Sailboat to Panama


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Central America Caribbean » Panama
April 13th 2009
Published: April 15th 2009
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SAILING TO PANAMA



There are only two options for getting to Panama, plane or boat. Why no buses? The Pan American Highway was destroyed here by drug smugglers. Most people say that if you want a guaranteed kidnapping experience, try to cross the Darien Gap overland. In fact, most of the dumb Americans that you see on Oprah that were held hostage in the jungle for years didn’t do any research before hopping on their motorcycle and driving straight down.
The boat cost us $350 each, but it wasn’t that much more than a plane to Panama. Let’s see, two hour flight or five days sailing in crystal clear water through 360 deserted islands, snorkeling, fishing, and eating lobster. Gee, let me think. I’ve been looking forward to this sailboat since Argentina. I really enjoyed the other tours, but this was my tour. I’ve always had an attraction to sailing even though I haven’t done any of it. I think it represents freedom and adventure mixed into one. I’ve even read books on sailing, so I know what the terms spinnaker, tacking, or draught mean. I sold the idea to Ammi by saying it was a test to see if I really liked sailing before we spent an amazing amount of money on buying our own boat and realizing we hated it.
After Turbo there were an amazingly few number of white people. There was really nothing to see here. It didn’t take us long to realize that every white person was one of our shipmates, and we ended up meeting all of them before getting on the boat. We liked them all and new we’d get along great. Two Germans, two Swiss, an Aussie, an English girl, and us, the only Americans.
We got to talking about why we chose this boat over the more easily accessible boats from Cartegena. One reason was seasickness, Cartegena has many electrical storms around it, and some of the cheaper boats are nothing but drug runners themselves. Nobody in Panama would check our bags. The captain gets us our entry stamps. If we wanted to we could smuggle drugs ourselves. Another reason was that Ammi had found an alarming number of reports of these boats getting shipwrecked. People would have to swim to shore and live with the Kuna for a week before getting rescued. This boat came highly recommended.
The next morning we hopped onto a small boat with all our bags and arrived at the Captain’s boat, the Twilight, sitting at anchor in a small bay. We dumped our bags and the decision was made to head out the next day instead of that day. That was fine, we thought. It gave us a night to get used to the waves without being in too rough ocean and it gave us a chance to walk to Panama, with was about 10 minutes away. We hiked a small hill for ten minutes before coming to a border checkpoint covered in camouflage. “I wonder how different Panama is from Colombia?” Ammi asked.
“Ammi, it’s going to be exactly the same. Other than the signs you won’t even realize we’re in a different countr….” I stopped as I realized that Panama WAS different. The grass was softer. There were different flowers. Even the air smelled sweeter. “Huh.” We made our way to a scenic beach. We walked through the powder soft sand, watching out for the occasional jellyfish and bits of trash.
I took off my shirt to go swimming. Stefan asked: “Why are you wearing a white shirt swimming?” It was true, I could stand to work on my tan a bit.
We walked back to Colombia. The captain had dropped us off on the beach by boat. We had all our digital cameras and whatnots. So I had to swim back to the boat to tell him to pick everyone else up. While he was doing that I swam over to a hanging rope swing on the beach. It had a branch in a knot that you hang from to swing. Halfway through my first swing, the branch broke, forcing me to land on my ankle, hard. I looked down and realized the skin was cheese-grated off, and was bleeding freely. “Uh, should I be worried about sharks on the swim back?”
That night we did a lot of socializing, drinking, and cooking while we were at anchor. The captain had gone off in his dingy to get some supplies. The tide had gone out and we realized our boat was drifting awfully close to other boats. “Should we..uh…do something?” Quickly thinking, we cinched up the rope. We only slammed into the other boat a few times. The captain doesn’t need to know, right?
The next day we spent
The crew of the TwylaThe crew of the TwylaThe crew of the Twyla

From left to right: Kevin, Stefan, Carmen, Ammi, Dave, Lucinda, Jan, Vera, Esperanza, and Javier
a few hours under motor before we let loose the sails. When you’re under motor is when the seasickness is the worst because you’re sloshing around in all directions. When you’re under sail the boat only pivots on one angle, making for a smoother passage. Most of us were up on deck, soaking up the rays and looking at the horizon. Lucinda was down stairs, laying on her stomach, trying to combat seasickness. Being in the cabin in the worst because you can’t orientate yourself, and it’s hard to tell when a wave is coming so you slam into the walls with surprising regularity.
After a few hours we arrived at some Kuna settlements. The Kuna are the natives of this area that like to cram as many people onto each island as possible. One island we paddled around in a canoe in 20 minutes had 50,000 people on it! One guy in a dugout canoe decided to race the three of us by himself. He seriously smoked us. “They’ve been canoeing for thousands of years,” I tried to console us. “We’ve been doing it for five minutes.” It was kind of an unusual canoe ride because you realize that all the outhouses are on piers overhanging the water. Every so often you’d hear a PLOP sound. Ugh. We came back to the boat and some of our shipmates were swimming in the water. “Uh…you may not want to swim in that.”
We went ashore to see the Kuna. The captain bought some fish and crabs for dinner, and left us to sightsee. Right away some kids wanted their pictures taken and so they’d pose for us. After about twenty pictures we said: “OK, we need to go now. Stop posing.” They were cute, though.
The next day we started to approach our true destination: the deserted islands of San Blas. Picture perfect islands in every direction. More islands than there were people. We could have stayed on one island per night and stayed a year. We were about to make our way through a narrow channel towards a group of sailboats at anchor between a group of islands. Immediately someone jumped in his dingy and sped off towards us. “What’s your draught?” The obviously American man asked.
“Six feet.” Our captain yelled back.
The man stuck some kind of device into the water for a second. “It’s only five feet here. Head more towards starboard and come in at 45 degrees.” Then he took off back to his boat. I suppose our captain misunderstood. He’s from Spain and English is his second language. He must have thought the man said ‘Follow me’ because that’s what he did.
I looked down into the water. The water looked VERY shallow. “Uh…I don’t think this is a good idea…” Before I could finish the boat just stopped. We were no longer bobbing up and down in the waves. We’d run aground. At least we hit sand and not the rocks. After about five minutes of finagling we were able to turn around and make our way out. He decided to take us somewhere else. We had come that close to getting shipwrecked.
Finally we found another place to drop anchor, amidst numerous multi-million dollar yachts from around the world. I could hear Robbin Leach in my head: “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous!” Beautiful islands surrounded us. I’ve been to some nice beaches in Hawaii but this blew them out of the water. I knew at once that I truly enjoyed the sailor’s life and vowed to return some day with our own boat. Now it’s just trying to figure out how to make that happen.
That night we decided to have a bonfire on the beach. The captain caught 8 fish miraculously in 10 minutes (I think he bought them previously and pretended to fish). However I got totally wasted on AguaDiente (sort of like Sambuca) and fell asleep in the sand.
The next morning I awoke early and wanted to wake up by jumping in the water. I noticed one of the other shipmates had jumped in ahead of me. He will remain anonymous for obvious reasons. Just when I was about to jump in I stopped myself at the last moment. What stopped me was I noticed that behind him was swimming, what I refer to as, the Australian Brown Snake. It was seriously a meter long before it began to break up. “Dude! There is a bathroom you know!”
“I know, but you haven’t lived until you’ve taken your first aqua shit.”
“I’ll take your word on it.” Even now that image haunts me. I wake up every so often, sweating, moaning: “The horror. The horror.”
So I had to wait for five minutes for it to float downstream towards the other boats. Let them deal with it. That day we did an amazing amount of snorkeling and taking underwater pictures. This would be the place to scuba dive. Not only did it have amazing corals and fish, but I’m sure these wealthy sailors drop some expensive stuff.
Jan, one of the Germans with us, had a dream of standing on an island with only one palm tree. He daydreamed of it since he was a kid. We found one and canoed to it. It was seriously just like the island in the Far Side comics with the two arguing sailors. One is carving a canoe and the other asks: "Are you carving a canoe?" To which the first responds: "No, I'm making a salad bowl for those lavish dinner parties we throw." We got there, walked around for five minutes, and Jan said: “Ok, I’m bored.” The problem with only one palm tree is what do you connect the other end of your hammock to?
Ammi got bit by something under water while she was swimming over the grass. It caused her arm to swell until she poured some antibiotics on it. Stefan cut his hand on coral, which would have become infected if not for Ammi. “This sailing is dangerous!”
For another two days we sailed around and had the times of our lives. We think we learned to sail a bit. We didn’t get seasick. I’m even thinking of joining a crew of Findacrew.org. I think Ammi was hoping to rid me of this desire to sail, but not only has it made it stronger, but I think she’s become a convert as well.

Next stop: Panama City and Costa Rica. Chao!


***TRAVELERS' TIPS***
- Here's the company we went with. I highly recommend him.



Additional photos below
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16th April 2009

Cool pictures!
Hi, I had a nosey at your blog after you left a message on my terribly whinney thread about being ignored by friends at home! Your trip looks fantastic, I love the first picture on this page of the water, it looks amazing!
23rd April 2009

Great times in the San Blas
Nice wrap up of a great great trip! Def a trip of a lifetime, postcard picture stuff. Got some great pics there too kev, but sadly none of the infamous aussie brown snake. that thing was beautiful...

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