16 September 2013 Yansaladup, San Blas, Panama
It was another overcast day, so we got on with a few jobs and ran the watermaker. We’d been told by “Infinity” that the Kunas on Yansaladup are desperate for drinking water because their well is not filling up enough, so we dinghied over and gave them a 5 gallon jerry jug full of water. We were going to give them more, but they didn't seem very enthusiastic about our water. While we were there, Glenys gave them a bag of clothes that she no longer needed and some small things like a magazine and a pack of playing cards.
We've found that the Kuna will accept anything that you give them, but it’s hard to know what they really want. The language barrier is a problem for us and also their attitude to gifts is different to what we Europeans would expect. They seem to regard tourists as a source of free stuff and there’s no real reciprocation, often not even saying “Gracias” most of the time.
We lurked about in the afternoon. It was so hot and muggy, that we felt physically drained, so we couldn't even be bothered to go snorkelling, instead just jumped off the back of the boat to cool down.
17 September 2013 Yansaladup to Isla Linton, Panama
We were up at 0600 and motored away from the San Blas Islands. We've had a good month here, but we've had enough of palm fringed islands and snorkelling – it’s time to do something different. As usual in this area, there was no wind, so we had to motor for eight hours to Isla Linton.
On the way, I deployed my new birds on a 3mm line with a heavy squid lure and then had a normal lure on my fishing rod trailing behind the birds. I hooked one large fish that got off before I could get to the rod and then caught a nice 3lbTuna on the birds. While I was landing the Tuna, the fishing rod started to scream away and I found that I’d caught a small, three foot long Reef Shark, which must have been attracted by the Tuna. After a bit of kerfuffle, I brought it alongside, and cut the steel trace about 6 inches from the hook, keeping my fingers well clear of the pissed-off, snapping shark.
Isla Linton is not one of my favourite anchorages. All of the good anchoring spots with shallow water are packed with permanently moored boats. The only space available is in 12 metres of water between other boats that are permanently anchored here. In addition, the water swirls around in light winds, so it’s very difficult to know where everyone’s anchor lies. We did our best and put out 50 metres of chain, which surprisingly put us in a reasonable position between a couple of permanent live-aboard boats.
In the evening, we went to Hans’s bar with “Nuwam” for a beer or two. This bar is owned by a German guy and the food is supposed to be good, but the whole place looked so grotty that Glenys didn’t want to eat there. The bar is frequented by the permanent live-aboards, who are a random collection of scruffy drop-outs – a kind of floating pikey. God knows what the locals think about these people permanently hanging about in their area.
18 September 2013 Isla Linton to Portobello, Panama
I woke up at three o’clock because the wind had picked up, so I got up and looked at where we were swinging. Unfortunately, we were now within a boat length of another boat, which was directly behind us. I then spent the next hour going to bed and getting up every ten minutes to see where we were. Eventually I pulled up ten metres of chain to move us away, but even then, I woke up every so often to peer bleary eyed out of the window.
It was miserable, grey and raining in the morning, so we ran the watermaker and got on with a few small chores – like getting the front heads to work, which was not pumping well. (It turned out to be a two inch long stick that had been sucked up into the inlet pipe.)
I’ve been worrying about spending five months in Ecuador – it seems like an awfully long time to be spending in one place. There’s not much opportunity for cruising around in Ecuador because the paperwork is a nightmare and the anchorages are few and far between, so our plan is to do a lot of travelling inland and do some jobs that have been building up. However, five months is a long time to be hanging about, so we started to look at other possibilities again. We could spent a couple of months cruising the west coasts of Panama and Costa Rica before going down to Ecuador .
At noon, we dinghied around to Panamarina to see our friends Tierry and Claudia on “Vanupieds” who have just flown back after two months in Switzerland. We had a nice lunch with them in the restaurant – grilled steak and chips and Moules and Frites. It was good to catch up with them – they’re planning to go down to Ecuador as well. On the way back, through the small boat channel, we spotted a troop of Capuchin monkeys in the mangroves, who were as surprised to see us as we were to see them.
All the boats in the anchorage were swirling around and we were still close to the other boat so we decided to motor for a couple of hours to Portobello and dropped our anchor in 8 metres of water in splendid isolation – the nearest boat is 100 metres away, so I’ll sleep tonight.
19 September 2013 Portobello, Panama
I woke up in the middle of the night with the runs. It must have been that medium rare steak that I had yesterday – obviously too rich or alien to my stomach after five weeks of fish, chicken and lobster. I took a couple of Immodium after spending half the morning rushing to the heads and, fortunately, that worked like magic.
Glenys spent most of the day reading up on Porto Rico while I quietly read a book and tried to rehydrate. In the afternoon, we dinghied into town to buy some food. As we walked off the dinghy dock by Consignment Dave’s, we bumped in to English Dave, who naturally had a can of beer in his hand, it being after midday.
Dave told us that there was a German (Pat) who’s set up a sail making loft in town and showed us where it is. The stitching on the sacrificial strip on our genoa is starting to pull away, so it needs repairing. We were planning on doing it ourselves when we get to Shelter Bay, but it would be a struggle to manipulate the huge sail on our foredeck. It’s a very easy job for a sail maker with a rigging table and Pat only charges $25 per hour, so we’re going to drop our sail in tomorrow.
We went to the bakery, bought a couple of loaves of bread, then wandered to the supermarkets to buy the usual provisions – beer, wine, orange juice, milk, breakfast cereal, onions and some meat. It’s always the drinks that we run out of, mostly because they’re heavy and bulky. Surprisingly, Portobello town didn’t look as dirty and run-down as I remember, but there's still loads of vultures hanging about. It’s much, much more sophisticated than Nargana or the Carti Islands.
Our friends Jerry and Susan from “Vida Dulce” came over for a beer or two and we caught up on what they've been doing since we last saw them a couple of months ago in Shelter Bay.
20 September 2013 Portobello, Panama
We were woken at half past six by the sound of voices – I looked out of the window to find that we were surrounded by fishermen in canoes, who were hand-lining. It’s interesting that the people who live in Portobello are mostly Afro-Caribbean, yet they still use dug-out canoes like the Kuna. Even their oars are the same design.
We dropped the genoa off at the sail maker’s. Pat says that we can pick it up on the 23rd, so we’ll be stuck here for a few days. The leather protection has pulled away around the clew of the sail, but Pat hasn't got any leather and it would be more delay, so I said that I’ll do the repair. We've got a small piece of leather stowed away somewhere and it’s just a matter of hand stitching it on – I'm sure that I’ll regret saying just…
We bought some more drinks and food while we were in town and retired back to the boat, where we had a quiet day reading and generally chilling out. I did some more work on the pdf version of The Galley Slave.
21 September 2013 Portobello, Panama
I woke up with the intention of changing the oil in the generator, but managed to put it off by continuing work on The Galley Slave pdf file and managed to get all of it finished - it's now on our Downloads page. At lunch time, Glenys wryly said that she detected a certain reluctance to do the oil change and she’s dead right.
Glenys spent the morning cleaning stainless steel and winches, then in the afternoon played her ukulele and wrote up some more recipes for the web site. I managed to motivate myself enough to work on our Lewmar genoa cars, fitting the various rubber end stops, which I brought back from the UK in July. Unfortunately, it took longer than I thought and I didn’t have enough time to start the oil change…
Glenys was highly motivated after writing some new recipes for her cookbook and produced Piononos for dinner, which were delicious.
22 September 2013 Portobello, Panama
We woke up to a grey Sunday morning and I felt guilty enough that I got right into doing an oil service for the generator, which didn't take too long. We've been getting sooty deposits on the hull next to the exhaust water outlet, which indicates that either the generator is starved of air or the injectors are clogged up, so I cleaned the air filter which was soaked in oil. I assume that it’s been sucking in oil vapour while we had the oil leak in the crankshaft. I dived down and wiped the black marks off the hull and we’ll see if they’re there in a week’s time.
At lunchtime we went to Captain Jack’s bar with Jerry and Susan from “Vida Dulce” and had a fantastic cheeseburger and fries washed down by a few cold beers. Obviously, the afternoon was spent reading a book and sleeping off our Sunday lunch.
We’re both getting worried and excited about going through the Panama Canal. It’s getting imminent now – we’ll most likely be in the Pacific Ocean within two weeks and we've still not decided exactly where we’re going to go. We've had reports from various people that the weather is more unsettled on that side of the isthmus at the moment with big thunderstorms, but hopefully that will have changed by the time we get through.