PUERTO RICO TO PANAMA – 905NM
Finally, we’d have an entire passage in the trade winds! We’d be seeing a lot of the trades, almost exclusively from the northeast at 17-21 knots, with gusts (read: squalls) to 26 knots. The course from Bouqueron, at the western end of Puerto Rico, to the entry breakwater at Panama is nearly dead downwind, so we’d be gybing to take advantage of shifts in wind direction and to avoid the near-permanent low-pressure system (possible winds to 35 knots, with steep, ugly current-againstthe-wind seas) that lurks off the northwest coast of Colombia. Our sail-carrying plan called for a single reef in the main, and ’s 95% overlap jib (on a jib-boom and roller-reefable) and furling Code 0 (non-reefable) to
