Friday 11 March Temptress took her leave of Panama City and the grubby rocky, rolly anchorage of La Playita for somewhere cleaner and calmer. Once dawn broke and the wind gathered the sail was a pleasant beam reach under initially full genoa,then as the wind died a bit our huge white asymmetric spinnaker went up for the first time since Scotland.

Just thirty miles from the city Las Perlas is a group of innumerable islands with sandy beaches and rocky coves. A playground for the city at weekends and deserted during the week. Only Contadora is developed as a resort (by Trump) and has an airport and a few shops. Way down south the largest island Isla Del Rey has a proper village according to our ancient guide book. Our destination though was the quiet anchorage between Isla Chapera and the wonderfully named Mogo Mogo island in the north east corner of the archipelago.

On the way we had a few fishing problem; first the rapala had plenty of bites but nothing stayed on the hook. We hauled it in to find the rusty hooks were either breaking off or straightening. Kevin sacrificed his nails to opening the split rings and replacing the triple hooks with some I had purchased in Panama a few days ago. We quickly hooked a nice sized shiny silver grey bonito. I grabbed my iPad to photograph our catch saying don’t lift it out of the bucket it might… too late as Kevin lifted it for a better picture it wriggled and splashed its way over the transom. No fish for supper tonight then!

By mid afternoon we were anchored off a sandy beach with trees coming down to the high tide line and swimming to cool down from the heat of the day. Just 36 nautical miles through the water with a good half knot or so of current in ten hours had taken faraway from the big city to our first Pacific Islands. Now all we need is a good wind forecast to set off on the next 3800 miles with and Saturday morning after cleaning down the filthy deck, weedy dinghy and doing a few final preparations that is what it looks like we have. Time to go!

Log: 36.3nm
Position: 08 35.08N 079 01.20W