If it's Tuesday, We Must Be in Paradise

Flying Cloud anchored in the lee of Bandeup Island in The San Blas Islands.

Waking up anchored off a beautiful South Pacific type island, replete with palm trees and a white sand beaches, we realized we’d arrived in Paradise. With crystalline waters, a cooling trade wind breeze, and a huge protected reef surrounding the island, we could ask for nothing more. We were still debriefing ourselves after our scary encounter with the reef at Isla Rosario in Columbia and realized we’d have to up our game for sailing in the much more dangerous waters of the San Blas.

Aerial photos of the area show white water streaming off reefs, just about everywhere. Luckily a Canadian cruiser had shared a set of digitized maps from the well know Bauhaus Guide to Panama. As someone said, it would be insanity to sail here without that guide and we fortunately had a set of those charts converted to work in a new navigation program we were using for the first time, called OpenCPN. It's the product of a group of dedicated programers who produced a unique navigation program that works on both PCs and MACs and can read a wider variety of files than our mainstay nav program, MaxSea. With OpenCPN we now have access to highly accurate charts of the San Blas area, which when viewed on our MaxSea program shows up as mostly uncharted waters.  We religiously followed waypoints given to us by another cruiser in Cartagena that lead us into this highly protected lagoon after sailing over 200 miles the previous day and night. It’s a little unnerving to learn a new nav program so quickly and with so much at stake, but it worked perfectly the whole way.

Monica on the bow and Phil at the helm of the indomitable Miss Molly.

A little later in the morning Miss Molly sailed up and anchored behind us. Great to see them again after being apart only two days. We spent the afternoon snorkeling and exploring our little lagoon, followed by sundowners on Flying Cloud with Phil and Monica. They left the next morning, only to be replaced by Jeff and Katie on Messaluna, another MagNet boat that we hadn’t seen since Bonaire. Again, nice getting caught up with them.

As much as we wanted to stay, we needed to hustle to get checked into Panama and then sail north to Shelter Bay Marina so we could apply for our long term French Polynesia visas at the French Embassy in Panama City.

 

The view from the Upper Ramparts of Fort San Lorenzo (now a UNESCO World Heritage Site) looking towards the town of Portobello. 

On the 16th we sailed a short distance to Provenir where we cleared into Panama to the tune of $403 with another $60 going to the Kuna Yala for cruising in the San Blas region. We departed the next day and sailed about seven hours north up the coast to the historic port of Portobello. Nestled into a highly protected bay, Portobello was the major transshipment port for all the gold and silver plundered by the Spanish in South America. Ringed with forts on both sides, Portobello was heavily defended, but was still rampaged by the pirate Henry Morgan in 1668.

Fort San Lorenzo and several smaller forts protected the harbor from rampaging pirates.

It's so nice to meet new people while cruising. We quickly became friends with Steven and Sandra off the beautiful Lyman Morse yacht, Yonder.

As we were getting settled in we waved at a pretty blue sloop anchored nearby and they swung by in their dingy. Steve and Sandra off of Yonder were from the Boston area but had been cruising for over 15 years in the Caribbean and Newfoundland (where they keep a second boat, an Oyster 41). They were going for a short hike nearby and we invited ourselves along, hungry for exercise and meeting new people. We had a wonderful hike through Fort San Lorenzo and up the ridge line to the upper ramparts with beautiful views of the harbor. 

A smaller fortified wall guards the town of Portobello.

The Aduana (Customs) building in historic Portobello. It is said so much silver from Peru went through this building that they had to stack in out in the streets at times.

Since it was the NFL Playoffs, we accompanied Steven & Sandra to Capt'n Jack's Pub, a popular backpacker bar and hotel where we watched the Seattle/Green Bay game. As Seattle was getting trounced, and since Steve and Sandra were routing for Green Bay, we quickly lost interest in the game. Torrential rain showers were working their way through the harbor resulting in the satellite coverage fading in and out. The next thing we know, Seattle, through some miracle, is back in the game. In the last two minutes we watched a series of somewhat unbelievable plays resulting in Seattle winning the game and going to the Super Bowl. Amazing.

Yonder came sailing past us like we were standing still, and Flying Cloud is fairly fast for a cruising boat. Must have had a big piece of kelp on our keel.

On the 19th we followed Yonder out of the harbor and tried to keep up with them on a reach all the way to Shelter Bay Marina. They did a horizon job on us, making us question our basic sailing skills. As we approached Colon we were amazed by the number of anchored ships, we counted over 30 just off the breakwater, all waiting to transit the Panama Canal. One supposedly anchored ship started steaming towards us, reminding us to always be on your guard in these very crowded waters.

This supposedly anchored ship in front of us all of a sudden started moving. I guess that's why you need to stand watch.

We rounded the entrance to Linton Harbor (and the entrance to the Panama Canal) through two huge beacons flashing red and green. Once through the entrance we hung a hard right and sailed right into the beautiful Shelter Bay Marina. While it was still very windy, we made it into our berth with the minimum of drama, always a plus in a marina. It’s a great marina complete with a boatyard, a good restaurant and bar, and a wonderful pool.

We took a quick dip and then met Steven and Sandra and a large group of other cruisers, at the bar for sundowners. It’s always nice meeting new people as soon as you arrive to a new port since you have a million questions and they have a million answers (usually). Nice to go to bed that night securely tied to a dock with the AC purring away cooling the cabin to a somewhat reasonable temperature.