4 January Passage and arrival San Blas

Onwards, always onwards with 190 miles between Isla Rosario in Colombia and San Blas islands in Panama. We left Rosario at 7.15am and arrived in the East Holandes at 2.30pm next day. It was a lovely sail with an average 15 knots just abaft the beam.

Navionic charts and San Blas have the same relationship as rugby and football. Both games have two sides, but with different number of players, both are played with a ball, but of different shapes. Navionic charts show islands, reefs and depths, but not where they really are. We knew this and had prepared with caching Google Earth images in the Ovital app and using waypoints taken from the Bauhaus guide imported into the Open CPN programme. I look for the dark blue areas in Google Earth to find a safe(r) path and cross check with Bauhaus for waypoints which are input to the chartplotter for David to follow. We always use eyeball navigation when approaching areas of uncertainty. It's not a fool proof method, but it kept us safe going into the anchorage south of Banedup and west of Tiadup island, tucked in with reef all around we could see the breakers on the reef a mile north and fell the wind across the deck in settled waters.

Anchored in 8m on a sand bar at 09°34.91N 78°43.43W and dropped back to 15m depth.