How do Catamaran's perform against a 6 knot current?

If you are sailing in this area, it is a good idea to plot out where all possible anchorages may be in advance should you need to seek shelter in an emergency. We had signed up to ‘Panama Posse’ and we extracted the information from their website and added all suggested anchorages to Navionics in advance. This was helpful. Relieved that we have diesel again, we depart from Santa Catalina with a planned final destination being Vista Mar Marina where we hope to meet up with YKnot to say goodbye to them as they are due to depart for the Galapagos. Our passage to Vista Mar was planned out so that we would have day sails with an overnight in some quiet anchorages. The longest passage would be the one from Benao to Vista Mar due to the distance and the fact that we would have the current against us. Our fist stop was Isla Cebaco which is 13nm away from Santa Catalina. There is a large protected bay on the western end of the island called Ensenada Del Naranjo. When we were low on diesel, this anchorage was one of the options we were considering going to, to get more diesel as we had read that there is a fuel barge here and a few Game Fishing boats. Luckily we didn’t choose this option as there was no fuel barge and no fishing boats either. There was a mooring field but it looked old and we suspect that it would be unsafe. We very rarely pick up a mooring and prefer the safety of our 32Kg Bruce anchor. We explore the beautiful bay. To have this all to ourselves is incredible. There one house on shore and apart from that we are surrounded by jungle and an amazing coastline. At night a small local fishing boat arrives and anchors between us and the shore. This can be scary when you are in remote locations especially when you have a wife and children onboard. They settle down for the night and eventually so do we. The next morning we depart in unsettled weather and make our way to the next overnight anchorage just north of Punta Naranjo. As we arrive there, we discover the anchorage is too exposed for us so we abandon and head 3nm further north to Bahia Arenas. In the intermittent rain we drop anchor keeping a close eye on wind direction changes due to exposed rocks on our starboard side. We set the anchor alarm and have a good sleep. The next morning we depart for Benao which had been recommended to us as a great surf spot with some cool small hotels. We arrive there and anchor in the north east corner of the bay. We feel a lot safer here anchored alongside the Aero Naval launch and a busy beach. The boys head off to surf and Claire and I explore the beach and a small river. There are some really nice hotels and surf schools on the beach. We manage to find one with Wifi so we buy some drinks and enjoy a Wifi fix. This anchorage is great but we believe that it could become untenable if the wind comes from the South East to the South West. Our next destination is Vista Mar Marina to see Yknot. We depart from Benao and make our way in an Easterly direction towards Punta Mala where we expect to encounter a Southerly current. We start to feel the current pushing us south and with the wind coming from the north, this makes the challenge of getting to Vista Mar as we had planned quite a task. We soon realize that Vista Mar is not an option unless we are ok with spending a considerable amount of time at sea tacking up to Vista Mar with the elements against us. It becomes clear that Las Perlas will be our destination. Not by choice. Talking it through though, we decided this was actually a good plan as we wont be tacking our way through fishing fleets and the shipping channel and that we would only have to cross the shipping channel once. During the day we hardly see any fishing boats and at night they all seem to appear. 90% don't have AIS and they have so many lights on, you cannot identify which way they are going. Radar is good for this though. We cross the shipping channel and have to call up a couple of ships to make sure they have seen us. Some don't answer. We make is safely to San Jose and are welcomed by dolphins. If you are enjoying our videos, please consider supporting us on Patreon which will enable us to carry on with our adventure - https://www.patreon.com/sailingmokara Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sailingmokara/ MUSIC Reflections – Markvard (No Copyright Music) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmHLGppjTUg Reflections by Markvard https://soundcloud.com/markvard Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/3r4yXYs Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/DmHLGppjTUg Dreamers by Nettson https://soundcloud.com/nettson Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/3ahNPI Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/M0TD7AGfnoU Cattle - Delicate Steve “Dreams’ – Royalty Free Music from Bensound