Well I don’t quite know where to start… it’s been an interesting couple of weeks!

A week ago, we were getting ready to leave the San Blas and head north… we’d had such a great 5 days (despite the rain clouds that would visit once or twice a day!) of swimming, snorkelling, beaching & even a tiny little bit of interneting (!!!)

It had been an interesting passage to get to the San Blas — we decided to do it as a night trip, just to ensure we’d get there with daylight. In the middle of the night there were 3 strange flashing lights that I couldn’t make sense of, but Jon quickly recognized them as fishing net markers.

That made sense, so I kept a close watch as we got closer… and then suddenly there were  HUGE solid plastic markers looming up ALL around us. 3 of the buggers were lit with flashing lights — but 15-20 more were completely unlit. These were 5′ tall solid buoys just bouncing around waiting to smash into us… I had the big flashlight and Jon had the wheel and it was a tense 15 minutes to say the least!! These are the times we are really thankful to be a full keel trailing rudder!

We woke up in paradise though…

The women run the show in this matriarchal society… and they are pretty amazing!

…Not to mention beautiful!

We had our obligatory 17-months-of-marriage-photo 😀 (not a bad place to celebrate!!)

And we snorkelled almost every day…

Then we left the San Blas, headed for Providencia… and long story short, ended up in Bocas del Toro, Panama. Huh. How’d that happen? 😉

“The only thing that stays the same — is plans change”

We’re very happy to be here; it’s an unplanned stop that’s working out for the best. We needed a rest, we needed a few new plans, and unbeknownst to us, we needed repairs. Why, you ask? Well because yesterday our alternator fell off. Literally. Nothing like the clean break of a cast aluminum ear to get your attention. Never a dull day around here!

It’s a boat project — and one that we’re still actively in the middle of — so there isn’t quite a tidy solution yet. I’ve got pictures and I’ve got efforts to report, but I’ll wait until I’ve got a happy ending to bore you will all of the lovely details 🙂

Until then,

Breaking Randomly In the Ocean,

– LMK