Blog #047 – Life Since Bocas

Rio Chagres

This is season number three for us on the water. We have been to some interesting places but where we are now has over shadowed them all for me. It’s probably a combination of things that has brought on this euphoria, not necessarily the place itself. It’s like having a glass of ice water after you’ve wandered around in the desert. After weeks of being parched and blistered and sunburnt you survived! You now have in your hands a cold, sparkling, glass of water with ice cubes and drips of condensed water beads cooling your cracked, dry hands as you take a drink. It’s like that…Today, this morning, is like that first sip. So where are we that has invoked this feeling in me? Up the Rio Chagres.

Bocas Del Toro, Panama

A few days ago we finally left Bocas Del Toro “the desert”. Bocas is not a bad place at all. In fact, it’s a wonderful place to be when hurricane season sets in and the storms are tearing up all the islands and coastlines. So what’s the desert comment all about? Well, let me explain. Hurricane season is a long time. Long, long, long time. And to be stuck in one place so long makes us really want back on the water, out to sea and going to new places and seeing new things. Floating Doctors was the best way to spend our time and now we were ready to move on.

Black Fin Tuna caught on way to Escudo de Veraguas

But we were stuck waiting on parts to be shipped in, feeling anxious to leave, but trapped. So we sat in Bocas Marina anchorage waiting, listening to very, very loud music almost every night as we tried to sleep. At Floating Doctors, the bay after dark was absolutely peaceful, quiet, sublime. But Bocas, well it’s a tourist driven economy on an island catering to a younger crowd who still party, a lot. Bocas town itself is a lovely place to go for a bike ride or slip into a quiet restaurant for a glass of ice tea. We loved the fruit and vegetable stands. One restaurant had soft-serve ice cream cones and on sweltering afternoons, they were oh, so good. But in the anchorage panga taxis raced by all day and in to the night, screaming fast and loud past all the anchored boats, including ours. Well, that sets the stage for why the Rio Chagres, seems like heaven to me.

Fishermen in Escudo de Veraguas

So we had a full day sail to Escudo de Veraguas. The sail was perfect, we had wind the whole trip and loved every minute of it. Upon arrival we were met by fishermen eager to sell their days catch. So we bought some lobster. We planned to stay a few days – the diving is supposed to be beautiful, but the wind blew all night and created a bad situation. It was a lee-shore and we had our back against a reef and the wind and waves were building making our anchorage unsafe. So we decided to set sail for Chagres, 22 hours away. The Rio runs through Gatun Lake, the man-made reservoir created by damming up this amazon-like river through the Panama rainforest. The entrance is dangerous even in the most settled weather because of a sand bar and reef that protect it from all but the most determined fools. We fall in that category – determined fools. But everything we heard about it made it worth the risk. So we sailed through a dark, cloudless night to arrive in the morning so we could make the entrance in the best conditions with sunlight shining overhead. The entrance was butt-puckering to say the least. After an hour of navigating along surf lines and around unseen rocks and unseen reefs and over unseen trees floating down the river, we arrived here – heaven on earth.

Entrance to Rio Chagres

A few miles from the mouth and half way to the Dam before the river bends, it widens out into a large pool about 500 feet wide. The water barely moves and is surrounded on all sides by a jungle canopy that goes 150 meters into the sky, strait up from the banks. The only sounds are birds, bugs, a soft breeze and howler monkeys in the trees. Silhouette is swaying in the water like an inner tube on a lazy river. No sounds of water taxis or music blaring, no wake to rattle our home like living under a railroad bridge, none of that. Just the beauty of nature, of parrots flying in pairs, and an occasional splash of a fish jumping for a low flying bug. The sounds of a world far removed from civilization. So I enjoyed peace and quiet with a tall glass of ice cold water, thanking God for bringing us here safely. We had the best sleep in months. We explored the crocodile filled river by dinghy and did a bit of fishing and floating down the Rio. We were kinda like a floating buffet for crocodiles, but we kept our hands and feet inside the ride at all times!

Rio Chagres

We left the Chagres and sailed two days to the San Blas Islands. Liana had looked forward to this for months and our trip had been cut short by the oddity of trying to ship anything into the desert of Bocas. Our original cruising plans had San Blas as our last destination before working with Floating Doctors but the time dwindled away and we were forced to make a straight-shot across the Caribbean Sea to beat the oncoming hurricane season. The Islands had to wait. When I suggested we may skip them altogether and just head straight to the canal after Floating Doctors the entire crew (Liana) threatened mutiny…she was apparently going to take the boat with or without me… so we went to San Blas Islands.

San Blas Islands

The Island of Porvenir where we checked-in was nothing more than an airstrip with a few palm trees and a couple of one story buildings. They had to make the island longer just to accommodate the runway which is mainly used for people flying in to visit friends on cruising yachts. I had to walk across it to check in. The women at the Kuna Yala Congress building (where one must pay entry fees) spoke no English – I spoke no Kuna. So we reverted to sign language. I thought they wanted to know what size of valero (sailboat) we were in, so I looked at their chart and pointed at the one that said 50. I was thinking 50 foot boat. After a good belly laugh one of them walked outside and had me point to our valero. So I did. She walked in and declared the bottom one. Good thing because that one was only $30, the other one…well, let’s just be clear, we would not have been visiting the San Blas Islands if we had to pay that fee. Turns out I had pointed to the passenger capacity for a small cruiseliner. Oops.

Check-in complete, off to Dog Island where we heard there was an old shipwreck that makes for a fantastic dive. Turns out the charts did not match the water depth we were seeing, so we picked the next island over, Banedup South. We dropped anchor and were in for the night. One of us usually goes for a swim to check the anchor. I was the designated anchor checker so off I swam. I found a large pile of sand and our anchor leaning sideways. I straightened it and rocked it back and forth a few times. It rocked very hard so I assumed it was well set.

San Blas – molas

We spent Thanksgiving here. We slept in and then Liana baked fresh bread, cookies, brownies and started to thaw out a ham we purchased a few months back. Ham is not a Bocas thing and turkey is even less of a Bocas thing so when we found a ham we stashed it away just for this occasion. While she baked we ran the generator so we could have air conditioning. It gets very hot in the galley with the oven on and 90 degrees outside. So as not to waste electricity I charged the batteries, made water and filled all our dive tanks. Our plans were to dive every chance we got. We heard voices outside the boat and came up to find men in a cayuco with buckets filled with molas. The Kuna are famous for their intricately made needlepoint pieces. Many depict Kuna Yala history, legends, animals and a variety of designs and colors. Liana looked through them and chose a few. Next thing we knew another cayuco showed up with more to show us and while they were still on the boat another lady came asking us to buy hers. We ended up buying a lot more than we planned.

Kuna Ladies Cayuco

Then while the ham thawed we went for a snorkeling adventure to see the shipwreck off Dog Island. It sat in zero to ten feet of water with crystal clear visibility. No tanks required. We found out later the Kuna do not allow diving in their waters, only snorkeling. So we put away our dive gear for a while. We swam around the wreck for an hour looking at some very interesting fish and corral taking over this 100 year old ship. We saw a large lion-fish protecting its corner from invaders. It need not worry we’re not getting close to that spiny thing.

Liana got a bit cold and we were both getting hungry so we headed back to Silhouette for Thanksgiving dinner. The smell of ham filled the salon. We also had green bean casserole, fresh bread, baked potatoes and even a rusty can of cranberries came out of the depths of some locker some where. After dinner we had chocolate brownies with key lime frosting for desert. We watched the sun go down and soon the sky was overcast so we went below for a game of Battleship. Me, being the navy veteran promptly crushed her spindly fleet of scaly wags and she decided she hated Battleship so we went on to something she is a bit more qualified for – Mexican Train….after six rounds she claimed victory but it was only to dubious declaration of little known rules applied liberally in her favor at moments of near desolation creating inevitable loss on my non-rule making side of the game. (Liana: what does that even mean?)

Buying Molas

We checked our position one last time before entering the twilight zone and around 4:00 am I started to here it. Ting, ting, ting, it was driving me crazy! The wind had shifted and our flag fluttered back and forth with the halyard just loose enough to rattle the brass clips on the rigging and it was making the ting, ting, ting thing that was driving me nuts. I woke up Liana to declare I had had enough and was going outside to kill whatever was creating that racket. Luckily, I put some shorts on because what happened next could have been called “Naked and Afraid at 4:00 am”. I climbed the ladder to strangle the noise maker and as I was looking for it I saw a boat directly ahead of us not more than half a boats length. When we went to bed we had Corto beside us 100 feet away. One of us was dragging anchor. The wind had changed direction and we were in a bad situation. Whether it was them or us someone needed to act quickly or we would be exchanging more than a little paint and insurance cards.

“Liana, come up here right away!” She did and we got underway quickly. She wanted to wake up Corto and I was thinking our bow coming through their saloon window would do it soon enough! I started up the diesels and she grabbed the headphones. Liana unsnubbed the anchor and I immediately used the bow thruster to starboard. I put Silhouette in gear and pulled us ahead of Corto. Out of immediate danger we considered our options. Liana didn’t see any boats ahead of us so we decided to pull forward and possibly re-anchor. Liana brought up the chain and declared, “Dang it, we have a huge clump of hard mud fouling our anchor”. Liana stepped back to grab a boat hook to dislodge the clump.

San Blas Islands

As soon as she got back with the hook she discovered a black sailboat directly ahead of us. It had no anchor light or any other light to illuminate it. She told me to turn to port. Now! So I hit the bow thruster. Then she said back up, back up immediately! I shoved us in reverse and laid on the power. Our three blade prop cavitated and I could hear water rushing forward. Just then I could see we were nearly broadside a 50’ sailboat. I was quickly closing in on Corto’s bow in reverse so I turned on the bow thruster and spun a circle as we were backing up. Thankfully, Corto had lights and we could clearly see we were going to miss her. We headed outbound and I slowed down to give Liana a chance to see anything else lurking ahead. Nope, it was wide open. Our hearts slowed down.

We decided to just move on. We had planned to move at daylight anyway. We followed the track I laid out earlier for our trip to the Hollandes Island group. Liana came back to the cockpit and I went forward to take a look at our anchor still dangling about four feet down from the bow. With a flashlight I started to look at the problem. It was not mud at all but a coral head – a bombie as we call them. It was tightly wedged in between the gap on the claw of our anchor. We were the ones who were dragging. The fouled anchor had slid slowly across the sand bottom. It took a half hour with a boat hook and a gaff to dislodge the corral head. By flashlight it looked like a massive hunk of concrete.

We made the narrow gap between the island and reef around 7:45 am and with the sun behind us we had good visibility of the reef into Bug Island-our next destination. At 8:00 am we dropped the hook and relaxed. We were surrounded by little islands covered in palms, with pale green water outlining the corral reefs. The anchorage was calm and only a couple boats. A rainbow stretched half way across the sky while Liana was out on her kayak exploring the bay. I am documenting yet another chapter in our adventures. Ting, ting, ting, it’s the little things we are thankful for. God is so good….next step…Panama Canal…

Banadup Island Rainbow