What Does It All Mean?

Set sail on Saturday 1 December, pulling out of Bocas Marina and heading due east. I thought it would be a 28-30 hour trip, but I made it to the big-ship anchorage outside the Colon breakwater in about 22 hours, thanks to having 5-10 knots of north wind on the beam, flat seas, and a strong favorable current – sometimes as much as 3 knots, almost the entire way. Was secured in a slip in Shelter Bay Marina by 0930 or so Sunday morning. Gotta say, though, that staying up all night is not everything it’s cracked up to be.

Bocas Marina: A very pleasant little marina, well run, pretty, convenient to Bocas Town. Recommended, for a short or a long stay.

Shelter Bay Marina: Improved substantially since I was here last in January 2010. The physical facilities have grown a bit (new dock, additional showers and bathrooms), but the most noticeable change has been in the service level. Not coincidentally, John Halley, the very well regarded former dockmaster at Club Naútico Cartagena, became manager here at Shelter Bay perhaps a year and a half ago. The shockingly customer-hostile employees from 2010, most notably in the marina office, are gone; the people working here now are friendly and helpful and service oriented.

Cruising: fixing your boat in exotic locations, in this case on the hard at Shelter Bay Marina, near Colon, Panama (north end of the Panama Canal)

The restaurant has improved immensely. In 2010 on a given night the menu included perhaps five completely ordinary items, such as hamburgers or tuna melts, two or three of which were typically not available, and the wait staff was extremely slow – if they could be bothered to stop by your table at all. Now, the restaurant offers a full menu (the few items I’ve tried have been quite good), and the wait staff, while at times overwhelmed and a little disorganized, for the most part works hard and appears to care. Both the marina and the restaurant are overpriced, though, clearly a function of location and lack of competition.

Anyway, my canal transit date is set for Monday 10 December, and I have the tires, lines, and line handlers all set up. We’ll leave here Monday afternoon, go through the Gatun locks in late afternoon or early evening and then take a mooring ball in Gatun Lake for the night. Early the next morning, like at 0600 or 0630, the adviser (like a pilot but not as exalted) shows up again and we beat it on down the line. Quite a bit of Gatun Lake and canal to go through, then the Pedro Miguel and finally the Miraflores locks, which will take us to the level of the Pacific ocean. We should get into Balboa around mid afternoon on Tuesday.

I’m hopeful of finding a mooring ball at the Balboa Yacht Club, where I’ve spent quite a lot of time in past years, for two or three nights while I do a final provisioning, some laundry, and take care of absolutely final preparations before heading for Mexico.

Happily, my zarpe (port clearance) from Colon shows my destination as Puerto Chiapas, Mexico, via Balboa, so I won’t have to do any more paperwork.

Arrangements having come together surprisingly quickly and easily, I have time to do some boat cleaning and minor maintenance without being in a cold sweat.

And I’m walking around with more spring in my step these days, being quite a lot lighter in the wallet after setting up the Canal transit and covering the various related expenses.

But it’s worth it. I am really looking forward to being back in the Pacific and getting back to Mexico.

Runnin’ with the big dawgs in Shelter Bay. Oh yeah. For a sense of scale, compare the size of the guys working on the boom to the size of the boom itself. This is not a trick photo or an optical illusion. I paced this sled off at about 150 feet.

Item one: Jean-Pierre Bouhard’s former catamaran, unmistakeable for its yellow-painted rails and mast, anchored nearby yesterday. ow in other and presumably non-bloodstained hands, the boat is a grim reminder of the terrible Javier Martín saga that unfolded a year ago. Martín, a Spaniard with a shadowy and suspect past, killed two cruisers, including Bouhard, and was using Bouhard’s cat to ferry backpackers back and forth in the Panama-Cartagena run, with much chaos and uproar.

Ferrying backpackers is a cottage industry in this area. The one-way price runs around $450 and includes food and a few days of cruising in the San Blas en route between Portobelo and Cartagena. The alternative is to fly, which costs about $350 (and is the usual disagreeable hassle that flying has become). So for only a hundred bucks more the adventurous traveler gets a few days of cruising in an exotic corner of the world.

I’ve talked with a few travelers who said they had excellent experiences: clean and professionally operated boat, gourmet cuisine, etc. I’ve also talked with one or two who said their boats were filthy, the food was basic if not primitive, living conditions were extremely cramped and uncomfortable. I know of two instances when boats very nearly came to grief on reefs because of incompetent hands at the wheel. In one of those cases a backpacker was driving the boat because the captain was too drunk or stoned.

Javier Martín was reportedly usually wacked on one substance or another. Martín was apprehended (can’t remember where, Colombia or the Darién) with a lot of cash and some documents belonging to Don North, the first cruiser he murdered. Don Winner, writing for the English-language on-line newspaper Panama Reports (get URL; verify title) has documented the case extensively.

Item two: Two Frenchmen who arrived in Cartagena the day before I left Manzanillo reported having been boarded and attacked and robbed while anchored in the Rosarios.

Item three: A report on the radio this morning from a cruiser involved in assisting the victim indicate that a singlehanding Frenchman anchored at Narganá was boarded by two men in a canoe yesterday evening, attacked with a knife and a machete, bound, and robbed. The victim said he has many years of sailing experience in the area and had anchored at Narganá perhaps a dozen times previously. Fortunately he was not seriously injured in last night’s attack. The thieves stole his wallet and a cheap cell phone but overlooked an iPod and a computer. The Frenchman worked himself free of his bindings after the attackers had left and set off a flare; other cruisers responded immediately. Police are involved, and they and the victim are attempting to identify the attackers, one of whom was apparently also cut during the attack and robbery.

The Rosario assault, while probably a rare event, doesn’t surprise me all that much – Colombia, for all its many really friendly and good people, has a much more ragged and lawless edge than the country’s marketing would have you believe.

The Narganá assault is disturbing, not only by its very nature but also because Kuna Yala (the comarca of San Blas, the territory of the Kuna people) is a tranquil area with very little crime. The Kuna people in general are gentle, even retiring people. So what could have happened?

The attackers could have been atypical Kunas, corrupted by Western civilization and as prone to crime and violence as anyone else. Or they could have been Spanish-speaking outsiders from anywhere else. It’s well known that as pure and perfect as Kuna Yala, with its turquoise waters, white-sand beaches, and coconut palm trees appears to be (in fact, of course, it is neither pure nor perfect), it is one route the narco-traffickers use to move drugs northward from Colombia. Also, Colombian tramp steamers ply these waters continually, trading in food and gasoline in exchange for coconuts. Either case presents the possibility of outsiders, possibly very unsavory ones, being in the area.

Further, it’s a rule of thumb that as Christmas approaches, muggings and assaults and robberies increase. It seems paradoxical or at least ironic that people stoop to violent crime for last-minute Christmas income enhancement, but that’s what happens. Like it or not, we live in a materialist, mass-consumption society. And to most of the local folks, we cruisers, even those of us with the most modest resources, are rich beyond anything they can imagine.

Cynosure on her way back into the water last Monday, four fresh coats of anti-fouling paint in place. Forestay with roller furling and backstay (not visible) still not attached.

No new posts here for a while, as I’m soon on my way to Panama and will probably take ten days or a couple of weeks to get to Bocas del Toro. I’ll be island hopping rather than cutting straight across (check your favorite atlas): from Cartagena to the San Bernardos and then to Isla Fuerte. From Isla Fuerte it’ll be an overnight hop to Snug Harbor or somewhere around there in the San Blas islands, or Kuna Yala (Kuna Nation) to the Kuna people whose territory it is. Then easy day sails up through Kuna Yala, a longish day from the western end of Kuna Yala to Isla Linton or Portobelo, and another overnighter from there to Bocas. That’s the idea, at least; we’ll see how things actually turn out.

Hauled out to renew the anti-fouling paint, something I hadn’t done since about March of 2008, in Balboa, Panama, when I also rebuilt the Perkins diesel and with Emmet stripped the failing old teak planking off the deck. Almost three and a half years is quite a long time for bottom paint. The old paint was still in surprisingly good shape despite having been scraped and scrubbed several times and despite the boat’s having spent extended periods of time in very biologically “hot” waters (areas where marine growth accumulates rapidly on anything submerged for more than a few days).

Note detached forestay with roller furling on left of photo -- it had to come off for the boat to fit in the Travelift

As boatyards go, this one is pretty nice, though pricey.
The employees here, from the laundry lady and the
office help to the guys working in the yard, are invariably
pleasant and friendly, and the work ethic is good. The
guys who prepped and painted my hull did a very
thorough, careful job, which I appreciate greatly. xxxxxx
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I’m running a couple of days behind plan, but that’s not
a problem. I expect to be on my way on Thursday or
Friday, all bills paid and all official check-out paperwork
completed well before everything shuts down for Christmas.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Cartagena’s not a bad town at all – outside of the Centro
Historico, the working-class and industrial neighborhoods
remind me a lot of Mexico. The Centro Historico, although
pretty touristy in some places and the aggressive emerald
sales people become tedious, is marvelous, a beautifully
preserved and well presented example of 16^th- to 18^th-
century Spanish Colonial engineering and architecture,
with a few turn-of-the-century Neo-Classic buildings thrown
into the mix.

On balance it’s been fun, but I’m ready to beat feet outta here and get on with next steps.