Jinja Island: Around Jinja and the B.E.N.

So now we zoom in a little bit. The map above shows the area around Jinja Island. Dry land is depicted by the shapes with the darkest borders. These borders are real, as all dry land in this area tends to have a ring of mangroves surrounding it. The mangroves actually help to buffer the dry land, and create new land. "Dry" means mostly dry. You can walk on it, though it might be quite soggy after a good rain. On Isla Cristobal you can actually find some hills - true topography.

The lighter grey shapes around the dry land are marsh, typically sawgrass flats. Always wet. Can't really walk on it, though you might do ok with waders. Can't take a boat across it.

The light gray/blue areas around this are shallows. There are reefs in this area as well.

Blue is deeper water, though these inner bays don't get too deep.

People seem to give their own names to these little bodies. Graham named his island Jinja because he is a proud ginger, and he likes a good pun. The soon-to-be neighbors that bought the dry patch to his northwest named it Colibri Verde - Green Hummingbird (they broke the frog paradigm in animal naming). The dotted line shows the preferred path of tour boats and whatnot entering Dolphin Bay from Bocas Town. If I find out what the eastern bodies are named, I'll update the map. I'm headed to a swap-meet at the Bocas Marina tomorrow, so maybe I can get some intel there.

(Sorry for the dark video, the light in the supply closet is out)

Some of the people that I might see at the swap-meet are those that I've been talking to every morning for a month now on the Bocas Emergency Network - B.E.N. This is a group of people, mostly expats and vagabonds, living on boats and small islands, that meet up on the VHF radio every morning at 7:45. Operator duty is rotated, but the agenda is always the same:

1) Operator greeting at 7:45 sharp (usually a "wake-up" goes out at 7:30)
2) Priority traffic - emergencies, etc.
3) Roll-call - everyone participating checks-in by boat name or BEN number (Jinja is BEN 63)

(You'll notice the Operator responding to people I cannot hear - out of my range)

4) New boats, leaving boats, returning boats - status updates
5) Mail call - anyone leaving that can take flat mail to be put in a box stateside?
6) Weather report - gleaned from various websites, this is also a rotating duty
7) Community announcements - what's going on - gatherings, happy hours, restaurant specials, etc
8) Boat/House problems & tips
9) "Treasures of the Bilge" - stuff you are trying to give away
10) Open forum - other odds and ends - trivia, birthdays, congrats, complaints, etc.
11) Operator close-out

My inherited duty, in Graham's absence, is to ask two trivia questions every morning, just before operator close-out. I try to make the first one something that someone listening should surely get, and the second a bit harder. I try to always make the subjects interesting and informative, so even if the listeners are stumped they will get something out of it. My degree of success varies.

Watching the video, I realize that I said "naval" instead of "nasal" - how embarrassing. But nobody called me on it. Maybe over the radio they couldn't tell the difference.