Careening and the Old Fort

We've been busy in San Blas. Two days ago, we careened the boat on a sandbar in the estuary and spent hours scraping off the barnacles. Once again, the careening was as easy as pie, though this was a harder spot than Don Juan since the beach was steeper, the sand mushier, and the tide created a strong side current. Jack and Patrick scoped out the best spot on the previous days' low tides and then marked the spot we wanted to be sitting on with a four foot stick. A few hours after the high tide, we simply drove the boat up next to the stick, dropped a stern anchor to the side to hold us still again the current, and dropped the main anchor off the front. Then we turned off the engines and waited for the tide to drop. Since we had not gone in at the highest part of the tide, we were able to easily back off the sandbar that evening and re-anchor out in the estuary. Very cool, but we worked so hard that we didn't do much of anything yesterday. Unfortunately I can't post pictures today of the careening, but will do so as soon as I can.

Then today, Lori and Amy from Third Day took Jack and me on an excursion to the old fort of San Blas. We walked there and so had plenty of time to look at all the homes, the cemetary, the stores and finally the fort and abandoned church. The highlight of the day for Jack was swinging from the vines hanging off an enormous old tree up at the fort. My favorite thing was a tidy little home we passed with a beautiful old Virgin of Guadalupe picture hanging on the wall by the door, beautiful flowering bouganvilla and a banana tree (with bananas!) at the gate, and a pot of something smelling good on the outside fire pit. The old church was pretty cool too.