboard – we were bound to have a bit of fun.  And have fun we did.

Moving On

Time Spent in Chichime

I don’t spend much time here ordinarily, it’s a nice anchorage with an excellent view and a pretty steady influx of people moving in and out.  A bit of a social place, but primarily for the international crowd. The downside is that it’s a small anchorage with what can be a tricky entrance when the wind is howling like it has been.  And generally speaking, the spearfishing is ‘meh.’

After the Straya Day party we got a message from some friends in Chichime.  We were only a short sail away, so we headed that direction.  We averaged about 6 knots, but were slogging through some waves for a while at 4 knots.

We could have almost sailed into the anchorage but the entrance wasn’t ideal.  And when we tried to pull in the headsail it got jammed – which made for an interesting few minutes.  But we made it in, got anchored right next to Fishers Hornpipe.  Luke checked the anchor – there was 25 knots of headwind, and I didn’t want to leave the boat unattended until we put eyes-on the anchor.

The next few days were a mix of parties, dinner get-togethers, diving, and surfing.  I think we actually worked on the boat once or twice.  Luke has two spots here he can surf, and I usually end up diving right next to his surf spots – so it’s convenient for both of us.

The Birthday

My birthday was on February 3rd.  We planned a small beach party for that night, but Lisa (another friend here) got work and was leaving on February 2nd – so we decided to celebrate into the birthday (i.e. the night of Feb 2).  Fine by me.  That’s like having two birthday-days.

We started it off correctly by going and exploring a new dive spot in the early morning.  Luke and I started on the Western side of a channel here and worked to the outside reef, where it was blowing like Hell – and therefore had some pretty epic swell breaking over the reef.  The current was ripping too.  Not much home.

So we tried the Eastern side of the same cut.  Dramatically different, despite being only a couple hundred meters away.  We found a huge wall where I almost bumped into a Black Grouper. We were both a little surprised and he made haste in his retreat.  Luke and I dove a couple more times there, then decided to hunt the rest of the wall – then come back and try to sneak up on him again.

On the way be both found lobster and lionfish.  Within 30 minutes, I had two giant lionfish on my spear and two single-serving lobster stuffed into my wetsuit – so I headed back to the dinghy.  Luke found crab, lobster and the biggest lionfish either of us have ever seen.  It was enough for ceviche and dinner.  Boom.

Luke found that Black Grouper twice more, and let off a hailmary spear but missed.  Too far.  I never saw him again after that dive.  We headed back to the mothership.  Andy had returned to Fishers Hornpipe with a new crew – and they were anxious to dive.  So when I told him about the grouper – his answer was “so you wanna go get him?”  There’s no way to say no.

Two hours later we were headed back to Luke and I’s spot.  We guided Andy and crew there, dropped Luke off in the surf, then dropped our anchor near our Black Grouper’s home.  Andy anchored closer to the surf.

Upon diving the wall with said Black Grouper – I saw two.  Both high-tailed it much too quickly for me to give chase.  They were gone.  Andy and I made a plan on how to run those grouper in between us, on the way back.  So we hunted the rest of the reef…  Until I saw my dinghy with three guys in it, heading into the swell outside the channel.

That’s an unwelcome sight.  It means something went haywire.

 

 

Oops

The folks in my dinghy picked up two other divers, and with 5 people onboard they were having trouble keeping the dinghy upright in the swell – so they escaped back inside the channel and left Matt and me to swim.  When we made it back inside the protection of the reef, everyone looked a little worried.  I quickly realized that Andy’s dinghy was capsized and bobbing (without the motor on it). In the middle of large, breaking swell.  Against the reef.  A long ways from either mothership.

We have a problem. Andy’s dinghy had pulled into the breaking surf, capsized, lost the motor, and was bobbing just above the crashing surf.

But there were 6 guys around and two dinghies (one underwater).  That’s enough to salvage almost any tough situation out here.  A quick discussion and we decided to tow the submerged dinghy out with my dinghy – and after getting slammed repeatedly and almost losing the other dinghy in the surf:  we did manage to get it out of the surf.  Then we had to flip it rightside up.  But the swell was huge, and we were in deep water.  So we towed the dinghy back onshore the nearest island.  Then we bailed it.  Then we realized I needed more gas.  So we towed the other dinghy to Fishers Hornpipe, filled up with gas, and headed back out to pull a 115 pound motor off the bottom of the ocean in the middle of huge wave breaking on the reef. No problem.

We got there, Luke drove the dinghy (expertly) and Andy and I drug the engine out of the breaking waves, freediving, into deeper water, where we pulled it aboard my dinghy.  Then we salvaged what we could from the bottom of the ocean in the area (Andy had stuff in his dinghy when it flipped).

I was bleeding from a couple spots, and we had some bumps and bruises;  but it was handled super-well.  We all made it out without serious injury and recovered the important things:  dinghy and engine.

Then it was time to breathe a sigh of relief and decompress.  Both Luke and I were completely beaten.  A little rum helped.  Then I started cooking, we had a dinner aboard Fishers Hornpipe, and then we started the island party.  We were joined by a backpacker boat, the local Kuna, and everyone of Fishers Hornpipe.  That party went like island parties do – we drank, talked, stoked the fire, and just hung out.  A great birthday, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Here’s hoping I spend another birthday or two that way.

Time Spent in Chichime

We’ve been busy around here.  There was some sailing.  There was some diving.  Some boat maintenance.  A couple of parties, my birthday party, and an adventure.  We’ve been in Chichime a while now, and we’re feeling the itch to move.  So we’re off again tomorrow, if nothing breaks.  But before I write another update – I have some things to share.

Something to Share

The first thing to share is an interview with Teddy from SailLoot.  It wasn’t super-easy to connect (on my end), but when we finally got connected – I enjoyed talking with him.  Great guy – here’s a link to the interview.  And here it is on iTunes.  Teddy has a cool site, so it’s worth a click or three.

The second thing is a much-delayed catchup on my much-neglected YouTube channel. So, if you watch this relatively short video, it’ll catch you up.  At least from a YouTube perspective. We have some pretty neat dive video worth showing coming up next.  The only real delay is finding a fast enough Internet connection to upload said videos.  So, you should subscribe to my YouTube channel.

I’ll catch everyone up tomorrow on our latest shenanigans.  Including my birthday, which rocked.  Thanks for all the birthday message, folks!

Something To Share