Sailing to Las Perlas

Before leaving for Las Perlas we had one last shopping chore to do. Fresh fruit and veg. Patricia and I set off from the hotel to the markets in the city centre only to find that due to some civil unrest no fresh deliveries had arrived. As far as I can gather some of the roads into the city have been blocked due to protests. So we had to make do with supermarket produce. The reason we were avoiding this is because the supermarket produce is pre-chilled and therefore not as long lasting in this hot weather. Once back at the boat we had to remove all packaging, especially cardboard and paper as this can contain cockroach eggs that might hatch along the way. I do not fancy sharing the boat with cockroaches. I have enough trouble with the mozzies. For similar egg reasons all fruit and veg had to be washed and put into nets for hanging.

We finally set off at about12pm. The Las Perlas islands are only 25 miles from the bay at Panama City– roughly a 4 hour trip for us. We motored all the way as there was not a whiff of wind, but this also gave us the opportunity to practice using the various electronic instruments such as AIS, radar and chart plotter. (I am more used to doing chart work by hand rather than by electronics and using my eyes to spot vessels and decide if we are on a collision course.) We also got a brief fishing lesson from Scott on the off chance we might catch something.

It turned out to be quite an exciting trip. First we had 2 dolphin playing in our bow waves for about 15 minutes. We were doing 8 knots and they raced together inches from the bow. It was fantastic to watch. I took photos but they are very poor quality so not attaching any. I’m sure there’ll be plenty more opportunities.

While we were in the marina John and Scott bought 2 new finishing rods and a pile of lures. Scott has a theory about using different colour lures. Yellow and green for dawn and dusk, and blue and purple for daytime use. So to prove his theory he set the 2 lines up each with the different lures. About 2 hours into the trip we spotted a cluster of about 200 pelicans on our port side about ¼ mile off. Suddenly they all rose up and flew over us to another spot on our starboard side – also about ¼ mile off. We could see they were diving so we altered course to go and have a closer look. Nobody was even thinking about the fishing lines because we were so overawed by the sight of the pelicans.

Hundreds of pelicans - feeding frenzy

When the fishing line started screeching, at first we didn’t know what the noise was. Our first instruction was to put the boat into neutral so that we didn’t snap the line. We just about remembered to do this in all the excitement. Then Gavin took the rod from its holder and started to slowly reel in, then let the fish pull on the line, then reel in some more. After about 10 minutes of this he had a nice sized tuna on board. The murder of the fish sounded like a floppy and messy affair. I couldn’t look. Gavin set the line again and literally 5 seconds later we were off again. This time Gavin had quite a struggle before landing a 10kg tuna. We took the lines in then as we had more than enough for 2 dinners for all 6 of us. The first fish we caught had a squid in its mouth and second sardines. So this must be what the pelicans were after too. By the way, Scott’s theory proved correct. The line that had the dawn and dusk lures attached, attracted nothing.

All this fishing delayed us by an hour and so we arrived in Las Perlas long after night fall. However, there is a full moon at the moment, which gave us more than enough light to safely find a good anchorage. It is hard to believe just how much light you get from the moon when at sea. It is like a giant spotlight and glistens beautifully in a wide beam across the water. Magic.