On Island Time

Panama has been a great, great sailing experience so far. We have been sailing the Pacific islands of western Panama on our way to Panama City and the Canal. The islands, bays and the Panama mainland are blissfully quiet and very beautiful. Few people live in this end of Panama. We see lots of green hills and blue water as we sail the coast, and the seas have been flat and the winds light. It makes for good sailing and even better anchoring.

In the 400 miles between Golfito and Panama City we will find only anchorages, no marinas, and in most of those we are the only boat there. We even visited one bay that had a small village with no overland road access where we traded tools for vegetables. The farmer we traded with did not want money because he had no place to spend it, but tools and an old tarp were much more valuable to him. We have definitely gotten away from it all.

We left Costa Rica in our wake spending our first night out anchored near the famous surf break at Pavones (8° 23.930'N 83° 8.280'W, Google Earth latitude/longitude).

Pavones is the longest left hand break in the world (whoop-de-doo), but this is a big thing in the surfing community and we wanted to see what all the excitement was about. Also, since Pavones was only a 15 mile sail we could leave late, sail slowly, check out our engine repairs, and still find a safe place for the night.

Two more day sails and we found ourselves in an island anchorage at Isla Gamez (8° 7.708'N 82° 19.017'W) which may be one of the prettiest spots in the world. This was our first glimpse of palm trees on the beach and turquoise waters. Add in gently lapping waves and we were in heaven.

Sailing Panama one of the attractions is that the spots available to drop anchor are much closer together, and we avoid the long sails and overnights that are much less appealing. Yes, it rains in heaven too, so we are still getting our regular PM showers, and it is very dark at night with no lights ashore or on the water, but the scenery makes it all worthwhile. (We were a little spooked one night when the cloud cover obscured the stars, there was no moon, there were no lights, and we realized that we could stare into the night with no hope of seeing anything more than two feet from the boat. Definitely an eerie feeling.)

We crossed over to the mainland to explore the small town of Boca Chica (8° 12.684'N 82° 12.450'W ) and to get some fresh fruits, and we found an extremely pleasant restaurant high on a hill overlooking the harbor entrance. A fellow from Vail, CO had just opened for business, and he served some great seafood dishes for very few dollars. Panama is much less expensive than Costa Rica which is also one of its appeals. A large and delicious fish dinner cost us $6.50 (no tax) with $1 Panamanian beers to wash it down. In general Panamanian beer is pretty bland, but when it’s hot… Boca Chica was also the first place we had seen any other boats on this trip and we enjoyed the opportunity to share sea tales at the bar.

 

Isla Seca (7° 59.600'N 82° 1.900'W) was the next island anchorage and my first opportunity to clean the bottom of the boat after months of sitting idle in the Golfo Dulce. Swim fins, mask, snorkel and a good paint scraper were all I needed, that and the ability to hold my breath for several minutes at a time as I scraped sea grasses and barnacles from the bottom. I wanted to throw this in so you will know that even out here we are working hard. Isla Seca had some canvas tents on the hills that we could see from the anchorage, and we understand that for $300 a night you can occupy one of these tents while visiting these islands from the mainland.

 

Bahia Honda (7° 45.849'N 81° 32.281'W) was where we got to meet Domingo and his son Kennedy and his granddaughter Lacy who provided us with spinach, limes, bananas, cilantro and peppers in exchange for our small tools. What they really needed was fishing lures and lines, but the fish had already stolen most of ours. Buying fish from the locals is lot more reliable than dragging a line. Also the local fishermen can catch lobsters which have completely eluded me so far.

 

Santa Catalina (7° 37.400'N 81° 16.350'W) was our second surf stop and already I am wondering why I don’t surf. These are supposed to be some of the best waves in the world and most of the breaks are very difficult to reach by car or bus, but they are right there on the boat road south. But at least the surf breaks attract enough traveling surfers to warrant small bars, restaurants and hostels nearby.

 

We are spending an overcast afternoon in Benao Cove (7° 25.362'N 80° 11.296'W) which is another surf spot, a long, long sand beach with gentle breakers. We are just 24 hours from Panama City and will probably make that jump in one quick sail either tomorrow or the next day stopping at an island near the city to rest and relax and re-acquaint ourselves with civilization before we visit “the big city”. Benao has a small palapa bar and restaurant with internet access (first internet since we left Costa Rica) so we are taking advantage of their hospitality while we catch up on news from home.

 

 

Hope you all are well and enjoying our trip as much as we are.

Tom and Andrea

Off to See the Wizard

We got our first look at Panama this week, but it was via bus rather than by sea. We had learned that our best bet for finding a needed carburetor gasket was to try the Yamaha dealer in David (2^nd largest city in Panama), and since we wanted to see this inland city anyway we decided to take a shopping trip via Greyhound (well, maybe not THE Greyhound). The trip to David would be two buses with a stop at the border along the way, and would cover about 90 miles of Costa Rica and Panama.

Tuesday at 6 AM we were ready. We waited patiently for the bus to the Panama border to pick us up on the main street in Golfito. And we waited, and waited. Around 7 AM a friendly Costa Rican passed by with the words “No bus, no puente”. For those of you who struggle with Spanish this loosely translates as “You’re out of luck. The bridge washed away last night”. Something to do with the rain. Undaunted we were back in place at 6 AM the following morning, and the bridge was back in place too.

The trip to David for parts is very much like pulling into Santa Cruz harbor and then heading for San Francisco (by bus remember) to find a marine store in a large, strange city. Throw in a couple of bus changes, and then a border crossing, and try to do it all in a foreign language. The border crossing was like visiting two DMV offices (Costa Rican customs and Panama Immigration) along the way to stand in one line, find you’re in the wrong one, find another line, fill out a form, go back to the first line, etc. In addition to all of the above NO ONE spoke any English at all. Nada. Could a German tourist pull this off in CA? I doubt it. But with a lot of questions and a lot of luck we got to the border, managed to check out of Costa Rica and into Panama, and then find another bus to David.

Panama was a very pleasant surprise after Costa Rica. Good roads, clean, great buses, and the stores turned out to be the best stocked markets south of San Diego. Even the razor wire and armed guards so prevalent throughout Latin America were missing here. Panama was indeed a pleasant surprise.

Panama also had a less pleasant surprise waiting. We had arrived in the middle of a huge Independence Day parade. None of those great stores (including the parts store) would be open until after the three day Independence Day celebration. Historical note: This was the independence from Colombia in 1903 when about 10 local guys got together and offered to take over Panama so they could sell Canal rights to the US for $15 million dollars. Since there were only 10 of them they needed us to send in the troops, and since you could only reach Panama by sea from Colombia our big battleship sailing into the Colon harbor sealed the deal. But the parade was great so we decided to make this a multi-day visit to Panama.

The parade consisted of many, many, many marching bands with many, many majorettes. White go-go boots with 3 inch soles are apparently still in style in some places. There were no vehicles or floats in the parade, just the bands with drums and bugles. We watched some parade, walked in the city, watched some more parade, went to lunch, came back and watched some more parade, checked into a hotel and then caught the end of the parade. We had first seen marching bands at 10 AM and the last band was still marching at 4 PM. David is about the size of Santa Cruz so where did all the bands come from? A very impressive display.

 

With time (days) to kill we added the town of Boquete to our itinerary. A few years ago AARP had identified Boquete as one of the top 5 international places to retire and we had heard it was a pleasant mountain town with much cooler temperatures. An easy, hour long bus ride dropped us in the center of a very nice community with coffee bars and hiking trails, and rain. We drank coffee and watched it rain for an entire day. It was a good thing we were in such a pleasant town. When we returned to David we learned that Boquete had made the national news because of the flooding in the town that day. We heard it was a remnant of hurricane Ida but it seemed like just another rainy day to me.

At long last the stores reopened. The holiday started on a Tuesday. Stores closed Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and then just to break up the work week they opened for Friday rather than making it long holiday. But Yamaha came through for us and the Super 99 market was open so we packed our parts and our supplies onto the bus for another ride to the border and back to Golfito, Costa Rica. Overall this was a great trip and we were very impressed with Panama.

The engines both work (first time we have had both engines working since Mexico), the boat is cleaned and polished, and after a relaxing Sunday afternoon at the bar of a first class hotel watching the NFL we are ready to leave Golfito. We checked out today with immigration, customs and the port captain, and paid our bill at the marina. The sail south (and east) will cover 400 miles and we will spend all of our time at anchor for the next 3 to 4 weeks. I suspect internet access is a thing of the past so if you do not hear from us for a while just assume we will be enjoying palm lined beaches and turquoise blue waters aboard our little boat. Either that or it will still be raining. J

Tom and Andrea

Panama Here We Come… Soon

In case you missed the news we are off again for another 60 day sailing adventure. With any luck we will make the sail from Golfito, Costa Rica to Panama City, transit the Panama Canal, and get to spend some time in the San Blas Islands of Panama before we head home in January. Once again I will try to entertain you and maybe educate you about Latin America with some highlights of our trip. As always…. if you find our vacation boring feel free to hit the “Drop me from your e-mail list” button on your computer.

To get back to Golfito we were facing a long flight from CA to Costa Rica and then an eight hour bus ride through the mountains. Andrea, however, found us a $12 flight from San Jose, CR to Golfito. That’s right, $12. Skeptic that I am I had some serious doubts about the reliability of a $12 flight, but that’s cheap, could be an adventure, the pilot wouldn’t go with you if it wasn’t safe, so why not? Is this a second hand airplane? Do they save money on maintenance? Do they pack the plane with a little too much weight? Is it a scam? What are we getting into here?

First problem was that the cabbie at Alajeula airport in San Jose did not know where the airport was for the puddle jumper flight so we spent a few chaotic moments yelling in English at a Costa Rican who spoke about as much English as a sheepdog. He kept taking us back to the Alajuela airport which we knew was wrong, but we couldn’t explain where right was. He couldn’t read a map or the directions we had so there was quite a bit of “incomprehensible yelling” before we finally headed off in the right direction. When we did find the airplane we had to climb on a scale along with our luggage to see if we were light enough to fly. Fortunately I had been watching my weight all summer and we passed. Then we waited in line with several other thin people next to a sign that said “Wait here for Pilot”. Duh! We weren’t going to go anywhere without him, but it was reassuring to know that he was willing to go along with us. Actually the sign said “Favor espere por el piloto” which I had quickly mis-translated as “Please “hope” for the pilot… which I did.

 

 

The flight itself was anticlimactic. The very small plane got us off the ground with only a little hesitation and we were off to Golfito. Other than a runway full of dogs nipping at the wheels as we took off this was just like flying any of the big airlines, and the very slow speed landing was… different. The dogs might not have had to run to catch the plane when it landed.

The boat had survived the “green season” very nicely, thank you. Our friend Caesar had aired it regularly (after each rainfall) all summer and only faintest traces of mold/mildew were discernible. I will state flat out that “it rains a whole lot in paradise”. Someone in the Costa Rican Chamber of Commerce came up with a fantastic idea of renaming one of Costa Rica’s two seasons as the “green season”. Dry season and green season.  No bad seasons. It is green season now with no signs of letting  up. During the parts of the green season that we have seen the days start out hot and humid building towards the torrential rainfalls that start everyday at 3 PM and last sometimes all night. Buckets of rain. More rain than I have seen anyplace or anytime in my life. Likely more rain than Noah saw, although he started in a desert so it might have seemed like more to him. Green season, very clever, the touristicas will never figure it out. Put one over on them we did.

What caused us to stay in Golfito for the summer (rather than sailing to Panama last June) was a faulty transmission for which I needed a part that had apparently fallen overboard while I wasn’t looking. Armed with a new part obtained at home we were confident that it would take us just a day or so to be on our way south. Okay, maybe a few days. But no sooner had we fixed the starboard (right) engine that we developed a carburetor leak in the port (left) engine. Since we were fixing that leak anyway we decided to open up the fully operational starboard engine carburetor “just in case”. It seems that this now caused the good engine (starboard) to start leaking too. Worse… What could be worse you say?... since we only had one gasket we could only repair one engine. Yes, our one day, then a few days, is now one week. But at least it’s paradise. Pass the umbrella, Andrea.