Day 30: Panama to Ecuador – 04/02/10

I don’t learn.  I wake up with a hangover but it’s my own fault.  Feeling sick with a bad headache, I stay in bed most of the morning and winge to Mike whenever he comes down to see how I am.  He’s sympathetic but I know I don’t deserve it.

Mike goes over to Voyageur as Susan’s computer is playing up again.  He does have his uses.  When he returns we motor to the north of Isla Del Rey, to the town of San Miguel in the hope that it might have internet access and supplies.

The journey there is not very long but it is straight into the wind, and we battle against a strong current - not a nice journey when you’ve got a hangover!

Approaching the town, Mike reels in a fish.  It’s a long, thin fish, shaped rather like a snake but with very long bill full of blue teeth.  Unfortunately it takes ages to die despite the copious amounts of alcohol we pour into its gills, and Mike eventually has to gaff it and hang it over the back of the boat until it gives up the ghost.  The teeth look too nasty to risk anything else but I hate having to do this, especially as we don’t know what it is, therefore whether it is edible.

We decide to call the fishing gurus on Brown Eyed Girl and talking to Joe and Jared, they think it is a wahoo from the description I give them.  Wahoo makes good eating.  Yahoo!

Photo:  Strange looking fish, but can we eat it?

Then we find a picture of a wahoo – and it’s definitely not the thing hanging off the back of the boat.  We cut the head off and put it in the freezer, then Mike guts it and I clean and pack it away until we can correctly identify it.  We don’t want to risk being poisoned.

Photo:  Blue teeth – very pretty – and pretty sharp

We arrive at San Miguel – and it’s not promising.  The tide is low and the mud flats extend for hundreds of yards, which would necessitate us dragging the dinghy across mud if we could be bothered.  Looking through the binoculars doesn’t reveal anything much in the way of shops and we can’t get an internet signal from the boat.  All that way for nothing.

We have lunch then head back to where we started from this morning.  At least the return trip offers us a more comfortable journey as we are now going with the wind although the tide has turned and the current is once again against us.

We goose wing the two genoas and glide slowly at 3.5 knots;  slow but not that bad seeing as there is only 6 knots of wind.  Mike gets another bite on the line but it manages to get off before he can reel it in.

Once we are back in the anchorage we started from, Mike and I take the fish head over to Ronja, the Norwegian boat that joined the fleet recently.  Jan Morton recognised the fish straight away and said it was alright to eat but not worth the bother – in Norway they throw it back or use if for bait.  We still want the English name for it though, so we go over to Skylark and Francois identifies it as the same fish but with the French name, orphie, and agrees with Jan Morton – it’s  not worth the bother.  We are offered drinks but my still waning hangover dictates that alcohol is not a good idea!  On the way back to Jeannius, we throw the fish head overboard, where it sinks immediately.

We are rewarded with another beautiful sunset.  It looks like a ball of fire over the top of the hills.

Photo:  Beautiful 

For dinner we have angel hair pasta with garlic and chilli – Jim is now a dab hand at this one,  and watch the film ‘An Education’ which we all thoroughly enjoyed. 

We head off to bed early as have to be up before 6 am in the morning.  We have 60 miles or so to go down the coast of Panama tomorrow.