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Shortly after 1300 we lifted the anchor and left bay towards Bocas del Toro.

Wind from ENE with 4 Bft in the upper range. Main sail with reef 2 and the genoa fully out. MaRe accelerated quickly to 8 – 9 on. For quite a while we ran in the 8 kn range. It just was fun to watch MaRe elegantly ploughing through the sea with swell from her PRT side. The swell made it a bit bumpy.

After bit more than 1 1/2 h, the wind simply disappeared. Who stole the wind? Nevertheless we made 13 NM towards Bocas del Toro.

No choice, but we added the engines to the sails hoping the wind will come back, but it did not. In swell with not enough wind pressure on the sails they were flapping too much. Thus, main sail down. We only used the genoa to get a bit additional speed. Ride was very bumpy. Too bumpy to have a somehow pleasant dinner.

Just before dinner we pulled up the main to reef 2 and made heave-ho (German: beistehen). Ship movements were much smaller and we could have dinner. The dinner was the dolphinfish we caught 2 days ago. OBM made it in a coconuts sauce which was pretty delicious.

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After dinner we just used the engines until 0400. Then we had enough wind to add the genoa which pulled additionally a good knot.

At 0655 we used again the gennaker. With this sail we made for hours almost 6 kn SOG in average. It just was perfect sailing. Most of the time even in the track mode of the autopilot, which brings us directly to the WPT selected as “GO TO” target.

1243 – log book entry – we quickly took the gennaker down because a squall, with pretty dark and low hanging clouds appeared. It turned out the squall passed in front of MaRe. No strong wind was felt by MaRe.

An hour later, at 1343, gennaker up again to increase speed. With this configuration we sailed towards our destination until shortly before sunset, when we changed to main with reef 2 & genius fully.

With these sails, we were prepared for the night; sails small enough to sail in winds up to 40 kn. A squall can have winds of to 30 kn. Thus, a solid margin in the sails and the genoa could be reduced from the cockpit. An additional purpose for these sails was too be able to make a heave-to because we would arrive a few hours before sunrise and landfall in the dark I don’t want to do.

At 2118 a squall hit us. No strong winds at all, but winds with changing direction
that intensively, that we furled in the genoa. Kept the main in reef 2 up, and used the engines for an hour. Then back to main reef 2 and genoa full.

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At the beginning of my watch at midnight, I delayed the arrival at the heave-to point to 0315 by reducing the genoa to 1.5 bars. Now I hope the wind keeps blowing.

The wind blew nicely and when it stopped, a 2kn current let MaRe drift in a safe direction. A heave-to was not possible as there was no wind at all. Thus, with all sails down MaRe drifted along the current for about 2 h.

At 0620 we started the engines and slowly moved towards the entry of the Bocas del Toro Channel. Sky was fully covered by clouds. A wonderful composition in all shades of grey. Some were hanging low and were pretty dark. I was wondering if these clouds will make it over the mountains we could see in the distance.

They did not make it. They dumped their water on us and we had winds of more than 25 kn.
With a handkerchief of the genoa we sailed away from the coast. Visibility was down to less than 100 m. Almost a white-out.

When the wildest part was over, wind circled around the scale with 360 deg several times. Later, the wind stabilized from westerly directions so we could stabilize MaRe’s direction again. The weather radar shows showers around us for circle of at least 12 NM diameter. I’m wondering when these showers are gone and we can enter the narrow channel into the Bocas.

Early in the morning, at 0700 I started to remove the sock from the gennaker because I got the feeling that something got twisted inside. To pull up the last about 3 m of the sock was difficult.

While the 3 of us worked on the gennaker at MaRe’s bows, a guy in a motorboat headed towards us. He had a message from the Navi station at Isla Grande del Maiz, Big Corn Island. We should first go to Big Corn Island to make inbound clearance. Navi and the guy after were right. I negotiate time to complete our gennaker today repair and go quickly shopping at land. Thereafter we will leave for Big Corn Island. The guy asked the Navi on a VHF and we got permission for both of our requests.

As soon as we complete the gennaker work, we dinghied in to the pier to do our shopping. In the open restaurant Nik wanted to write a bunch of messages. OBM and I went shopping to the fruit & vegetable shop where a guy with excellent English helped the young shop keeper, who also spoke English on how to deal with this foreigners. It was a nice time we had at the shop. Jokes and laughters were plenty exchanged. I tried my broken Spanish and people loved it. At the end we took a picture of the shop with the 2 lady owners.

Back on the main road, we met the lady who sells icecream and gave OBM a whole bag of mangos the day before. Sure, we stopped and talked. She explained us about the many almonds trees along the 1.5 m wide main road. A young man just 20 years old, joined the conversation.

Shopping for the rest of the needed food in a kind of supermarket was again a nice and friendly event with a fair exchange rates for our USD.

We also had a breakfast in the restaurant where Nik wrote her messages and emails that her finger tips got hot and she needed a cold drink to cool the tips. OBM and I talk with the staff behind the counter and the owner – an US American who got stuck here – about education and that we regard it as extremely important. The restaurant had a library with quite many books for lending. We also learned that in village there is also a public library. A no car island but at least 2 libraries. Great!

Finally we took off to our boat but, there is always a but, we got into a conversation with the young guy who served us last night. This despite that this restaurant was closed. Then an elderly gentleman, sporting an Panamanian head, he bought quiet some years ago, came and joined. It turned out they are Italians. They invited us for a mocca in the more private area of the closed restaurant with comfortable rocking chairs, the common furniture of the entire Caribbean. At least of the part we saw. It turned out that the elderly gentleman was a former high level pizza baker in Italy and he still bakes excellent pizzas in his island restaurant.

As for mocca and espresso we got an important lecture. An espresso is made in using a machine. A mocca is boiled in a bialleti. Thus, we don’t have anymore espressos on board of MaRe, but moccas. Learning is a never ending story.

Finally we left our business card and might meet again in 2023 somewhere in the Southern Pacific again.

When arriving at our tender, the elderly gentleman of the day before took again care of it and got another tip.

We dinghied back to MaRe, prepared her for departure, pull the hook up, hunked – it was agreed upon – our horn 3 times, waved good bye, saw people waving good bye at the shore, and turned MaRe towards the deeper water outside the bay.

A nice wind was waiting for her.

The day before yesterday when my bread was ready for the last 2 h rest. I jumped the tender an meet OBM and Nik at the pier where I dropped them. Seeing their faces I saw they love the tiny island of Nicaragua.

They welcome me with an ice cream; my the second one since Gibraltar. (Cuba has good icecream!) And the lady who sells icecream gave OBM and Nik a bag full of mangos. Just like that. A kind of welcome present from the island.

They bought ready most important food and understood where are shops along the concrete main street of about 1.2 – 1.5 m width. Most important, they described the people here as very friendly. The later I experienced myself when I wanted to tie up the tender with my steel wire to lock it and an elderly man told me I don’t need to lock up but give him the normal line and he will take care of our boat. I trusted him right from the very first moment; I knew he wants to earn some money, which I was willing to give him.

We walked the already pretty dark street. The darkness was caused by the disappearing daylight and the huge trees covering the street and being a natural “air-condition system” when the sun shines. Street lights are not needed; lights from the houses are enough and where there is not light there simply is darkness. Where’s the problem?

OBM and Nik showed me what they found on shops, restaurants with WLAN and I felt the friendliness of the locals. Several dive shops and the restaurants indicated that there are tourists as well.

We decided to stay for dinner at land and went into a restaurant with enough space between the tables. We still have COVID-19 around thus have to be careful. On the island nobody uses masks. Maybe good for environment – no mask just thrown away – or most likely and most important, life is outside and there is always wind, which dilutes viruses, should they be around, thus no need for masks.

Just when we sat down, Nik heard German from the neighbor table. A young couple from Bremen, back-packing Central American countries. They rented a house or room on the windward side of the island. And Nik meet also a young local lady who spoke fluent German.

As for languages, people here speak Creole, Spanish, and English.

After dinner, we went back on the boat, which was well known by all the people of the island. OBM and Nik went to bed and I baked my more than well rested formed breads. Fortunately I use a canvas sheet, which keeps bread in shape during the last resting.

Then we also discovered what technologies mean on islands like this. Disco music for all the leeward part of the island including the bay where we at anchor. Until 0330 in the morning. I wonder how many people went into the disco and how many people felt disturbed by the music?

Yesterday’s sunset was incredible. A full power concert of all colors, which can appear in a sunset. And the clouds with huge formation and filigrane elements were drums and percussion instruments.

This was followed by full moon night with lots of clouds only loosely connected to each other allowing the moon to shine down on the water and creating always a new moonriver when breaking through the drifting clouds.

At 21:36 log book says we started motoring. There was simply no wind.

At 00:07 I pulled the genoa out to gain a bit more speed; maybe half a knot.

At 04:20 wind can me almost exactly from behind. As the full moon illuminated all so nicely, OBM and I set up a butterfly by adding the 20 m2 jib. It brought another half a knot.

At 07:20 after OBM’s watch we set the gennaker and got a nice speed for about 10 minutes, then wind died again. Exercising patience, I waited for maybe a quarter of an hour and the wind came back and stayed for a bit more than 2 h. Gosh, this was nice sailing. Nik came out of her cabin and we had nice conversation. OBM slept after extending her watch by almost an hour.

And then, a busy day started. “No time to get old” was a thought which went through my mind.

It seems that my sailing direction approach could work, BUT, where is the wind speed I need? Who stole the wind?

First we needed to get the gennaker down because the wind not want to come back again. Ok. Fine. We use the engines. Sailing conditions set to >7 kn of wind for > 10 min.

In the meantime OBM and I worked on some business and IT matters. Hardly finish when the wind came back. Gennaker up again and nice speed. BUT, there’s always. BUT! A dark grey stratos or stratocumulus started to develop behind us. This cloud looked a bit to heavy for having the gennaker up. I set a trigger point for getting the gennaker down. Thus point was unfortunately reached pretty fast. Thus, in the shortest time possible OBM and I got it down.
And the big cloud passed behind our sterns. Better to be on the safe side!

Then we set sails already for the night. Main with reef 2 and the genoa full. And the wind got tired again. 2 – 3.5 kn. Not a speed record!

Let’s set when winds comes back again. All is prepared!

In the morning light the anchorage begin the reef looked completely different. The grey of the water under a sky with dark clouds and no sun hole in between was replaced by a color with lots of blue mixed into it. The emerald water just behind the reef was brighter. It called OBM and me too swim over with fins, snorkels, and masks. OBM took a short swim with only swimming goggles and was surprised about the many fishes she saw.

I admit, I would have searched the rocks for lobsters. Should get a spear on board to get lobsters when they go deep inside their caves. I also need to learn to use my spin fishing rod to get dinners while we are at anchor in a bay.

What I would like to do most, is swimming with Se and Ba between the corals and look at all the colorful living creatures, being the inhabitant of a coral world. I bet they would love to look and dive for all kind of shells. With Je I could do even more. Swimming further and driving down deeper.

However we needed to depart for Little Corn Island, 120 NM to the SW of our anchorage.

So we departed without breakfast and bet on a stable sailing wind with the gennaker. We won. We had a leisurely

The wind forecast was “maamaa” as the Japanese would say. “Not good, not bad”. But I considered the glass as half full and wanted to leave by 0900. Shortly after the hook was up, log book says 0905, and MaRe was on course under engines, we prepared the gennaker. Gennaker sheets from bow to stern, blocks attached in the right way to the stern cleats, tack line prepared, halyard prepared. Then, hatch open, gennaker top out and immediate hooked onto to snap-shackle of the halyard, and Nik pulled it up directly from the sail bag in the storage compartment at the PRT sail storage. As the wind came from PRT we needed to shift the gennaker in it’s sock over the furled genoa to STB. Tack line attached to the tack of the sail and the gennaker sheets tied to the clew. OBM went to the STB winch, took out the slack in the sheet, and was ready for launch. However, the wind shifted and I asked Nik to start 20 deg to STB. And then I pulled the sock upb to launch the gennaker. OBM pulled the STB sheet in until she had it stably flying. The rest was fine tuning.

For running in track mode, the wind directions were to unstable, thus I changed to wind vane mode. I had to change the AWA from 100 PRT to 80 deg PRT to not sail too much W. At 80 deg AWA MaRe eine good with the gennaker and the gennaker tack just about 30 – 40 cm above the gennaker bow sprit. As I’m writing these lines, MaRe eine with 6.5 kn STW at 80 deg AWA and a TWS of about 11 kn.

For the night I want to set the main at reef 2 and use, as long as the wind permits it, the genoa fully. Then we can sail higher into the wind and balance the W component by sailing with a more southern component. Let’s see if the wind permits and enables my routing approach.

On the 13th, we reached our WPT “Honduras E” and turned to the next WPT “Nicaragua E” with a nice sailing speed.

The time on board was very relaxed. I sat with OBM at the bow and talked. I also had my conversations with Nik. Our conversations very often are about people from F-bach. Due to our difference in age, I sometimes feel like a history book she reads with a lot of interest. But her stories are also very interesting for me as I left F-bach long before she was born.

After turning S at the WPT “Nicaragua E” the wind felt asleep. We got one nice squall resulting in a freshwater shower for MaRe and short time speed of 9.x kn. Thereafter the wind got tired again. I gave the wind our dinner time to increase or change to engines. Poseidon had his choice and preferred to let the wind be very weak. Thus, we took all sails down and ran with engines through the nightly waters west of Nicaragua heading for a reef north of the island Providencia. This island is much closer to Nicaragua than to Colombia but belongs to Colombia.

After a night of motoring, we set the gennaker for a while but then went back to engines to make a constant speed of 5 kn. As we need to reach our final destination Panama, I was even thinking about skipping the reef north of Providencia and sail with more favorite winds directly Isla de Maiz Pequenea, Little Corn Island as it is called in English.

However, anchoring behind a reef sounded so interesting for us that we continued to the reef at 13°31.052’N • 81°20.283’W.

Finally we reached around 1700 the reef. The sky was filled with deep hanging dark grey stratos clouds and the water begging the reef appeared also grey in the area were we needed to anchor. Only very close to the reef it was emerald green.

OBM and I took stern showers with bailers of seawater of pleasant temperature and a quick splash of fresh water at the end. Nik, took a very quick in-boat shower.

Then OBM prepared another good board dinner. But after dinner my batteries suddenly got empty and I felt asleep within seconds. 10 always on alert drained batteries.

Now a new day started and I’m curious what I will see outside on a sunny day.

After partially very fast sailing last night, Poseidon the God of the Seas slows us down far away from his Greek waters in the middle of the Caribbean.

On the last few miles to our WPT “Honduras E” we have a current of more than 2 kn against us. Frustrating!. The current is a part of the Mexican Gulf Stream, which flows around the Capo Gracias Adios, the most western point of Nicaragua or does this Capo belongs to Honduras? The Navionic maps are not very precise about this. Once we are further south towards Panama, we should have good current pushing us towards our destination. Let’s see, it is as it is.

Here on board OBM and Nik are still sleeping and my stomach makes “bekko, bekko”. A Japanese colloquial term for “I’m hungry”.

Once in while a higher wave from E makes MaRe rocking for a moment from PRT to STB. Besides these waves, their is no rocking now. A mixture of swells from different directions meet, but the height is very low. A meter or a bit more, maybe.

The wind, since hours only 4 Bft, just now, while I’m writing these lines, increased suddenly to 5 Bft and MaRe accelerates to 9 kt in peaks. Does Poseidon have mercy with us and wants us to reach our “Honduras E” WPT earlier?

Yesterday, shortly before 2200, we reached the trigger points at which I wanted to be woke up. Nik woke me up to tell me that we have more then 20 kn TWS, and the STW is 11.5 kn. I was up in a fraction of a second. OBM, who was ready to start the 2200 – 2400 watch, was already up. I asked her to go on the STB genoa winch to ease the sheet. I went on the furler winch. Together we reefed the genoa by 2 points. In a great teamwork we had, in the shortest time possible, the speed, thus the energy out of the boat. Nik read aloud the boat- and windspeed so I could judge the situation without looking at the instruments.

In about 10 min the spook was over and I was wet. While furling the genoa which was raised by OBM, I got a full body shower from a wave on PRT. It felt good, but it was salt water.

Nik went to bed, OBM started her watch with the normal routine tasks, I got rid of my sea water soaked clothes and the salt on my skin and went to me my rest place at the salon sofa.

We all experienced a 28 kn wind squall and how fast we could reef the genoa. Thanks to my crew.

I did not believe it but in the Caribbean I caught already daily at least one vegan fish!

It is so easy that it is no fun anymore to catch a non-vegan fish.

The vegan fishes are the saragossum grass. It is unbelievable how much of this grass is drifting in this area of of the Caribbean. Normal trolling is close to impossible. Today I tried it again, but within about 30 min I had 2 vegan fishes and the third and last vegan catch of the day I got again in about 15 min.

Saragossum is not only hampering trolling but also pollutes beaches. There it slowly rots if not clean up. And who cleans up beaches from saragossum grass?

Global warming is also considered to cause the increased growth of this floating plant. However I’m not an expert on this topic, thus please check what is available in the internet.