From Panama City we headed off shore a short ways to the Las Perlas Islands. A small cluster of rocky islands that Panama controls. 40 miles roughly. It is kind of like Lake Geneva Panama style. Some quite beautiful homes on the waterfront. Not a whole lot else though. There are virtually no boats here except the ARC boats. An entroponeuor could have a field day here but there are none around. No water taxies, fruit/veggie boats, not even a Mola to be found. No provisioning. We did spend a night on the hook in between a couple of the islands that were used in the Survivor series when they shot Pearl Islands Panama season. We went ashore and found what seems like it would have been a couple of their encampments. Found out later that the same islands had been used by the foreign franchise versions of Survivor. I guess there are several foreign language versions that they produce.

One kind of neat thing was the tidal flows as we sat between the islands. Earlier in the day, at high tide, we were swimming. A couple of jelly fish stings but nothing to bad. When the tide dropped a flow of millions of jellyfish started flowing by. So thick it was unbelievable. Then in the middle of the night the bioluminescent creatures come out. They float by twinkling blues and greens. Absolutely stunning. When you flush the head (it is salt water flush) They get swept in and the whole bowl glows. Quite something.

On the way back in for the rendezvous we crossed over a school (if that’s the right term) of sting rays. Brown in color. About 4 feet down. Couple of hundred of them at least. We were about a mile off shore in a rather poorly charted area. We all thought they were rocks and we were about to ground on them. About had a stroke till we figured out what they were. Never seen such a large group.

Biggest adjustment is dealing with the tides. 20 foot worth. And no docks. You drag your dinghy up on the beach and depending if the tide is going in or out you are either going to find it floating away or way up the beach high and dry. Both are an issue.  100 yards of beach disappear as the tide comes in. Huge rocky formations appear out of the sea and stand 20 foot dry before the tide starts to come back up.

Lost two crew today. Things weren’t working out to great. And with the amount of space that you have to coexist in……  not to great is an issue.  Not happy with that situation. Going to have to find crew and get them to Galapagos. Not something I had figured on. Write your plans in the sands.

Anybody want to crew a leg or two?

Hooked into some decent WiFi so I will try to get some pix loaded up. But I did get a post uploaded earlier today as well.

This is coming into the breakwater entrance of the Panama Canal. We are the black boat. The rest are huge container ships waiting for their passage. Like a floating city.

The boats coming through we quite impressive. And they are building a larger one that is to be complete in 2017. But no one believes that date.

Did a river dugout canoe trip to a fairly remote village. And an hour in a dugout canoe is worth about 5 hours on a hard cold surface. 

Transport Central Panama style.

 This is the local elected Chief. Runs for re-election every 4 years.

The kids were all smiles.

All for now. I feel like I am pushing my WiFi luck.

Off to Las Perlas in a day or so. Then the Galapagos.

M

For now I am going to try just a couple of pictures. I am lucky if I can get text posted. If we ever get to WiFi heaven I have a bunch to download. Like my new tattoo given to me by a bare chested 23 year old Panamanian Indian woman.

San Blas to The Panama Canal was a pretty easy run. We did it over two days. Buddy boating with our friends on Chez Nous. Linton the first night. Nothing much there. Kind of dirty. Great little restaurant that had mounds of good food for very cheap. $1.10 beers. Hope the health department never finds them. But I really don’t think there is one in Panama.

Then on to Shelter Bay Marina inside of the breakwater that is the entrance to the Panama Canal. Lots of BIG ships out on anchor waiting for their turn at it. Bob counted 38 or so. And these are huge container ships. It was a floating city.

Shelter Bay is nice. Nice and hot. And we feed a lot of mosquitoes. Eventually turned into a quest to find mosquito netting to drape over the bunks. Mine has nice frilly embroidering on it. Looks like  Panamanian version of a pretty pretty princess mosquito net. But they didn’t fall for it. Many many made it through and bit the S#$T out of me all night. So that’s two nights no sleep thanks to the little black salt water mangrove mosquitoes. Cannot wait to move on.

So we did. Through the Panama Canal.

The day before our transit we took a tour of the locks at Gaton. It is something. Let me tell you. And at 100 years old it is absolutely stunning in its scale and accomplishment. We were there for about an hour getting some idea of what we were going to go through the next day. But it turns out to be kind of like sitting across the street from a car wash and watching the cars go through. They go in one end and out the other but you really don’t have any idea what goes on inside. We learned that the next day.

VIBC made to the Panama Canal

The day of, we had a skippers briefing but sure still had a lot of questions that only the experience would answer. The process is basically that you raft up with two other boats. Cats in the middle. And proceed through the locks. The actual is something else. We were rafted up with two fifty foot monos. We must have been about 150,000 lbs of boats. We are 53,000 ourselves and we are not ballasted. Not an experience any of us have had before. We anchored out at a staging area called the flats. “F” dock for short. It’s along side the traffic route and when everyone is anchored and present they send out the advisor pilots. We were 14 boats going in four groups of three and one raft of two monohulls. Experience level of the skippers to this process….  Zero.  Experience levels of the pilot advisors…. Varies. Our advisor, Francisco Lopez, was excellent. 23 years at it. A couple of the other guys were very new. One boat had a trainee on board with their advisor. These guys are training and buying time to become a Panama Canal Pilot. There are only 300 of them and they make upwards of $300K a year. Obviously a desirable position. So we head down the lane toward the first Gaton Lock and about 1500 meters short we start the process of rafting up. Kind of like docking at about 3 knots. I am in the middle and am supposed to keep the bus on the white line. Which is interesting when a boat about your size ties up along side and then kills their engine. Until you get the boat on the other side rafted up it’s a little bit out of balance. For Francisco it was his 354^th transit with small yachts. For me it was like the first time skydiving. Intense. So we hit the first lock fine. As you come into the locks a line thrower up on the wall will toss down a small line with a weighted monkey fist at its end. They are about 3 stories above you at the top of the lock wall. They say don’t try to catch it. You will break your hand. The line is then attached to a long line that is carried on the two outside boats. The line handlers pull the lines up the wall and hang them on the “buttons” along the top of the wall when you are in an appropriate position. At least thats the theory. In practice we saw it go sideways several different ways.

Several of our 14 boat transit. The blue lines are the key to happiness.

Example:  Second lock. First day. First one went OK. We were getting a feel for it. They pump in 3 million gal of water a minute and raise you 9 meters. Gigantic swirling bathtub of brackish water. On the second lock the line handler got his toss line caught behind a chunk of 100-year-old rusty metal plate. It cut the line and dropped the big line into the canal. We were trailing it behind. Major bad thing. It is long enough that a following raft can get it into a prop and neutralize and engine. Our on board line handler made a new speed record for hauling in the now useless line. Useless because if it is on the boat and not attached to the wall you got nothing but a gnarly cement wall coming at you. At the same time the line handlers on the other side did their job and got hooked up. We were screwed. Panama Canal style. Our guys tied the loose line to the bowline and they pulled both up the wall to secure them. When the two tied together lines got to the top one guy went one way and the other guy the other. With the lines still tied together. More yelling and swearing. We have some of this on video. About this point they figured out that they could not untie the CF, they needed a knife. Which no one had. They started beating on the line with a piece of pipe against a rock. In the meantime I am using full throttle and bow thruster to try to keep the port boat off the wall. It did settle down and we finished the lock. I think I sweated about 1 ½ gallon during that brief time.

Anyway, one more lock after that and we are into Gatun Lake for the night. Its about 8:00 PM and has been dark for an hour or so. Strange anchorage, in the dark, quite small area, very deep water. Lovely. Violates about every rule about coming in to someplace new. Slept in the salon that night waiting for the anchor alarm to go off indicating we had drifted. Lots to drift into here. But it was a quiet night. Up at 5:00 to get ready for the pilot to get there at first light. Found out later that another boat in the next transit group hooked up on the tree or something and had to leave behind their anchor and 300 foot of chain. They are trying to arrange a diver and boat to go back and get it recovered. That shouldn’t cost much.

Day two of Panama Canal transit involved getting 27 miles across central Panama to the set of locks that lowers you into the pacific side. Gaton Lake crossing was beautiful. Tropical jungle. Saw Toucans and a fresh water crocodile. Then it got a bit uglier and it got into the area where they are constantly dredging and clearing. Even saw one big dynamite blast behind a hill. Scared the S#$T out of us. The concussion hit us in the chest. Big cloud of black smoke from behind the hill. Pretty cool.

One more line handler F’ up in the last lock and we were on our way. That was one heck of an experience I must say. Shoulder is very sore. I was at the helm for about 8 hours on both days. The O’l rotator cuff is a growling at me today.

So we anchor up at La Playita Marina. It will not be one of our favorites. Did a tour of a local indigenous tribe and a Panama City tour. I think we are done with the bus herd tours. Got some good pictures I will post sometime. WiFi still pretty ragged around here.

The kids in this house gave the head gear to Dawn. They were all smiles. 

Best part is Dawn joined us yesterday. Now the crew is complete for the passage to the Galapagos. A few days more here on repairs and provisions and we head off the Las Perlas. 45 miles or so off Panama. Rendezvous with the ARC fleet and stage for the 6 or 7 day passage.

All for now

M

And as I see the post now I see it dumped a bunch of the pictures I down loaded. I will see if I can get them on here. Should be in order. Sorry for the confusion.

Not going to work. The one picture below took five minutes. Send me an email and I will send you a compressed file of the blog with pixs if you want. Now we continue the search for WiFi.

Greetings from Vivo.

We have been with out Wi-Fi for a couple of weeks now. Here is an update.

The crew and friends before the beating.   Err… I mean passage.

These are our fellow circumnavigators. We’re in there somewhere on the left. 43 boats.

We had one heck of a week before the start. When I left in December we were in pretty good shape. Which was not the case only a couple of weeks later. Two days before the start we had no starboard engine. No gen set. And no refrigerator or freezer. All we needed were some small simple parts but they were not to be found on island. Very frustrating given all the time and money I had put into spares. We were going to be a non-start for lack of a banjo bolt on the return fuel line of the gen set. ARGGGGG.

And it would blow a squall through about 4 or 5 times a day. Winds into the 40s. Blinding rain. Perfect conditions for doing repair work. Not. We were still in a slip in the marina so it was only an inconvenience at that point but the squalls need to be considered as you set up for off shore. Conditions change fast.

Anyway, we got through that but it cost us our training time. I had planned to go out for three days and shake out some new equipment and sails. Come together as a crew and get to know the various maneuvers we would be executing. And get the bottom cleaned off from the growth we had been getting in the marina. Did not happen. We got done what we could. Tossed the lines. Went out and anchored for a couple of hours. Todd scrubbed the barnacles off the props and it was start time. We had never tacked or gibed as a crew. Much less doing it in the 7-10 foot seas we would be going out into.

We hit the start fine. 2 reefs in main and Jib all out. Went out and did the turning point to head to panama then turned up and dropped the main and headed out on jib only. Spent the next day and ½ working out sail and equipment issues doing a leisurely 5 knots. Big seas. By the time we got reasonably well sorted out we were about a day behind. And the squalls? Not a one. We were all set to be blown to bits and get through it, and nothing. Didn’t rain again till the third day. And even then only for about ten minutes. So all of our short sail, safe setup, was for naught. But if we were set up to go fast the gods would of sent us a gale to get our attention.

Status at that point was…..  Wind indicator down. Sailing by feel. 24V battery charger down. Charging with port engine. Side Band radio drains 12V system way to fast. Have to ration its use. Seas are so big and from behind we are siphoning water into the bilges. Slowly and manageably. Don’t worry Mom. Then the water maker would not restart. Leaves us with 100 gal of water and 8 days ahead if we cannot get it going again. Several tense hours later we did. Or I should say, Todd did. Then the gen set copt an attitude and was throwing off error messages when we went to run it. A ground lead broke off due to the rough ride we were having. Tell you what, its no fun going down in the engine compartments when the seas are coming down on you like that. Had to keep the hatch closed and bang on the hull to get someone to let you back out. Timing it with the waves so we didn’t poop the engine compartment. (Poop means getting a breaking wave over the stern. Not a good thing. But I know why they call it that. Because when it happens, that’s what happens.)

So the thoughts in my head are getting there slow but get there in one piece. Crossing the Caribbean Sea is one of the more sporty passages on the trip. North of Columbia are some of the worst waters in the northern hemisphere. So they say anyway. Looked like it to me! Nice that it’s the first passage huh? There is definitely no going back. It would be like skiing moguls uphill into 30 knots of wind. Not going to happen.

After a couple of days we had sorted out some sail configurations and combinations that made reasonable speed but were safe to handle in the big sea state we were in. Were were getting run down by house size waves. A couple really soaked us. And we are pretty well up and out of the water. The monos and smaller boats….  Can’t imagine. My hats off to those folks. We had a ride. They had a RIDE!

We made up some time and learned a lot. We should be able to put it to good use on the next leg. Oh yeah. No we will not. Next leg is a windless hot motoring slog to the Galapagos. We will probably not be able to use the lessons of last week till we get to the Indian Ocean months and months from now. Hope I can remember everything.

So we made it to Panama. 1100 miles. San Blas Islands. Very cool place. Very chill, as they say. The area is run indipendant of Panama by the Kuna Yala Indians. We visited several of the islands. Saw a show of local traditional dance. Although I must say they are not a particularly smiley bunch. They live very simply as they have for decades. There are no mooring boats here. Really not much of anything here. But beautiful. And navigation is interesting. Charts are not very accurate. Two boats have hit the reefs since we got here two days ago. They followed their charts right onto the reefs. This is eyeball navigation at its best. Going to have to get used to it.

ARC wise, met lots of interesting people. Quite an eclectic group. Many nations represented. And no one has given me any grief about being the 3^rd to the last in. The talk is about malfunctioning equipment and injuries. Got to be friends with Sweat Pearl and Merlyn during some very late night radio conversations as we all put putted in at about 5 knots. After a week of getting blown to bits we finished up in almost dead air. It is very comforting to hear another voice at 2 AM. Keep each other going. So tired you were hallucinating after 8 days of pretty steep weather.  Seems no one else hears it but I hear singing and voices in the wind as it goes through the rigging. Never during the day.

So now lets go random…….

Ran into our old sailing instructor Capt Bob Ward. Here we are on Vivo in St Lucia as 4 of his students get ready to head off on a circumnavigation.

There is a daily radio net on the SSB. Moderated by a volunteer from one of the ARC boats. Everyone calls in their positions and any critical information. Winds, breakages, emergencies. Gets to be kind of a highpoint. Tells you something about life on passage. Here we are huddles around the SSB radio waiting for the broadcast.

 

The locals in San Blas stopping by to pitch their wares. These are Molas. Hand stitched. I’m a sucker. Bought two. (Two panels)

Don’t know if you can make out the pattern but its two frames of two parrots. One frame looking at and talking to each other. One looking away and not. I miss Dawn. Yes honey, I am going to shave before you come down. Love ya!

 

Merc and Bob.

 

Judy and Todd. Tough day at the office in San Blas.

 

A traditional Kuna dance. Kind of like square dancing with Pan Pipes. The photos don’t really capture it. It is very lively and colorful. The Kuna are a very diminutive peoples. I don’t think any one was even 5 foot tall. Probably 4’6” ave for adults. Bob was a giant!

 

One of the many islands of the San Blas. There was one family living on this one.

 

No idea about this one. There are no cattle on any of the islands we have been on. Much less room for any. No red meat on any local menu. Of which there are few anyway. No provisioning here. Had a fruit and veggie boat come by the other day and got some nice produce but not much of it,.

 

Don’t see this to many places. Just us and the locals here. They paddle and motor around in these enormous heavy dug out wooden canoes.

 

Made reservations for dinner at this place the other day. 8 people, 5 O’Clock. With our friends another cat. No problem. When we got there they milled around for a while as we had a couple of beers before they admitted that they had no food to serve. That’s kind of how it is here. Very hit and miss. Two days ago they were serving huge lobsters and mounds of rice and veggies. Last night no food. But a boat came by that evening with some produce so we stocked up on some much needed fruit and vegetables. Banana, yucca, onions, cucumbers, pineapple, nice stuff. Cheap! $12.50 US for the whole pile here. A place of contradictions. Scarce but cheap? That defies the laws of supply and demand does it not? We are good to Colon now.

 

So we were pondering our options for dinner, since the shore grills had no food, when these two fellas came by with their catch. 5 lobsters, ($10 US ea.) and two pitons and they went away a couple of happy Kunas. With one more gigantic one still to sell.

 

 

So then we get thinking……   maybe we can BYOL to the kitchen with no food and they cam cook them up for us. So Judy (our Spanish speaker) and I go over there via dingy and chat it up with the boss guy. Turnes out they have no food and they have no fuel to cook food even if they had some. A tough existence these folks have.

So we went over to a diferent islad that we had not been on before and the owner there says he will cook them up for $2 each and for $3 more we can get a plate of rice. SOLD. 5 whole lobster dinners $15 each. And we met the friendliest  buch of locals so far. Really beautifull place.

Table for 5 please?

 

Cooked up and delivered exactly at 5:00 as we had discussed.

 

This was all the traffic they had going on. Us and a dugout.

 

Virgin Island Beer Club being proudly represented in San Blas.

 

We are in the breakwater of the beginning of the Panama Canal. We start our transit today. We will be in the locks after dark. That should be interesting.

All for now. More when I get some WiFi again.

M

Made it to the Panama Canal. We transit in a couple of days. Then on to the pacific. WiFi is really slow here so I cannot upload any pictures. If/when I get some good WiFi I have a lot to post.

All for now

M

Getting a little antsy here. 4 days till we head to St Lucia. 12 days till we set out. Wiped out on the ice last week and tore the rotator cuff in my right shoulder. Then again at the gas station 4 days later. I swear the midwest knows I am leaving and is making a pretty good effort at killing me before I can escape. So I got that going for me. Should be awesome. Maybe I can find some island doctor to fix it. Or maybe if I eat enough bananas or something.

Anyway. A couple of people have asked what the Parasailor is that I mentioned in the list. Its a new (in the last ten years or so) type of downwind sail. A big billowing spinnaker with a lifting wing built into it. Four of us went to Florida a couple weeks ago to train with it. I was quite impressed.

Neither of these is Vivo. Just some shots from the manufactures website.

And this bloody thing is huge! 2,000 sq feet. Our first house was 900 sq ft. Microplastics started in 1,500 sq ft. We have some rigging to do to get this set up on Vivo but I can't wait to fly it. Boats talk about setting it and having it fly for a week solid without having to make adjustments. Which is just unheard of.

We have said goodbye to family and friends. And used way to much rum in the process. Heck, maybe I didn't even say goodbye. Cant remember. Especially the Microplastics send off. Thanks for that guys!

Countdown continues.

peace

M