Wks 63-64: Colon to San Blas (102 nm)

Boat work and passaging had overtaken our last couple of months, so Alec and I were both feeling a strong desire for clear water and relaxed anchorages. Lucky for us, the San Blas islands, just 70nm east, have consistently come up in other cruisers’ top recommendations. Just the place to recharge! But first, we get measured for the Panama Canal and restock the pantry in Colon.

Shelter Bay and Colon

We spent a few nights in Shelter Bay Marina after our passage, which made a good base from which to get checked into the country, get our Panama canal paperwork sorted, sort out boat issues and re-provision.

It would be difficult to top Greece or Italy for bureaucracy, but Panama is sure trying its best. And it does take the award for most expensive country to enter that we’ve visited so far. In addition to a whole morning of Alec’s time at customs and immigration, we were required to purchase a cruising permit, which was not only $$$ but took two full days to be completed. Bleh. Luckily, we will be here for three months, so we’ll get our money’s worth in exploring!

While waiting for our cruising permit to come back, Alec organised with the canal agent to complete the required formalities so we could book in our transit date (and then, knowing we had a spot reserved, be able to relax and go see San Blas!). An official measurer arrived promptly to our boat with an impressively long tape measure to check our length and width (apparently they don’t trust registration documentation and so measure every single vessel to be sure), followed shortly by the agent’s assistant to sign a few forms and pay the bill. All in, it’ll have cost us about £1,200 – not cheap but definitely worth it for not having to sail around Cape Horn! It also turned out we were well ahead of the crowd in getting our paperwork completed, so had our pick of any date we’d like through the end of the year. We decided to go with Boxing Day (December 26th); we wanted to do Christmas in Shelter Bay but then thought it could be fun and festive to go through the canal straight after – and it keeps us from getting any post-Christmas blues being far away from family.

With that settled and cruising permit in hand, we turned our attention to our more usual marina / post-passage tasks – checking over the boat and restocking the fridge.

I’m starting to find my groove with provisioning the boat now. I’ve got a good general stock list that I work from, plus we’ve developed a diverse range of recipes, including some that we can make from all dried/tinned goods and some that take advantage of the best of the fresh stuff that is available. We’ve gotten more creative too, and tried a lot of new recipes and new food stuffs, which has made cooking extra enjoyable lately. But, we’d heard from a number of people that getting food in San Blas is really difficult (apart from some fresh veggies, which can on occasion be procured from the Colombian trading boats that visit the anchorages), so, you are advised to bring everything with you. We intended to spend a month or more exploring the region, so we turned that into an opportunity – it made for a great chance to pull all our learnings together and practice planning out good food for a long period away from civilisation, which would really help develop strategy for the huge Pacific provision we’ll do in January! Armed with good tools and enthusiasm, I was excited for the challenge. I will report back at the end of our time in San Blas about how it went! (Mini-spoiler: should have bought more gin and more crisps, but otherwise pretty damn good. Also, the pressure cooker is the new MVP of the kitchen).

While I focussed on food, Alec took on checking over the boat and her equipment. Broadly we seem to have come through our big passage relatively unscathed… or, so we thought.

…But, hey, boat life. We’re getting better at not letting this kind of thing get to us. Alec led the charge and was able to stay incredibly chill, which really helped me to follow suit. Before long, he had the wheels in motion to get it sorted. The parts would take a few weeks to arrive, but we didn’t let that dampen our plans. Most of our travel in San Blas would be motoring anyway. It was definitely time to get out and take a “vacation.”

After a last few days anchored inside the Colon breakwater finishing up internet tasks (we had also heard it could be very difficult to get web access in San Blas, so were trying to get ahead on blog posts and life admin), we were finally ready for departure. Though there are many anchorages between Colon and San Blas, a spate of robberies in those areas recently meant we decided to do the whole 70nm journey in one shot. To ensure we arrived in the daylight to find our way through the reefs, we left Colon at midnight, which was in itself an interesting experience! To start, Alec had to call the control tower to get permission to exit the breakwater through the unending parade of huge ships on their way to/from the canal. To add to the excitement, we have also never picked up the anchor in the dark before, though admittedly the blazing lights of the harbour meant it wasn’t exactly hard to see. Soon enough, we were back out at sea and hurtling towards our destination with a 2+ knot current behind us (the same one that had made our final approach to Colon previously a real drag).

The San Blas Islands

We’ve had many, many sailors recommend San Blas to us. It’s consistently listed in the top three when we ask other cruisers about their favourite places. This is in part why we did the long passage straight from Grenada to Panama in the first place – we wanted to get as much time to explore here as possible. And all our hard work meant that we could have a month or more to do just that, which felt incredibly luxurious.

The San Blas is a long string of reefs and sandy islands covering the Atlantic coast of Panama east of Colon all the way to the Colombian border. It is unusual not just for its topography of impossibly tiny islands and huge reefs but also for the local Amerindian population, the Guna. While we know this as San Blas, it is really called Guna Yala, and the area has always been at least semi-autonomous. Dense jungle and steep mountains stretch along the mainland shore, while badly charted reefs protect entry from the sea, so it would certainly have been difficult to conquer. The Guna are very protective not only of their land but also their traditional way of life, eschewing most modern technologies. Though some of their dugout canoes are now powered by outboard engines, just as many still get around by paddle or sail. Their economy is largely barter-based, with the principle commodity being the coconut. The exchange rate varies of course, but it seems three coconuts for a beer is a good trade. We had also heard you could swap power for coconuts, though this seems to have changed. Most Guna don’t have electricity, but need it for their one modern vice – the mobile phone; however, no one has asked us for charging services. We’ve seen a few solar panels on huts around the islands, though, so perhaps that explains it. In any case, they are welcoming to cruisers and we were excited to explore!

Chichime

We arrived much more speedily than expected, and officially entered Guna Yala around lunchtime. We’d selected Chichime as our first stop because it was close, had good protection and also a relatively easy entrance. We dropped the hook in the centre of the little lagoon and took in our surroundings.

This is a very busy anchorage because of its proximity to Porvenir, the small airport by the mainland just a few miles west (lots of cruisers here make extra money by taking charter guests). We’ve anchored in many a tight, busy spot during our time in the Caribbean so we were unfazed, though that nonchalance turned out to be a mistake. Down here in Panama, it takes a long time for the trade winds to settle in, and early in the season, as it was, the wind can come from just about anywhere. We learned this the hard way. I was woken up early the next morning by the noise of a squall coming through, which brought with it winds from the exact opposite direction to what we’d had the whole previous day. Suddenly our perfect anchor spot became an extremely bad spot as we drifted back towards another boat. I was not firing on all cylinders so it took me a few minutes to realise we were in trouble before I frantically shouted for Alec to get up. He appeared on deck in about 2 seconds flat and we scrambled to get the engine on and get the anchor gear out. Alec managed to get us moving just as we were about the kiss the boat we’d been drifting towards. It was pouring with rain so I was having a bit of difficulty at the front getting the windlass set up and figuring out where the anchor chain was, but eventually I was able to pull in chain and we reset in a safer location. I guess the eastern Caribbean had made us a bit blase about wind direction, so this was a good wake up call (must think about all possible wind directions when selecting an anchor spot!) and good practice for the Pacific, which too has changeable winds.

Chichime paid us back though with some new friends. Alec noticed a catamaran driving in that was crewed by two people who looked similar ages to us. We waved hello and noticed their boat, Hoodoo, was registered in Alaska – I think the first we’ve seen from there! Later on, they came by in their dingy to introduce themselves and we had a very pleasant afternoon getting to know Yanell and Missy. Turns out these guys are also crossing the Pacific in the new year, so a very good boat to bump into! We managed a few drinks at their boat after dinner but were still so tired from our journey from Colon that we had to excuse ourselves to pass out by around 9pm. They were off the next day to pick up friends from the airport, but we’d see them again before long!

(West) Lemmon Cays

A lady I got to know at Shelter Bay Marina recommended this spot, so we decided to check it out after Chichime, but things must have changed recently as it was completely dead – just an unoccupied boat on a mooring to keep us company. Well that and the no-see-ums. I’d read about these little devils but never had the displeasure of meeting one before. Yeah, they suck. Apparently I am just as appetising to them as to mosquitoes, so it was never going to end well. It also took us a long time to work out those little pin pricks were no-see-ums biting, so I did not take evasive action (aka gallons of deet) until it was far too late. It being my first encounter with these bugs, my immune system went bananas. My +30 bites each turned a deep red and itched nearly as bad as chiggers. For two days my main focusses in life were vast doses of anti-histamines and liberal applications of calming lotion.

On the plus side we had amazing mobile phone reception, but we quickly decided that was not worth it given the bugs. The water was also really murky, so we moved on quickly in search of a better spot!

Western Holandes Cays

Keen to find nicer water for swimming, we headed northeast to the most offshore of the island / reef systems and anchored at the western edge between the little islands of Acuakargana and Waisaladup (your guess is as good as mine on pronunciation). Okay, now I get why people like the San Blas. This place was WOW. Pristine, clear waters, vibrant colourful reef, all sorts of fish, super cute islands… it had it all.

Not to mention, our second day there DOLPHINS came right into the anchorange and swam just by the boat! How cool is that!?! It was an idyllic few days, kayaking around the anchorage, snorkelling and generally marvelling at the lovely sights around us.

With nice, clear water we could also finally inspect the underside of the boat for the first time since our passage from Grenada. The paint we’d used to antifoul our propellor must have degraded after 18 months stewing in the workshop as much of it had peeled off the blades, but that’s alright. A lot of people don’t bother antifouling their propellor because, if you are using it fairly regularly, it doesn’t usually attract that much growth. And if we have to knock barnacles off every so often, that’s no biggie. The more worrying discovery was a golf ball-sized chunk missing from the front of the rudder. We had heard something sizeable bounce down the hull during our passage, though had previously thought it only struck above the water line; whatever it was, it must have hit the front of the rudder on its way past. Very glad it didn’t cause anything worse! Much to our relief, testing showed the rudder wasn’t structurally compromised, so no major repairs required. Thank goodness because dropping the rudder for a fix is a BIG job. One we really, really hope to avoid during our travels! Luckily, this just needed a patch, and we had the tools aboard to apply one in situ. I had, sort of on a whim, bought some underwater-curing epoxy in Trinidad from the chandlery at Peake – fortunate! It mixed up pretty much like regular epoxy though much thicker. We scratched our heads a bit, struggling to think of any particularly good ways of applying it or even carrying it underwater. After a few failed attempts with tools, Alec just scooped it up in his hand, swam down and smeared it in place. Turned out to be an effective strategy!

If only we’d got any cell reception we might have been hard pressed to leave, but eventually the urge to keep exploring found us again and we headed east towards a spot Hoodoo had recommended, the Coco Bandero Cays.

Coco Bandero Cays

No wind meant driving across so we took the opportunity of the engine being on to make some water but otherwise just enjoyed a relaxing ride through the mill pond-still water. As we approached our destination, we noticed another boat ahead of us going in to the same place. We were slightly miffed, as it is a really tight anchorage and we’d hoped to have it to ourselves. As we got closer, Alec remarked on the impressive amount of watersports equipment the boat had managed to strap to its deck / tow behind. We laughed because it reminded us of Azimuth, the boat we met in Nevis and eventually sailed to Montserrat with, who we’d called “Mr. and Mrs. Watersports” before we got to know them on account of their incredible haul of paddleboards, dinghies, dive tanks, etc. I got out the monocular to have a closer look and, low and behold, it was actually Azimuth! What a lovely surprise! No longer annoyed about having to share the anchorage, we were excited to catch up with Stephen, Lisa and their lovely dog Sienna.

They came round for drinks later that evening and we shared tales from when we’d last met. Stephen had sold his boat (Azimuth belongs to Lisa), they’d spent hurricane season in the ABC islands, oh and also happened to be good friends with Hoodoo, having spent their time in Bonaire moored nextdoor. Small world indeed!

More on our time in the Cocos with Azimuth next week, plus a Thanksgiving feast to remember!