The first couple of days on the yacht were fairly uneventful as we powered our way across the Caribbean towards the San Blas archipelago, just off the coast of Panama. Everyone was feeling a little sea sick from the rolling waves and spent most of the night, if possible, trying to sleep out on the deck away from the hot and sticky cabins that only served to increase the nausea.
During the day we sat out on the deck enjoying the sun, chatting with our fellow travellers and watching amazing lightning storms that surrounded us at night. On the second day our designated fisherman, Eric from Sweden, felt a tug on the line we were towing and after a bit of a struggle pulled in a 12kg dorado fish. The fish put up a tough fight and with a bit of a thrash and a cry of "Ah, Fack!" from Fritz, our Austrian captain, the hook had pierced the skin on his knee. After managing to subdue the fish (by hacking through it's spine) Dimmy the deckhand cut it into steaks using a large knife and a hammer to get though it's inch thick backbone in preparation for that nights meal.
The second night was noisey with Fritz's screaming and shouting at the deckhand (he did this a lot, and not just at the deckhand, anyone who was near by while he was annoyed!) during a storm while trying to cover the cockpit. We awoke on the third day to calm seas, beautiful turquoise waters and deserted tropical islands. Our neighbours were two other yachts floating off in the distance and one recently shipwrecked boat on a reef off an island. After breakfast, during which we all recovered our appetite without the sea sickness looming over head, most of us on board grabbed snorkels and masks and headed off to take a look at our surroundings. We swam to a nearby islands and walked, swam and paddled around it collecting coconuts we planned on filling with rum later that night. We snorkeled a little more and saw lots of little fish and a couple of rays buried in the sand. When we got tired we headed back to the yacht to throw ourselves in the deepend by flinging ourselves off the dive platforms at the front of the boat.
After lunch we headed off to another spot and pulled up between two islands, we all suited up again with flippers as well this time as the current was really strong, and swam off to the near by reef. Testosterone was running high with all of the guys wanting to fulfill their urge to be hunter-gatherers so had brought along spears and snares in the hope of catching a crab or fish to supplement the evening meal. We swam along the reef moving between the reef and a steep drop off while spotting lots of bright fish, corals, sea anemones and more rays. We reached one end of the reef which ran along the length of an island and only one of the spear weilding guys had bagged a fish, a pretty pink and purple fish about 5 inches long with barely enough meat to feed a cat. He looked sheepish but carried it all the way back to the boat in his shorts pocket to use for bait for the bigger game. We walked around the far side of the island as we didn't fancy swimming against the strong current and we were all tired from all the tropical life spotting and spearing we'd been doing. Arriving back at the boat after a long swim against the current that just wouldn't let off we all chilled out on the deck and ate mangos and oranges which were not in short supply. That night we were all really hungry after the long swim and were ready for a hearty meal of something delicious only to be rewarded with an Austrian speciality of weird lumps of thick pancake type mix with bits of toffee and a rare sultana hidden deep within. Fritz and Hans, the other Austrian on board, both tucked in heartily as we nibbled a bit and nudged it around our plates while dreaming of a huge pan of floured, fried chicken (what the stuff actually looked like!) Luckily some one asked Fritz to bring out the bread and we all made sandwiches of ham, cheese and tomato with Fritz's delicious homemade mustard to fill our grumbling tummys.
Mark had spent an hour earlier that day hacking open the coconuts to get the milk only to find out that one of them had been bad and had ruined the whole batch. That night we sat around the table late into the night downing rum and coke with fresh limes. After a while a few of us went out onto the front of the boat to escape the Irish banter (8 people of the 13 were from Ireland) and fell asleep under the stars until a storm came in and threatened to soak us. We moved inside for another hot sticky night while the rain poured outside.
The final day started with a crab fishing excursion and a lot of hungover Irish people. We were supposed to be given lessons by a local Kuna fisherman about what to look for and where but after half an hour on his narrow boat he dropped anchor, jumped into the water and swam off leaving us to figure it our for ourselves. We snorkeled around a coral reef for a while until he called us all back to the boat and headed off to another location where the whole exercise was repeated. By the end of the morning the Kuna fisherman had two crabs and a crayfish while of the 10 of us on board Mark was the only one to have spotted a crab.
That afternoon Fritz realised the next day was a Saturday and the passport office would be shut on the day he planned to drop us off in Panama. We spent most of the afternoon powering over to a more inhabited island to get our passports stamped while local Kuna people came over to our yacht offering local wares as well as crayfish and a huge crab. We decided to buy the lot, 8 crayfish and the large crab for a grand total of $12 which Fritz said he'd cook up for dinner for us that evening. We spent the evening in the same spot and just chilled out on the boat playing cards while the Irish tentativly sipped more rum.
The next day we set off to Cati on the Panama mainland where we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere for a 3 hour 4x4 ride to Panama city.
On our third day on the boat I had picked up bad cold-chest infection so I spent the next few days trying to recover while Mark went out to visit the Panama canal and wandered around the city. We caught a bus and a boat out to another island in the Caribbean sea called Bocas del Torro where we spent a couple of days lazing in hammocks (and doing more recovering) on Isla Bastiamentos. Mark went out to see a local beach on the other side of the island which involved a half hour hike through knee deep mud and a soaking when a big thunder storm rolled in. 
The following days were spent trying to travel as fast as possible over the Costa Rican border and out the other side to Nicaragua. We arrived two and a half days later to the coastal surf town of San Juan Del Sul where we are at the moment. We're heading off tomorrow to Isla Ometepe a island formed by two volcanoes in the middle of a lake.
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