Chichime
10:30 Escribanos Reef - The charted buoy is missing but the reef breaks and is easy to see. We did cut it a little close and had a couple of thrilling minutes while we slowed and worked our way into deeper water. The bottom sure can come up fast in these parts!
12:00 Turn point at the entrance to the San Blas Channel-out in front of us are dozens of a different kind of island than we've seen before. These barely have their heads above water! The only things visible on any of them are the palm trees and buildings. We used the radar to locate ourselves as we avoided the reefs off Isla Porvenir and turned into the channel, running ahead of Margorie Grace toward the Mandingas at the head of the gulf.
13:00 Dead in the water while I try to figure out where in the Devil we are! We'd been running in deep water while watching the chart and the radar. I thought I had three little islands pretty positively identified and had cleared one hidden reef when all of a sudden things didn't look right; there was another uncharted reef directly in front of us! Lois was in the middle of baking a pie, so I started Gennie and we just drifted while I poured over the chart and waited for Margorie Grace to catch up.
13:30 Bill had the right answer, although it took me a few minutes to believe it. The reef we almost ran over is shown on the charts as an island (Kit Kapp's chart of the Mandingas published in the early 1970's shows it as having a population of 22 people); but now it is under water! I had mistaken the next little island, only a quarter mile away, for it. Vivid demonstration of why they say to run only in good light here in the San Blas!
Once we got that sorted out we started hunting for a place to park. It appears that every island in this group is occupied, covered solidly with palm thatched houses from one end to the other. Bill headed for one called Tupu-Torres, or Isla Lena, with us, my confidence still not restored, trailing behind. After a bit of hunting-the bottom goes from over fifty feet to eight feet in a matter of feet-we found a shelf where our hooks might hold if there isn't much wind. By the time we finished getting them down we were already surrounded by dozens of cayucas filled with men, women, and children. Most of the people were just being friendly and curious, but a few of the women had molas for sale. We bought four molas and a blouse and tried to say goodby, but it didn't work. They just stayed and kept trying to sell us more, or peek in our windows. Only one boy tried to come aboard and he back off quickly when Lois said, "No pase!", but the presence of so many people around the boat is, to say the least, somewhat distracting!
Deb and Bill had invited us to have a Holloween turkey with them tonight-Deb didn't think she could keep it until Thanksgiving-so we crowded our Metz down between the cayucas, told the folks we were leaving, and, with Lois' mince pie in hand, ran over to Margorie Grace. There we had to again push our way through a crowd of Kunas to get aboard. They didn't finally give up until we were all below and had ignored them for several minutes. Deb said she was having fun and I think she meant it. I think we might have done better to ease into it a bit by first visiting a little less populous island.
Dinner was great! Big turkey, good dressing, green beans, and mince pie for desert! I think Bill and I have the best cooks in the fleet!
We all loaded into the Metz and first made a turn around the little island. It is perfectly flat, not more than four feet above sea level, and I'd guess the total area at not more than five acres. As I said yesterday, it is totally "developed". There is one sloping concrete landing where we've seen the supply boat land, and one fishing "pier" where pens of bamboo and net are used for seafood storage. Other than that, the entire perimeter is lined with bamboo fences and palm thatched houses of individual families. Enrice met us at the one public beach area, a small pocket of sand beside the landing ramp where we left the Metz. He led us through the streets of the village, cleanly swept sandy paths eight to ten feet wide running between the houses. Debra had brought candy for the kids and a swarm of them followed us as we wound our way along, ending up at a basketball court in the center of the island.
Enrice told us that there were more than three hundred people living in this tiny area and sanitation must be a real problem, but there was no sign of dirt or filth anywhere. The houses, with walls of bamboo and roofs of palm fronds, had cleanly swept dirt floors and all looked neat and orderly. Many of the women had hung molas out in front of their houses for our inspection. Surprizingly, there are two Tiendas in the village selling everything from cooking oil to mola materials. There is also one large community building, or Congress, with many long benches which serves also as a church building. In several locations we passed fifty gallon drums set in the ground as shallow well liners. Enrice told us the water was used for washing and for the pigs; rain water is collected for drinking.
At Enrice's own house we met his wife and family. He has one son and one daughter living with him, and who knows how many grandchildren? He is 78 and his wife must be at least as old, a smiling old crone who, like several of the other old women of the village, goes bare breasted rather than wearing the colorful mola blouses of the younger generation. Their house consists of a fenced area with a narrow ramp to the water where a dugout waits, an outdoor cooking shed, and a metal roofed sleeping building, one of the few in the village. The family was very cordial, treating us like honored guests.
Later, after we had finished our tour and gone back to the boats, Bill and I took a care package back to Enrice: rice, sugar, a cap and shirt, and a ball which Lois sent for the kids. He told us a bit about himself and the Kunas. He was raised in Boston, having gone there with his father when very young. He came back to the San Blas in 1960, so has spent about half of his life here. He is in the minority having only three children; he says most of the families have many more. There were only a few old men in the village today and he told us that the working age men were all "in the mountains" working in the rice and cane fields. In answer to our question as to why the people lived on the crowded island rather than on the mainland, he could only tell us that .pa
they liked it better here. He taught us a few Kuna phrases:
The Kuna are very good sailors! Their dugouts are built with a mast step carved into the bottom of the boat and a heavy seat morticed into the sides as the upper support. They use a gaff rigged mainsail and a small jib and use a large paddle for a rudder which also provides auxilary propulsion. They are something to see in a stiff breeze!Dinner on the Sea Raven tonight: turkey stew a la Lois after we managed to break free of the swarm of vistors at Margorie Grace. Bill had made up a bubble machine out of a piece of wire and some Joy detergent, and the Kunas were going wild! I guess they'd never seen soap bubbles in the air before and almost the whole village turned out to see the fun! It was an interesting day. I think we are starting to get the feel for the area.
| 11:00 With a little coaching from Bevica we found our way through the breaking reefs and into a beautiful pond of bluegreen water between two little islands. Although it's in one of the outer group of islands, the pond is actually a depression in a monstrous reef which is barely covered with water. Waves break continuously in a circle a half mile away, but in our anchorage it's calm, clear, and quiet. There is plenty of room in thirty feet of water with a sand bottom for ourselves, Bevica, Margorie Grace, and a French boat called Aries, and a few more could be fitted in without being crowded. Just a great anchorage! | Chichime |
We'd gotten anchored and settled down before our first visitor arrived; a man and his wife, Nacho and Liliana. Nacho speaks pretty good English which he says he learned in Panama at the YMCA school, and Liliana makes very good molas, so good in fact that Lois managed to buy a hundred dollars worth before they left. Arthur calls it Mola Madness-I believe he's right! Although a few more cayucas stopped by during the day, there weren't the crowds of Isla Lena so it was a more pleasent atmosphere. We bought a couple of good sized lobsters plus one of the big San Blas King Crabs from a boat load of divers who stopped by. The San Blas Kings aren't as big as the Alaskan Kings but the one we bought was a good eighteen inches across with it's legs spread out. They have huge pinchers, but the claws meet only at the ends, like a thumb and forefinger, rather than being sizzorlike.
In the afternoon we went with Wayman and Darline from Bevica for a sightseeing tour around the inner island. It has only about four buildings on it. Nacho told us that families trade off in living here and taking care of the coconut palms, a major source of income for the Kunas. The chiefs decide who gets the next tour of duty. Wayman and Darline have been pretty successful in their snorkling on the reef around the island. They showed us some big conches they'd found-said they were really good eating. And they sure are pretty-all pink inside!
For dinner we shared our lobster and crab with MG. Both were excellent but at $5.00 for a lobster and $1.00 for the crab the crab was a better buy. The meat was every bit as good as Dungeness, and came in bigger chunks. You do need a good hammer though, I managed to break one of Debra's nutcrackers working on the tough claws!
Spent a quiet day in our little reef bound anchorage. It was cloudy and windy with a couple of sessions of rain through the day. Lois did a load of laundry while I fussed in the engine room for a while. In the afternoon Bill, Deb, and I took advantage of a short break in the clouds to go out and look at the reef. What a difference an ocean makes! It's a completely different picture than we've been used to in the Pacific. Some of the fish are the same, although I saw many I hadn't seen before, but the coral makes the big difference-thousands of varieties, all in very shallow water, forming beautiful backgrounds for the beautiful fish. Bill found a big, pink conche over a foot long in a grassy patch in the sand.
Stopped by for a short chat with the folks on Aries, the pretty little schooner parked next to us. Julian and Anna are from France and are on about the same kind of schedule as we-namely none. They've been here for several weeks and are waiting for favorable winds to sail north toward Colon. Told us not to miss the Holandes, the next group of islands where they said we'd find lots of lobster.
The house consists of three buildings: a sleeping building, a workshop, and a kitchen. All are built with bamboo walls and framework, and have palm thatched roofs. As in the village the other day, the whole living area gives the impression of being scrupulously clean. The sand floors are sprinkled and swept, there were clean sheets on the beds, and the kitchen work areas were clean with the only noticable odor being that of smoke from the cooking fire in the corner of the room. Oso seated us in his kitchen (both of us ducking to get under the five foot high beams) and proceeded to show us all his molas .... surprizing, because it is usually the woman who does the selling. He would take each one out of a five gallon pail, unfold it carefully, show it, and give us the price. Most were of inferior quality with only two layers of cloth, some so thin you could see through it.
Oso is a very nice little man, less than five feet tall with bowed legs, knobby body, and crooked teeth. He smiles all the time-even when, after he'd gone clear to the bottom of the pail, we told him that we didn't want any more molas. He seemed delighted when we told him, "Nuedi!"-Thank you, in Kuna. Later he came out to the boat in his cayuca and we had him aboard for a beer. While he was drinking it his cayuca got away-I hadn't tied it securely enough-and I had to go chase it. The wind was blowing pretty hard and I put on quite a show for the other boats as I tried to corral that heavy log boat with my inflatable. I couldn't tow it. I finally got it back by putting it on the upwind side of the Metz, balancing its drag with power from the Johnson to steer.
Late in the afternoon Felix and Sea Biscuit came in to the anchorage. Felix made it through the entrance OK but Arthur, who came in an hour or so later, somehow mis-read the breakers on the reef and found himself aground. It was a frantic few minutes as Felix, I, and the launch from a Panamanian sportfish boat all ran out to see if we could help. Fortunately, he had just touched the edge of the reef and Dina already had their inflatable in the water and was leading him off by the time we got there. She said it was the scariest moment of her life-they had just been diving on the remains of a sailboat wrecked on a reef in the Coco Banderos!
With our business finished, we went back to the dock where the mola ladies were waiting. We had them lay all their goods out on the bottom of a boat in the shade of a tree and ended up buying two quite nice ones for $20.00. Lois has a hard time bargaining for molas, I guess because she realizes better than I do what work is involved in making one. We have a book that says it takes from 40 to 80 hours to make a well done mola. That would make the rate for a $10.00 mola 25 cents per hour. On the mainland, and to the cruise ships, we've heard they get three times as much. One of the few real bargains left in the world.
Back at the boat, we hauled anchor again (It sure is fun to just turn the little handle and watch the chain reel in!) and headed for the Holandes Keys ten miles to the east. The sea was flat and glassy as we ran down the Mayflower channel behind the chain of reefs to the north. There are only a few channels to the open sea so the water behind is like that of a lake. At the far east end of the Holandes we found our way through the reefs into another large basin, this one situated between four small islands. Only one small sailboat from Germany was here when we dropped the hook, but we were soon joined by the Panama sportfisher and Margorie Grace. As we were getting the boat in "home configuration" the first cayuca came up, this one propelled by an outboard motor. I turned out to be Edvino, a local entrepeneur whom we had heard about. He took our order for fruits and vegetables-which he'll bring back from the village of Rio Diablo Sunday-and sold us our second bargain of the day, one of the big King Crabs, for $1.50. When I told him I'd only paid a dollar for one at Chichime' he grinned and said this one was, "mas grande!" Seems like a nice guy, and we've heard he is very honest.
Margorie Grace came down the outside and caught a 40 inch Wahoo on the way-Bill said if put up quite a fight-so they invited us to share it with them for dinner. He did it in steaks on the barbeque-very good!
It was a hot, cloudless day and there wasn't any wind so we let the little boat sit for a bit while I went for an exploring swim around our reef. It's not quite as pretty here as it was on the reef off Chichime', more sand and grass and less coral. I was looking for one of the big Queen Conches like Bill found, but saw nothing but lots of sea slugs and starfish. The starfish are big bat stars, some twelve inches or more across.
By the time I got through with my swim a little breeze had come up, so Lois and I piled into the Ranger and tried to remember how to sail it. We did pretty well, actually, once we got the sheets and haulyards sorted out, sailing around the anchorage, out over the reef, and back. Later Bill and I took the boat all the way around the island to our north. There we found another sailboat anchored (this one from Spain) and another tiny island which is deserted and covered with palms and flowering vines. Looked like a great place for a picnic. By the time we got back the wind was a steady eight to ten knots, just perfect for the Ranger. We found it handled best with me in the bow and Bill, who outweighs me by about fifty pounds, at the tiller. It's pretty well balanced and stable that way.
Edvino came back today bringing a load of bananas, apples, oranges, peppers, cabbages, and tomatoes from the village of Rio Diablo-pretty good stuff. He charged quite a bit, about three times what you might pay in the market, but it's nice to know that the fresh stuff is available when we need it. He's a really nice guy who doesn't give you the feeling he's pushing things at you. He bought a small picture album with him and showed us pictures of his wife and sons and other yachts which have stopped here.
Winsome Flyer, Summer Breeze, Felix, and Sea Biscuit left today, the first two heading north and the latter east to Cartegena. I think Hegira and Shaharazade are planning on leaving tomorrow. More boats coming though-Sailorr, Halcyon, and Voyager to name only three. We'll have lots of company!
Heard on the radio this morning that Winsome Flyer had turned back and were running for Colon. They started taking water through what they believe are loose planks on the starboard side. That would be a scary thing to have happen. Glad they weren't half way to Jamaica when it did.
Bill and Deb borrowed the Ranger and went sailing in the rain this afternoon, then came over for dinner at our house. Lois fixed some of the Wahoo that Bill caught on the way in the other day. Good, good, good!
Other than for that little interlude it was a day of paint, paint, paint. I put primer on everything that had a spot of rust on it. Tomorrow I'll do the same thing with a finish coat and be ready to start reassembling our house.
By the time I got everything covered with two coats of paint it had turned out to be a pretty nice day, so Lois and I did a little playing. First we took the Ranger for a spin around the anchorage, circling MG several times while practicing our tacking, then we took the Metz over to a reef on the far side of the bay for a snorkling tour. There were lots of interesting coral forms there but in covering a half mile or more we never saw a single live conche or sign of lobster. They can't be that hard to see -- I suspect Bill has just been lucky to have found two of the big pink conches already.
We were running the VCR's all afternoon recording four movies; but, when Bill and Deb brought dinner over and we were ready to watch one, their machine quit working. Too bad! We were hoping to copy a couple of good ones of theirs. Oh well, we had a good dinner anyway, a delicous chop suey concoction of Deb's.
We hauled up and moved today, over to another group of islands called the Coco Banderos. Like the Holandes, they are just a few high spots on a huge reef that extends for several miles. Finding your way into a place to park is a spooky exercise! The bottom goes from over 100 feet to four or five without much warning. By taking it slow and putting Lois out on the bow when we got near shoal water we managed to work our way into a nice little anchorage between two of a group of four easterly islands (N 9 deg, 30.83 min/ W 78 deg 37.17 min). As we made the final turn a couple of cayucas waved us to anchor in about thirty-five feet of water. It looks open to the northeast but the surf breaks in a line about a quarter of a mile away and there's only a slight roll in the anchorage.
We'd barely gotten the hooks down when the cayucas arrived with the molas. We were hot and ready for a swim so put them off 'til tomorrow and took the dings out snorkling on the reef. I'm beginning to get a complex about that! Bill and Deb found three nice big conche and in an hour of looking around I never saw one! Guess we'll just have to buy ours from the fishermen. At two bucks a piece for the big ones that's the practical way to go.
One is a kitchen/smokehouse. At each end of it they had a small fire going and over each was a pot of boiling liquid. In one were platinos, chunked like you'd do with potatoes, and in the other were fish boiling in coconut milk prior to being laid out on the smoking racks which are built behind each fire. The racks are arranged so that the fish can be moved upward and back farther from the fire as the drying process is completed. There is no enclosure or any duct work to control the smoke; it is just allowed to fill the upper part of the room which is black from years of use. Surprizingly the room is not uncomfortable; the large doors at either end ventilate the lower portion quite well. Several women were at work shredding coconut or preparing other foods for processing. Out guide told us that the food was being stockpiled for the Fiesta in January. The other building is a large dormatory room with only a few hammocks hung around at this time, but with room to sleep a great many persons on occasion. It appears that there is a small caretaking group and the rest of the people are transients.
Edvino came by this morning. The reason we hadn't seen him before was that his outboard had quit on him. He told us that it took a half hour to come from his home in Rio Diablo with the outboard, with only his sail it takes at least two hours-if the wind is blowing. We bought two more crab from him and made a date for him to take us into the village tomorrow.
Spent the rest of the day playing. Deb took Lois over to a sandy beach on the island and taught her how to use the mask and snorkle, a first. I'm hoping that if she gets a few glimpses of the underwater world she'll take to it. Later, when the wind picked up a little, we took the Ranger out for a ride. Dodging reefs the whole way, we sailed up to another little island about a mile away which has half a dozen palms on it, landed, claimed it by walking all the way around its white sand beach (maybe fifty yards), and sailed back. Fun trip!
It's only about five miles from our anchorage at Coco Banderos to the village at Rio Diablo which, Edvino told us, is actually two villages on two islands joined by a foot bridge. The larger is Nargana with about 1500 people; the other is Corazon de Jesus with 1000. Most of the buildings on both are concrete or concete block structures, making the islands' appearance contrast sharply with those with bamboo and palm villages. With Edvino at the helm, we approached from the north, swung around the end of Corazon de Jesus, and anchored between the two islands and the mouth of the river almost directly in front of Edvino's house. As with Isla Lena, almost every square inch of these islands is devoted to housing. For those on the perimeter the sea provides a ready made sewage disposal system and the shore is lined with little sheet metal walled houses on stilts with narrow boardwalks leading from shore.
| We landed the Metz at the sandy end of a narrow waterway in the spot evidently reserved for Edvino's cayuca greeted by a half dozen curious children. He led us into his house to meet his wife, Filorilelia, and their two sons, Edvino Luis and Luis Edvino. Filorilelia is the prettiest of the Kuna ladies we've seen, and they tend to be quite pretty. Just twenty-one years old, she was wearing the traditional costume and had on a very well made mola blouse. Other yachties have told us of her good work and she showed us a mola she has made for a boat called Daybreak, now on the way to Hawaii. She had done very nicely in working an outline of their sailboat into the mola pattern. Their eldest son is about three and the youngest still nursing. They live in a small apartment in a group of three buildings belonging to Evino's family, the Vallarinos. Later Edvino told us that he had to pay $300 to Filorilelia's home village before they would let her come to live with his family. Normally the new husband lives with the wife's family, but the mosquitos were so bad in her mainland home that she was happy to come to his island. |  Edvino Luis and Luis Edvino |
We chatted for a while, then Edvino led us through the village, and across the bridge to Nargana where both the bank and post office are located. Turned out that both were closed because this is another Panamanian holiday, but Edvino hunted around, found the postmaster, and talked him into opening the office to take our mail. It was a hot morning and, with our mail posted, we adjourned to the restaurant next door for a cold drink. As we entered, the proprietor greeted us in English and cleared a table covered with an oilcloth printed in mola patterns. His name is Francisco and is retired from the Panama Canal Company where he told us he worked as a stevedor for 48 years. It was a bit of a surprize when he brought out our cold sodas and beer to find that he was serving us Old Milwaukee. As we wandered though the village we met several people who spoke pretty good English, including one young man of 33 on crutches who had spent a couple of years in the States while the doctors attemped to repair some of the damage done by polio. By 1966 the disease was pretty much wiped out in the U.S. but not in locations such as this. He told me that he had the good fortune to have a group in Panama City raise the money for his medical expenses.
We'd gone back to Edvino's house, filled our jerry jug with gasoline (Edvino sells it as another of his ways of making money), and were headed out to the boat when the Panama Militar arrived in their big fiberglass boat with two 75 horse motors. They were quite polite but wanted to see our passports. Fortunately, we had gone back this morning to get Bill and Deb's passports after Edvino told us this might happen. The leader had copied names and passport numbers myself, Lois, and Bill into his little book and had handed our passports back; but, when he got to Deb's, he seemed to change his mind, asked for all passports again, and told us we'd have to pick them up at the office. Both he and Edvino assured us that there was "No problema", just a routine check.
All right-we bid them goodby, had another cerveza, and decided to take a ride up the river while they were looking over out papers. With Edvino driving again, we ran up the Rio Diablo which again reminded us very much like our trip up the Saint Maries river in Idaho last year. Of course, this river's banks are lined with palm and banana trees with splashes of color provided by hibiscus and other flowering plants. Surprizingly, when we reached the swifter moving water it was cold, colder than any water I've felt for more than a year, and I'm quite sure colder than the ambient air temperature! The only explanation I can think of is that upstream whitewater must provide enough evaporative cooling to drop the temperature below ambient. Bill had his swimming suit on and went over the side to cool off-I wished I'd done the same. I'd been hoping we'd see a crocodile but no luck, not even with Bill as bait.
Back at the Office of the Militar a good looking young man in shorts and a T shirt shook hands with each of us as he returned our passports and wished us a pleasant stay in the San Blas. Outside a group of other young men were engaged in a game of baseball. Looked like only a skeleton military crew were in uniform on this holiday.
We hauled up the anchor about three o'clock and headed back for the Coco Banderos with cracked crab for a snack on the way. By four we were re-anchored there and Edvino, who seemed in no hurry to leave, spent another hour answering our questions about himself and the Kuna people. Very interesting session. Each village has its own chiefs and rules, and there is a considerable amount of rivalry between villages. For instance, he told us that he could not visit the village of Tigre, or their camp here in the Coco Banderos, because he was of Corazon de Jesus. At least that is how we understood him-it's a little hard to accept, but he did set sail for home soon after with no possib-ility of getting there before dark. Of course, with a wife as pretty as his who would spend a night away? Before he left he gave us his address:
| Bill and Deb were out sailing the ranger, Lois was getting bread ready for baking, and I was down in the engine room changing Gimmy's oil when Edvino and his family arrived for a visit. An airplane had come in from Panama bringing fresh vegetables so he had rented a big cayuca with a 15 HP motor from his cousin for $3.00, loaded it up with produce, and brought his wife and sons along on the delivery. Once we managed to get ourselves sorted out, we had a very nice visit. Filorilelia and the boys were dressed up in their best and the little guys soon had Lois doing flip-flops. They are cute little buggers with their big black sparkling eyes. While they were here Bill and Deb came back so the ladies divided up the groceries, sorted out the tab (expensive, but not so bad if you figure in the delivery), then we all had a nice visit. Edvino is working very hard on his English and loves to practice by telling us what he has done, what he is going to do, and anything about the Kuna in which we show interest. They stayed for about three hours. |  Edvino & Family |
After they left, I went back to my oil changing and Deb and Lois went out to do a little beachcombing. Over by the little island next to us they saw a large shark in the shallow water with its tail in the air apparently working on the sand bottom. It was probably a harmless, and we're told vegetarian, Nurse Shark but it sure impressed the girls! From what she said, Lois was ready to walk on water!
About noon a little breeze sprang up so we put a few cervezas in the little cooler and took the Ranger out for a spin. I had installed a couple of new jam cleats which made it a bit easier to handle so we called it a test run. We sailed around two of the islands, hauling up the centerboard as we crossed the reefs. She sails pretty well without the centerboard on a down wind run.
In the late afternoon we had a rain squall go through-Bill had been out on the deck blowing his conche horn to urge it on-so we collected twenty gallons of water to help out Margorie Grace. As of this evening he still hadn't found a leak. I suspect they just got a little careless about usage. Bill was just matching stories with me about how they take a fresh water shower every day and I know that we use a lot more water than they do; but, we carry five hundred gallons and have a watermaker, they carry only one hundred in their main tank.
Watched a movie called "Sunset" with James Garner in the evening, a fun superman tale about Tom Mix and Wyatt Earp. Dick and Allyn sure picked some good movies for us!
Both Nan and Kris told us that they had never received the video tape we mailed from Panama on October 18th. I suspect that some Pamamanian postal employee now has three video cartridges and we'll have to make new copies. I guess we'll have to hold off on sending anything but letters.
We decided to go with Margorie Grace to Isla Tigre so this morning we hoisted the Ranger up part way and lashed it to our port side without having to de-rig it; then MG hauled up and rafted to our starboard side so we could transfer water and their VCR. We made quite an odd looking raft, the Sea Raven with a sailboat lashed to either side. While we were together we decided that rather than going to spend the night at the rather large village of Tigre, we'd go instead to another small group of islands called Devil's Cays, a short distance away. On the way we caught a fish which looked very much like the Sierra Mackerel which we've been catching on the Pacific side, except that it had no yellow spots. The meat was white and firm just like the Sierra.
As we approached Devil's Cay's we could see an anchored sailboat and when I called we got an answer from "Philmar" in a very British accent. After we got anchored we invited Margorie Grace and them to share our fish for dinner and met a delightful couple. Phil is a doctor from England; Mary is from Sweden. They have both spent some years in Fiji (not as cruisers) and are now on their way back there. They've spent the last year in the windward islands and Venezuela after coming across the Atlantic. Said they liked Venezuela very much. They plan on going to Costa Rica then on across the Pacific.
Once we got past the reefs the Farewell island anchorage turned out to be beautiful; nice flat sand bottom, clear water, a deserted island with clean sand beach all around, and a nice reef to do some snorkling on. Our problem today was that, about the time we got settled and ready to have some fun, the sky opened, the wind blew, and the rain fell. It was one squall after another all afternoon. The rain isn't so bad-it's kind of fun to shower on the deck and we have rain flaps for the doors-but when the wind blows the rain we have to shut everything up on the boat and even snorkling gets difficult.
Edvino stopped by soon after we anchored-he seems to find us wherever we are-just to say hello. He gave us the straight poop on flights into the San Blas. Two companies operate daily flights from the Paitilla airport in Panama City: Marcos Gejabert (ANSA) and an outfit called Aereo Taxi. Both fly into Porvenir, Ciedras, Rio Diablo, and Tigre, leaving Paitilla at 6:00 AM (As I write this at 7:00 AM I see the plane landing at Rio Diablo. We've seen planes landing at other times but they may not be scheduled flights). The fare is something less than $25.00. We'll try passing this information to Kristy in the morning. If they could make it, I know they'd love this place in spite of the rain!
It was kind of an uninteresting day today. Instead of the squalls of yesterday, there was a steady wind and rain from the east which was kicking up some good sized seas on the other side of our little island and keeping the water stirred up and a swell rolling into our anchorage. It never got uncomfortable but we put out a stern hook to keep ourselves pointed into the swell. I tried snorkling a couple of times but couldn't see much. Once as I floated along on the surface a rain shower hit which was so heavy that I could hardly clear the snorkle tube. Lois was riding shotgun for me in the Metz and after that I couldn't get her off the boat again for the rest of the day.
During a couple of breaks in the rain I did a little exploring of the island. It's about a quarter of a mile long, perfectly flat with an elevation of not more than five feet above high water, and covered with coconut palms. There's a soft, low ground cover of a broad leafed green plant and lots of flowers and flowering bushes scattered around. The red hibiscus are giants! The coconuts are obviously cultivated. Many of the young trees have had the grass and brush cut away to give them room to grow, and the tall trees have been pruned. The whole island is exceptionally clean-no trash anywhere except for a little flotsom on the seaward side. It looks much like a well maintained fruit orchard of the U.S. There are only two structures on the island: small, palm thatched shelters, one with palm fronds layed out for a mattress, the other with the remains of cooking fires in the center. Probably for the occasional transient caretaker or fisherman.
We had no visitors today although there was a constant stream of cayucas and larger boats going through the channel. We seem to be on the main east-west route of the "inside passage". We didn't see any cayucas with Mola ladies-the seas may have been too rough for them to be out and about.
When dawn came we got our second surprize. The water around us looked like that at Pedro Miguel or Puntarenas, brown with mud! There must have been a hell of a rain in the mountains; we are more than two miles from the mouth of the river. Anyway, that put a stop to my plans to dive on our anchors, or for any other reason. With our pretty anchorage all messed up, we decided to move on and went to work stowing all our toys. This time we hauled the Ranger all the way up to the top deck into its cradle and lashed it down leaving the mast erect. That's a lot safer if we roll around. We got everything else stowed and headed out.
We wanted to go into the village at Nargana to get off a letter to Kris and Bob confirming what we told them on the radio and felt we could make it there without a problem even with the muddy water. We'd been watching the route that the freighters take and had been in there with Edvino before. It was still a very heart stopping trip! We cleared the one reef at the channel entrance without a problem and from there on we should have been in deep water; however, the bottom is extremely irregular and, when it goes from over fifty feet to less than twenty in seconds and you can't see anything, you can only hope the chart is right and you haven't misread it. I came almost to a stop a dozen times in the three mile run. We never got in water less than 19 feet deep, but the worry was always there.
We anchored behind the islands where we had before and I ran the Metz over to the airport while Lois finished writing her letters. There are two airstrips here: one on Nargana which I had mistakenly thought was strictly military, and the other on a larger island ½ mile to the east. Both are paved and either is easily accessible with the dinghy. I was again told that the only regularly scheduled flights are in the early morning.
We went ashore on Nargana, changed a $100 bill at the bank (It is open from 8:00 until 1:30), and found that the phone is out of order and that the Post Office wouldn't be open until 2:00. No problem, we had a cerveza at the little restaurant/grocery store and then made the acquaintance of something we'd heard about but hadn't tried, Kuna Bread. Wow, a real treat! It's as good as the little rolls called Boletos we got in Mexico. It's also in the form of rolls, long skinny ones that look like stretched out hot dog buns. We bought 20 warm ones for a dollar and ate six for lunch. Bueno, bueno!
After lunch we fooled around on the boat a while, then went back over and mailed our letters. I never get a really confident feeling from the Panamanian postal people. This time the clerk didn't even weigh the letters, just came up with a price of $1.80 for four. Last week he had charged $1.00 for two of Debra's. Oh well, we'll cross our fingers and hope they get there. We bought some eggs and tomatoes at a small store but held off on other vegetables. Edvino seems to be able to come up with better stuff. He showed up later in the day with his three year old son, bringing a gift of platinos. He plans to take a load of groceries out to Bandero tomorrow so we volunteered to take him with us, towing his cayuca behind. He says another fiesta is starting tomorrow. There was lots of activity today-big navy boat loaded with people, five or six Columbian coconut freighters in the harbor, and some passenger vessels of various kinds. There was music on the shore tonight but it was squally again so we stayed on the boat. Hopefully, the weather will settle down tomorrow.
We got in behind the reef and anchored OK, and soon Donna and Tim, two of the six person crew on Climax, came over for their groceries. We chatted for a while. Climax is a Force 50 ketch from San Francisco which we first saw in Zihuat. They always seem to have a big crew on board, never less than four and sometimes as many as eight, and are always ready for a party. Later Steve from Donna Jean came over for their stuff. He and Donna have been ready to leave for the Bay Islands of Honduras for three days now, but the weather won't cooperate. Nothing to do but just sit tight and wait.
I talked to Nan on High Seas this morning to tell her Bob and Kris were coming down. Asked her to send a care package to them for us, all the parts and pieces she's been collecting. We had a really good connection through WOM in Miami once I got our transmitter warmed up and operating. It's been acting funny lately. When I first try to transmit I can't even get the ALC meter needle to move, even though the set has been on and is well warmed up. If I keep trying it gradually starts to indicate and, if I keep talking long enough, eventually comes back to normal levels. When I tune up using the transmit button on the set itself I get full power instantly, so the problem must be somewhere in the mike circuitry. There's a small preamplifier in the mike and I asked Nan to send us a spare one, but if the difficulty is internal to the set we'll have to find a radio repair shop. I wish Felix were still around-Mark has a whole shop on his boat-but they are off having fun in Cartagena. I'll cross my fingers and hope it keeps working until we get back to Panama. It's our only contact with the world out here-we have yet to find a working telephone.
We never did get around to getting the Metz in the water. I'd like to go back to the Holandes for a few more days. It's a little more protected from the swell than it is here, and is a good place to dive and play with the Ranger; so when our break turned out to be for only an hour we were just as happy we hadn't gotten it down. If we get any kind of a break tomorrow, we'll make a run for Holandes.
We ran Gennie quite a while today while we got caught up on our watermaking, Lois did a load of wash, and I worked on getting our Christmas Card list updated. Looks like we'll be sending out letters again this year rather than pretty cards. If we'd been on the stick we could probably have done something in Panama, but we didn't. I've got a summary of our year's travels almost ready to go. I also took our HF radio apart and worked over every connector I could reach. Didn't do any good! I'm still not getting modulation unless I shout into the mike. I find that Sailorr has the same ICOM 720 radio and IC-HM7 mike. Bob has offered to trade mikes with me when we can get together. That should tell us whether the problem is in the mike or internal to the radio.
Edvino was a little disappointed that Margorie Grace and Philmar were not here as planned. In order to make his trip worthwhile we bought $5.00 worth of limons and Grapefruit even though we have all we can use. MG and Philmar are still pinned down at Tigre and we kind of wish we were with them. At least there they have some entertainment. They say that at Tigre the chiefs have ruled that the cayucas may not approach the yachts, so they have not been bothered by mola sellers. On the other hand, they have been welcomed to the village, given tours of the water catchment and power systems, invited to the congress meetings and a dance. They've gone up two rivers and even caught a glimpse of a good sized crocodile. The anchorage at Tigre is well protected but the entrance is narrow and open to the swell. After watching Bill go in the other day, I wouldn't want to try it under our current conditions.
Sailorr is still pinned down at Chichime. The only yacht to move was a westward bound, 48 foot Mapleleaf called Honey Bucket which went out and ran downwind for Isla Grande. He reported ten foot swells on his quarter. Here in the Banderos almost all activity has stopped. Other than for Edvino, I think we saw only two cayucas all day long and the mola ladies are nowhere to be seen. There are only a couple of people on the inhabited island. We spent the day on the boat, as did the crews of Donna Jean and Climax. In the afternoon, during a short lull when the wind died to about ten knots, I put out the swim ladder and snorkled over to the nearest reef. It's a pretty coral garden with lots of tiny, colorful fish. That was my exercise and recreation for the day.
I discovered today that we have lost one cell in one of our original 8D batteries, the one I've been using for our 12 volt bus, so I changed the bus to one of the Mexican 8D's-one more thing to put on the list for when we get back to Panama. Those batteries don't owe us anything. They've had four years of hard use.
Getting out of the anchorage and down the channel behind the Bandero Keys was easy. The reefs cut most of the waves and the wind was behind us; but, as we passed over the Mayflower shoal and turned north toward the Holandes, we started to get the full affect of the winds of the past week. The Caobos Channel, over which we'd towed the Metz and Ranger a little more than a week ago, was now a rolling seaway with waves that blotted out the horizon. The channel is only four miles wide and, unlike the seas in the Sea of Cortez, the crests of the waves were reasonably far apart, so it really wasn't a bad ride. Lois emitted several squeals but only once did a wave catch us just right to rattle the dishes in the cupboards.
What a difference as we came through the entrance into the Holandes anchorage! The sea was flat, with just a small wind riffle on the surface. The wind, broken by the tall trees on the north island, was a slightly gusty ten knots. The sun was bright and teh reefs easy to see. A quarter of a mile away to the northeast we could see mountainous waves expending their energy on a higher and wider reef than that of the Bandero. The holding here is not as good-the coral sand is quite soft and thin in places-and we made good use of our power windless as we tried three times before getting an anchor set with which I was happy. We spent a good part of the afternoon getting unpacked. We pulled in our flopper-stoppers, took down the Metz, got up the awing, took all the junk out of the Ranger, re-rigged it, and lowered it over the side. The sun was hot and bright, so between jobs I snorkled on the reef just bedside us. When we got the Ranger in the water I decided to try it out alone-Lois was into something else-and had a bit of an exciting ride. The wind was pretty gusty and I came close to getting dumped a couple of times before I learned to drop the sheets quickly when a gust would hit. I've got some practicing to do before I get as good as Bryan at single handing that little boat.
There are five boats in the anchorage this evening where there was only one yesterday. Ringoe, the little German boat is still here (He must be homesteading), Donna Jean, Climax, ourselves, and a tiny trimaran which we not seen before. I expect that tomorrow we'll see Sailorr, Margorie Grace, and Philmar. It'll be quite a crowd.
We had visitors several times today, showing molas or just chatting. We bought lobsters and a crab from a cayuca of divers, and later went over to what people call Robinson's Island and met Mr. Robinson. He's a nice old guy of maybe eighty with only one eye and a typically Indian beard consisting of a few widely spaced hairs on his chin. He speaks quite a bit of English and, judging from the hand printed brochure he hands out, he has been in the tourist business for quite a few years. He arranges Kuna dinners, tours of villages and rivers, fishing trips, and about anything else you might need. He has a wife considerably younger than himself and a pretty daughter in her twenties. He keeps guest books with pictures and comments from all the yachts that stop here on the island or in the village of Ciedros, a few miles away near the mainland. We sat in his shelter, looked at his books and bought a pair of molas from the display hung there.
In the afternoon Lois and I took the Ranger out for a nice sail across the bay. The man from the German boat, Ringoe, was also out sailing his dinghy. We found that his name is Peter, his wife's Usa. They are heading slowly westward and will be going through the canal soon. We're starting to meet and hear about quite a few boats heading that way.
Deb, Verna, and Mary Anne came over this morning for a mola coffee klatch. They each brought the molas they have purchased over the past weeks and had a great time looking at each others choices. They have about eighty between the four of them. While that was going on I borrowed a mike for the Icon 720 HF radio from Bob and found that the problem I'd been having is indeed in the mike. His IC-HM7 mike, the same model as ours, works just fine with our radio. I took ours apart, checked all the connections and wires, and have concluded that the problem must be in the TR 25D661 transistor, a tiny component of the microphone preamplifier circuit. I've already asked Nan to get us a new mike and send it down with Bob and Kris. When I talk to her again I'll see if she can also send the transistor. In the meantime, Bob came up with a desk mike which also works and has loaned it to us until we can get another one.
Don't know quite what happened to the rest of the day. It just sort of disappeared in a bunch of little jobs. The sump alarm in the lazarette went off and we had to drain that out-one of Seaborn's few real mistakes in boat design. We have to do that every couple of months. The Ranger was also full of rain water so we did a couple of extra loads of wash with that water, stopping the machine before it got to the rinse cycle, filling it with buckets from the Ranger, and re-running it through the wash cycle to rinse the clothes.
In the afternoon I took the Ranger out for a sail around the bay. Two new boats came in to the anchorage, both from Germany, one with several small children aboard. We now have three German, one English, and three U.S. boats here, plus a large schooner of undetermined nationality anchored just outside the bay. We've decided to let Mr. Robinson prepare our Thanksgiving dinner for us. Thanksgiving with the Indians should be fun! More?