Libeccio - Spectacular Welcome at the San Blas Islands

You may recall from the previous blog entry that we had wasted the better part of the day with just the genoa as we waited for the anticipated increase in winds to the 30's. The increase did not arrive and contrary to our general approach to night time, we increased our sail rather than decreased it. The decision to raise the main with 2 reefs was just the tonic to get us going again and we are pleased to stay that we made very good time- helped by a steady increase in the winds as we approached the San Blas Islands.

As it turned out, we were able to take 4 hours off of our arrival time and managed to cross the finish line at 9:15 am. The original thinking was that it is best to approach islands with coral surrounding them between the hours of 10 and 2-- the time that the sun is at its highest and providing the most visibility to the coral surprises below.

However, we had been "lucky" enough to have a squall pass through about an hour before our arrival giving the boat a well needed fresh water rinse. The squall was just a small part of a rather large bad weather system that had been providing us with spectacular lightening displays pretty much through the night. It was small comfort that the lightening was downwind of us, as it seemed that we were catching up to it.

With it being so cloudy, there was no sun to be seen and so no advantage to waiting until 10. In fact, many of the WARC participants had already made their way to anchorages that were more easily accessible.

We joined Shepherd Moon- at the Coco Banderos islands. Richard, Vanessa and their son Jacob are all from, cue "its a small world, after all", Sevenoaks. Jacob had attended the prep, although was in a different year from our gang.

Once we had anchored, one of the members of the families that live on the islands where we anchored brought round some live lobster- suffice it to say that we now have something new on the menu for this week. We only need our brother in law, Paul Sedola, to join us to show us how he cooked it last time in Bequai!!

We are off to dinner on board Shepherd Moon. Hope you all are well.