#13 San Blas Revisited

San Blas – Part 1

If there is a more perfect cruising ground than the San Blas Islands then I would be very surprised but then again, I said that about the Bahamas when we left.  Crystal clear water, very healthy coral, abundant marine life, over 300 islands and countless anchorages to explore, fascinating history which includes pirates and ships full of gold, a warm and open people who genuinely enjoy sharing their paradise with you and not, it feels, just because you have a few dollars to spend with them, fresh lobster delivered to your boat by canoe live at $4 each, and balmy weather all year round with zero chance of tropical storms or hurricanes.  We were lucky enough to have two spells in the islands, the first with Jess and Dennis on our way from the Bahamas and the second with the lovely Kate from the UK, Lottie’s friend from her Tesco days.

The local Guna people are a proud race that would be independent of Panama if they could be.  Their history is a both tragic and uplifting.  They were originally mountain people (many still are) but they were all but wiped out by the Spanish Conquistadors and took refuge in the San Blas Islands.  Here they put up a staunch defence against the invaders and using the “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” logic they partnered up with various pirates, privateers and basically any country that was fighting Spain at the time.  Iwin, the heartbreaking lobster chef who cooked our meal on the night we arrived from the Bahamas told us much of this history and he seemed to have a great deal of love for the Dutch, French, English, Americans and, bizarrely, Scottish who also have some history in these parts.  To have three English nationals (Jess is half English) and a Dutchman on his island made him very happy he told us.

The resourcefulness of these people is amazing.  Iwin had grand plans for his tiny island and while we were there he was building a big hut for visitors to string up their hammocks and a toilet block.  They make extensive use of the palm trees on the island using the trunks for main structural members and the fronds for thatching and lumps of dead coral from the sea to use as building blocks.  I asked him where the bamboo came from which I saw he was using for the internal walls and he shrugged his shoulders and said “the sea brings it”.  Being downwind of the entire Caribbean Sea / Central Atlantic Ocean a lot of stuff washes up on the islands and the local people make extensive use of what we would think of as rubbish.  Plastic gets used where they need waterproofing and I even noticed that Iwin had a large storage cupboard in his kitchen hut which on closer inspection appeared to be an old industrial fridge possibly off a wrecked ship.  There was also a massive gas oven (a gift) which Iwin used to make and sell coconut bread to local boats like us so not only did we get fresh lobster for dinner but warm fresh bread for breakfast as well. 

On the second day he wanted to proudly show us the “road” he was building across the island.  Being a road building guy myself I was keen to see what the local construction methodology and materials would be and was slightly disappointed to see that “road building” consisted of laying out parallel rows of conch shells to define the edge and then sweeping the sand to make a nice smooth surface.  I’m not sure that process would cut it for the West Gate Freeway but it did look very pretty and was fit for purpose.

Our second anchorage was at the Lemon Cays and involved a very complicated series of manoeuvers to enter.  There is a man called Eric Bauhaus who has devoted over a decade of his life to charting the San Blas Islands (a bit of a modern day Captain Cook but on a much smaller scale) and has documented a series of “waypoints” (coordinates) which in some of the more complicated anchorages you follow in a certain order so that you can enter safely without hitting any reefs.  It reminded me a bit of one of my favourite films, “The Hunt for Red October” where the submarines have to make a similar series of extreme moves to take a shortcut through an underwater canyon.  “on my mark turn 60 degrees to starboard, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 mark!”.  That sort of thing.  The result was worth it though.  A little basin big enough for one boat completely surrounded by mangroves and reefs.

Our final stop was at Chichime Cay and on the way there Dennis managed to hook and land a lovely Spanish Mackerel.  Before the anchor was even set we were surrounded by Guna canoes offering us the usual Mola cloths but this time we were also offered two enormous spider crabs which Dennis purchased on the spot before anyone could stop him.  He boiled them up in our biggest pan and then spent a good hour or so meticulously dissecting each and every claw to extract every last morsel of meat.  The meal he and Jess served that night, crab salad followed by poached Spanish Mackerel was one of the highlights of the whole time they were with us which was all the more remarkable considering we hadn’t been to a shop in about 10 days.

San Blas – Part 2

The next day we sailed back to Linton Bay, formally checked in and the next morning packed our incredible crew into a cab and waved them off to Panama City.  I cannot overstate how grateful we were to have such great people help us with our first big passage. We might have been able to do it without them but it wouldn’t have been a fraction as pleasant or enjoyable.

We felt a bit like a charter boat as Lottie frantically washed all the sheets turning over the cabin for Kate’s arrival and then headed off to the city to buy another week’s worth of food to take back to the island with our new guest.  Meanwhile I filled the tanks with water and fuel and got our gas tanks refilled. With everything replenished, Kate arrived late in the evening on one day and by dawn the next cast off our lines to the sound of howler monkeys and we were on our way back to the islands.  The noise of howler monkeys has to be heard to be believed.  Its more like a deep roar from an enormous monster than a howl and sounds just like the more scary dinosaurs from Jurassic Park.  When the roaring starts you look at the surrounding jungle rustling in the breeze and you can imagine a massive T-Rex bursting out of the trees at any moment.  Scary stuff.

Kate was the perfect guest and even managed to keep smiling while she donated her breakfast to the fish on the way to the islands.  We were smashing into some quite big waves and she (and the kids) quickly turned the colour of the native forest and I only hoped the end justified the means.  I think she would report that it did and we spent a magical week with Kate in the islands visiting five anchorages, three of which none of us had been to before.  Two places stand out as highlights.

The first was BBQ Island / Banedup Island where we reunited with our favourite Guna, Iwin, and timed this for Kate’s birthday.  Iwin not only prepared a delicious fresh lobster meal with sides but also enlisted his brother to pour the celebratory champagne we had brought with us.  The poor guy had never poured wine in such a formal way before and you could see the beads of sweat on his forehead as he endeavoured to do it properly.  The result was not quite silver service but meant a lot more to us given the effort the lad went to.  Iwin was fascinated with Kate and was completely mind blown when he found out that she was single and, potentially, available.  He promised that he would have his island ready for honey-mooners in two years time and gave her lots of suggestive looks as if to say “you can be first if you like and if you haven’t had any takers by then…” He’s not known as the heartbreaker for nothing.  His pièce de résistance was gathering all the men on the island (about 5 in total) and assembling them to sing Kate Happy Birthday in both English and Spanish (at the same time) which, whilst confusing to the ear, crowned what I think was one of Kate’s more memorable birthdays.

Rounding off our visit, we spent the next morning snorkelling the outer reef. There was a reasonable current running so we drifted along on the current, with me holding the dinghy painter (rope) in my hand and we effortlessly covered a good kilometre of reef in this way.  We spotted a nurse shark, 4 lobsters, a school of trigger fish, rays and countless other fish and we all agreed it had been our best snorkel trip to date.  Charlotte in particular has developed her confidence and skills enormously and she’s gone from being slightly timid and holding onto the dinghy to striking out on her own in deep water without so much as a flinch.  We’ll have her scuba diving soon at this rate!

The second highlight was Cambombia where we experienced something none of us had before.  The island has a stunning silver beach (nothing new there) but the water dropped almost vertically from the beach to a depth of 8m and the prevailing breeze always blows slightly offshore.  These factors combine to make it the perfect place to anchor your boat right next to the beach, back in and then tie the stern (back) of your boat to a couple of palm trees on the shore.  The result is that you can just about step off the back of your boat onto the beach giving the feeling you’re living in one of those huts you see in Bora Bora and the Maldives.  It was so cool there we spent a couple of nights entertaining ourselves by swimming around and jumping and diving off the boat, paddle boarding or walking around the island, being towed behind the dinghy on our inflatable “airhead” (kids and Kate), learning to wing foil (me) or just relaxing in the sea on a floatie sipping a glass of wine (Lottie and Kate).  Each night we would hear big splashes around the boat and shining a torch we could see eagle rays patrolling the surface. Occasionally they would dive and then leap out of the water presumably chasing prey. We would let the kids watch this show before bed time which is so much more fun than our usual land based routine.

But it wasn’t all fun and frolics.  Three days into our adventure with Kate the filter upstream of the water pump spookily unscrewed itself dumping our entire fresh water supply into the bilges. The bilge pump being switched off didn’t do its job which meant the bilge filled with water wetting the connection to the water pump shorting it out. Brilliant.  First job was to turn on the bilge pump to empty the bilge. Simple.  Second job was to fix the filter.  Easy.  Third job was to run the water maker to fill up our tanks again.  This took a few hours but was achieved no problem.  Final job was to fix the water pump.  Impossible.  It was at that moment I realised that carrying a spare water pump would have been a good idea.  In fact I have since asked about a dozen boats if they carry spare pumps and to a boat every single one does.  How many more lessons do I have to learn!!!! So we had water but no way of using any of our taps or showers.  Solution?  Each morning I would go up to the bow locker where the tanks are, put a jerry can deep into the anchor locker below the level of the water tank, lower a hose into one of the water tanks and siphon the water into the jerry can which when full I would manhandle out of the locker and then repeat this process with three more jerry cans.  Two of these I would leave on deck to heat up in the sun and the other two would go into the galley for drinking water, kettle filling, cooking, teeth brushing and washing up. Each day as the sun was setting we would decant the now warm deck water into buckets and using a manual bilge pump would have our very own deck shower.  It was a bit of a process but Kate in particular seemed to love it and I guess it all added to the feeling of being on an “expedition” rather than a holiday.

Panama City

Our time with Kate was over far too quickly and before we knew it we were waving her goodbye and preparing the boat to be hauled out of the water.  In order to enter the Galapagos, the authorities insist your bottom is spotless and when you arrive into the main harbour they even send bottom inspectors to check and turn you away if you have any nasty growths.  They are even more strict when it comes to the boat!  Boom! Boom! Joking aside the Galapagos authorities do quite rightly take the stewardship of their island group very seriously and one of the rules is that entering boats must not have any weed or barnacles growing on their hull. For us that meant hauling the boat out of the water and applying new coats of antifoul paint.  As the job would take a few days we decided to have a mini break away from the boat split between Panama City and the jungle.

We stayed in the old town which is steeped in history dominated by both the Spanish conquistadors that used the narrow isthmus of Panama as a part of the route for shipping their gold from South America back to the motherland and of course the construction of the Panama Canal.  One of my favourite activities was wondering around the Canal museum and learning about the incredible trials and tribulations experienced over the decades of this enormous undertaking.  As an engineer involved in large infrastructure projects the research I’ve done on the canal has had a profound impact on me and I’ll discuss this more in my next blog which will cover our transit through the waterway.

The old town had a great buzz about the place and there was a funky foodie and craft beer scene developing. We discovered some great little bars, restaurants and even a brewery serving really excellent food although my choice of a thick pint of Porter was probably not best suited to jungle style weather.

Gamboa Rainforest

Next stop was the Gamboa Rainforest where we stayed in a property that bordered the Gatun Lake, an enormous man made lake that was created by damming the mighty Chagres River and is used to supply the Panama Canal lock system with water.  On various hikes and tours we came across monkeys, caimans, tortoises, capybara (the worlds largest rodent, yay!), racoon like creatures and even a couple of toucan.  One evening we took a night tour and spotted a sloth chilling out in one of the trees.  We also got up close and personal with these bizarre creatures at a sloth sanctuary nearby.  They reminded me a bit of koalas in that they spend the vast majority of their life asleep hunched over like old men somehow avoiding falling out of the tree they are comatosed in.

After our little excursion away, we arrived back at the boat to find the hulls all freshly painted and looking as good as new. You get very inventive living on a boat and while we were away I had managed to find a nice lady called Bertha who was able to both source and deliver to me a new water pump and I then spent the next couple of hours installing that in one of the bilges.  It would have taken 15 minutes but the pump was a different brand than the previous one and thus needed to be mounted differently.  I was proud of how far I had come as drill and screwdriver in hand I was able to get the new one in place, hooked up to power and water and the whole thing purring away without a single swearword being needed.  We could have showers again! Incidentally, a week after installing the new pump I found a spare one hidden in an out of the way compartment I hadn’t opened before so the whole deck shower process could have been avoided after all!

In the next instalment we get the boat craned back into the water, sail to Shelter Bay Marina at the Caribbean end of the Panama Canal, narrowly avoid being run down by a ship, sail up a jungle river teeming with crocodiles, one of us catches COVID and after recovering we transit through the canal and enter the Pacific Ocean for the first time! 

Well hopefully we do the last bit! We haven’t actually gone through the canal yet but we been given a slot to do the first leg tomorrow evening so excitement is building!!!!