I remember being a bit nervous when arriving in Jamaica, not knowing if in the near future there would be an ok weather window for us to continue sailing South to Panama. Because hurricane season starts in June, we wanted to be in Panama (which is hurricane-free) by the end of May. Luckily, we found a pretty good window with rather low winds and swell and started sailing south on May 16. It was going to be our longest sail yet as a family (570 nautical miles, 4 days and 5 nights).
Since we didn’t succeed at installing our spinnaker and couldn’t fix the mainsail traveler in Jamaica, we only had our genoa for that sail, which meant that we had to motor a bit more than expected.
At the beginning we had to get used to being at sea again after a week of Marina-life, especially with the waves from the side, the ride down to Panama wasn’t very comfortable. After our fisherman Jannis insisted on putting the fishing-lines, we got rewarded with two Mahi Mahi’s. The kids made big eyes when they saw them. Other highlights were when we saw flying fish (the kids thought they look like little fairies) or when we found enough energy to play some games together.
When approaching Linton Bay, we were sailing right into a thunderstorm – welcome to Panama!
