Potobelo and onwards
Normangcarter
Norman Carter
Wed 3 Mar 2010 19:59
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From the various descriptions this area seems well
worth a visit and the anchorage was safe and quiet but the town was another
storey.
The area is steeped with history and the town is
home to the church of San Felippe de Portobello famous for the wooden statue of
the black Christ.
It's history is not physically well preserved and
neither is the town, I found it dirty, smelly and a bit intimidating so next day
off to Shelter Bay, Panama!
It's an exiting experience, going through the
Atlantic entrance of the bay for the Panama Canal and the marina was able to
just about squeeze us in at anchor for three days before finding us room on a
pontoon where we had access to water and electricity.
One of the other yachts on the pontoon had dropped
his Gerber Knife overboard and asked me to look for it - I tried free diving but
it was over 8 metres and vis was poor.I was thinking of using my bottle but
the harbour master suggested it might be unwise as there were crocs in the water
and only the day before they had a local pig!
The skipper was quite disappointed.
Going through the canal is a brilliant experience
and we did it twice, the first time was as line handlers as all yachts that
passage through have to have a skipper, four line handlers and a pilot on
board.
The transit up the locks takes about three hours
and then you overnight on Gatun Lake so a good excuse for eating and drinking!
Up early the next morning and motor the next 25 miles to the down side and the
Pacific
Here we anchored at Playita for about a week where
we worked on the boat and provisioned her for many weeks.
For the first two days I managed a swim from Norsa
until I noticed a regular massive sick of raw sewage being discharged in the
bay-------thank goodness I had my hep BE before we left.
During our time at Playita I managed to fit a small
katadyn water maker but because of the state of the water I was very reluctant
to try it out! Management of batteries and energy consumption of energy is quite
a problem on smaller boats and I'll write about our various problems and
solutions later.
Enough! -of s----- Playita
and time to leave. The Las Perlas Isles are only about 35 miles away and we are
the second boat to leave, close behind Briet, a 34ft Najad. We are the two
smallest boats in the fleet, and off to Contadores. At
this lovely inhabited island we had a chance to clean the Panama dirt from the
hull and decks.
The island is little more than a mile long and less
wide and it made a very pleasant walk
Here at anchor we watch the pelicans flying in
formation, like the Red Arrows, skimming the surface of the sea, then climbing
high and dive bombing for their food
.
Threre are a couple of basic shops --but they
do sell alcohol and a couple of restaurants. We had some delightful meals at
Geralds, near the tiny airport.
Sara and I bought a 2 bottle dive but it was
disappointing as the viz was really poor, still good practice.
It really blew up on the third night and some
yachts had trouble with dragging anchors.
Next day off to Isla Canas to a most wonderful
isolated anchorage where we ate our spanish mackerel caught on route, what a
wonderful fish.This anchorage was so beautiful that we just had to spend another
day here.
The next day we slipped for Esmeralda. - in fact
just a little north of it to river Cacique where we anchored for a few nights. a
very good anchorage and quite an exiting trip up the river on the dinghy through
the mangrove trees.
Caught more fish, a blue fin tuna and an even
bigger crevalle jack.
The locals visited our boats on their dugouts,
selling their wares and the local kids were a delight, looking for pressies
which they generally got! Couldn't give a strange kid a penny lollipop back
home!
Time - to go!! we left Las Perlas
at midday on 02-03-10 and are now 133 miles into our journey to Galapagos. there
is virtually no wind so we are motor sailing although the seas are quite
rolly.We are trying to eak out the diesel as well as we can so keeping the revs
below 2000, but still averaging 5 knts.
As I write this I am dripping with sweat,
everything is sticky, at night the moisture laden air clings to all it touches,
mildew and mould thrives on everything - now where was that in the
contract?
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