Tigre (Mamartupu), San Blas Islands

Friday, February 15, 2002

009-26.340 N
078-31.140 W

We began our trip down the coast at about 10 AM in order to have good sun to facilitate navigating the reefs. In reality the only place that we had to worry about was getting out of Snug Harbor and into our destination, but a mistake at either could have caused a lot of damage. Luckily the sun was good & no problem were had. Most of the run was down a deep (45+') channel, and one could easily see shallow spots because the 6-10' seas would break over them.

It was amazing was to see the local Indians out working the reefs in these seas. One would be in the dugout and another would be snorkeling & collecting lobster or crabs (I guess). What makes this really amazing is that these dugouts only have about 6" of freeboard! You see them constantly bailing But they're made out of wood, so I guess that they float...

We pulled into Niadup and quickly decided to move on. It rolled way too much and the village didn't look very interesting, so we moved on about 2.5 miles to Tigre, which is also known as Mamartupu. According to the charts we were over the islands at various points. They're correct N/S but everything is shifted about 0.25 miles W.

Tigre is surrounded by reefs and you have to thread your way in. You anchor in about 45' of water off the of village and pick your spot carefully as the guide book says that the winds can switch during the night, taking you into the reefs along the shore. Two hundred feet of chain gives you a lot of swing, but the winds didn't switch and the boat was positioned just fine anyhow.

The village itself looks quite rough from the anchorage, but once you get inside it's quite nice and very orderly. Of course you have to go through seeing the Shiala to get permission to anchor and see the village. What was nice was that they don't charge here, but we gave them a donation of $1/boat to help pay for an upcoming festival. Then we wandered through the village where everyone had the molas out for sale. I swear someone runs down the "streets" in front of us saying "they're coming, they're coming!" as you could see people scrambling to get them ready. A few old ladies were quite belligerent when we didn't buy anything.

We had the first good rain last night of the entire trip. It probably only lasted 15 minutes, but I'm sure that it helped wash away some of the salt & grime.

Today we're supposed to move down the coast to Green Island, but we've got heavy cloud cover which will make navigation tricky. I hope that it breaks!
Log ID: 168