We are sailing the Bocas Archipelago enjoying Dolphin Bay and the Organic Chocolate Farm and snorkeling at Mangrove Island (our fave in the whole archipelago). Don't miss the chocolate chip poison dart frogs and amazing grounds of the chocolate farm plus a wonderful encounter with an octopus!
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The crew departs Bocas del Toro with friends on the boat Bedouin, heading toward Dolphin Bay. Their journey includes navigating Panamanian customs, troubleshooting a weak VHF radio signal, visiting an organic cacao farm, and exploring a premier snorkeling spot before continuing toward Red Frog.
In this video we finally leave Bocas with our friends Chris and Mandy
and find a great snorkeling spot, a chocolate farm with poison dart frogs
and a possible solution to our weak VHF. We are saying goodbye to Bocas del Toro
for a few days. We're headed out to Dolphin
with our friends on Bedouin. All right so let me talk check-in here for a second.
We checked in through, not through an agent, but directly with
the port office. Four officials came out on the boat,
signed us all in and we thought that process included our cruising permit
which we found out a week later it didn't
and that we needed to complete another application. Well the person who does
that is on vacation for a week and we're not sure when he's coming
back. So we've heard stories from you don't
need a cruising permit to officially you need one but
unofficially you don't really. No matter what the case is we're gonna
get one. We're working through an agent in Cologne who's gonna file the
paperwork for us. The cruising permit is $185
plus $75 fee. Check-in fees were $45
for agriculture and $85 for immigration customs and someone else
who I'm not sure what they were doing but
still got paid. That's the check-in for Panama. We've already had a good report
from our friends Bedouin who have gotten to the anchorage already.
They've already seen a dolphin, said that the anchorage is clear, no jellies
so this is a good sign. Yay! Engines are still warm but we're off
with our friends to do some snorkeling. Here.
Yeah. See this? Uh-huh. That's not great. Okay it's not soldered.
You see in there? Yeah. It's just touching. Without a good ground
antennas are not happy. Our bed is at the top of your mast.
It's the same. This is so cool. This is awesome. You can use this for multiple
things. This is antenna only. This is VHF
antenna only. Okay. It's specific to VHF. So let's do low
power first. So change it to low. Okay. Good. Cool.
All right. Now you're gonna push the mic. Okay. Okay. You don't need to talk.
Okay. Just push it. Hang on. Hang on. You got it?
Yeah. Okay. Go for it. Just push and just hold. Okay. So the way to
I'll try and explain this. What happens when you push the microphone right is
it's pushing power from here. Right. Into the antenna but if the antenna is
not well grounded then what actually happens is it pushes
back and hence the pushback is subtracted from
how much outbound you got. So therefore your signal will be crappy.
It's not terrible. You're showing at about
one and a half. It should be one. Okay. But it's near impossible to get one
especially with a run like that. Okay. It's not bad at five watts right now.
Okay. So let's put this on to high. Oh yeah. Now we're talking.
Now calibrating it. So now let's see how much forward power we get.
We read that off the watt. It's actually not bad. 22. That's pretty good.
Okay. Pretty good. There you go. Now we measure the bottom.
Push. About 1.6. So there's nothing wrong with your radio.
Oh. Have you got a soldering iron on board? I don't. No.
Okay. Probably need to get one. Of course you do Chris.
You can do so well in the business world.
You could totally. You could get a hundred dollars an hour.
So you think you're getting a better transmission because you have the
military spec cable first of all. Yeah. Okay.
I would definitely solder this. Okay. And I would take a look at the top
of your mast. If it's the same. See whether this is all corroded and
yucky. So your core is good but you're not getting a good ground to here.
This is special stuff. It's called flux.
And if you don't put this on, the solder won't stick.
Right. It doesn't flow. Have you ever done this before?
My mom used to do it. She used to make like little decorative
glass. She would put lead glass. She would hang them.
No way. Did Popey do that? Put a little bit on the end of the iron.
I'm just going to put a little bit on because it's brand new this thing.
Make sure that the solder will stick here. Oh yeah.
See how it sticks and flows. Uh-huh. So that'll make it easier when we get in
there. Okay. Cool. So now I'm going to put this in
there. So it sticks to the tip. Yeah you can put a little bit on to
stick it to the tip. I'm going to do a little bit here. Okay.
You can hold that. All right. Wow. See it's disappearing in there.
Moves a tiny bit but it's stuck. So it'll have connectivity to this
thing and I think we should leave it. Normally you do this when it's off and
it's a lot easier. Elena. Elena. Mucho gusto.
Oh look how beautiful this is. Green Acres is a 30 acre organic cacao farm
owned by Gary Mitchell. As well as cacao, they grow citrus,
bananas, coconuts, and nonis which they share
with the locals and use for cosmetic purposes.
This property is absolutely stunning. I am
so bummed it is raining and I can't pull out my good camera.
But we're going to get some shots with the GoPro.
Thankful for the GoPro. Other side of the stream
we have 10 acres and that is our sacred forest.
Wow. And we only go to the sacred forest just to plant
special keystone species to help the forest to be as strong as possible.
Again, my reason for being here had nothing to do with chocolate. I just came
to try to help as many species as possible survive. This
will be on the cacao tree and you'll have little
fruit flies that'll come and lay their eggs inside
and those little fruit flies will go and pollinate the tiny little flowers.
This is a real cool system that nature has put together.
So the white part is sweet, the inside is bitter.
I like to eat the sweet and the bitter together and let's see if we got a good
one. So he said that 40 pods of cacao make one
pound of chocolate. We roast for about 45 minutes at 290 degrees
and that gives us a nice medium roast. One bottle of Green Acres chocolate
infused rum, one can of sweetened condensed milk, one
can of evaporated milk, one can of coconut milk, one can of
coconut cream and a banana. So after our tour of the
chocolate farm we decided to move the boat.
So we thought we would try this little hole up here.
Our friends on Bedouin went before us. They're coming back out so that means
no go. We're gonna head probably into that secondary space over there.
This was a great anchorage, well protected by the mangroves
and not too deep. And it was a very short dinghy ride to the best snorkel location
in all of Bocas. This tiny mangrove island in Dolphin Bay
had great animal life all around it. We went back several times
because it was so unique. We are here just for the night
in this beautiful anchorage. We are on our way out now
after a wonderful snorkel this morning getting to see tons of great sea life
and now we are off to Red Frog and we are following Bedouin out of
here. So thankful for them and just buddy boating with them is so
much fun. Navigation in Bocas del Toro is basically
just avoiding the mangrove islands
but there's not a whole lot of surveying that's been done here so you're just not
a hundred percent sure of the depths and because they don't have white sand
you can't see the depth differences like you can
on this. Join us next week as we explore Red Frog
Resort and its beautiful beaches, find sloths and another poison dart frog,
wander through the town of Bastimentos and take our chances hiking down to
Wizard Beach. It's always an adventure with the Blown
Away crew.
