June 26 – August 13, 2023; 10424 nm and 1606 days after departure from La Rochelle.

Funny names for adverse climatological episodes in San Blas. Fortunately in general those episodes are not common but can happen once in a while. At least so it was said in the books. I don’t know if we just had bad luck or if the El Niño year was the reason we were confronted with several “Culo de pollos”, in short squalls. “Culo de pollo” means ‘chicken ass’ because during these storms, the chickens run away and the wind blows their feathers away revealing their bum. Love that explanation🤣! Though I didn’t find any explanation for “chocosane”. In German that sounds like “Schokosahne” which means chocolate cream, but experiencing a “chocosane” was not at all in any way sweet… Those squalls have very strong winds blowing from 40-60 knots (75-110 km/h), come from south east and arise within a short period of time, we are talking about minutes. They can occur from May to October, originate in Colombia and run through the whole San Blas to later continue up to Costa Rica . This phenomenon brings rain, thunder and lightnings next to the strong winds to the San Blas region and can last up to 45 minutes. 

Debbie who lived in the “pool” for already 20 years said she had never experienced such a time here in the Holandes islands. So much rain, thunder, overcasted sky and on top so many culos was very unusual.  Our first encounter with a culo was fortunately in the morning (and not at night). El Capitano had just started to repair a lid which covers the maintenance hole for our wind vane, when the spectacle started. The sky got dark and rain was pouring down. Some thunder here and lightning there and just like that it did blow sustaining 38 knots and more in gusts. Still, apart from being wet all seemed to be ok. We felt secure about our anchor as we had checked on it before and on top we had a looooot of chain out. I was more concerned that we might loose our sunshades. They are pretty strong but certainly not made for that kind of strong wind. Then El capitano shouted: ” Shit, our dinghy made a 360!!!!” What?? Yes, it had lifted up, was airborne made a complete turn and fortunately landed back on his bottom. Then we realised that the gasoline jerry can, the dinghy anchor and our flip flops were gone. Shit! It was still blowing like hell and the visibility poor due to the rain. Fortunately we saw that the jerry can was floating nearby and magically was even still connected to the engine. Very carefully trying not to rip off the the already stretched rubber hose, we pulled it in and as well could rescue the dinghy anchor. The latter was easy as it was anyhow connected to the dinghy but we didn’t realise that at the first shock🙈. Lucky us! That would have been a bummer without the jerry can. No petrol can, no gasoline, no engine…no possibility to get ashore. Only two minutes after that shock had settled a bit we had the impression Altimate was not turning with the wind anymore. In fact it felt as if she was leaning over in the blowing wind. Damn! She was stuck sitting on a shallow sand pit. Oh nooooo!!! Though the anchor was not dragging the force of the wind tightened the chain and we ended up on a shallow patch. Fortunately that shouldn’t have been a problem for Altimate with her shallow draft and design for laying dry, but definitely a challenge for our sunshades. Now the wind was blowing from the side instead of from the front and put of course even more power to our poor suffering sunshades. Well hell! We couldn’t do anything but wait for the wind (and rain and lightning) to settle. Lucky again! The shades survived! As soon as the spook was over I stepped (literally) into the water to check the rudder, which was the only vulnerable part being pushed back- and sidewards to the sandpit. (El Capitano was still not allowed to go into the water but that was another story…) All looked good. Altimate was only just about sitting on the sand. Happy that everything looked alright I gave her a big push. Who would have thought… I managed to push her back into deeper water. Yeahhh one, two three and Altimate was free. El Capitano was proud and called me “Herculinebine😁”. Next we did was checking on Debbie via vhf if she was ok. Fortunately she was. So we lifted the anchor to get to a deeper place. Better safe than sorry! Boy we were glad that we did change the anchorage! The very next night another chocosane interfered with our sweet dreams. It started with a swoosh, followed by rain and lightning and bang the squall was there. Still half dreaming (I was hoping I was dreaming at that point) we jumped out of bed to check the situation. Hatches were closed tightly and nothing was left by accident in the cockpit which could have flown away. At night, a culo de pollo is even more scary! We agreed that our decision to move Altimate was the best lately. At this place we could swing around with a tight long chain 360 and still had enough water beneath us. By the time we were properly awake the culo had disappeared. Back to bed at 3am. Good night!

Apart from becoming awake in the middle of the night the chocosane didn’t do any harm to us, to Altimate or any other boat in the bay. So the next morning we got up, a little later than usual but in a good mood to welcome the new day. The sun was shining, the water crystal clear and the world felt great again. Like every morning we enjoyed our freshly made coffee and were reading news on our mobiles. Well, I was going to but when I picked up my phone it didn’t say anything anymore. Really? Just couldn’t believe it. It was pitch black. At night it was still ok and in the morning it was dead. Just like that. I was furies! A brand-new i-phone broken! Thank you apple! We tried all the tricks to get it back awake, even with apple support-but nada. Kaputt! 😡(Now we have to hope for replacement when we will find an Apple Store somewhere. Fortunately I could still use my old mobile but the pics I took with the old new one were gone. The reason why I didn’t have much pics for this blog.)
Oh, and just to let you know… we had another chicken ass the same week! Crazy weather! But that is getting boring now and somehow we got a little used to the sudden squalls anyway.

What else did happen? Well, poor El Capitano got a nasty infection on his shin. Already back in Puerto Escoses he realised that he had a small spot on his shin but he didn’t know where it came from. Long story short it got bigger, very red and looked infected. It was time to get in contact with our dear friend Peter who is a sailor and doctor in Germany. When he saw the pics we send him he was rather concerned which in turn made us concerned. He never used to be worried. Was the leg that bad? He prescribed antibiotics which we fortunately had aboard. He also instructed me to make sure the patient didn’t get in touch with sea water and that I made sure that the leg was often lifted higher than El Capitanos heart to release the pressure of the leg. It was heavily swollen at peak time of the infection. He had to take the antibiotics for 11 days and we had to send pics every day to Peter. He had even asked -only just in case- wether we would have been able to see a doctor or a hospital. That got us even more concerned. Don’t let your head cinema scare you off!! What caused this nasty infection? Nobody knew. We were just guessing that it was a sandfly bite which got infected. Anyway the antibiotics seemed to work and the infection sloooooowly disappeared.

Really nice was the fact that sailors always do help each other! One evening, it was already dark and we were sitting in the cockpit watching a movie, Norbert’s leg high up, when we heard an engine approaching. We were surprised when we saw to guys heading in our direction. It was a doctor from New Zealand and his brother. Ibin had told him that El Capitano had this nasty infection. That was reason enough for them to pass by at night without even knowing us to check on Norbert’s leg. When Phil, the doctor saw Norbert’s wound he was also pretty surprised. His first word was: “Wow”. I guess he didn’t expect to see that. Anyhow he looked at it and came to the same conclusion like Peter. It felt good to have a doctor to make a life examination as pics not always show the reality. He was such a nice guy! He promised to pass by the next morning to have another look before they would leave. How kind was that? The next morning he even brought his tweezers to take out some of the old tissue- argh. Horror🙈. El Capitano was brave and let him do it. Unfortunately it didn’t work out as the tissue fell apart so he couldn’t´really take it out. Still he was satisfied with the look of the leg. Even though I thought it looked horrible. Well, it was what it was. The infection which needed time to leave.
All in all it took more than 5 weeks for the infection to come and go. Sorry about the pics. Amazing what harm a little spot can do. If you don’t want to see the following pics just close your eyes 😉.

Anyway, apart from mean infections and adverse climatological episodes we still enjoyed our time in the pool. Of course I had the better part as I could go swimming and snorkelling with Debbie while Norbert had to look after his shine. Well at least sometimes Deb kept him busy. He helped her with technical stuff like e.g. installing new speakers or getting a zoom meeting running. We celebrated the 4th of July, met more nice sailors, enjoyed Ibins amazing kitchen and followed his new over-the-water-terrace getting ready. Debbie invited us for dinner and vice versa. Long story short, time was flying. End of July we headed further to Linton Bay and a few days later to Shelterbay marina in Colon. That is the marina just in front of the entrance to the canal to the pacific. Nooooo, we are not planning to go through soon. The marina is just the place where we wanted to leave Altimate when we would fly to Europe. Oh yes it was soon time to see friends and family🙃.

In Linton we met Wolfgang from Steadfast. He happened to be there at the same time as they had found a very interested buyer and were hoping to sell their boat by the end of the week. As well by chance we also caught up with Susan the amazing single handed lady (she is 83!!!), we met before in the San Blas. Anyhow, the original reason to stop in Linton was an aluminium holder which we had ordered for our soon coming Starlink antenna. Yesssssss!!!! For all of you who do not know what that is: Technically speaking Starlink is a satellite internet system. But for sailors and other remote web users, it’s a potential godsend😇. It is super fast anywhere!!! And especially for me for uploading pics for the blog it will be just heaven!!!

But back to the holder. Of course it was not yet ready. Monday morning Stanley the welder promised to have it ready in the afternoon. Ok no problema, we had planned to join Wolfgang to go to Sabanitas for some shopping anyhow. In the afternoon El Capitano had happily picked up the holder only to realize that the angle to fit to our davit was not correct or in other words not usable! So Norbert headed back to the marina to catch Stanley to let him know he would need to change the holder. At least El Capitano tried to hurry to still catch him. After only a few meters the dinghy died and he had to row- poor Norbert. Fortunately Wolfgang saw him and gave him a fast lift. They just about made to find the welder before he had left the marina for the evening. He was sorry and promised to get a new one ready 9am the next morning. Our plan to leave early the next day was probably going to be delayed. In the morning Wolfgang was so kind to pick up El Capitano to get the holder. (Our dinghy still had decided to stay on strike.) Guess what? Correcto! It was not ready… who would have thought so? In theses parts of the world it´s always good not to be squeezed in a tight timetable… About two hours later Norbert came back with a new beautifully welded holder including the right angle. We can recommend Stanley, just don’t be in a hurry! Soon after Norbert had returned we started to lift the anchor until the chain stopped coming up. The anchor was stuck, noooooooo🙈. Somehow I had the impression that day was not our best morning. Well, always keep smiling! We tried everything to get the anchor out, forwards, backwards what ever was possible. Nothing worked. Fortunately Mathieu from the French Ovni which was anchored right next to us saw our dilemma and came to help us. He was the man of our day, yeah!!! The anchor was laying in 11m depth, too deep for us to dive down. Mathieu fortunately easily dived down (without a tank) and checked what was the problem. And not only that, he also managed to untangle our anchor from some bigger ropes or whatever it was tangled in. Unbelievable! We were so happy and thankful as we definitly couldn’t have done it ourselves. Merciiii Mathieu!!! And eventually we were off to Shelter Bay Marina Colon.

Meanwhile we have been here at Shelter Bay for more than a week. The first 5 days we were just cleaning, tidying up, cleaning and cleaning. Laundry, more cleaning, bleaching. The rainy season does make it easy for mold. If not careful some fabrics tend to catch mold stains and parts of our sunshades were also covered with mold. Kind of disgusting but what can you do? We did try before to get rid of it scrubbing the shades for hours with soap or baking soda but that didn´t really help. Fortunately somebody at the marina told us to use chlorine to kill the mold and so we did. And…OMG I’m in love with bleach!! The shades soaked for 30 min in chlorine and all the mold was gone. I was so happy!! The same with some clothes, soaked for only a few minutes and all the mold stains gone – so easy. Maybe not so healthy but mold isn’t either, right?
It felt so good to get a complete cleanup! We took out everything and cleaned every little corner of Altimate. By now we could even eat from our bilge – not that we tend to do so, but hey that thorough cleaning was more than overdue! After living almost 5 years (only 4 weeks to complete) on Altimate we as well checked at everything we had aboard. Items we hadn’t used in 5 years we gave away to gain a little space for new stuff😉. We maintained the big engine including an oil change, we repaired the outboard engine and finished most of the projects of our never ending to do list. Now it’s time to relax and getting excited to fly home.