Sadly, Punta Mala (Bad Point) was correctly named. The rounding was boisterous, which in sailor talk means it sucked. We had 25 knots on the beam, with 8′ seas 6 seconds apart. Which means they were steep and close together. And with them on the beam we were thrown around all night long and very little sleep happened. We had up a reefed mainsail and no headsail, which was unfortunate because a little headsail would have stabilized us a bit. But it was gusting really good all night and with just the reefed main and current we were making over 6 knots. We don’t like to go fast at night, so it was better to get sloshed about a bit.
It took us all day yesterday to get into an anchorage for the night. The wind kept blowing from the north and in mid afternoon just after a 20 knot wind gust it stopped instantly. Just the wierdest thing. Then it turned and started blowing from the south about 12 knots. We tacked the sails and kept going. The anchorage was one of the prettiest places we’ve been in a long time, with rolling hills and pastureland mixed with tropical jungle. Wish we could have stayed for a while, but it was pretty exposed and bouncy and we’ve got some miles to make.
Today we’re sailing west towards a bay called Bahia Honda where we’ll hang out for a couple of days. Maybe we’ll get the kayaks out. On our way into the Perlas we finally caught a Sierra, which Maya couldn’t get enough of. It’s a lovely firm white fish and is excellent just alone on the grill. So we’ve got our hand lines trailing and are hoping for another treat for the kitten and us.
As we were crossing the Bay of Panama I was happy that we had spent the $200 and bought an AIS (automated information system) unit. All of the commercial ships and some pleasure craft have senders that transmit information about the vessel. Hooking it up to our radar and adding a data feed from our GPS gives us a visual on our plotter that shows each ship. We can read who it is, how fast they’re going in which direction, and what our closest point of approach is. If we need to we have the ship’s name handy and call hail them on the VHF. It was really nice late at night rounding Punta Mala while we were getting pounded to see all the ships and know they weren’t going to smack into us in the dark!
