We rejoined "First Light" in Bonaire April 10 and found her in good shape. We spent two weeks doing various jobs and snorkeling in Bonaire, then took off for nearby Curacao. Unfortunately our crew -Bobbie Kusehel -- who had intended to go to Tahiti with us, became ill in Curacao and had to fly home. So we pushed on alone, having a very good four-day passage to the San Bias Islands of Panama. These are quite isolated, but our friend Bruce McConnell from Santa Rosa managed to fly into the tiny airstrip at Porvenir just an hour before we arrived from Curacao. What timing. The three of us spent a week exploring the San Bias and meeting the Kuna Indians who have a semi-autonomous homeland there. The islands are much like South Pacific atolls, with great sailing and isolated anchorages. We then made a leisurely passage to the entrance of the Panama Canal at Colon, making several stops. Colon, as we had been warned, is a pit. It's marginally safe by day, and definitely unsafe at night. So we spent most of the time at the Panama Canal Yacht Club which, while very friendly, is pretty dilapidated. Unfortunately, the Panama Canal Commission picked this moment to close the Canal to yachts for the first time in history, in order to clear out a backlog of ships. This left about 20 of us on each end cooling our heels and worrying about various hurricane seasons. Many of us called our embassies, members of Congress and the media in an effort to pressure the authorities into reopening the Canal, which they finally did, just before a cruiser blockade was mounted! Let's hope this is not a precursor of things to come after the Canal passes to Panama in the year 2000.

We are meeting lots of people and making new friends in the cruising community, which includes boats from Scotland, England, Norway, France, New Zealand, Australia and Central America. The boat is doing well, although we are having to cope with the usual array of mechanical, electrical and other maintenance problems. Provisioning is also a time-consuming job, particularly given our very limited knowledge of Spanish. But to Jill's delight, they have a full-on, bona-fide PriceCostco here, with free pickup and delivery for cruisers. All in all, cruising is turning out to be a lot more work than anyone tells you beforehand!

Tomorrow we plan to leave for the Galapagos, with a stop in the Las Perlas Islands off Panama. This is about an 800-mile trip, with notoriously light winds, so we have loaded up with soy oil cans of fuel (purloined from the local fried chicken joint). A "down side" of being a fast boat is that we get to be at the head of the pack, hunting out the wind, while our slower-moving friends learn from our mistakes via our local net. After that comes the longest passage we will probably ever do - 3,000 miles to the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia. Jill's not really thrilled with the idea of sleeping in 2-3 hour increments over the next month, but figures if we can do this, we can do anything.