San Blas Islands 29 February 2024.

In the night the anchor alarm went off (I set the distance which we are not supposed to deviate from) but we were not really moving so I went back to bed. In addition there is a propane alarm under the electric panel which went off a few times. We were able to silence it but we could not work out why it was sounding as the gas alarm at the galley had not sounded, the C02 alarm in the rear cabin had not gone off and the gas was off. There was no way of unscrewing it to removing a wire. I went into the engine room to see the back of it but it was not clear. There were some small holes in its face so we covered hem up in tape bit that did not work either. I looked in the bilge under the steps and saw what I thought was a sensor and so when the alarm went off I disconnected it but that did not work either. Short of smashing it with a hammer we were a bit lost. Of course when you think of doing that sort of thing it goes quiet and does not go off. Typical!!

It was a lovely morning when we woke and very different from the dreary cloudy day before. We had breakfast of beans on toast (Carolyn’s choice) and some toast after that. We got ready and were off to our next anchorage. We had to creep out of the reefs that we had navigated around as we did when we came in. It is a little worrying as we pass reefs within 20 feet but we got through and then we were into open water and on toward our next anchorage which I think we can see in the distance with a number of masts of yachts. Once clear we put out our genoa and were sailing along nicely and overtook a yacht which had main and genoa out There were a few yachts about and we had to watch out for yachts coming the other way.  After about 5 miles we took down the sail and then negotiated a number of other reefs to come into the new anchorage which had been recommended to us. We crept our way in and recognised the different colours of water depth. Blue tends to be fairly shallow with often a sand bottom. The sort of yellow/brown tends to be shallow reef and the dark blue/purple tend to be the deeper water. There were quite a few boats in the anchorage who had taken the more shallow spots so we tried to anchor initially in about 8m off the back of. a yacht which did not hold and we dragged (you can feel from the anchor chain the vibrations of it dragging along the bottom). We therefore decided to raise the anchor and try again off another boat to port (left) and this time we dropped the anchor in about 15m of water. Once settled it held well and we probably had about 80m of chain out.

We settled down and put out the solar panels. What do I mean by this. On the back I have a solar panel each side but they are vertical when we are under way. When stationery we can hinge them horizontal so we get the full benefit of the sun. You can see the effect of this from a battery controller below where it shows whether you are in negative watts or amps (i.e. you are using more than you are getting in or positive – i.e.. you are putting in more than you are using). With the sun out and the panels up we were in positive territory and it pushed the 24volt system to 100%. I have a second set of panels on the coach roof and we decided to move the boom out of the way so there was little shadow on these panels and this made a difference too.

We had a nice lunch in the cockpit looking over two deserted Islands covered in palm trees and sand. You have to pinch yourself as each set of Islands are like this. Once we had lunch we decided to explore and went to the reef side of the Island we were anchored opposite. We went round the side of the Island and pulled the dinghy on to the beach and went for a snorkel. This was different again as we did not have coral and fans and sponges but more weed and sand and the odd mangrove in the water. There were some fish in the sand and weed which was nice. There were also the odd starfish and David saw a ray. However when you got near to the mangrove the water became a sort of rusty colour and warmer and the fish life increased enormously.  Carolyn thought she saw something large probably a reef shark which made her retreat. The bottom was full of palm tree trunks and leaves and unfortunately some rubbish in the form of old shoes and plastic buckets etc.

We returned to the dinghy and saw there was another dinghy on the reef with some people appearing to walk on it. We went to explore and found that they had found a sandy pool and were appearing to have a drink in it. We returned to our Island and explored the shore nearest to us and the water was crystal clear.  We pulled up om the beach and snorkelled near the shore. This must have been a fish nursery as there were thousands of silver fish about 4-6 inches long which swept past us and then thousands about 1-1.5 inches long  which were yellow and green. It was magical.

We returned to Stormbird to shower etc. I have always had a small weep (leak) from my rudder post and when I met the owners of Yaghan in Panama they had had the same thing and they told me what had fixed it for them.  There are some bolts on the rudder stock which needed to be tightened and I did this although one would not tighten. However above this is a ring which needs tightening as beneath it is a nylon ring which can come loose. Tn problem is that it is quite large and I do not have a spanner that large. However I did have a large oil filter remover which is a large rubber strop which you can fit round and put it back on itself. I got it round and it started turning.  I did as much as I could and so far the weep seemed to have stopped. Let’s see over the next few days.

We had sundowners in a nice breeze on the rear deck watching the sun go down. We had a nice fish supper with red cabbage and noodles followed by watermelon. It had been a good day and we had moved on to another lovely anchorage etc.             

The blog will continue as we head off to Panama and beyond.

If you have any comments or suggestions about the blog do email me on hine.nick9@gmail.com  I can only upload one picture a day and visit our website www.stormbirdgoesglobal.co.uk