We’ve
taken up counting the seconds after we see lightning and before we hear
the thunder. Sound takes about five seconds to travel one mile, so this
gives us an idea of how far away the lightning is. It surprised us to
find that most of it is a long way off and only rarely does any come
within a half mile. Although one day in June during our usual afternoon
downpour, we had lightning well within that distance. Actually it was
within fifty feet. We know this because that’s the height of our
mainmast and that’s where it hit! The flash and the thunder were
simultaneous and the sound felt like a physical blow. Of course, the
whole thing was over before we had a chance to start getting scared.
Neither of us had felt our hair stand on end or anything like that. It
wasn’t until we started trying the electronic equipment that we were
sure that we’d been hit. As it turned out, we had to replace most of
our fuses and that fixed almost everything. The major exception was our
wind instruments. Later we found the melted pieces of our masthead
anemometer strewn across the deck. We have since learned that a thunder
storm is called a ‘tormenta electrica’ in Spanish. We certainly felt
like we were being tormented by electricity.
Once
you leave Mexico heading South, there isn’t a single dock where you
can take on fuel and water until you reach Flamingo Marina in Northern
Costa Rica. We have a watermaker that makes all the water we need out of
seawater but we do need fuel once in a while. The day before we arrived
there a hurricane several hundred miles away had sent an exceptionally
large swell into the bay where the marina is located. The waves had
caused a sailboat called “EOS” to drag its anchor and be washed up onto the beach. “EOS”
had been at anchor there for a couple of years while her owner was in
the U.S. working. Rumour has it that the marina was supposed to be
taking care of the boat but since the owner hadn’t sent any money for
a long time they weren’t feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility. So
poor “EOS” was high and
dry on the beach and nobody was doing anything about it. We thought that
we might be able to pull her off on the next high tide but by the time
we got there she had a huge hole in the side and was full of sand and
water. Within days the vultures had stripped her of everything valuable
and she was left to disintegrate on the beach. Sadly some of the
vultures were other boaters.
Susan
and “Daydream” ended up
staying in Flamingo Marina for three weeks while I went home to take
care of some family business. This is easily the dirtiest, most
ramshackle excuse for a marina that we’ve ever seen. It’s been
amateurishly built out of junk that floats up on the beach. In fact, the
marina later made use of a few pieces scavenged from “EOS”.
There are no showers or even bathrooms available. The electrical wiring
would be comical if it wasn’t so scary. There aren’t even any cleats
on the dock to tie up to, only some rusty chain loops just waiting to
chew through your mooring lines. We suspect that the whole place would
fall apart if the boats weren’t there to hold it together. It does,
however, have the twin distinctions of being the only marina in Northern
Costa Rica and having a world class collection of mouse-sized
cockroaches.
Susan
had to sit through a hurricane alone at this marina. Hurricanes don’t
normally occur this far South in the Pacific, but, a Caribbean hurricane
jumped the continent in Southern Nicaragua and just brushed the marina.
Luckily she knew it was coming and had time to prepare. Usually this
means using every line you have to hold the boat in position and taking
everything you can off the deck. Because of the classy facility that I
left her in, she felt that it was also necessary to place our inflatable
dinghy between the marina and “Daydream”
to protect the boat just in case the marina started to break up. She
also put out an anchor so that when the marina gave way completely,
there would be something to hold the boat off the beach. As it turned
out the eye of the hurricane was far enough away that she experienced
only light winds but had torrential rain for 48 hours straight.
We
wanted to leave Costa Rica from Puntarenas, which is halfway down the
coast of the country. We ended up in an embarrassing situation on a
Friday afternoon when we managed to get ourselves checked out of the
country but were unable to complete the paperwork for the boat. The
whole process was wildly confusing. Legally we had to leave the country,
but, the boat couldn’t! We solved this little problem by creeping out
of town with the intention of coming clean in Costa Rica’s
southern-most port of Golfito.
Later,
we were glad that we hadn’t checked out at Puntarenas because a couple
of hundred miles south we broke some rigging. This time it was a
backstay chainplate that gave way. Fortunately we have dual backstays,
so we were never in danger of losing the mast. This is the second major
piece of rigging that we’ve broken since we left home and that’s two
more than anyone else that we’ve met. I wonder what this means? For
those of you who sail, it may be interesting to know that we were
sailing upwind in flat seas with about 15 knots of wind at the time.
Golfito
is the place they were thinking of when they coined the term ‘banana
republic. The town was originally a company town for United Fruit and
still has rows of identical company houses. The only industry is bananas
and even that has recently fallen on hard times. The Port Captain here
is a real character. Checking in and out with him is difficult because
he only attends his office for a few seconds every day and as a result,
you have to hunt him down. On the way in we got lucky and spotted him
out on the pier meeting a Dole ship. On the way out we tracked him down
having a two hour liquid lunch in a restaurant near his office. Other
people have actually had to stake out his house to corner him! Even
though Golfito is a muddy little town with a bad reputation for crime,
we liked it. How could we not like a town that has a wonderful machine
shop capable of welding stainless steel and a great pizza place.
Barbara
and Whitey are an expat American couple who moved to Golfito about 10
years ago and started a
restaurant. Several years ago they closed the business down because of
hassles with the Costa Rican officials but they still live on the bay.
We decided to visit them one morning. Their part of the bay has about
six feet of water at low tide and 16 feet at high tide. We planned our
visit for low tide and then foolishly went aground and got stuck. This
can be a huge problem, but, since it was already dead low tide and we
didn’t expect any kind of waves, we weren’t worried. We just put
down our kickstand and went ashore for a quick visit. Barbara and Whitey
have become modern day ‘Robinson Crusoes’. They live in a grass hut
(about 2000 square feet) in the jungle with a nice beach out front.
Other than the constant rain, it looks like a pretty idyllic existence.
Our
first stop in Panama was at an island called Isla Parida. This is a
beautiful tropical island with thick green jungle, white sand beaches
and clear water. It also has a friendly little restaurant/store run by a
couple from Vancouver Island. Most cruising boats in this area stop here
for a while. This gave us a chance to catch up with old friends and hear
all the latest scuttlebutt. One of the reasons we liked the place so
much was that Dave and Sharon, who own the restaurant, show videos every
evening.
The
clear water was a pleasant surprise for us and we took advantage by
doing some snorkeling and speargun fishing. These Northern Panamanian
islands are very remote and unspoiled. The people who live on them for
the most part are fishermen and coconut farmers and there aren’t many
of them. We stopped at several islands and always had spectacular diving
and quiet anchorages. We would have spent even more time except that
Susan broke the tip of her middle finger one night. We weren’t even
sailing at the time, she just dropped a hatch on it. The pain was pretty
intense and there wasn’t much we could do beyond a little codeine.
We’re pretty sure that a doctor couldn’t have done much more which
was a good thing because the nearest doctor was about 24 hours away.
The
last leg to Panama City was fairly short, only about twenty hours, but,
we expected a relatively difficult passage. This area has the greatest
concentration of shipping of anywhere in the world. The night before we
had almost come close enough to two separate ships to shake hands with
their crews and there were usually three or four ships in sight at any
one time. Imagine being on a bicycle out in a desert and discovering
that three or four, fifty story office buildings are lying on their
sides and heading in your general direction at twenty-five miles per
hour. That’ll give you some idea of what it feels like. In addition,
our autopilot was broken. Our autopilot steers the boat on a set compass
course and frees us up to navigate, check the radar, make food or
whatever. Without it we would have to wrestle with the wheel virtually
one hundred percent of the time.
On
every passage there are different things that you have to be aware of
but this one had just about everything. Ships, of course, which we
consider our greatest danger. Also shrimp boats which behave very
erratically but at least they are usually well lit and they provide a
good radar return. Pongas are small open boats made of wood or
fiberglass. They don’t show any radar return and usually have no
lights. Pongas are about 30 feet long and might weigh 5 tons when
they’re loaded with fish. The only reason that we don’t consider
them a bigger problem is because we’re enough of a danger to them that
they avoid us. Other yachts are not usually a concern, however, we have
to watch for them as well. Usually land in the form of islands and rocks
is not too big of a worry. The hard crunchy stuff is very tough on a
boat if you allow the two to touch so we always have the best available
charts and are very careful about our navigation. You can always get
into trouble though. The first modern charts were made in the late
1700’s and many have never been updated from their first edition. The
guys who drew these first charts were fantastically skillful sailors and
cartographers, unfortunately their equipment was pretty basic. The
result is that shorelines are quite commonly out of their charted
positions by a mile or more.
Add
to the above difficulties, the huge amounts of rain. Because of all the
rain, the sea is always full of big logs, trees and flotsam of every
description pouring out into the sea from the coastal rivers. Most of
this stuff doesn’t worry us, but, some of the logs are big enough to
cause damage and occasionally you’ll see one big enough to make a
yacht out of. During good visibility we can dodge the dangerous stuff,
but, at night in the rain we have to trust the odds, or if we are
feeling unlucky, slow the boat way down.
The
Bay of Panama is approximately 80 by 100 miles. The tide raises the
water level in this bay by as much as eighteen feet twice a day. To move
these trillions of gallons of water out to sea and back again every
twelve hours entails some pretty substantial currents. These tidal
currents are another important navigational hazard in this area. They
are so strong that depending on their direction they can add or subtract
50% of the boat’s speed.
After
taking all of these problems into consideration, we chose the best
possible time and departed. For the first few hours the wind was very
light and it alternately blew from every direction, then it would stop,
then blow a little more, but, we were making progress. At sundown the
lightning started. After a few months in Central America during the
rainy season you pay no attention to lightning that’s more than a mile
or so away and this was much farther than that. Unfortunately by
midnight the storm had found us and we had the wildest night of
lightning that there has ever been. If someone had made a movie of it,
no one would have believed it. There was all kinds of lightning. There
were long jagged burns that hit the water and looping flashes that went
back up into the clouds. There were sheets that lit up a whole section
of the overcast and a new one for us that we named ‘bombs’. These
were small, brilliant, round flashes that were followed by one very loud
bang. The thunder was equally extravagant and varied. Distant lightning
has a low, slow grumble. Nearer it’s more like a reverberating booming
rumble. When it’s right on top of you, say within a half mile or so,
you hear a fast tearing sound followed instantly by one tremendous bang.
We gave up counting the seconds because there was so much lightning and
thunder that you simply could not determine which crash belonged to
which flash. There were periods of ten seconds or longer in which we had
continuous light.
One
lightning strike is supposed to have the potential power of a small
atomic weapon so storing the electrical power from one of these storms
would clearly be useful. We don’t know how to do that but we do have a
method for producing a nearly unlimited supply of adrenaline.
Naturally,
rain came along with the thunder and lightning. There really should be a
special word for this in Panama. It’s not like a big rainstorm, it’s
not even like a firehose. It’s probably only slightly less water than
what you’d get standing underneath Niagara falls. It actually rains
over one billion gallons per day on average over Panama. It felt like
most of it fell on our boat that night. The visibility during one of
these refreshing little showers is very similar to being underwater. We
could only see a couple of hundred feet and even our radar could only
penetrate about two miles through the porridge. Oddly the radar would
often get targets that we couldn’t pick up visually, but, we regularly
saw the lights on boats that weren’t showing up on radar.
We
finally anchored seven miles outside of Panama City at a great little
island and town called Taboga. Taboga has a nice beach, restaurants,
millions of flowers, dinner plate sized frogs and eight foot wide
“sidewalks” that double as roads for both of the island’s cars.
They also have a town generator that shuts down at 10 pm, two public
phones and daily passenger ferry service to Panama City. It’s a really
pretty island and looks like a great place to live although there
aren’t many permanent residents. Most of the homes are used only on
weekends and holidays by wealthy Panamanians.
Our
next stop was the Balboa Yacht Club which is in Panama City and actually
situated in the entrance to the Panama Canal. The Yacht Club itself
looks like it may collapse at any moment and there are no docks to tie
up to, just buoys. A buoy in this case is an old tire filled with foam
and chained to a locomotive wheel down on the bottom. For the privilege
of staying there we paid 18 dollars per day which is probably enough to
rent a nice apartment in the city. Unfortunately it’s the only game in
town and we needed a bunch of repairs so we had very little choice. We
were certainly ready for a big city. We needed new anchor chain, a new
autopilot, backstay chainplates, sampson posts and bottom painting. We
had planned to paint the bottom by leaning “Daydream” up against a grounded ship at Taboga Island during a
high tide and then painting the bottom after the tide went out. However,
they had removed the old ship before we got there so we ended up doing
it on the Yacht Club railway. The railway was fully booked for months in
advance but they squeezed us in one night from 6 pm to 6 am the next
morning. It took us all night long working by flashlight to get the job
done. We sure hope that we never have to beat that 12 hour bottom
painting record.
Panama
City is big, modern and expensive. We spent almost a month there
repairing things, ordering parts from the U.S. and filling up on movies
and fast food. The city has a weirdly split personality. The Yacht Club
is in the Canal Zone where everything is as neat as a pin. The grass is
perfect, the palm trees are all in line and the roads and sidewalks are
ruler straight and in immaculate condition. The buildings and houses are
all well painted in Navy white and the people are carefully dressed. Two
miles away on the other side of a police check-point is a very poor
neighborhood. This is a scary place. When you go through in a taxi, the
driver asks you to lock your door and he speeds through the red lights.
All of the buildings have bars on the holes where windows belong and
everyone looks hungry. You can’t see any weapons but everyone looks
like they need one. Another mile further and you’re in the financial
district. Office buildings here are 50 stories high, TGIFs and Burger
King share a corner and everybody is in a suit, carrying a cell phone
and riding in a BMW.
One
of the most important things that we needed to do in Panama City was to
repair our autopilot. We had done the last couple of passages on the way
there without one and as a result we both needed a chiropractor. Because
this is a major port, we had no difficulty finding a firm to repair it.
It took a long time and cost quite a bit more than we expected, but, we
were just happy to have it back. Minutes after we installed it, it
failed again. The electronics repair shop said that, of course, it was
under warranty and they sent out a technician to see what the problem
was. He fiddled around for two or three hours then took the autopilot
back to the shop. Four days later he returned, handed over the autopilot
and said “Sorry, it can’t be fixed” (in Spanish, of course).
“Hmmm” said we. “How about a refund?” Naturally, we’d have to
talk to the boss about that.
We
called the office and were told that the boss wouldn’t likely be back
that day. We decided to stop in anyway since we would be going right
past. Surprise! The boss had unexpectedly returned. She’d decided, she
said, purely out of the goodness of her heart to refund half of our
money. “Doesn’t seem quite right to us”, we said. “After all, we
paid to have it repaired and understood that the work was guaranteed”.
“Of course it’s guaranteed” said she, “but what about my
costs?” This went back and forth for a while until finally she
concluded that we were being unreasonable and stomped out.
We
settled down on a really nice comfortable couch to wait it out. At
quitting time the receptionist asked us to leave. We explained that we
planned to stay and would be delighted to spend the night. The boss who
had “gone home” earlier made another appearance. Either we would
take what she had offered or she would have to call the police.
“Excellent” we said “in fact, give us a telephone and we’ll call
the police”. She stomped out in a huff. We continued sitting on the
couch inflicting our Spanish on the receptionist.
Shortly
thereafter the assistant manager made an appearance. After asking us to
leave, he made us a new offer. It wasn’t all of what we had paid but
by this time our ‘hunger strike’ was getting boring and we were
actually getting a little hungry. We accepted and just as he stepped
into the back room to have the boss (who had gone home again) sign the
cheque, the police actually arrived! As you probably guessed, we
didn’t have to do any hard time.
The
preceding does NOT reflect our normal experiences in Latin American
countries. They are extremely resourceful people and can fix almost
anything. Usually the work is done very quickly and very inexpensively.
Sometimes the price is so low that we wonder if they’re showing
typical Latin warmth by reducing the normal price for us. Also, everyone
is amazingly trusting. For example, we found a gentleman with a little
shop on the side of the road (attached to his house) that had a sign
indicating electronics repairs. This was in the small town of Puerto
Madero in Mexico. We stopped and asked if he thought he might be able to
fix the alarm on our old style depth sounder. He told us to bring it on
in and he’d give it a try. He wouldn’t charge us a thing if he
couldn’t fix it. After opening it up the next day he found out that he
wouldn’t be able to fix it as it needed a new part. The darn thing
is probably 15 years old so we weren’t surprised that he didn’t
happen to have the part. But he did dig out another depth sounder from
his jumbled back room and dusted it off. This was another old style, but
still considerably newer than ours and it had an alarm. “Take it
home” he said. “Try it out. If it works on your boat and you want
it, you come back and pay me whatever you think it’s worth”. You can
just see that happening at home can’t you?
|
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It turned out that it
worked just fine with our transducer and it’s really nice to have a
spare depth sounder around. This story is much more like the hundreds of
experiences we’ve had while repairing and buying boat bits and other
things in Latin America.
In
the 1880’s the Frenchman who had successfully completed the Suez
Canal, Ferdinand De Lesseps, began the Panama Canal project in Northern
Columbia. Thousands of workers died from yellow fever and malaria before
the French company ran out of money and abandoned the project. The USA
eventually bought the French company’s rights and equipment. However,
they weren’t interested in spending huge amounts of money without some
sort of guarantee so they encouraged a revolution, recognized Panama’s
independence within hours of its declaration, signed a juicy deal giving
themselves perpetual rights to a strip of land across the isthmus and
then started digging. Before long they realized that that they had to
solve the disease problems before they could successfully dig the big
ditch. The U.S. army sent a doctor by the name of Gorgas who thought
that both diseases were spread by mosquitoes. He cleaned out the
mosquitoes and virtually wiped out malaria and yellow fever in Panama.
Almost certainly the French would have built the Canal if these diseases
were understood just a few years earlier. By 1914 the Canal was open for
business. Today each ship that goes through pays around $30,000 U.S. for
the privilege. This is a bargain compared to the time and the fuel
required to go around South America. An average yacht pays about $50 US
for the actual transit.
The
Canal is a fascinating piece of engineering. Basically, the designers
found a narrow place between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans (40 miles
wide) that wasn’t too far above sea level. Then they dammed the
Chagres river, forming a huge lake that stretches all the way from the
Atlantic to the Pacific. This lake is about 80 feet above sea level.
Locks were then built at either end that raise and lower ships from sea
level to lake level and then back to sea level again. The only other
major problem was a range of hills that stood well above lake level and
through which a channel had to be cut. This channel needed to be over
nine miles long and 300 feet across at the bottom. Its depth varies with
the terrain but is several hundred feet for most of the nine miles. In
order for the walls to stand, their angle was set at 20 degrees. The
result is that in places the top of the channel would be more than ½
mile from side to side. They say that enough material was removed to
build a tower 30 feet across and 2000 miles high.
The
locks themselves are amazing. They are 1000 feet (almost ¼ mile) long
by 110 feet wide with about 80 feet of depth. They have immense,
floating iron doors (each of which is 65 feet wide by 80 feet tall and
seven feet thick) at each end that look like the doors to a giant’s
castle. To raise a ship, they close the doors at either end then open a
tap. The lock then fills with water by gravity from Lake Gatun. As the
lock fills, the ship rises. Once full, one door is opened and the ship
moves into the next lock. To lower the ship, the process is reversed,
except of course the water drains out. As large as these locks are,
about 5% of the world’s ships are too big to fit. Consequently, there
is some talk of expanding them or building another canal elsewhere.
These
locks hold a lot of water, all of which is supplied by gravity from Lake
Gatun and is then lost into the sea. Lake Gatun is supplied with new
fresh water entirely from rainfall in the surrounding watershed. Believe
us when we tell you that it rains a lot in Panama. Each ship transit
requires 53 million gallons of fresh water and with 30 ships going
through each day, the canal uses about 1.5 billion gallons per day.
In
the late 1970’s, U.S. president Carter signed a treaty which promised
to return to Panama the entire Canal and Canal Zone by the year 2000.
While we were there thousands of acres and hundreds of buildings and
facilities were being ceremoniously turned over. Many people were
expecting the sky to fall as a result. We, on the other hand, were
hugely impressed with a country that would voluntarily give up one of
the most valuable assets on Earth to prove a principle.
“Daydream”
didn’t get to go through the Panama Canal but we did go through with
Harry and Petra on “Thetis”.
The transit was actually a little boring. The locks are very exciting
and nerve-wracking, but, they only occur at the beginning and the end of
the transit. In between there is nothing to do except steer the boat and
watch the passing ships and jungle. We did have one exciting moment
though. When a yacht arrives in a lock, the canal line handlers are
about 30 feet above on either side of the lock. Because the lock is so
wide and the yacht is so narrow, they are about 50 feet away. They have
to send four lines down to the yacht, one for each corner, to hold the
boat in place as the water comes in. To accomplish this they have a very
light heaving line with a heavy compact knot in the end about the size
of a baseball. The idea is to throw this ‘monkey fist’ to the boat.
We, the line handlers on the boat, theoretically catch these lines, tie
them to our heavier lines that are then pulled back up to be secured to
the wall. These canal line handlers were all sullen, unhappy gentlemen
who looked like they might enjoy a bit of sporting fun. We probably
shouldn’t have been surprised when they threw their ‘monkey fists’
with what seemed excessive force and apparently aimed them at our heads.
We were all taking evasive action, hiding behind whatever was available.
There is some pressure to catch these lines and to do it quickly as
there is a huge ship sidling into the lock right behind you and you need
to get a move on. One problem is that these missiles are coming in from
both sides and you need eyes in the back of your head. Another problem
is that the helmsman of the yacht is not catching lines but
concentrating on driving. On “Thetis”,
Harry was driving and was completely exposed to the incoming missiles.
As fate would have it, one of the ‘monkey fists’ got him squarely on
top of his head, knocking him off his feet and leaving a big goose egg.
We’re pretty sure that the canal line handler in question won that
week’s office pool.
We
have some Russian friends in Panama on a $400 sailboat who escaped from
and cannot return to Russia. They literally don’t have $10 to their
names or even passports. They have no way of making money, and because
they have none, they never bother with the proper immigration procedures
when they arrive in a port. This is partly because there are always port
and immigration charges and partly because they don’t have all the
legitimate paperwork for the boat and themselves. The result is that
they have been deported from Mexico and Costa Rica and have been
illegally in Panama for over two months and will probably eventually be
deported. Interestingly, in all of these deportations nobody has put
them on a plane back to Russia, they just tell them to leave the country
on their boat.
The
Kuna Indians of Panama are really interesting. They’ve managed to
preserve their culture and land to this day and recently obtained some
degree of sovereignty from Panama. The women seem to conduct most of the
business so we saw quite a bit of them in Panama City. They’re
incredibly colorful. They wear brightly colored handmade blouses called
molas, leggings made entirely of beads and large gold rings in their
noses.
Panamanians
all seem to have a unique first name. Most places that we’ve been to,
the people have pretty standard, familiar names. Lots of Miguels, Marias,
Juans, Jorges, etc. In Panama, however, there is hardly a name that
you’ve ever heard of or can even pronounce. They have a particular
affinity for X’s and Z’s. Some that we were able to pronounce were
Rigoberto, Marure, and Fayre. This last is said ‘Fay-ray’. When we
mentioned that my sister’s name (Faye) is very similar, Fayre became
quite upset, insisting that her name was an original!
Our
destination upon leaving Panama City was the Las Perlas Islands which
are quite difficult to approach or visit. They are a collection of 227
main islands and hundreds or perhaps thousands of smaller rocks.
They’re only 40 miles from Panama City but they have never been
accurately charted. They have tides of 18 feet or more, tidal currents
that sweep through the islands at 2-3 knots and very poorly protected
anchorages. From our point of view the fact that they are so rarely
visited makes them very interesting. The Spaniards cleaned out all of
the pearls hundreds of years ago and since then no one has been able to
come up with a good reason to live there. They aren’t completely
uninhabited though. There’s a small resort on the island nearest to
the city. Then there’s a tiny village on another island where the
villagers lead an extremely basic life of fishing, farming and hunting
iguanas. The iguanas are an important food source in Panama. There is
also an abandoned (we hope) drug smuggler’s air strip. This air strip
is well known and being only a few minutes by air from the Panama City
police and a U.S. airbase you wouldn’t think that it would still be in
use, but, one afternoon a Lear jet overflew our anchorage at an altitude
of about 200 feet. We’ve been scratching our heads but we can’t come
up with a single logical reason that a Lear would be that low 40 miles
from the nearest airport. Finally, there is a German couple who sailed
here 11 years ago. The Germans have been squatting in the islands ever
since and no one seems to care. We didn’t get to visit their island
but we were awakened one morning at the Yacht Club in Panama City by the
strangest cries, which turned out to be Deiter’s new goat tethered in
the cockpit of his sailboat.
Leaving
the Gulf of Panama turned out to be much harder than getting there. We
had strong wind coming from exactly where we wanted to go, a very strong
current pushing us back and ship after ship squeezing us up against a
dark rocky coast as they rushed to and from the Canal. Not far from the
Bay of Panama is a point called Punta Puerco which means Pig Point. We
figure that it’s called that because it’s such a pig to get around.
After two days of fighting, we finally got past Pig Point and things got
easier. We rewarded ourselves after a hard passage by buying two huge,
fat lobsters from a fisherman for five bucks.
We
stopped in Bahia Honda, Panama for a few days. This is where some
friends of ours on a boat from Vancouver bought land and became teak
tree farmers. This whole thing was really fascinating to us and so we
questioned Ross and Louise about it pretty closely. Here’s how it
works. Most remote, roadless land in Panama is not titled. However, you
can have a titled issued so they found a piece of land that they wanted,
knocked on grass huts until they located the owner, confirmed his
ownership by talking to all of the neighbors, bought the land, flew in a
surveyor and had a title issued. Then they had the land cleared and
planted with teak tree shoots. In about 20 years they’ll own millions
of dollars of teak! In addition, their land is on a pretty, Pacific
beach inside a very nice bay.
Bahia
Honda also has a little village of about 500 people which we visited one
night. It has one telephone and one building with electricity. There are
no cars, roads, mail service, police or sewage systems. Every house is
lit either with candles or flashlights after dark and the phone always
has a fairly long line. We also had a chance to visit a farm here
because we were out of fruit and vegetables. Since there is no store to
buy them from, a farm is the only option. This was a pretty cool
experience. You could see right through the farm house since it was
built very loosely of rough planks. There were no doors, windows or
floors and the furniture was limited to one chair, one rickety table, a
cupboard and numerous hammocks. In addition to the family, the house was
heavily trafficked by dogs, cats, geese, pigeons, ducks and a bristly
little boar that seemed to enjoy licking my feet. When Domingo, the
farmer, paddled out to our boat in his dugout canoe and told us that he
had vegetables for sale, he hinted pretty heavily that his kids would
like some sweets if we had any. We dug around and found some chocolate
to take along when we went to his farm. We always buy candy “for the
children” but it often gets eaten by our parent’s children. The
chocolates were in a big, fancy, sealing mason jar that we had bought
pistachios in. We were happy to get the glass off the boat so we’d
have one less thing to break. Although the family definitely appreciated
the candy, we suspect from their reaction that the mason jar may have
pride of place amongst their dishes.
Our
shopping trip resulted in 100 bananas and many other assorted fruits and
vegetables. You may be wondering why we needed 100 bananas. There are
actually three reasons. We were just about to start a fairly long
passage in which the only available groceries would be freshly caught
fish. Second, Susan makes great banana bread and unbelievable banana
smoothies. And finally because we got three different types of bananas,
all at different stages of ripeness, it would be possible to use them
all. The first bunch were about five inches long and triangular. They
took four days to ripen forcing us to then eat about 30 bananas in two
days. The second bunch was about the size of a large thumb and they were
purple. When they were ready to eat they were pink and tasted a little
like apples. They took eight days to ripen and then we each had to eat
15 bananas in two days. The third bunch were what we think of as normal
bananas. We must have done something wrong with this bunch because they
went right from green to rotten on the 14th day. So far we haven’t
noticed any ill effects from all these bananas although we do have a
strong urge to swing in the trees.
Because
of weather concerns at this point, we were in a rush to get back to
Mexico. When we left Northern Panama, the plan was to sail directly to
the most northerly port in Costa Rica. There, we’d stock up on food
and fuel and leave immediately for Southern Mexico. The trip from Panama
to Playas del Coco, C.R. should be about four days of upwind sailing.
Normally this would be very hard, slow work. We were fortunate and had
gentle winds and most importantly very little rain.
On
this trip we had two memorable experiences, both involving ships. The
first was with a cruise ship called “Legend
of the Sea”. All ships and boats under power have a red light on
their left side, a green light on their right side, and a white light
that shines all the way around. The bigger ships have two white lights,
one at the front and one at the back positioned higher. These lights
enable us to figure out which direction everyone is headed and whether
or not they’re going to get too close to us. Unfortunately, cruise
ships are often lit up like small cities and the result is that you can
see them coming from a long way off but can’t always tell precisely
which direction they’re headed. This particular cruise ship had taken
a run at us when we were leaving Panama City. Then, we had been able to
see their red light, a mass of white light and a bluish green light. Its
lights seemed to indicate that it was heading straight for us. We called
them on the radio and they very kindly turned to avoid us. The second
time, in the middle of the night, we first saw a glow in the sky.
Shortly afterward a small city of light appeared on the horizon and
headed generally toward us. Because of its turquoise colored emblem
(which we had mistaken for the green steering light previously) we
recognized it as “Legend of the
Sea”. Once again it looked like it might run us down, and once
again they obligingly turned when we called them up. “Legend of the Sea” does a regular run from LA to Miami via the
Panama Canal so we won’t be surprised to see it again.
The
second ship pulled an optical illusion on us and caused us to break one
of our most cherished rules. The rule is that we will go to any lengths
to ensure that no ship ever has an excuse to run us down. This one
appeared in the middle of the night and we could see that we were on a
collision course. However, because of the unusual angle that we were
closing with it, we thought that it was a large yacht or a fishing boat.
As a result, we chose to alter course to pass in front of it. Of course,
we would never even contemplate turning in front of a ship. We were
actually never in any danger but you can imagine our consternation when
the ‘yacht’ turned into a 700 foot ship and passed within a few
hundred feet of us!
When
we stopped at Marina Flamingo to get fuel, the electricity was out so
they were starting a gas driven generator as we pulled in. Once they got
it started and could run the pumps, they filled the generator with
gasoline, while it was running! This is a gas station version of Russian
Roulette, but, obviously nothing exploded. Later as we were leaving the
gas dock we went aground for a few seconds. This was the second time
ever for us and both times have been in Costa Rica.
Our
friends Jim and Marie-Paul and their kids (also our friends), Rita and
Paula, were in the marina so we stopped to say hello and ended up
staying for dinner. Marie-Paul is French and a fantastic cook (these
things seem to go together) so it didn’t take much convincing.
Having
landed in Costa Rica we needed to report ourselves to the Port Captain,
Immigration and Customs authorities whose offices are in Playas del
Coco. The surf in Playas del Coco was running three or four feet that
day. Since there is no dock, you have to take your dinghy through the
surf and up on to the beach. Big surf means you are either going
swimming or possibly just getting soaked. We did both and got covered in
sand to boot. A certain amount of skill and luck are required to time a
surf landing so that you don’t dump. It seems that we had neither that
day.
When
it came time to leave Costa Rica for Mexico, we had had almost a week of
rain free weather. We figured that the rainy season was finally over. Of
course, it began to rain on the day we left. Rather than fight it,
(it’s very unpleasant to sail in the rain) we anchored and settled
down to catch up on our reading. After three days of solid rain, we
decided that it might not ever quit so we left anyway. This trip should
have been upwind and therefore slow and uncomfortable, but, instead we
had a steady 15 knots of wind on the beam, which is a very pleasant
point of sail. Instead of four or five days of slogging uphill, we did
the run to Puerto Madero, Mexico in 3½ days. Best of all, within about
20 miles of the Mexican border we saw the last of the rain.
Unfortunately, now our world-class mold collection is drying out! We
found out later that we were getting this great wind from an out of
season tropical depression, which was preceding us up the coast. These
depressions are the embryos of hurricanes but this one soon fizzled out
and disappeared.
You’re
going to find this hard to believe but we had 12 people (including
ourselves) for Christmas dinner on “Daydream”
in Zihuatanejo. We had Vic, Nancy and Kyle from “Charisma” (USA), Robert, Lynn, Allison, John and John from “Flying
Wings” (Britain), Alonso from “Isla
Romantica” (Costa Rica) and his ‘girlfriend de jour’, Maria
from Zihuatanejo (Mexico). It was a little like the United Nations. For
dinner we had a huge smoked turkey, salad, mashed potatoes, gravy, rice,
homemade bread, pumpkin pie and fruit punch. Just like home except there
wasn’t much snow and the temperature was in the low 80’s after
sunset.
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