It was 5,133 miles – 47 days. It was my longest passage yet, from Linton Bay in Panama to Douglas, Isle of Man.

Without stopping.

And it was fairly eventful – which is why, a full two weeks after arriving, I am only just now sitting down to write this.

But then the whole trip happened in a bit of a rush: I was just back from the family skiing holiday in Italy where, sitting at a mountain restaurant at the foot of the Matterhorn, I had reminded everyone about the plan to meet up again in the Azores in July.

“Oh no,” said Tamsin. She couldn’t. She was going to Vietnam in June to visit Lottie (Lottie is teaching English to little Vietnamese children). Tamsin wouldn’t have enough holiday from her new job to spend a week in the Azores.

Thinking on my feet, I came up with: “How about a weekend in Dublin?” There were people round the table who had never been to Dublin. Dublin sounded great – so Dublin it is, sometime in August, maybe…

We settled to ordering Tartiflette and Fonduta Valdostana,

It was only when I got back to Panama and Ramón, the taxi driver, had negotiated the final two miles of dirt tracks to the little French enclave of Panamarina (really – they all speak French and there is a proper French restaurant) that I began to think of the logistics.

I had plenty of time – it was only early April after all. But Donald Trump was talking about “taking back” the Panama Canal, and it would be just my luck to get stuck there with a State of Emergency. Also, if I were to sail all the way without stopping, it would be good material for another “Voyage” book – and I needed one: Old Man Sailing had sold 13,000 copies since I published it on Amazon in 2021. But sales were tailing off and, quite frankly, I needed the money.

The “Voyage” books were a success, but there were only two of them, and you can’t decently have a series with less than three. The more I looked at it, the longer I spent poring over the Navionics chart and the relative benefits of the windward and leeward passages around Cuba, the more the idea started to become a reality – and the thing with reality is that you want it to get on and become one as soon as possible.

And then, for some reason I can’t quite pin down, I thought of sailing straight to the Isle of Man for the TT. I tried to get there years ago – I once had a BSA Bantam (and nearly killed myself on Streatham High Road). I wouldn’t dream of riding a motorcycle now. But I do love to see them – and hear them. Hearing them between rain squalls while anchored in Ramsey Bay was all I managed last time. But if I were to leave now – well, as soon as possible – I might just make it for the last weekend. It would be a challenge (which would add a frisson of excitement to the narrative). All I had to do was sail 100 miles a day for 50 days.

I left on Wednesday, April 17^th – it would have been the 16^th, but Fausto, the immigration man, had to go to Panama City to get me my Zarpe – the essential exit permit.

And so, with a bilge full of beer, several dozen tins of beans and, by oversight, only six sheets of kitchen roll, I set off into a northeasterly Force 4-5 with a “Distance to Destination” of 5,166 miles.

The fact that I shaved off 33 of them had something to do with ignoring the advice to stay 130 miles off the coast of Nicaragua because the fishermen are now so hard up, they’re not averse to a little amateur piracy. On April 17^th, I was 66 miles off Cabo Gracias a Dios in only 12 metres. I blame some idiotic competitive spirit.

The whole point in choosing the leeward passage – going between Cuba and the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico – is to ride the Gulf Stream through the Florida Strait. The downside is that it’s a beat all the way, and if the Tradewind is blowing at its full Force 5-6, that’s 350 miles of wind over tide. I’m ashamed to say, I revelled in every cable of it – there is something ineffably wonderful about looking at your track on the screen and seeing that you’ve been tacking through an obtuse angle (check it at https://www.polarsteps.com/JohnPassmore/15574045-2025).

But if I thought that was pretty exciting, wait ‘til I got to the east coast of Florida. Somewhere off West Palm Beach. I sat at the chart table filming the plotter as the “speed over the ground” hovered around ten knots and once, for a memorable second or two, flicked up to 12.1! I could get used to this…

And that’s the trouble. Once you get into the Gulf Stream, it’s hard to leave. Why would you want to? Sea that really is aquamarine, sky the very definition of sky blue, and a screaming beam reach – it’s sailing straight out of the charter company brochures. I recorded no fewer than three 150-mile days – that’s an average of 6.25kts. In all, I was to have 27 days when I clocked more than 100 miles over the 24 hours. At one point, the average was 123.9.

And this included one inexplicable day of total calm, 60 miles off Cape Canaveral. Actually, this was no bad thing: One of the reasons for getting the Remigo electric outboard is because I plan to get a bracket made for the stern. The company website features a 23-footer powering along with one on the back. I reckon it could keep Samsara going at a knot or two, and that’s all you need to keep water flowing over the keel and stop the awful rolling as the ocean reminds you that it never sleeps – no matter what the wind might be doing.

But first, I had to establish that the 1,000W motor could push a 32-footer. I inflated the dinghy, lashed it alongside and pressed the “forward” button of the remote control.

Silently, the motor began to push the Caribbean behind it. Another press of the button, and we were making progress.

I am pleased to say that I managed to record a speed of 1.7kts – hardly surprising since the Remigo has, in the short period I’ve had it, demonstrated five knots (I found it really quite frightening). However, lash it to five tonnes of becalmed yacht, and it tries to launch the dinghy into space – rather appropriate, given where we were – but not much use for progress through the water. Most of the thrust was directed downwards. I was glad when the wind came back.

And the wind took me racing all the way up the east coast of the United States – the Carolinas, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey. On May 11^th,  Day 26, the daily average hit 123.9 miles. By then, we were just inside the tail of the Grand Banks.

The next day, I broke the Aries. This redoubtable mechanical self-steering gear, built in the 1980s – the same model I had on my old Rival Largo – I always considered to be indestructible. However, in trying to match old and new parts, I may have made a miscalculation. The servo-oar hit something, and the sacrificial sleeve didn’t break fast enough. The main shaft bent, and it wouldn’t work anymore.

I did wonder what it had hit – and how big and immovable that object must have been to do so much damage. Could it have been a small ice floe – a “growler”? The water temperature was down at 1°C – and what would that have done to the hull if the course had deviated just a few inches to starboard…

Anyway, I spent the best part of a day getting the gear aboard (it weighs nearly 23kg) and trying to fix it. When I put it all back, it just wanted to take us round in circles.

This left me with 1,899 miles still to go and having to rely on the electronic autopilot. I have written a lot about electronic autopilots in the past, and my very low opinion of them. But this was based on my experience with the cheap little tillerpilot, which has all its electronics out in the cockpit. Every time it rained, I had to pay £70 for a new circuit board.

When Samsara had her 50^th birthday refit in Conwy in 2023, Dave Jones of Advanced Tech Marine installed the much more sophisticated Raymarine Evolution system for me. It was very expensive, appeared to be most complicated, and its various components were secreted all around the boat, connected by miles of wire. But it steered faultlessly all the way home.

Well, there is a caveat with that. Because it has to “think”, the autopilot is not as quick to react as the Aries, which transmits the movement of the vane to the movement of the rudder instantly – all the forces being connected by aluminium castings and Dyneema line. Besides, once the autopilot’s electronic brain has done its “thinking”, the electric “muscle” of the steering ram has to grind its way across the cockpit. It all takes time – and, in a blow, it all takes far too long.

And we did get a blow.

In fact, I had three full gales with wind speeds over 34kts. I never saw the dial at more than 38kts. But they were very useful for experimenting.

In the first one, I wanted to see if I could get the boat to heave-to and drift directly downwind. When I had tried it before, she had fore-reached and sailed out of the protective slick which Lin Pardey talks about in her storm management books. This time, I streamed the SeaBrake drogue from the bow, and it worked brilliantly. It held the bow up between 45° and 60° to the wind, to take the full force of the waves, and yes, we did drift sideways. However, I didn’t think much of the slick. If it had been as effective as Lin promised, there wouldn’t have been any breaking waves – maybe it had something to do with her boats having full keels and the Rival design only a long fin. Still, I sat there for 12 hours, reading, cooking, and sleeping in relative comfort.

Only later did I discover that I shouldn’t have led the line for the drogue through a fairlead. The force of those breaking waves bent the screws and split the teak toe-rail. The SeaBrake is supposed to collapse and “give” when a sudden strain comes on it. Obviously, not enough.

The second gale saw us lying to the drogue set on a bridle off the stern. This was not a huge success. The boat still needs to be steered, and the autopilot, with its limited range, couldn’t really handle it. This gale lasted well over twelve hours, and at the end of it, the circle of rigging wire which holds the drogue open (and distorts to allow it to collapse under strain) had been strained so much that it had broken. Also, the material had chafed through where it rubbed on the webbing bridle.

The third gale was a bit more awkward because we were coming up to the northwest coast of Ireland, and I didn’t want to get any closer. Fortunately, weather forecasts via Starlink suggested this was going to be short-lived, but even so, I had to sit in the cockpit for three-and-a-half hours and steer through it with waves crashing over me and filling the cockpit above the top of my boots.

You would think this would be enough for one passage, but look what happened when we got into the Traffic Separation Scheme: At half-past two in the morning, with a cruise ship coming up behind, there was an almighty bang and the headsail fell over the side. The forestay had parted at the top.

Of course, I didn’t know this at the time. I was too busy rigging the removable inner forestay before the mast fell down. This wire terminates at the masthead, and not only kept everything upright, but I could set a staysail and keep sailing. This was even more important because, among other setbacks, the engine wouldn’t run for more than five minutes without overheating.

So that’s why it’s taken me two weeks to get around to writing this – that and the broken pump for flushing the watermaker – and, of course, the TT: Believe me, until you have leaned over a wooden garden fence and experienced a motorbike flashing by virtually within touching distance, doing something over 160 miles an hour, you really don’t know what excitement is all about.

Well, this is a first (mind you, it took me 12 hours to find it!)

You can follow my track ‘2025’ at

https://www.polarsteps.com/JohnPassmore/15574045-2025?s=B45DE028-9CAF-4BD7-AA23-4771087DDD44

 I went out to lunch yesterday. Actually, the whole purpose of coming to this deserted anchorage was to go out to lunch.

It was blowing like stink, the skies were cloudy, and from time to time a handful of rain blew in through the hatch. I reckon I deserved lunch.

There is supposed to be a restaurant on the island behind me, Tiadup – indeed there are half a dozen little cabins on stilts with steps down into the water, so I suppose you could call it a resort, but when I hauled myself up to the level of their dock and rolled onto the planking, it turned out they weren’t expecting anyone.

Two women sat at one of the tables and ignored me – and they really do wear their amazingly bright traditional clothes all the time. But when I suggested lunch, the whole place woke up. The chef bustled out offering chicken or fish – which is what everybody offers. He had a packet of dried beans, but you can’t cook dried beans from scratch.

I said I would go and look at the restaurant on the other island, Kagandup.

Actually, I had a suspicion this was going to be the better option. All day there had been four lanchasanchored off the beach and, through the binoculars, I could see the passengers cavorting in the shallows or snoozing in the hammocks strung between the palm trees.

It did mean venturing out of the protection of the anchorage – but isn’t that rather the point when you’ve got a brand new 3D tender and a Remigo electric outboard to go with it. I got comprehensively soaked.

Once again, two women sitting at a table – but this time they seemed to be going through the books and stopped for the usual “buenas tardes”. The menu (recited at breakneck speed) seemed remarkably extensive. I chose the only dish I recognised, prawns in garlic with fries and salad. No piña colada, though – not until the bartender came back.

I settled for a Balboa beer … and then another. It was still early for dinner, and I wanted to stake my claim.

Kagandup is quite an operation. It’s only about 100 metres across but the restaurant is as sophisticated as many you’ll find on the mainland. There’s even a bathroom with flushing loos (an oil drum full of seawater on the roof, an underground waste pipe leading back into the sea). The lanchas carry about 15 people, so there can be as many as 60 guests a day. The kitchen must be run off its feet – although the guests waiting their turn can play volleyball or lounge about in the hammocks.

By the time I finished the excellent prawns (and the most enormous helping of fries) the bartender returned with the rest of the crew and the supplies for the next day, all of which had to be carried up from the boats – sacks of potatoes, endless plastic cans of fresh water… all that beer…

At least I got my piña colada – even better than the one at Banedup – in its own pineapple skin.

Note to self: Must master launching the dinghy into surf with the Remigo on the back. Got swamped. That’s one good thing – a petrol outboard wouldn’t have started. This one works underwater!

Thank you for joining me. And, while I’m on, I’ve got some book news. The Voyage #2 Falmouth to Grenada – which includes the story of the near-catastrophic knockdown north of the Canaries and the 1,500 miles with a broken rudder on the Atlantic crossing, is now available in Audible, narrated by the inimitable Charles Robert Fox. Also, as an experiment, I have added my autobiography Faster, Louder, Risker, Sexier to Kindle Unlimited, so if you have a subscription, you’ll find it included. It took seven years to write. I’m intensely proud of it – and some of the early readers say it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.

Goodbye for now.

The 3D tender and the Remigo electric outboard – don’t they look good together!

Lancha

If you’re going to start varnishing, you have to get off the boat.

Well actually, once you finish varnishing, you have to get off the boat.

The table looked wonderful: That deep, intense shine you get from being too impatient to do it properly with twelve thin coats and instead you ladle it on as if spooning golden syrup onto a crumpet.

OK, so the finish is rubbish – but the worst thing is that it’s going to take the whole day to dry and a table with nothing on it is just asking for trouble – quite apart from the step between the saloon and the galley. How was I supposed to avoid stepping on that? It’s a step for heaven’s sake…

There was only one thing for it: A visit to Taidup.

Taidup is the island on the other side of the anchorage they call the Swimming Pool in the Eastern Holandes archipelago of the San Blas. There’s a hut and, at night, a single light – so, presumably somebody lives there. But, on the other hand, I’ve never seen anyone go over in a dinghy. Clearly, this would be the time to take presents.

In his Panama Cruising Guide, Eric Bauhaus talks about the dignified poverty of the indigenous Guna people who have lived here since they were forced off the mainland by the Spanish in the 1500s. Then they had to fight a war of independence against the Panamanians which only ended in 1925. They are fiercely proud of living as they have for the past 500 years.

Their huts are made from bamboo and palm fronts, they paddle dugout canoes and there is a tradition that sailors who visit bring gifts. Food is most welcome. Crayons and paper for the children. One of the best things you can give them is reading glasses for the older women to sew their Molas – the traditional intricately-wrought fabrics. I had them all.

Taidup was indeed, very small. I could have walked round the whole island in 15 minutes and it turned out there were half a dozen little encampments – all deserted except for one at the far end. There was a woman in the usual brightly-pattered clothes and then, when I looked closely a white man sitting on a plastic chair. A bit of a disappointment, that – to find a visiting yachtie here already.

But it turned out that, no. He was Guna – but albino.

This is not at all unusual. If you think about it, with only half a dozen families on the island, social life is going to be limited. Inbreeding is endemic. Indeed, it is part of the culture: During a lunar eclipse, the only people allowed out of the huts are the albinos – and it is their job to chase away the dragon which is eating the moon.

Tentatively, full of Spanish Good Mornings, I invited myself into the encampment. They were, of course, unfailingly polite – although it was clear that this was the equivalent of walking straight into someone’s living room without even ringing the doorbell.

“May I give you a present?” I asked (without even having to consult Google Translate, which I thought was pretty good) and I brought out the rice. You would think I had given them a bar of gold. It seemed their staple diet were plantain and coconut. There didn’t seem to be any young children for the crayons, although some teenagers appeared from nowhere. But then I brought out my trump card: the reading glasses. I had four pairs of differing prescriptions and so there was a lot of trying on – it was quite clear that the young man with the pale skin and the blue eyes was seeing the world as he had never seen it before.

His mother took me over to see her molas, strung out like washing. So, of course, I had to buy some. In fact, I thought that in view of my undoubted generosity, I might qualify for a bit of a discount, but apparently not. On the other hand, $40 would mean a lot more to them than it did to me.

It seemed that all the huts were on the beach – the interior was jungle. On the other hand, how could I tell without exploring it?

It was when I found the first coconut on the ground that I remembered how unwise it is to walk around under coconut palms. They are impossibly tall, and a ripe coconut is as heavy as a brick. More people are killed every year by falling coconuts than you can count.

I remembered thinking about this in Tobago and wondering whether I should have come ashore with my florescent cycling helmet and decided that when it came to naff tourist faux-pas, that was probably off the scale. But I did have my molas. I folded them carefully and stuffed them into my hat.

But I was right, the jungle was impenetrable. I would have needed a machete to get anywhere. But I did come out with a coconut.

There is absolutely nothing as refreshing as fresh green coconut water. In Aruba they have roadside stalls turning them into smoothies. But for that I really would need a machete.

Back on the boat, I opened up the tools locker. The saws were no good – the fibrous nature of the husk just clogged the teeth – same with a spade drill bit. In the end I got in with a 10mm metal drill. At least I could drain out the water – and it was fresh, although not with that champagne-like tang you get from a nut that has been cut from the tree.

I mixed it one part rum to three parts coconut water and put it to chill in the beer fridge (removing a beer to make room, which then required drinking while I thought up a suitable name for one part rum to three parts coconut water, shaken in an old fruit juice bottle and served ice-cold in a glass from the vegetable fridge.)

 The name I came up with was a “Swimming Pool Slammer”.

Meanwhile, the table still wasn’t dry, so the afternoon would have to involve another expedition. I still hadn’t been to the Hot Tub.

This is the next anchorage, behind an island called Kalugirdup. It would be a good destination for a further trial of the Remigo electric outboard. This was fully charged from the solar panel and I am pleased to say I have learned how to get it out of the cockpit locker through the hatch behind the nav station.

Actually, this is a good thing. If it’s too long to get out the normal way, I don’t have to put a padlock on it.

I’m beginning to discover all sorts of good things about the Remigo. For instance, it looks so different and so stylish that people on other boats remark on it – which gives me an excuse to stop and answer their questions, which in turn leads to the occasional invitation and I can always unload another leaflet about the Old Man Sailing book.

Then the skipper of a big South African boat told me where to find the best snorkelling, which was how I came to tie the dinghy to a fallen bamboo trunk, get myself all kitted up with mask and flippers and start swimming in the direction of Cuba.

Well, apparently there would be a reef before I got there – with wonderful coral according to the South African.

I never did find it, despite swimming for half an hour not always in the right direction. In the end I had to turn around because I kept going aground – and never did see any coral.

Before leaving, I went and asked some Canadians anchored nearby who said they took a detour round to the west and then tied themselves to the dinghy and drifted back with it – although even they hadn’t seen any coral. Anyway, that wouldn’t suit me. My dinghy is so light that if I try to climb into it from the water, it just turns over. I admit this is awkward from a safety point of view, but as I found out in St Maarten, it does work if you’re drunk – which is probably what counts.

Thinking about this, when I got back (a total of six miles at an average speed of 3.8kts and the Remigo battery still at 80%) I unloaded all the surplus gear and headed for the beach for some experiments: It turns out that, with 12kg of outboard on the back, if you thread the painter round the rowlocks and pull on the slack, you can haul yourself aboard over the bow without turning the thing arse over tip.

One way and another, it was rather a good day – and of course, it wasn’t over yet: There was still Cocktail Hour to come – with Swimming Pool Slammers on the sundeck.

Although it turns out that coconut water and rum is not the success you might imagine – although I did find that mixing the surplus with scotch whisky was an improvement.

But that may have had something to do with the senses being dulled somewhat from the original recipe…

If you haven’t already, you might like to look at the “books” tab above. There are nine titles up there – and, would you believe it: I’m going to be 76 years old in two weeks… and there’s still absolutely nothing wrong with me. In fact I’m one person who doesn’t need reading glasses! See the “Good Health” tab.

So far the record is seven years – I met a German who said had spent seven years in the San Blas and not left the islands even for a day. There are said to be 365 of them and the climate is perfect all the year round (you do get a few rain squalls in the summer but they soon pass).

Mind you, that’s not for me. I wouldn’t want to stay in the same place… although I’ve just realised I’ve been at Bug Island for a week now. Originally, I had plans to move the anchor to a better spot now that there are only nine boats in an anchorage which will comfortably accommodate 50. But somehow I find I can’t be bothered.

It’s not really called Bug Island. The Guna people of the region call it Banedup and there aren’t really any bugs. The anchorage is “The Swimming Pool” because, being surrounded on all sides by reefs and islands covered in palm trees, it is as calm as a swimming pool.

Part of the island’s attraction is Ibin’s Beach Bar and Restaurant, a collection of ramshackle huts – some on stilts in the shallows (some of the tables are in the shallows too, but not on stilts.) People come from all over the world to get married on the beach at sunset, party until dawn and then crash out in the camping hut. It’s such an institution, it even has it’s own entry on Google Maps:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Banedup/@9.5831643,-78.6738236,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!1m7!3m6!1s0x8e54f98970b98ed1:0xdfdee27232697c5!2sBanedup!8m2!3d9.5831643!4d-78.6712487!16s%2Fg%2F11mvmzdhmd!3m5

!1s0x8e54f98970b98ed1:0xdfdee27232697c5!8m2!3d9.5831643!4d-78.6712487!16s%2Fg%2F11mvmzdhmd?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDMxMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

But after the revellers depart in the high-speed lanchas back to Porvenir (which is just big enough for a miniature airport) the sailors take over again. The other night 18 of us gathered for barbecued lobster.

So, like the wedding guests, I wasn’t up very early the next morning – but that’s e beauty of life in the islands: I had plenty of things to do, just nothing that I abasolutely had to do. There are still three weeks before I fly back for the family skiing holiday (that’s if Donald Trump doesn’t invade Panama first.)

For instance, I needed to find out what was wrong with the battery for the electric dive system. This is a floating pump connected to a 10m hose and a diving regulator – a lot less bulky than SCUBA gear on a small boat. Yesterday, I spent the best part of an hour cleaning the weed and barnacles off the bottom before the battery expired. Now I just needed another ten minutes to finish up, but after four hours on charge, the LED status showed four red lights. Surely, that should be  four green lights. I started looking for the instructions.

Looking for things on a boat really is one of the most useful activities. To begin with, I looked in the chart table. I keep the instructions in two plastic folders – one for mechanical devices, one for electrical. But now so much stuff is electrical – and the instructions are so much more extensive that they’ve taken over the mechanical folder as well.

Besides, there were instructions in there for stuff I threw out years ago. Also, it seems that Arnold the Rat had paid a visit because a lot of it was in small pieces – and what was eggshell doing in the chart table?

Anyway, no instructions for the dive system.

I did find some rubber wedges that really ought to be in Toolbox #5 under the foot of the starboard berth – and that in turn led to some elasticated Velco I’d forgotten about which might do for immobilising the Aries when the Remigo outboard is on its bracket. I really should look for things more often. It’s important to know where stuff is – who knows when I’ll need to find the headsail luff feeder in a hurry?

Also I found the sieve – a bit late, admittedly – I bought another in Puerto Lindo. But I never did find the instructions for the dive system. It was only after a whole afternoon of unexpected discoveries that it  dawned on me they might have instructions online.

That’s how I learned that four red lights means “fully charged”. They don’t do green lights (where’s the logic in that?) So I went over the side again to finish up the bottom (although I have a sneaky suspicion the weed was re-attaching itself as soon as I looked the other way). Never mind, I sawed a bit off one side of the boarding ladder to make it level and then decided to reward myself with a beer at Ibin’s – I could order fresh bread for breakfast tomorrow at the same time.

The beer turned into a beer and a Piña Colada – although, as cocktails go it wasn’t much to write home about on the family WhatsApp group. This meant I had to stop at the beach bar opposite the anchorage for a proper one.

And now I’ve woken up at three o’clock in the morning finding that I never actually went to bed and the washing up’s still in the sink.

Never mind, tomorrow is another day in Paradise…

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in my books: https://oldmansailing.com/books

My daughter worries that I’m lonely, sailing all by myself with not even a dog or a cat for company.

Not a bit of it. Let me tell you about the last few days.

I came back to Linton Bay to collect the new outboard. It arrived in Colón via a forwarding company in Miami and from there to the Marina. No sooner had I picked a spot in the Eastern anchorage than an email landed from Mike and Nicki of the Australian yacht Zen Again: They had spotted me coming in, identified the Ocean Cruising Club burgee, and would I like to join them for sundowners? In fact, there were seven of us in their cockpit by the time the sun dipped below the horizon in a yet another blaze of gold and purple.

Mike is an electronics engineer cruising the world as he builds IT systems for people in offices from Sydney to San Francisco. Zen Again positively hums with electricity – and he was appalled to discover that I had OpenCPN charts for the whole world but had never looked at them because I didn’t know how.

It’s true.  Andy on Cohiba uploaded them for me in St Lucia, but there’s more to it than just having this stuff in your microchips. You have to know how to access it, what to do with it when you’ve found it…

Mike offered a tutorial, and for an hour the following afternoon, I cudgelled my brain with the difference between Raster charts and Vector files and did I need a GPS dongle? I was pathetically grateful even though I don’t think I was any further forward. Anyway, we repaired to the Black Pearl – and there, from the next table, were joined by a tattoo-covered American called John with a Westerly Oceanlord. He had a baseball cap proclaiming “Surf Naked” and the two of us decided we had been living each other’s lives for the past 40 years. He was a professional skier from Aspen. I started sailing when I was five. I was able to assure him that he had indeed done absolutely the right thing in buying a boat first and then working out how to sail her.

Then we added some more chairs and a Turkish family with two little boys joined in. Nibbles appeared and so did another round of Panama’s version of IPA which they call Frog for no particular reason. That turned into dinner and then Roxana turned up in her red dress.

Roxana is a Hungarian violinist who gave up playing with major orchestras to sail her 30footer where the wind takes her. She pays her way by busking absolutely world-class music in any bar that will have her.  The Black Pearl will have her any time she feels like turning up.

And I’m wrapping up this post sitting in Julie’s Juice Bar waiting for my “vegetarian bowl” before leaving for Portobello because they have an ATM machine and there isn’t one in the San Blas. After that, if I can get to Banedup by Sunday afternoon, there’s usually an impromptu party on the beach. If not, the beach bar does absolutely the best piña colada and I shall be quite happy sit with it on my own, at a table knee-deep in the water under a palm-frond roof with solar-powered fairy lights as the sun goes down on another day in paradise.

And here’s a video of Roxana at the Black Pearl: IMG_4677

 I’m still a bit shaky. I’ve watched the video that accompanies this post three times wondering whether I should record it again and pretend it was the first attempt (that’s what proper YouTubers would do).

But I am strictly an amateur – so much so that the GoPro is back in its box because I can’t be doing with all the online instructions.

On the other hand, I suspect that part of the success of this blog is its unvarnished honesty – people who have read the Faster, Louder, Riskier, Sexier book will know that I possess “a compulsion to share inappropriate intimate details.”

So, I can reveal that the first day with the new electric outboard has scared the pants off me.

This is the RemigoOne, made in Slovenia (which is the first thing in its favour. All the competition seems to come from China). The Remigo is the equivalent of a 3hp petrol outboard. I only ever had a 2hp – and I haven’t had that for four years. I did try an electric “trolling motor” which had to be connected to a 12V lead-acid battery (not a terribly good idea in a rubber dinghy). Anyway, I think it was only rated at 1.5hp – and that was with a full battery.

So, the Remigo was a bit like going from a pushbike to a Porsche.

Which would be fine. But this is Panama and the cruising community, not the Solent and an RYA sailing school. Nobody wears lifejackets. Nobody uses kill-cords.

With the sort of excitement that accompanies a train set on Christmas morning, I offered up the magnetic safety switch. It snapped into place with an enthusiasm that could have been taken as a warning – by someone sensible enough to heed warnings.

The battery indicator blazed with ten green lights showing that the six hours connected to my folding 400W solar panel had pumped it full of energy which was now bursting to be released.

I pressed the “Forward” button once. There was a muted “click” and the big two-bladed propeller began to turn. The little dinghy moved off rather in the manner of a hearse leaving a set of traffic lights.

Another press of the button and we were up to Step Two.

I wonder what Step Ten will be like?

A word of warning here: If you should ever be in charge of a RemigoOne electric outboard on a tiny 2.3m inflatable weighing just 13kg and you decide to go straight to Step Ten, DO NOT LET GO OF THE TILLER!

You don’t have to. I mean, I wouldn’t have let go if I hadn’t been trying to film everything and needed my other hand for the phone.

What happened next demonstrates the wisdom of wearing a kill-cord and why the desire to “see what happens” generally ends in disaster.

In this case, the full 1,000 watts kicked in faster than you could say “Whoooah!”

With electric motors, there’s no build up to full power. It comes literally at the flick of a switch.

And all that power has to go somewhere. Where it’s supposed to go is into forward motion but that is easier said than done with a 75kg passenger and what the physicists would call “inertia”.

No, it’s far easier for the thrust to be dissipated by slamming the helm over – after all nobody’s holding onto it. This meant the whole assembly was thrown into a hairpin turn that reminded me of my first sail in a Laser, shortly before my first capsize.

It would have made great video (if, of course, I had pressed the Record button).

Still, it did prove that the RemigoOne is a powerful motor. Once I grabbed the tiller and recovered my equilibrium, retrieved the phone and opened the Navionics app, it turned out we were doing 4.6knots and leaving a wake to rival the local “lanchas” which ply between the islands with 25hp on the back.

Having a decent bit of power is important because, as I have mentioned elsewhere, the real reason for wanting an electric outboard is not just to get me from Samsara to the dinghy dock – I can row that far. It is to power the boat during those ocean calms that leave her rolling through 60° and the skipper’s nerves in shreds. The motor will even run while it’s still charging – a sort of perpetual motion as long as the sun shines.

OK, so it might also be useful in getting to the customs office on the other side Barbuda’s 2-mile-wide lagoon against a 15kt Tradewind – and I do, sometimes, want to take a passenger…

Meanwhile, I stepped the power down to 70% (3.9kts) and then 50% (3.4kts). Who needs to go any faster than that? Besides, it’s a shame to spoil the silence with a lot of terrified shrieking.

The embarrassing YouTube coverage is at: https://youtu.be/MEkAe7A_z-M?si=vA_Dj9moU-XIioEc

And since the Remigo people gave me a discount, the least I can do is include a link to their website. I just hope they don’t want it back because I’ve gone and spoiled their reputation: https://remigo.eu

Update March 5th 2025

Actually, none of this need have happened. I have now discovered there is a system for locking the outboard in a central position – you just pull the tiller, lift it vertically and let it snap into position and the steering is locked – and very useful it is if you need both hands for something else…

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in my books: https://oldmansailing.com/books

There I was in the Swimming Pool. It’s not really a swimming pool – just the anchorage to the south of Banedup Island in the San Blas of Panama.

The Swimming Pool is so completely surrounded by coral reefs and islands covered in coconut palms that there is hardly a ripple. Also, there’s a nice little bar too, with swings instead of seats and absolutely the best Piña Coladas. You can take them to drink at a table under a thatched sunshade knee-deep in the water.

But I couldn’t stay there – not on the 100^th anniversary of the Guna revolution.

The Guna are the indigenous people of this region. They’ve been here for 500 years – and they continue to live just as they always have. You might find a village on an island so crowded that there’s hardly room to walk between the wattle houses – or maybe just one family in one hut on an island you can walk round in 15 minutes.

They live by fishing and collecting coconuts and selling intricately-sewn “Molas” to the cruising community who sail through here on their way to the Panama Canal.

They are delightful, smiling people who paddle their dugout canoes as they have for centuries – fishermen who come alongside in remote anchorages offering the Caribbean Spiny Lobster (like the European one but with no claws). At the more populated islands, whole families will come out selling molas and Guna courtesy flags. The flag takes some getting used to – it’s a Swastika, but they had it first when it was still respectable.

And they do love a party. Everybody agreed: The 100^th anniversary of the revolution was going to be the party of the century. After hundreds of years of  oppression – first by the Spanish Inquisition, then by the Panamanian government, they finally won their independence in 1925.

So, where to go for for the anniversary, that was the question.

The San Blas Cruisers WhatsApp group was divided between Carti Island and Tigre Island. I plumped for Carti because there was talk of fermented sugar cane. I spent a day sailing down there with the wind behind me, only to find no other boats and the island so crowded I couldn’t imagine there was space for even the tiniest re-enactment – let alone the sort of Bacchanalia you might expect from sugar cane hooch. I stayed a day, walked around the place until I realised I had wished “Buenas Dias” three times to the same old man sitting outside his door. I moved on.

I had to sail upwind and then downwind (to avoid a bunch of other islands apparently not in the party mood) but Tigre was the place to be – there must have been 20 boats anchored there – particularly families with young children (how many school trips feature re-enactments of beheadings and dismemberments?)

The celebrations went on for five days, with dancing and fireworks, kite-flying, more re-enactments (the Panamanian soldiers had wooden guns – the Guna, wooden machetes and wooden axes).

But the big event was the Congresso. This was an extended version of the regular gathering in the village hall when the business of the village is discussed and the elders sit on hammocks and chant the songs and histories of the people – which in turn get translated from the ancient tongue by the not-quite-so-old elders. As you might imagine, this can go on a bit, so certain villagers are delegated to shriek periodically to keep everyone awake (Did I say this was an enlightened civilization?)

Something else that is really good about Tigre is how clean and tidy they keep the island. While some others are ankle-deep in plastic, here every house has its wastebin – a wastebin cleverly constructed out of plastic bottles. They even use plastic bottles as shades for the solar-powered streetlamps.

I would have stayed longer but without warning (and ten days late) UPS found my new dinghy and delivered it to the duty-free zone in Colón. Suddenly getting back to the marina at Linton Bay seemed more important than a hundred years of Guna independence.

It’s taking two days because the wind died on the first afternoon and I found myself an island with a protective reef to anchor behind for the night. It was only the next day as the wind began to fill in from the north and I thought about pushing on that I realised the island was not deserted after all. There were two huts – one at each end. I like to think there were two families, each minding their own business, living their simple, charmed lives of lobsters and coconuts, sewing molas and singing.

I wonder whether just on this one special day, they got together for a party?

A typical island in the San Blas (there are said to be 365 of them)

Recycled recycling

Molas

The Congresso

Re-enactment

The Swimming Pool