Caribbean Compass Yachting Magazine 2015

— Continued from previous page
…the delight of snorkelers and the dread of boaters
wending their way through minefields of coral. So far
this year alone four boats have met their fate on the
reefs of these San Blas islands. We did not want to be
the fifth!
So arriving in the morning, as the eastern sun rising
behind us would shine light down into these shallow
reef-strewn waters, seemed like a good idea. What we
are so angry and confused there is no clear best angle.
So we slow down and circle through the rolling and
bouncing… like riding a lazy bronco.
Three hours later, with no sun visible, the rain
begins to abate. The storm clouds turn from black to
slate and a low grey cloud cover descends upon the
coast, bringing bands of mist and fog to enshroud the
coastal lowlands. We turn back toward our island destination
and make our way toward shore.
Our San Blas landfall
after the rain
had the good fortune to have Eric’s waypoints from his
paper charts, which we were able to program into our
electronic charts.
Slowly, vigilantly, with one pair of eyes on the water
and the second pair on our new charts, we wended our
way from waypoint to waypoint to a 16-foot anchorage
(which on every other chart showed 60 feet of water!)
in the protection of Isla Piños… out of the sea swells,
out of the wind chop, in the lee of a hilly rainforested
island that blocked the northeast tradewinds. We
dropped anchor, let out 150 feet of anchor chain, let
out a huge sigh of relief, and retreated, exhausted, to
the chairs of the cockpit, each of us with a glass of
15-year-aged rum on ice.
It was 12:00 noon (5:00PM somewhere) and we drank
a toast to our arrival, to our outstanding collaboration,
to being “on the road again”, to being safely at our new
temporary home in Panama. We toasted to our partnership,
to the benevolent Poseidon and to all the gods
hadn’t accounted for was the local climate difference
only 150 miles away from where we started.
The area we had left, coastal Colombia, is almost
desert-like in its year-round climate. Positioned to the
west of northern Colombia’s tall Sierra Nevada mountain
range, the coastal towns of Santa Marta,
Barranquilla and Cartagena are all in the rain shadow
of the 18,000 foot peaks and suffer the arid consequences.
Here, across the sea to the west, we are in a
seven-month rainy season, in a rainforest, and (go
figure) as we arrive, it is raining.
Visibility is piss poor. An hour out, as we approach
Isla Piños, our first charted destination, we are
besieged by squalls, torrential rains, and very turbulent
seas. For the last three hours we have been surrounded
by dry electrical storms with bolts of lightning
following only two or three seconds later. Kent rushes
to put all our portable electronic equipment into the
microwave (a Gaussian shield) to protect it in case of a
lightning strike.
We have multiple electronic chart redundancy (no
surprise to those of you who know Kent) to ensure
safe navigation. Two of our electronic charts are
loaded onto a portable Garmin and onto an iPad.
These are both crammed into the microwave which
now sports a bold red-lettered warning, scribbled with
Kent’s Scripto, “DO NOT USE THE MICROWAVE!!!”
(as if we would turn it on without any food in it, just
for the hell of it!).
So, as the thunderstorm bears down on us and the
radar screen shows a four-mile radius of almost solid
black dots, we decide to turn the boat around and
head back out to sea. If the storm continues we will
circle in the area, eight miles out in 2,000 feet of water
to avoid any risk of reef encounters closer to shore.
Marilyn is at the helm and scanning the seas to
ascertain, in this limited visibility, the direction of the
swells. By pointing the boat at a 30-degree angle into
oncoming swells we can minimize our pitch and yaw
and cut down on the number of unsecured items that
slide off shelves or across the salon floor. But the seas
Other boaters have told us that ALL the popular
electronic navigational charts are unreliable in these
islands. Many boaters thought they were navigating
into ten-foot-deep anchorages according to the charts,
only to find that the position of the charted anchorage
was actually in the middle of an island.
Only one set of paper charts, those of Eric Bauhaus,
has accurately captured correct soundings and topography
of this remote and sparsely populated part of
the world. We had been living in anticipatory trepidation
about the prospect of navigating these islands
without accurate electronic charts with their accompanying
GPS systems. The beauty of electronic charts is
our ability to electronically track our exact boat position
(within the tolerance of GPS accuracy) on the
detailed maps of the area. Entering the reef of Isla
Piños without any good light to “read” the water and
see the underwater coral was possible only because we
Welcoming us to the San Blas islands, or Kuna Yala,
our new Kuna friend, Joaquin, in his dugout canoe
that might be looking out for us. We toasted to our
trusted Cardea. We toasted to all our friends and family
who care about us and whom we so deeply treasure.
And we toasted our good fate and fortune for being
alive and healthy and aware, doing what we most want
to do and in this most magnificent expanse of nature.
We are immensely grateful to just be here, just us, just
now in just this moment in time.
Kent and Marilyn have spent ten years aboard their
56-foot DeFever, cruising the eastern seaboard of the
US, the Bahamas, and for the last seven years the eastern
and western Caribbean. M/V Cardea is their first
and last boat.
SEPTEMBER 2015 CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 19
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