On the last day of the last year we left Chichime Cays after everyone had s swim and a breakfast for the Naguargandup islands.

Also there seems to be a possibility to go through the reef in the north, between Salardup in the E and Archuduo in the W but even with the Bauhaus guide map I don’t dare to go through it. I prefer the safe passage in the SE.

The wind was only of a weak 2 Bft, thus we simply used the engines for the 11 NM sail. With this Sen and Bar got their chance to steer MaRe. Changing from an “Opti” beginner sailboat to an almost 44 ft catamaran is definitely a challenge, which they did very well.

We dropped the anchor in the vicinity where I dropped it before. After a while we took the tender over to Salardup to say hello to the Kuna friends I know them already from several visits. It turned out that only Armando and Grifo where there, the other were still off of the island. It was like always a warm welcome and introduced to them all people on board.

We spent the afternoon on the island, walking around and swimming. As we are 8 people I needed to go twice with the tender back to MaRe. When I approached the island for the second time, it turned just 18:00 at the island but back home in Europe it was midnight, thus “Feliz Ano Nuevo”. It was an incredible moment of joy. Then we returned to MaRe.

Next day, we wanted to go to the eastern corner of Archudup but had a problem with the outboard motor. Plans changed. Fra rowed all over to the S shore of Saradup where they explored the SW corner of the beach. I, on board had to deal with the outboard motor.

Next morning, wind increased to 6 Bft, changed direction by almost 90 deg and someone started to dump water from heaven down on us. The forecast did not show a consistent rain pattern, thus the useless. After a while the sky in windward direction became lighter, the first indication that the end is coming.

At the end of the rain we took the tender and moved over to Archudup island to snorkel at it’s
E corner.

Snorkeling was really good!

As expected the current in the gap of the reef brought food in and there was a lot of life. Beautiful corals, fishes, and shells. With Sen, we saw even an approx 1 m long barracuda. Because Sen wanted to go down with me and look at things closer – the real beauty of the surface of corals shows up when looking at closer distance to them.

We started going down. With the fingers we showed each other the counting 1, 2, 3 and then descented. She hold my hands and released it whenever she felt like going up. After a while she descented very well, which included easing the pressure from her ears. The deepest (I guess 5 m) she went down was when she wanted to make a bundle sea-anemones to close. She achieved it. Should she start learning Apnoe diving, I would not be surprised.

They all liked the day.

At the end of the day a few of us went over to the Kuna friends to bid farewell. We all were moved. Shall I cross the Panama canal as planned from E to, i will take a few days to sail to Saradup to say hello.

Dinner on board and preparation for departure next morning.