We have been in Panama City and the neighboring Las Perlas Islands for almost 4 weeks now. What had originally been planned as an early December passage of the Panama Canal has now become a Christmas trip (yes, we are scheduled to cross on Boxing Day). We have transited the canal once already, but we did it as crew on another sailboat. Each small boat that transits the locks is required to have at least 4 line handlers on board, and we volunteered to help a solo sailor make the crossing. In addition to Andrea and I, he had recruited two bicyclists who wanted to make the trip from Panama to Cartegena, Colombia. Marc and Indira are both photographers, one from Spain and the other from Chile, who were bicycling from Alaska to Argentina. At this point the roads into Colombia pretty much disappear into the jungle so they chose to make part of the trip by volunteering as crew on a sailboat. The fact that they had no sailing experience and had never been to sea did not seem to faze them in the least. We loaded their bikes on deck and off we went. That canal crossing took two days because we missed our scheduled lockage on the other end (Gatun Locks) and had to spend the night anchored in Lake Gatun before we could continue north. After reaching the Shelter Bay Marina Andrea and I treated ourselves to a night in a hotel before taking the bus back to Panama while the others continued sailing east. Our bicyclists have a web site at 2Greenprints.org. The web site is “en espanol” but they may have put up some pictures of the crossing by now. One interesting sidelight was that they normally stayed at firehouses all along the way. Every town had one, they were safe, they could share kitchen facilities and the firemen were usually very welcoming.
You can check out the Panama Canal and Lake Gatun on Google Earth. You will see the mooring field at the Balboa Yacht Club (8° 56.211'N 79° 33.374'W), the Bridge of the Americas (which provides a beautiful night scene when lit up) (8° 56.604'N 79° 33.900'W), the two locks at Miraflores (8° 59.723'N 79° 35.412'W), the Pedro Miguel locks, the infamous Culebra Cut that required so much work to complete that it defeated the French (along with the mosquitoes) (9° 3.228'N 79° 39.378'W), the huge above sea level Lake Gatun, the three Gatun Locks (9° 16.482'N 79° 55.338'W) and finally the long channel out to the Caribbean through Colon harbor. Whew! Quite an experience. We are worriedly looking forward to our own passage in our very small boat. On our first trip through we were locked in with a Panamax freighter (maximum size for the Panama Canal) that dwarfed the sailboat we were on. We worry that Mañana will not have the engine capacity to maintain the required speed and to handle the strong currents in the locks. If there are no more posts after this one then our worries were justified.
Panama City is also the gateway to Las Perlas Islands (8° 37.585'N 79° 1.825'W), over 100 tropical islands just 40 miles offshore. After our canal adventure we spent a week in Las Perlas swimming, cleaning the bottom of the boat, and enjoying anchorages in near deserted coves and beaches. About a thousand people live in Las Perlas and many are descendents of slaves brought here by the Spanish to harvest the oyster pearls that give the islands their name. Queen Victoria’s pearls originated here. Panama’s history is one of piracy and conquest because the narrow isthmus was the most convenient way to transport the riches of Peru back to Europe. The pirate Henry Morgan figures prominently in any story about the old cities and islands that date from the early 1500s.
We returned to Panama from Las Perlas to pick up Liz (ex-wife #1) and her boyfriend Mike who flew in to Panama for a winter break from the weather on Cape Cod, and then sailed back to Las Perlas for another visit. While Liz and Mike were here we got some of the best sailing of the year along with good snorkeling each day. We also set records for beer consumption, sunburns, jellyfish stings, etc. Yep, last day of the trip we swam through the jellyfish while snorkeling. I didn’t even know I was allergic to jellyfish. What I got was a bad rash very much like poison oak that lasted about three days. However even the jelly fish couldn’t spoil what was a great week .
Christmas is just around the corner and Panama is decorated with Santas and reindeer and cute little signs that say “Let it snow…”. All of the carols are the same (with some translation needed) and they dream of a white Christmas and sleigh bells ringing. Everything would be perfect if it weren’t 95 degrees and humid each day. The prospects of a Christmas tree surviving the heat must be dim, but we see Christmas pines for sale, and gift paper with pictures of Santa in his full red suit.
I repeat myself when I say Panama has been a wonderful experience. Great sailing, beautiful islands all along the coast, friendly people, clean, relatively safe, and very hospitable to tourists and retirees. We are in awe at the size and number of freighters passing continuously each day to enter the canal, and we even got a close up view of the Mexican tall ship with all hands manning the yardarms as it entered the canal.
We have spent the last few days getting all of the permits to transit the canal and paying our fees (about $1,000) for the trip. Panama still has the Latin American penchant for paperwork. Even the modern computers in each office have not changed the reliance on carbon paper for copies. This transit is the big deal for us because when we left California our single goal was “the Panama Canal”. Of course we now plan to sail much further, but this was what we set out to accomplish over two years ago. We are excited. Christmas at the Balboa Yacht Club and then Caribbean. Hello!!!!!
Merry Christmas to All,
Tom and Andrea
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