Since I managed to change the driveshaft packing while Capri was still in the water (see previous blog) and did not get eaten by the crocs hanging around (Thank you Vinni for keeping such a careful watch), I can now write about our trip from Golfito to Panama.

The day after we changed the packing, we cleared out of Costa Rica.  The procedure was a nightmare and took all day.  I’m not going to detail it, suffice to say I was frustrated and pissed when it was finally over.  As soon as we could, we took in our lines and left Banana Bay marina.  Of course, that meant we sailed directly out into a deluge of lightning and thunder.  There is no respite for it here.  It thunders and spews lightning every day and more so now that the rainy season has started. 

Well what do you expect?  I mean it is Vinni and Carsten that are sailing.

Are we having fun yet?

Damned right we’re having fun!

The terrible weather continues and continues, more and more thunder, lightning all around us and occasionally a roar of thunder will break right above us and the lightning will slam down into the ocean.  It feels like the world is coming to an end.

Food for thought – For those who are sitting at home, comfortable in their easy chair/sofa (that is you dear reader) thinking; okay her goes Carsten exaggerating again.  A little bit of thunder and a couple of lightning bolts, yawn.  I can assure every doubting Thomas that when thunder breaks right over the boat and the lightning bolt slams into the water nearby, that just like in foxholes – there are no atheists.  Everyone says a quiet prayer.  Even dyed in the wool agnostics like me look up at the heavens and say; Ok God, you don’t need to send more of those – we get the message.  The thunder and lightning will follow us the next two days until we reach Panama City.

This weather is harder on Vinni than on me.  She simply can’t fall asleep with all the thunder.  I go to sleep immediately (Vinni damns me to all kinds of hell for my ability to fall asleep).  Lack of sleep means Vinni is tired and when you are tired, everything is tougher to handle, including thunder and lightning.

What can I say?  This is no fun but all we can do is keep sailing and get through it as quickly as we can.

I check our bilge regularly and it remains dry.  We finally come to the decision that I must have done my work right and we have nothing to worry about.

The guidebooks say that Pacific Panama is well worth a visit.  There are many beautiful beaches and small fishing villages along the coast.  We decide to skip them. First, because we have seen uncountable beautiful beaches and many, many small fishing villages.  The other reason is that if we stop, we have to clear in. Clearing in is time-consuming and costly (up to $400) – our Canal agent can check us in for free.  We head straight for Panama City and La Playita Marina where we stayed when we transited from east to west six years ago.

Hmmm – this all looks familiar – we’ve been here before.

Six years ago, when we transited from east to west (time does fly when you are having fun), we wrote; “This is the point of no return.  Once through the canal, there is only one way home and that is the long way around the globe”. 

We stand corrected.

In our wildest fantasies, neither Vinni nor I had dreamed that we would be back here, transiting from west to east.  It just goes to show; the best laid plans of mice and men…….

In other words – a return to the point of no return.

Our thoughts back then were good enough.  The canal really is “the point of no return”.  Normally, cruisers sail  west and keep going until they either go up the Red Sea or around the Cape Good Hope.  We did not expect to make a little 12,000nm side trip up to Alaska.  In doing so, we completed the “Little Pacific Loop”.  12,000 nm is a fair distance – just over half way around the world at the equator.

“We have no plan and by golly, we’re going to stick to it!”

Back to real time.  Despite the weather, we arrived three days later at Playita Marina and snuggled into a slip.  Now to meet our Agent, get cleared in and get some sleep.  We met the Agent at the immigration office and while we were waiting for our turn, we asked him if he had an earlier transit date.  Our scheduled transit date was over two weeks in the future.  He looked down in his papers and said; “how about tomorrow?  Sunrise transit”.

What?  Ok, we hurry back to Capri and begin to get her ready. Three young line handlers are coming and we need to buy a ton of food to feed them.  Additionally, we need to buy four bottles of water per person (including the advisor – so 20 some bottles all together) and of course, some snacks.  We spend the day shopping, making chili and spaghetti sauce and getting Capri ready.  Early (very early) next morning at 3 am we’re up, waiting for the line handlers to arrive.  They don’t get here until 4 am (why not get an extra hours sleep?).  We load some mega huge fenders and coils of shore lines on Capri’s deck.  At 4:30, we shove off and head out to the shipping channel, where we circle for an hour waiting for our advisor to show up.  An advisor is something like a Pilot.

Once he is on board, we wait (a cruisers life is full of waiting) for the ship we will lock up with.  We will also be tied to a 50 foot racing sloop that is being delivered from Tahiti to France by a couple guys.  The boat is not theirs and it is obvious by the way they treat her – they don’t care much what happens.

We’ve been told we are locking up with a cruise ship.  Here comes Fram, a small cruise ship owned by the Norwegian Hurtigruten.  We thought Hurtigruten only owned ferries plying the Norwegian coast, but they apparently also have cruises in the Pacific.

Finally we sail forward to tie up alongside the racing boat for our trip into the lock.  Since they are bigger than us, it will be them that is the lead boat, meaning their advisor is in charge.  We quickly realize that the crew on the other boat are not particularly good at handling the boat in close quarters.  Apparently neither is the advisor.  Every time we have to tie up (once at each lock), they are either not ready or they have not gotten their boat in the proper opposition to allow Capri to come alongside without scratching or causing other damage.  This is mega irritating since there is always heavy cross currents in the locks and laying Capri alongside is difficult enough even if the other boat is prepared. 

We manage, but it requires a lot of careful maneuvering on our part.  Our line handlers also seem to have a mind of their own.  I’ve told them that they are to realize the lines that tie us to the other boat on my command, not before, not after.  But they have done this many times and that means they just do it as they see fit.  With the currents, it is difficult enough to get the boats apart, even if the lines are being handled properly.

Finally, we reach Lake Gatun and we now have a 14nm run to the other side of Panama and the locks going down.  The cruise ship puts the pedal to the metal and takes off.  Our advisor tells us that the cruise ship is the last ship that day we can go down with, all the later ones will be too big for us to fit in the locks.  In other words, time to hustle and keep up with the cruise ship.  We are making six knots.  I let our advisor know that Capri can run at least one knot and probably close to two knots faster.  He says we can’t – the other advisor is in charge.

Ok, call him on the radio and let him know we have speed to spare.  We do not want to spend the night on the lake.  He answers back – just keep at the current speed.

Half way across the lake, the other advisor finally wakes up and realizes that we won’t make it in time.  Now he says, Full Speed Ahead.  Capri makes 8 knots but it is too little, too late.

Shit!

Now we have to spend the night on the lake, all because of an incompetent advisor.  Our agent said we should be across in one day.  Now we have three line handlers sleeping on the boat and we also have to feed them both dinner and breakfast – fortunately we purchased a gang of spaghetti sauce and bread.

he next morning we just sat on the mooring buoy and waited for several hours for a new advisor to show up so we could lock down the last three locks and be back on the Atlantic side of the Americas. 

There were no major issues with locking down and a few hours later we sailed into Shelter Bay Marina, a marina we knew from when we transited the opposite way six years ago.  Line handlers, lines and mega fenders got off the boat and now Vinni and I could start cleaning poor Capri.

We stayed in the marina for a few days and took the bus into town to provision.  This was a gigantic provisioning since the last time we really could fill up the larder was in Mexico.  Virtually all the cupboard shelves were bare.  In the supermarket we had a strange experience.  We were in line to pay with our overflowing shopping cart when an employee came, grabbed the front end of the cart and marched us down to the other end of the supermarket to an empty cashier stand.  We certainly didn’t mind getting out faster but then I noticed a sign above the cashier, showing a pregnant woman, a handicapped man and an older person leaning on a cane.  This register was reserved for those, shall we say, who had difficulties with standing in line. 

Hmmm.  Vinni and looked at the sign for a long time and finally burst out laughing. Vinni, I said, they can’t think you are pregnant, and you are not in a wheelchair, so it must be because they think you are old.  Of course, that statement got her temper all the up in the red area (as I know it would).  She came back with a rejoiner about how it was obviously my white hair that made them think we were an older couple.  Several fits of laughing later, we decided that the person who hauled us down here probably needed glasses.

But- we got through the cash registers a lot faster than anyone else.

The days pass with small odd jobs on the boat (when you own a boat, you may be unemployed – but you are never out of work).  We spent the afternoons lazing by the swimming pool.

We’ve been sailing in the Pacific for six years now.  In those six years, with one exception, the only Danish flag we have seen is the one hanging on the stern of Capri.  There was one Danish boat that passed through the Marquesas while we were there – 5 years ago.   We  have not seen a Danish flag for five years.  Here in Shelter Bay, there are Danish boats everywhere.  There seem to be at least five here.  Every time one of them leaves, another sails in a few hours later.  Many are filled with young people who sail off and then have paying crew to help finance the trip.  Typically, these boats will have 8-10 young people on board.  A couple are families.  The older sailors all know who Vinni and Carsten are.  Vinni and Carsten are well-known in the cruising community in Denmark.  We are more than surprised at the number of boats, all heading out into the Pacific.  Where do they all come from?  Wonderful to speak Danish with someone else than each other, but we are simply bamboozled by the number of Danish boats.

But we must ever onward.  We’ve learned that we can clear out of Panama at a small village right on the Panama/Colombia border – Puerto Obaldia.  It is a long sail and the bay at Puerto Obaldia is terrible to anchor in.  There is no shelter from the swells or the winds.  We sailed down there, but laid in and anchored in a small well-protected bay 20nm north of Obaldia.  This bay is a good place to anchor, there is a little Guna Indian village here and the ruins of an old Spanish fort.  Next morning early we hoist the hook and make our way to Puerto Obaldia where we drop the hook and launch the dinghy.  We landed the dinghy on the beach and tied her to a palm tree, thereafter we walked up into the little village.  This village is much as the other villages we have seen on our travels.  A bit run down and there si garbage everywhere. We found the immigration office and they cleared us out quickly.  Ow for the Port Captain.  His office is right alongside, but we can find him up in his store where he sells, paper, pens and photocopies.  Sure enough, when we inter the store, there is a man wearing a blue polo shirt with a Panama Customs seal embroidered on it.  Yes indeed, he is the Port Captain and we can follow him down to the office by the water.  Here he fills out an incredible number of forms, stamps them, stamps them again, collects $60 and we have now cleared out of Panama.  We dinghied back to Capri, loaded the dinghy on the foredeck, hauled up the hook and sailed for Cartagena, Colombia.