1 September 2013 Sabudopred, San Blas, Panama
We had an uneventful night and woke up to grey, overcast skies. A squall passed through just after breakfast and then it rained on and off for the rest of the morning, so we decided to stay here for the day. I messed about on my laptop, catching up on my web site and editing photographs - I've now got eight weeks of postings to publish when we finally get a good enough internet connection.
It brightened up in the afternoon, so Glenys spent a few hours with a bottle of Brasso, removing the rust spots from all the stainless steel on the arch – a tedious job that has to be done every couple of months. Meanwhile, I went for a snorkel to see if I could find another conch, but was unsuccessful – they’re a rare as rocking horse droppings around here.
I swam close to the shore to check out the sunken tree which was worrying me last night and found that it was an eight metre long tree trunk semi-floating in six metres of water, so I needn't have been worried. I should have swum over yesterday evening, which would have given me piece of mind.
Back on Alba, I cleaned the conch that I picked up yesterday - I’d stored it overnight by hanging it over the side on a piece of string. I’ve been told that the locals store their conch by tying three of them together on a length of string and leaving them in the shallows by the beach. The creatures are so stupid that three of them can’t agree on which direction to go to escape. We had Conch Salad for nibbles with our sun-downers.
2 September 2013 Sabudopred to Yansaladup, San Blas, Panama
It was a nice sunny day, so we were up early and set off for the Western end of the San Blas islands. There only a light wind, which was directly against us, so we motored for four hours to Gunboat Island. This is a lovely looking, isolated cay with a few Kuna houses, but we had trouble anchoring. Our first attempt was hopeless – just dragging on what felt like coral rubble.
On the second attempt, I tried to drop the anchor into a sand patch and then immediately jumped overboard to have a look. Sure enough, we were trying to anchor on the remains of a coral reef. The anchor was five metres from a small sand patch, so I hauled the 60lb beast over the sea bed and dropped it on the sand. Glenys then backed the anchor in which seemed to hold okay, but I wasn’t very happy with the anchorage.
Just as I climbed back onboard, a boat came out from the island and the owners demanded $10 for anchoring next to their island. We then had a protracted discussion in broken Spanish, telling them that we weren’t staying because the “ancla esta malo”. A young man was getting quite emotional about it and kept demanding the money, but I kept saying that we were going and we’d only been here for five minutes. Eventually, they gave up and we left.
We motored over to the Western Lemon Cays and into the anchorage at Narguarchirdup, but there’s some kind of building work going on and the islands looked most unattractive. We turned around and left. Dismayed, we decided to go to Yansaladup, which we know is a pleasant anchorage with good holding. With a sigh of relief, we anchored near our friends Robert and Heidi from “Nuwam” and invited them over for sundowners.
3 September 2013 Yansaladup, San Blas, Panama
It was a miserable morning with thunderstorms passing through, but after lunch it cleared up nicely. The vegetable boat called by with a reasonable supply of food, so Glenys bought a few things including their last six cans of beer, which surprisingly, was cheaper than in Nargana. We also had another visit from Lisa, who managed to get Glenys to buy a couple of cheap molas – we now have eight of them.
In the afternoon, we went for a snorkel around Palm Island, which is a 10 meter diameter cay with a single coconut palm tree. The snorkelling was surprisingly good and we circumnavigated the small island seeing a nice Spotted Eagle Ray hoovering up sand and having a good old forage around.
In the late afternoon, we went with “Nuwam” for a couple of beers on Banedup, which caters for backpackers and other tourists. The Kuna still live in grass huts, but have a generator and some accommodation for tourists. The island is only ½ mile from the Yansaladup anchorage, but it was a real mission trying to find our way back through the various reefs in the fading light.
4 September 2013 Yansaladup, San Blas, Panama
We woke to a sunny day, but with the distant rumble of thunder – will there ever be a day when we don’t hear thunder? Glenys took the opportunity to wash some of our smalls and hung them out to dry, suspiciously eyeing up the sky for most of the day.
A month ago, I bought some fins for the outboard to make it easier to plane the dinghy and I finally motivated myself enough to go ashore to fit them. We were greeted on the beach by the three small children who live on Yansaladup as well as a slow procession of other people. Glenys went for a walk around the island, while I fitted the new fins and found that they have a fresh water well, a few chickens and a small pig. They also have a wild cat that looks like a Ocelot. It’s only a month old kitten and is very tame, but God knows how big it will be when it grows up.
We went for a snorkel in the afternoon and tested out the outboard fins, which work very well. The dinghy now comes up on the plane much quicker and I can plane at a slower speed, which should save us fuel.
Robert and Heidi from “Nuwam” invited us over for sundowners and we had a pleasant time sat on the trampoline at the front of their catamaran eating nibbles and drinking beer in the cool breeze.
5 September 2013 Yansaladup, San Blas, Panama
I woke up with a bee in my bonnet about creating a video Christmas card with Glenys and me playing “Meli Kalikimaka” on the ukulele and guitar, so we spent most of the morning messing about trying to play and sing the song together. I videoed a few attempts and then put together a short video switching shots between the two of us. We sound awful and both look miserable and terrified, but at least I proved that we could do it with a lot more practise and more video sessions. Perhaps we’ll motivate ourselves again sometime soon.
In the afternoon we went for a snorkel at the fringing reef to the north of Yansaladup, which was very good. I found a big Nurse Shark sleeping underneath a ledge and Glenys picked up a large conch, which I prepared when we got back to the boat.
6 September 2013 Yansaladup to Yansaladup, San Blas, Panama
It was raining when we got up, but by ten o’clock it seemed to be brightening up, so we pulled up the anchor and motored over to the Carti Islands, which are the most densely populated islands in the San Blas Islands. We dropped our anchor to the east of Carti Sugdup, but the sea bed appeared to be broken coral and the holding was only just good enough for a quick trip ashore.
We took our dinghy around to the north side of the island, pulled up to a concrete dock next to a large brown building displaying a welcoming sign and were immediately helped by an old Kuna guy. He insisted on taking us to his house, where we had a chat to one of his sons who was lounging around in his hammock. Our guide then proudly showed us the three pirogues that he operates to take tourists on trips around the islands.
Our new friend then took us on a tour of the village calling in at various small tiendas, which had basic supplies – Glenys bought a few food items as we wandered around, but surprisingly (and thankfully), we weren't shown any molas. The houses on the island are a mixture of traditional and concrete buildings separated by very narrow, hard packed dirt streets. Most of the older ladies wear their traditional costumes with colourful molas and glass beads around their legs and arms, but the younger girls are adopting western dress.
We were taken into the Congreso hut where we were introduced to the head chief of the village swinging in a hammock in the middle of the building. The congreso is the largest hut in the village and is where the Kuna meet every evening to discuss local issues. There are comfy looking hammocks for the three chiefs in the centre of the hut, while the rest of the village sit around them on hard wooden benches. During a congreso, the chiefs impart their wisdom and resolve any problems. They also sing sacred songs which are a major part of the Kuna oral history. I’ve been told that the congreso’s can be very long and boring, so as a result, certain people are given the task of occasionally letting out ear-piercing shrieks to keep people awake.
We made a stop at the small Kuna Museum where we were given a short presentation by an English speaking guide, who took us through some of the history and culture of the Kuna nation. One of the most interesting things was how they bury their dead. They take the body to a special place in the jungle and dig a large rectangular pit. The body is wrapped in a hammock, which is suspended in the tomb. The relatives then place the dead person’s meagre possessions around the floor under the body adding some religious items such as small dugout canoes to help the person on their journey to the after-life. The tomb is then covered with wooden poles and earth is piled on top.
As we were wandering around, we came across four children playing with their equivalent of a toy car – a small, well-decorated dugout canoe. They were having a whale of a time and happy to have their photograph taken.
Unfortunately, the weather turned bad on us and it started to rain heavily, so we headed back to the dinghy, tipping our guide a couple of dollars when we left.
We were soaked by the time that we got the anchor up and it looked pretty miserable with dark clouds over the mainland, so we abandoned our original intention of anchoring at the nearby island of Acuadup and decided to head back to Yansaladup where it looked a bit brighter.
It rained all the way back. We had some wind from behind us, so we tried to sail, but gave up after twenty minutes of plodding along at 3 knots. By the time that we entered the Eastern Lemon Cays, the visibility was down to 25 metres in the pouring rain and it was almost impossible to see the reefs. Fortunately, we still had the outgoing track on our chart plotter, so we cautiously followed it back into the anchorage.
7 September 2013 Yansaladup, San Blas, Panama
It was a pleasant day with hardly any wind – you never know what is coming with this weather. Yesterday while sailing, I noticed that we have dark patches on the seams of our genoa, which looked suspiciously like mildew, so we pulled out both foresails and inspected them. The stay sail is fine and looks very clean, but the genoa definitely has some patches of what looks like mildew. It’s not too bad, so we left the sails out to dry for a few hours and we’ll give it a good cleaning when we get to Shelter Bay Marina.
We didn't do much for the rest of the morning – I messed around with working out how to play some new tunes on the guitar, while Glenys read her book. In the afternoon, we went for a snorkel to the north west of a small sand island, which was very good – it's a nice reef dropping down to 12 metres. There were lots of snappers swimming about and we saw a couple of big Nurse Sharks again. I also spotted a small shoal of Glassy Sweepers, which we haven’t seen for ages.
We went to “Nuwam” for evening cocktails and to sample the fish that Robert caught while trolling over the reef yesterday.
8 September 2013 Yansaladup to the Swimming Pool, San Blas, Panama
It was a beautiful sunny day, so we left early and motored across to Naguargandup Cays. We had a look at the anchorage close to Salardup, but most of the area is over 15 metres deep. There are some 3-4 metre deep areas, but they were too close to the island for my liking in this unsettled weather. We tried to anchor further out on two 6 metre deep patches, but both of them turned out to have coral heads and we didn't want to anchor there – a 30 metre length of anchor chain would have caused devastation when we swung at anchor.
We gave up and headed across to the Swimming Pool on the Eastern Hollandaise, catching a small Bonito on the way. We anchored next to Gris Gris, but unfortunately, the wind was swirling us around and we ended up a little too close to them. There was no danger of hitting them, but I felt that we were invading their “personal space”. By this time, another boat had arrived and took up the other anchoring place, so we decided to live with being a little close.
We snorkelled around the boat in the afternoon, and I spotted an Atlantic Torpedo which is an electric ray capable of giving out a 220V electric shock. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me. The no-see-ums arrived with a vengeance in the late afternoon and, despite burning a mosquito coil, they were voracious - Glenys eventually told me off for swearing every time that I was bitten.
After dinner, I heard the sound of fish splashing, so I rigged up a piece of tuna on a jig hook and managed to catch a reasonable Snapper and a huge 10lb Black Jack. Having fought it for five minutes and bringing it on board using our landing net, I then had to spend 30 minutes gutting and filleting the damn thing, which was hard work at nine o'clock at night.
9 September 2013 The Swimming Pool, San Blas, Panama
I had a very restless night worrying about how close we were to Gris Gris. A thunderstorm passed through and, although I knew that we had enough separation, I just HAD to get up and check that we weren't going to hit them. First thing in the morning, to my great relief, the yacht on the other side of us left, so we were able to move and re-anchor an acceptable distance from Gris Gris – I’ll sleep better tonight.
For the last few days, we've been discussing when we should go through the Panama Canal and we've finally decided to spend another week here in the San Blas and then start to head towards Shelter Bay marina. I've got a few things to sort out when we get there and Glenys wants to re-provision after depleting her stocks here, so we'll probably spend a week in the marina and go through to the Pacific in the first week of October. It's a scary thought that once we're through the Canal, we're committed to carry on and sail around the world...
Glenys got out her sewing machine and took over the saloon. She did some minor repairs to our big awning and replaced a zip on one of the side flaps for the bimini. I kept out of the way by going snorkelling around the anchorage trying to find an Atlantic Torpedo to get a photograph, but no luck. I did manage to spot a few Southern Stingray and a couple of Yellow Stingrays in my travels.
It was very hot and airless in the afternoon, so we hung around in the cockpit gasping for air and jumping over the side every so often. Tito, the local Kuna came over in his dugout canoe with his wife and their two grandchildren and relieved us of a $10 anchoring fee. It’s the first time that we've had to pay for over a month so we were happy to pay it over.
Glenys finally succumbed and bought a bead bracelet for $5. It’s made from a long string of glass beads, which is tied around the wrist and held in place by half hitches – it was interesting watching the dexterous way that the lady tied it on.
We invited Tom & Julie from “Gris Gris” and Frank & Gretchen from “Infinity” over for sun downers and swapped fishing stories.
10 September 2013 The Swimming Pool, San Blas, Panama
It was another hot airless day. Glenys had another go at sewing, but soon gave up because it was so hot down below. Frank from “Infinity” came over and gave us a big fillet of a 20lb Pompano that he speared yesterday, which was nice of him.
In the afternoon, we went snorkelling on the outside of the reef to the east of Tiadup. There’s an old wreck of a yacht up on the reef and we found a gully with a drop off in-line with the wreck’s stern. It was very exposed place but there was hardly any swell and the visibility was good. We didn't see many large fish, but I managed to find a couple of lobster. I caught a nice 2 lb one, but the wire loop on my snare snapped before I could catch the other one.
A huge thunderstorm built up over the mainland in the evening and gave us some welcome wind and clouds, so we had a pleasant meal of lobster in the cockpit with no insects to bother us.
11 September 2013 The Swimming Pool to Coco Banderos, San Blas, Panama
The day started off nice and sunny, so we motored across to Rio Diablo to go shopping. As soon as we’d anchored off Corazon, I picked up a reasonable internet connection and started to download three weeks’ worth of email while we went into town. This is the third time that we've been here, so we soon trotted around the few tiendas and bought what we could find – onions, flour, corn flakes, beer, wine, etc. Once again, the liquor store was all closed up and we had to go and find the owner in his house to get him to open up.
Back on the boat, we went through our emails and sent some replies – it was mostly spam with a few emails from family and friends – nothing urgent. Just after we had our lunch, a big squall pushed its way north off the mainland and brought torrential rain for an hour and a half, so we hunkered down and waited for it to pass.
There’s no piped water on the two islands, so the Kuna men go up the Rio Diablo with their dugout canoes packed full of barrels and containers to get drinking water from the river. While it was raining heavily, I watched a constant stream of Kuna paddling stoically past us on their way to the river – this minor spectacle really emphasised the basic way of life in these islands. The people on Nargana have electricity and there is a plethora of satellite TV dishes, so why on earth don’t they sort out their water supply?
The rain eventually dropped to a light drizzle, so we took the opportunity to dash over to Coco Banderos and anchored in our usual spot – we've definitely been in this area too long. There are a few backpacker boats around, but it’s fairly quiet in the anchorage.
12 September 2013 Coco Banderos, San Blas, Panama
I did some admin in the morning – catching up on my web site postings and sorting out the spare part for the generator. We've been running the generator using a jumper cable to bypass the faulty earth relay for two weeks now and I've been having a sporadic email conversation by satellite phone with Panda Fischer. I've finally managed to get a firm quote out of the German head office and have ordered it to be sent to Shelter Bay Marina by UPS. Hopefully, it will be waiting for us when we get there in a couple of weeks.
There was a bit of confusion because the USA distributor told me that the earth relay was no longer used and should be bypassed, whereas the German hot line told me that it was necessary and I should buy a new one. It’s an expensive little item at 200 euros, but I trust the Germans – the American distributor is pretty useless as I found to my cost back in July last year, when the Americans messed me about for weeks over a heat exchanger.
We went snorkelling on the reef just by the bow of the wreck of a freighter to the north of the anchorage. It’s a good spot. The reef drops off to ten metres and has quite a few fish darting about. We even saw a large 2-3 foot long Grouper, which didn't hang around long, darting into a cave and disappearing - I guess that it’s grown so big by running away at the first sight of man.
Glenys for some unknown reason, got it into her head to make Lobster Ravioli - even making the pasta dough from scratch. It seemed a lot of effort to me, but the results were very, very tasty.
13 September 2013 Coco Banderos, San Blas, Panama
It was a nice sunny day, so I persuaded Glenys to do some more videos for our “Meli Kalikimaka” Christmas card. We scooted off in our dinghy and shot some footage on a couple of deserted islands with palm trees and some more back on Alba. It’s quite complicated this film-making business. We’d already recorded a reasonable sound track, so we played the track through an MP3 player and sang along and videoed ourselves in various locations.
Having taken thirty minutes worth of footage, it took me most of the rest of the day to edit it into a one minute video. We both think that it looks okay, but I’ll hold final judgement and have another look in a month’s time and see if I’m still keen to send it out. I remember a film called “Confetti” where one of the couples getting married played guitars and sang folk songs at their own wedding – real cringe-ville. Am I strong enough to take the mocking?
It was very hot in the afternoon, so we took a break and went snorkelling. We tried a couple of places, but there were lots of small jelly fish around, so we gave up, went back to the boat and swam over to a reef at the edge of the anchorage. It’s only shallow, but pleasant enough. I spotted a Snake Eel which was pulling shells and pieces of coral from some poor creature’s hidey hole in the sea bed. Once it had removed the entrance barricade, it slid into the hole – all three feet of it. Very creepy…
14 September 2013 Coco Banderos to Yansaladup, San Blas, Panama
It’s Saturday again and the wealthy Panamanians arrived in their power boats, jostling for position at eight o'clock. By ten o'clock, we’d had enough, so we motored for 20 miles to Yansaladup. I love this anchorage – the holding is good and there’s only two other boats around. One of them is “Infinity” who we met in the Hollandaise a week ago. Gretchen has trained her cocker spaniel dog to stand still on the front of a stand-up surf board while they take it to the beach for a walk. She gave us a go on her board and, while I could handle it, I can’t see the attraction – far too slow for my liking.
We went snorkelling and circumnavigated Palm Island, which had a very nice reef. There were thousands of small, two inch long, Sharpnose Puffer fish – I took about forty pictures, but the little devils are so small and flit about so quickly that I only had two that were half decent. I need a better camera because the shutter lag is far too long on my Canon G11.
Some Kuna fishermen called by and sold us a couple of 2 lb lobster for $10. Glenys steamed them and shoved them in the fridge for tomorrow because she’d already got some chicken to use up. We had a delicious Chicken Curry with Pineapple – I love the West Indian flavours.
15 September 2013 Coco Banderos to Yansaladup, San Blas, Panama
It was a restless night. At two in the morning, I awoke sweating in the airless cabin and turned on my fan. Ten minutes later, we had over thirty knots of wind while a huge thunderstorm passed to the south of us along the mainland. I was glad that “Infinity” are anchored a hundred yards away because it gave me a point of reference to check whether or not we were dragging our anchor. We were fine, but I still had to sit up in the cockpit for quarter of an hour until the wind had dropped below 20 knots. It was difficult to get back to sleep after that.
It was an overcast and thundery day, so we stayed on board. Glenys got on with cleaning the heads and her galley while I kept out of the way and played on my laptop all day. I spent hours creating a pdf version of Glenys’s cookbook. It’s surprising how long it takes to format a document so that it looks good. I've only managed to get about half of the 80 or so recipes into the pdf, but it looks great on our iPad and I’ll publish it to our downloads page.
It remained miserable into the evening, so we decided to watch a movie with our Lobster Pizza. Unfortunately, our clever media player wouldn't send a video signal to the LCD projector. I managed to get it working using a composite video lead (with poor quality), but the HDMI feed isn't working. I’ll have to test both devices when I can get my hands on TV and DVD player which have HDMI connectors – it’s a real challenge to sort things out when we’re so isolated.
16 September 2013 Yansaladup, San Blas, Panama
It was another overcast day, so we got on with a few jobs and ran the watermaker. We’d been told by “Infinity” that the Kunas on Yansaladup are desperate for drinking water because their well is not filling up enough, so we dinghied over and gave them a 5 gallon jerry jug full of water. We were going to give them more, but they didn't seem very enthusiastic about our water. While we were there, Glenys gave them a bag of clothes that she no longer needed and some small things like a magazine and a pack of playing cards.
We've found that the Kuna will accept anything that you give them, but it’s hard to know what they really want. The language barrier is a problem for us and also their attitude to gifts is different to what we Europeans would expect. They seem to regard tourists as a source of free stuff and there’s no real reciprocation, often not even saying “Gracias” most of the time.
We lurked about in the afternoon. It was so hot and muggy, that we felt physically drained, so we couldn't even be bothered to go snorkelling, instead just jumped off the back of the boat to cool down.
17 September 2013 Yansaladup to Isla Linton, Panama
We were up at 0600 and motored away from the San Blas Islands. We've had a good month here, but we've had enough of palm fringed islands and snorkelling – it’s time to do something different. As usual in this area, there was no wind, so we had to motor for eight hours to Isla Linton.
On the way, I deployed my new birds on a 3mm line with a heavy squid lure and then had a normal lure on my fishing rod trailing behind the birds. I hooked one large fish that got off before I could get to the rod and then caught a nice 3lbTuna on the birds. While I was landing the Tuna, the fishing rod started to scream away and I found that I’d caught a small, three foot long Reef Shark, which must have been attracted by the Tuna. After a bit of kerfuffle, I brought it alongside, and cut the steel trace about 6 inches from the hook, keeping my fingers well clear of the pissed-off, snapping shark.
Isla Linton is not one of my favourite anchorages. All of the good anchoring spots with shallow water are packed with permanently moored boats. The only space available is in 12 metres of water between other boats that are permanently anchored here. In addition, the water swirls around in light winds, so it’s very difficult to know where everyone’s anchor lies. We did our best and put out 50 metres of chain, which surprisingly put us in a reasonable position between a couple of permanent live-aboard boats.
In the evening, we went to Hans’s bar with “Nuwam” for a beer or two. This bar is owned by a German guy and the food is supposed to be good, but the whole place looked so grotty that Glenys didn’t want to eat there. The bar is frequented by the permanent live-aboards, who are a random collection of scruffy drop-outs – a kind of floating pikey. God knows what the locals think about these people permanently hanging about in their area.
18 September 2013 Isla Linton to Portobello, Panama
I woke up at three o’clock because the wind had picked up, so I got up and looked at where we were swinging. Unfortunately, we were now within a boat length of another boat, which was directly behind us. I then spent the next hour going to bed and getting up every ten minutes to see where we were. Eventually I pulled up ten metres of chain to move us away, but even then, I woke up every so often to peer bleary eyed out of the window.
It was miserable, grey and raining in the morning, so we ran the watermaker and got on with a few small chores – like getting the front heads to work, which was not pumping well. (It turned out to be a two inch long stick that had been sucked up into the inlet pipe.)
I’ve been worrying about spending five months in Ecuador – it seems like an awfully long time to be spending in one place. There’s not much opportunity for cruising around in Ecuador because the paperwork is a nightmare and the anchorages are few and far between, so our plan is to do a lot of travelling inland and do some jobs that have been building up. However, five months is a long time to be hanging about, so we started to look at other possibilities again. We could spent a couple of months cruising the west coasts of Panama and Costa Rica before going down to Ecuador .
At noon, we dinghied around to Panamarina to see our friends Tierry and Claudia on “Vanupieds” who have just flown back after two months in Switzerland. We had a nice lunch with them in the restaurant – grilled steak and chips and Moules and Frites. It was good to catch up with them – they’re planning to go down to Ecuador as well. On the way back, through the small boat channel, we spotted a troop of Capuchin monkeys in the mangroves, who were as surprised to see us as we were to see them.
All the boats in the anchorage were swirling around and we were still close to the other boat so we decided to motor for a couple of hours to Portobello and dropped our anchor in 8 metres of water in splendid isolation – the nearest boat is 100 metres away, so I’ll sleep tonight.
19 September 2013 Portobello, Panama
I woke up in the middle of the night with the runs. It must have been that medium rare steak that I had yesterday – obviously too rich or alien to my stomach after five weeks of fish, chicken and lobster. I took a couple of Immodium after spending half the morning rushing to the heads and, fortunately, that worked like magic.
Glenys spent most of the day reading up on Porto Rico while I quietly read a book and tried to rehydrate. In the afternoon, we dinghied into town to buy some food. As we walked off the dinghy dock by Consignment Dave’s, we bumped in to English Dave, who naturally had a can of beer in his hand, it being after midday.
Dave told us that there was a German (Pat) who’s set up a sail making loft in town and showed us where it is. The stitching on the sacrificial strip on our genoa is starting to pull away, so it needs repairing. We were planning on doing it ourselves when we get to Shelter Bay, but it would be a struggle to manipulate the huge sail on our foredeck. It’s a very easy job for a sail maker with a rigging table and Pat only charges $25 per hour, so we’re going to drop our sail in tomorrow.
We went to the bakery, bought a couple of loaves of bread, then wandered to the supermarkets to buy the usual provisions – beer, wine, orange juice, milk, breakfast cereal, onions and some meat. It’s always the drinks that we run out of, mostly because they’re heavy and bulky. Surprisingly, Portobello town didn’t look as dirty and run-down as I remember, but there's still loads of vultures hanging about. It’s much, much more sophisticated than Nargana or the Carti Islands.
Our friends Jerry and Susan from “Vida Dulce” came over for a beer or two and we caught up on what they've been doing since we last saw them a couple of months ago in Shelter Bay.
20 September 2013 Portobello, Panama
We were woken at half past six by the sound of voices – I looked out of the window to find that we were surrounded by fishermen in canoes, who were hand-lining. It’s interesting that the people who live in Portobello are mostly Afro-Caribbean, yet they still use dug-out canoes like the Kuna. Even their oars are the same design.
We dropped the genoa off at the sail maker’s. Pat says that we can pick it up on the 23rd, so we’ll be stuck here for a few days. The leather protection has pulled away around the clew of the sail, but Pat hasn't got any leather and it would be more delay, so I said that I’ll do the repair. We've got a small piece of leather stowed away somewhere and it’s just a matter of hand stitching it on – I'm sure that I’ll regret saying just…
We bought some more drinks and food while we were in town and retired back to the boat, where we had a quiet day reading and generally chilling out. I did some more work on the pdf version of The Galley Slave.
21 September 2013 Portobello, Panama
I woke up with the intention of changing the oil in the generator, but managed to put it off by continuing work on The Galley Slave pdf file and managed to get all of it finished - it's now on our Downloads page. At lunch time, Glenys wryly said that she detected a certain reluctance to do the oil change and she’s dead right.
Glenys spent the morning cleaning stainless steel and winches, then in the afternoon played her ukulele and wrote up some more recipes for the web site. I managed to motivate myself enough to work on our Lewmar genoa cars, fitting the various rubber end stops, which I brought back from the UK in July. Unfortunately, it took longer than I thought and I didn’t have enough time to start the oil change…
Glenys was highly motivated after writing some new recipes for her cookbook and produced Piononos for dinner, which were delicious.
22 September 2013 Portobello, Panama
We woke up to a grey Sunday morning and I felt guilty enough that I got right into doing an oil service for the generator, which didn't take too long. We've been getting sooty deposits on the hull next to the exhaust water outlet, which indicates that either the generator is starved of air or the injectors are clogged up, so I cleaned the air filter which was soaked in oil. I assume that it’s been sucking in oil vapour while we had the oil leak in the crankshaft. I dived down and wiped the black marks off the hull and we’ll see if they’re there in a week’s time.
At lunchtime we went to Captain Jack’s bar with Jerry and Susan from “Vida Dulce” and had a fantastic cheeseburger and fries washed down by a few cold beers. Obviously, the afternoon was spent reading a book and sleeping off our Sunday lunch.
We’re both getting worried and excited about going through the Panama Canal. It’s getting imminent now – we’ll most likely be in the Pacific Ocean within two weeks and we've still not decided exactly where we’re going to go. We've had reports from various people that the weather is more unsettled on that side of the isthmus at the moment with big thunderstorms, but hopefully that will have changed by the time we get through.
23 September 2013 Portobello, Panama
We both spent the morning preparing lists – I updated my “To Do” & “To Buy” lists, while Glenys updated her “Provisions” list and did a stock take. We’re getting ready to do some serious shopping when we get to Shelter Bay marina.
I picked up our head sail from the sail loft, which only cost me $30. Pat seems to have done a reasonable job of the sacrificial strip, but his sewing machine wasn’t powerful enough to repair some stitching around the clew of the sail, which has lots of layers. He said that he’s got a bigger machine arriving tomorrow and could do the rest by Friday, but I don’t want to hang around any longer. It’s not that critical and I’ll get it done in Panama City or Ecuador.
24 September 2013 Portobello, Panama
We went into Sabanitas on the local bus to do a bit of shopping with Susan from “Vida Dulce”. These buses are ex-USA school buses, which have been painted in garish colours with some impressive graphics (even though they have holes in the floor). The ride took about an hour and was very bouncy along the narrow, winding road following the coast line.
Susan took us to a small shop that specialises in refrigeration equipment, where I was able to buy three more cans of R143a refrigerant to top up our leaking fridge. I was starting to get desperate because I was down to the last can and if I run out we’ll not have any cold beer.
Glenys only bought enough food to last a few more days because we couldn't carry too much on the crowded bus back – it doesn't matter since we’ll be doing some major shopping when we get to Shelter Bay marina. Unfortunately, we just missed a bus going back and had to hang around for an hour waiting for the next one, by which time a lot of people including a horde of school kids were waiting. It was a real fight getting on the bus, jostling with the school kids for a place - even so, I had to stand for half the journey. We were back on Alba by one o’clock and spent the rest of the afternoon recovering from the sensory overload of civilisation after five weeks in the San Blas.
Jerry and Susan from “Vida Dulce” are having some of their cupboards replaced on their catamaran and the carpenter has been working on their boat for two weeks now. As they are currently living in a building site, we invited them over for dinner to give them some respite.
25 September 2013 Portobello to Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
We left the anchorage mid-morning and arrived in Shelter Bay Marina at two o‘clock after four hours of motoring directly into the light wind – typical, we haven’t sailed for months! It was an effortless journey, with a only a small amount of stress monitoring the ships entering and leaving the busy port.
Sadly, the marina staff have put us into exactly the same berth as we were in seven weeks ago – it feels like we never left. I plugged in the air-conditioning and we’re now in luxury. Everything on the boat was getting very damp, so it will be good to dry everything out.
I picked up an internet connection and contacted our agent, Erick at Centenario about going through Canal – he hopes that the Canal Authority Admeasurer can come out tomorrow – he’ll let me know tomorrow morning. I now need to find three extra people to come through with us as line handlers.
In the evening, we went to the bar for happy hour and stayed for dinner. Dave and Wendy from “Elysium” are still here and Tony and Gail from “Cetacia” also arrived today, so it was a noisy group as we all caught up.
26 September 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
I spent most of the day on the internet and seeing people, while Glenys spent most of the day walking back and forth to the laundry. She did six loads of washing, so we now have clean clothes – some of our dirty washing has been hanging about for eight weeks and was ready to walk out of the bag by itself.
The Admeasurer came and filled in the various forms - he reckons that are 45.5 feet long including the arch. I’m happy enough with that because the price only goes up if you are longer than 50 feet. Erick turned up an hour later and went through a few things.
When the Admeasurer filled in all the forms, I didn't pay enough attention and I've signed a form that says that I’m willing to transit using the side wall of the chamber. Erick says that it’s not normal, but shouldn't be a problem. I've become very blasé about officials filling in forms – I’m going to pay more notice in future.
My parts arrived from Marine Warehouse – a new boat speed panel because the LCD display on ours has finally succumbed to sun damage. I also bought three, 20 micron filters for the watermaker which was a relief because I was down to the last one.
I had to ring UPS because they still hadn't delivered the replacement earth relay for the generator which was sent from Germany two weeks ago. They were very good and delivered it in the afternoon without charging us anything extra – we’d been told that they charge $50 for delivering out to Shelter Bay Marina most of the time, so I consider myself lucky.
Yesterday, I asked the marina to provide me with a 220V supply, so that I can put our batteries on charge. They connected it up today, but it’s 60Hz and a bit dodgy because they just join two 110V phases together. In the UK, we have three wires - a Line, a Neutral and an Earth - normally there’s 230V between the Line and Neutral and no voltage between Neutral and Earth. Here I have 220V between the Line and Neutral, 110V between Line and Earth and 110V between Neutral and Earth. This is very strange and I didn't want to feed this into our shore power connection, so I’ve wired up a separate feed to our spare battery charger – which seems to work okay.
While Glenys was in the laundry, she chatted to Scott from “Yollata”, who told her that Joachim from “Vela” was interested in being a line handler. An hour later, (before we could track him down) Joachim turned up at our boat and we immediately agreed to take him, which gave us our first line handler. Later in the afternoon, I wandered over to talk to Walter and Jacqui on “Jean Marie”, who are friends of “Vanupieds”. It only took me five minutes to recruit them as line handlers, so we now have a full complement of crew, which is a relief.
We went to the bar for Happy Hour again, but had dinner back on Alba and watched a movie in the luxury of the air-conditioned saloon.
27 September 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
I didn't sleep well. I woke up at two o’clock worrying about having said that we’d accept transiting the Canal using the side wall of the chamber. I can remember looking at the swirling water and the rough lock walls when we went through with “Sunrise” and thinking “Thank God we’re not alongside.” So, I just HAD to get up and send an email to Erick asking him to try to tell the Canal Authority that we’d made a mistake.
Then a thunderstorm came through and I had to get up to put our small electronics into the oven. Then I lay there worrying. Then I got up again to go to the toilet…
In the morning, we went into Quatro Altos shopping mall on the marina courtesy bus and took taxi into downtown Colon to the Post Office to try to pick up some mail that has been sent from the UK. They couldn't find any trace of it, which is a nuisance because we’re expecting two letters – one contains some new credit cards and the other one has Glenys’s spare glasses & contact lenses which she left behind in the UK. However, there’s not much we can do about it. After six weeks, we can only assume that they’re lost or probably stolen.
Colon town is a real dump. It could be a lovely place because there are lots of colonial buildings similar to Havana, but the locals don’t seem to care about the place and just squat in the old buildings. In addition, the streets are filthy and there are huge piles of garbage just lying around on the streets and any piece of waste ground. The people of Colon are mostly of Afro-Caribbean descent and have a different attitude to the whiter Latinos that are found in the wealthy Panama City. There’s such a culture difference that most of the employees of businesses in the Trade Free Zone (and Shelter Bay marina) come from Panama City and travel for 1½ hours to get to work every day. The Latinos think that the Colon people are lazy.
Yesterday, we discovered that the El Rey supermarket would transport us and our shopping back to Shelter Bay in a van if we spent more than $300. We had to arrange a specific time in advance, but it was a handy service. Taking advantage of this, we bought lots of heavy drinks and tins of food – 8 cases of beer, 20 litres of wine, 2 cases of soft drinks, 12 litres of coke, 12 litres of orange juice, 12 litres of milk, etc, etc. We had four large trolleys full of food by the time we checked out at a cost of $650 - it’s a bit bad when the till roll is over seven feet long.
Back on the boat, Glenys spent most of the afternoon updating her stock list and putting it all away. Meanwhile, Erick our Canal agent sent me an email confirming that we’re now scheduled to go through the Canal on the 3rd & 4th October, which is exciting. He also said that he’ll be talking to the Canal scheduling department and telling them that we don’t want to go through on the side wall, which is a relief.
We gave the Happy Hour a miss tonight – we needed a rest.
28 September 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
I spent the morning updating my live website, which I was shocked to find out hadn't been updated for over three months.
In the afternoon, I did some work on the generator. I snorkeled down to see if we had any more sooty deposits coming out of the exhaust. We've only run the generator for a couple of hours since I last cleaned it off the hull, but it looks encouragingly clean – perhaps cleaning the air filter has done the job. I’ll leave it for a few weeks and check it again. If it reoccurs, I think that my next action will be to remove the exhaust elbow and check for any obstructions causing the poor combustion. I chatted to Greg (the local mechanic) and he doesn't think that it will be the injectors because the generator starts and runs okay.
I changed the earth relay on the generator - I had a senior moment and wired it back to front, so I had to install it twice. I was very lucky that I didn't damage anything when I tried to start the generator, but it all seems okay now.
29 September 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
Having a good Internet connection, I foolishly decided to continue to rebuilding my laptop with a new hard disk. I spent all day down-loading software and installing stuff. There’s an incredible amount of reliance on the internet – I couldn't have done most of it without a good connection.
Glenys dragged out her sewing machine and started to make a new aft flap for our bimini to keep rain out of the cockpit when we’re sailing downwind. We’re very well protected going upwind or on a reach, but as soon as the wind gets behind us, we have to shut the companion way and put on wet weather gear.
During the afternoon, a guy stopped me on the dock and said that he’d seen my advert for my old guitar. He took one look at it, plucked the strings once and gave me $150 for it. I’m glad that it’s sold because we now have much more space in the front cabin.
30 September 2013 Shelter Bay Marina, Panama
It’s only three days before we transit the Panama Canal. We both caught the courtesy bus and had them drop us off at the Novey hardware store, which is very good. Having bought most things from my “To Buy” list, we caught a taxi back to Quatro Altos for the grand sum of $1.25 each. Glenys went off to the El Rey supermarket to buy some more provisions, while I went to the chandlers and bought some varnish and two more jerry jugs for drinking water.
I also went into the Digicel shop and bought a 30 day prepaid data card for Glenys’s fancy Android phone. I was hoping to use it as a modem for my PC, but I can’t get the phone to connect to the Internet, which is very frustrating. I mentioned it to Dave from “Elysium” at happy hour and he thinks that I’ll need to configure the “Access Point Name” whatever the hell that is. I’ll check it out tomorrow.
While Glenys packed away her latest provisions, I continued loading my laptop and transferring data from the old disk to the new disk drive – what a laborious process.