9/25/2011 Perlas Islands

We’re still in the Pacific side of Panama, getting ready to transit the canal.  Not that it’s really going to take much preparation of the boat, but the shopping here is the best and cheapest we have seen since Mexico, and I think it will not be nearly as convenient on “the other side”, so we’re stocking up on all the things we might need. 

We were getting itchy feet though so we decided to visit a local island chain called the Perlas Islands (Pearls) with a buddy boat Jeorgia.   The Perlas are an easy day sail from where we were and most are uninhabited and pristine.  On the way there we saw lots of whales spouting and playing.  Unfortunately, none got close enough to get a good picture.  On the other hand, I don’t want a big whale too close to the boat:

The weather was overcast and rainy, typical Panama in the “green” season, but the water was warm and clear.   We got a couple of good snorkeling days in, only one of which I brought my underwater camera.

The highlight of the snorkeling was having a white tip reef shark cruising by all of us for a few minutes.  I did not take the following picture, but if I had had my camera, and had it been real sunny, this would have been the shot I could have gotten :-)  This is exactly what he looked like.

We also saw lots of colorful fish, a few big stingrays a.d a turtle grazing on the bottom.  Unfortunately most of the fishes wouldn’t stay still long enough to get a good picture.

Can you spot the stingray buried in the sand?  This guy was probably 10 feet long tip to tail.

One afternoon we also took the dingys  up a river.  Paul racing to get there first:

We saw lots of birdlife

The jungle was incredible dense

But soon we found the river entrance

It was eerie going up through the tunnel of thick jungle.  In places we had to duck branches or go around obstacles.  Lots of birds and even a few wild orchids. 

We probably got at least a 1/2 mile up the river before it got too shallow, so we turned around and headed back

It wasn’t all fun, we also spent hours scraping and cleaning the bottom of the boat.  It’s amazing how fast stuff grows here in warm water. 

After about a week in the Perlas, we had a nice 5 hour sail back to the mainland.

Next Monday, September 26, we are getting the boat measured for the canal, then once we pay the fees, we’ll set a date. 

Cheers,

Carolynn & Tom

Map

Check out the map on the right. You can zoom in and move the map around. Just ignore those places where the lines showed we went over land :-)

We're about 3,000 nautical miles from when we started (as the crow flies), but we have sailed over 6,500 nautical miles so far (1 nautical mile = 1.15 land miles).

We're still in Panama City, thinking of going through the canal in a couple of weeks.

8/30/2011 – Panama City, Panama

Sorry it’s taken me so long to update the blog, we pulled into Panama City and got lazy :-) Looking back, I haven’t really written an update since we left Golfito, Costa Rica so this one will be a long one...

As we left Golfito we passed the U.S. coast guard cutter “Alert”, always good to see our tax dollars at work.

We also went past one of the yacht transport ships. They’ll just hoist your boat up on deck and take it anywhere in the world, Tom says that’s the way Sunny will be coming back to California, but we’ll see, it is very expensive.

We were soon joined by some dolphins playing at the bow, I never tire of watching these playful critters.

The trip to Panama City was uneventful but very long and tiring. Not only were we hand steering, but the weather was squally and pretty miserable. The unsettled weather was especially unfortunate since as I mentioned in the previous post in Bahia Honda, the anchorages looked to be some of the most beautiful and deserted of our cruise so far. It took almost two weeks to get to Panama City, though a week of that was holed up in Bahia Honda vainly waiting better weather. In those two weeks, I don’t believe we had more than 2-3 hours at a time that it wasn’t pouring. The final passage, coming into the approach to the Panama canal in the dark with thousands of radar returns of super tankers all around was nerve wracking, but just as the sun was coming up we got to Tabaga Isle, a little way from Panama City and decided to stay there a few days. Tabaga was where they sent many of the Yellow fever patients during the building of the canal because of its pleasant breezes. The little town is now a local tourist destination with a definite Caribbean flair.

After a few days we upped anchor and headed over to Las Brisas anchorage, where we currently are. Las Brisas is next to the causeway that runs along the entrance to the canal and across the bay is the City. It’s strange seeing so many skyscrapers after months in sparsely populated anchorages.
(sorry for the poor picture quality, most days are overcast and drizzly).

It’s almost always overcast (bad for the solar power generators), and afternoons and evenings frequently have thundershowers. In fact a boat was hit by lightning only about 100 meters from us! All electronics were fried, but luckily no injuries or structural damage to the boat.

Panama City is crowded, vibrant and friendly. Just like in El Salvador there are brightly painted buses running everywhere, but unfortunately we haven’t been able to determine where in the multi colors it shows anything about the bus’s destination, so we haven’t ventured onto them. Taxis though are relatively cheap and plentiful. Provisioning too is much cheaper than Costa Rica, or even El Salvador, back to Mexican prices with even better selection. There are a couple of dozen cruising boats here, several even that we’ve known since Mexico, so there is lots going on. There is a morning radio ‘net, pizza nights, and there almost always is someone to share taxis with.

One day I went with friends to visit the museum at the first set of locks for the canal. In addition to the museum, there is an observation platform and we watched a couple of big ships transiting through.

It’s amazing how they design ships to just fit into the locks with only inches for clearance. They are in the process of building even bigger locks which should be open in two years.

We also took a one day trip with about 16 cruisers to visit a local indigenous Indian village. The Embera Indians originally came from the Darian region (far eastern Panama), but moved to central Panama during the building of the canal for work. The villages though have remained relatively unchanged. They are trying to preserve their way of life and offer visits to their village as a funding source.

We took a van about an hour into the center of Panama and off a winding dirt road came to a river. There we loaded up into 2 Cayukas, or wooden kayaks.

Other than the outboard, these are the same design and construction from before the Europeans arrived.

We took about a 45 minute ride up the river, going up small rapids and dodging branches. Several times our guides had to either pole up rapids, or get out and push them up while the bottom dragged. Several times I thought we were going to tip over but these kids knew what they were doing and kept us safe and relatively dry.


We saw several crocodiles, iguana, river otters, and numerous birds. No pictures though, at that point is was splashing too much to risk the camera, plus these are not too stable especially with a load of tippy gringos. Other than the noise from the outboards, it could have been Panama 1000 years ago.
Once we got to the beach below the village, we were greeted by the villagers.



Then up the trail to the village.

They live in simple thatch huts, but according to the guide, a well built thatch roof is water tight and will last for years. The huts are on stilts for air flow (and to keep scorpions away) and are designed to funnel the breezes. Even though it was hot on the ground, is was cooler in the meeting hut.

One of the villagers, who also works for the peace corps, gave us a talk explaining the origins of their people, their way of life, handicrafts, and a little of how they are integrating modern life with tradition.

The Panamanian government has built a school house and a teacher comes four times a week.

We were then invited to wander the village and look at their handicrafts for sale while they prepared lunch. I bought a beautiful small basket and a carved frog. Tom got a temporary tattoo.
A small group of us also went way into the jungle with the medicine man to visit his garden. Through a translator he described the plants and treatments. He must know something since everyone in the village seemed very healthy and he said he was 76 and sure out hiked all of us!

Then back to the meeting hut for a wonderful lunch of fish and roasted plantains. (sorry for the out of focus)

After talking to some of the children, the teen boys and girls gave a traditional music and dance demonstration.

The video may take a while to start...

They even got some of the “gringos” dancing (not me, it was too hot in that sun).

After a quick swim in the river, with the little kids “attacking” our ankles, which resulted in tickles or the guys picking them up and tossing them as far as they could, which resulted in squeals and giggles, we loaded back up on the Cayukas and headed back down the “rapids”. It was a fun trip down, flying and side sliding over the rapids that were so hard to get up.

Overall it was a fantastic trip, but Tom and I both felt we saw kind of a “Disney-eske” view of their life and culture, and we felt a bit like voyeurs. There were no middle aged or older men or women, other than the medicine man and the village matron. All the rest were beautiful and vibrant teens and young adults, and cute and playful kids. Everyone looked to be the epitome of health, happy and very, very nice. Carmen, our friend and interpreter said that they only open a few of the villages to visitors and try to present a positive picture. Several of the young men and women said (through Carmen) that it was very hard to maintain the culture and lifestyle with all the pressures of modern times, and many of their friends have left the villages to find work in the city. They don’t want to lose their culture, but are not sure how to maintain it. Fishing, crafts and tourists only go so far... Oh well, I wish them luck and are glad we got a chance to spend a day with them.

Another thing we have now done twice is to be “line handlers” for other cruisers going through the Panama canal. The canal requires that every small boat transiting the canal (and we are definitely considered small in their books) have at least four line handlers, and a helmsperson. Since most cruisers are a couple (sometimes with a small child or two), they will need to find three additional bodies to help them through their transit. You can hire a line handler for between $65-100 a transit (plus food/drink and a taxi back), but most cruisers try to get other cruisers. Not only is it cheaper, but since we’ve been hanging out together, you get to know the personalities involved and whether everyone can get along in a small space.

Plus the canal requires an “advisor”, who communicates with the authorities during the transit and provide instructions on when to enter the lock, how we’re going to be tied, etc. The advisor is not expected to provide any assistance, other than verbal, though for both our transits the advisors have been very friendly and helpful (coincidentally both were named Francisco). The advisors typically have full time jobs in other aspects of canal operations and just pick up the odd small boat transit for extra cash (or to get the hours through the canal to test for a pilot job, where the big bucks are made).

So this puts at least six people on a boat really set up for two (yes I know empty, most of our boats are “designed” to sleep six or seven, but by the time you load life raft, dingy, lines, fenders, bicycles, extra sails, coolers, tools, etc, etc....., six on a cruising boat is pretty crowded. That’s another reason to get fellow cruisers as line handlers, they understand tripping over deck junk
:-)

Both transits were really pretty easy, though there were a few exciting points (exciting is not really a good thing when you’re moving your home through concrete walls). Both were very different as far as how we tied up, rafted up, etc, so while we’re a little more confident about bringing Sunny through in a few weeks, we’ll have to remain flexible. Here are a few pictures of our transits, unfortunately I was a bit busy during most of the operations to get good pictures. Also the pictures may be from either of the transits.

Approach to the Bridge of the Americas.

“Islamorada”, one of the boats we locked up with. The advisor told us it was originally Al Capone’s boat and was used for gin running and gambling, but was now a tourist boat.

Our approach to the first locks and our fellow boats scrambling for position.

There is a convenient arrow at the end of the point to tell us which set of locks we were to go into.

A guy threw us down a line which we then tied one of our long lines to (all boats need 4 heavy lines each at least 125 feet long, luckily these can be rented locally).

After that it got a little busy so I had my camera in my pocket for the rest of the transit (sorry). The line handlers need to be attentive, but it’s pretty straightforward. As you go up the lines need to be slowly taken in, and as you go down, slowly let out.

Overall it’s pretty straightforward to go through the canal.

Sometimes you end up tied to another boat, in this case one of the canal tugs. Once tied up, we’re along for the ride.

Between the Pacific and Atlantic locks, there’s a winding lake, but well marked. Unfortunately we are not allowed to do any exploring there. (sorry for the low quality picture, it’s the rainy season and it was pouring most of the time).

Here is Sylvia and Ken, they came all the way from Japan to Washington (59 day passage), down the west coast of the Americas, will cruise around the Caribbean then back to Japan. Hopefully we’ll meet again in the San Blas (Caribbean side of Panama).

Well that’s pretty much what we’ve been up to. We think we’ll be going through the canal in 2-3 weeks, but we’re not in a great hurry. We’ve heard the “other side” has clearer water and prettier anchorages, but more rain and less provisioning, so we’re not in a great hurry. We won’t be leaving Caribbean Panama until past hurricane season.

Cheers,
Carolynn & Tom