I was going to sail my boat to Europe after about 6 years in Caribbean waters. From San Blas Islands to Southern Spain would take around 3 months with about 4 stops in various islands and countries. It has been done before so how hard could it really be?
My friend Kenneth and I started with a few days in Panama City, waiting for a ride to get to the Carti in The San Blas Islands, where we were going to take a speedboat to Lemmon Cays, the home for my sailboat Solitude for a few months now. A good friend of mine, mister Steve Campbell who I had meet in Curacao, was now living and working in Panama City. Steve is a very nice guy and put a roof over the head of the two Danes for a few days.
The day came where we could get a 4X4 to Carti with food and things for about 4 days until we got to Shelter Bay Marina in Colon, the place we would stock up the boat for 3 months of sailing. 6 in the morning the Nissan Patrol came, very surprising and highly unexpected, on time! We took off with a couple from Italy who was going to a friend on a sailboat in the same place as us. Most of the journey I was sleeping or listening to the punkrock band Screeching Weasel in my iPod and blocked out the noise from the engine, the Italien couple and the highly annoying, super slow love songs the driver was not rocking out to.
3 hours car ride to Carti where the trip through Panama City is no problem, just normal good roads, then there is a bit of gravel road, which is noisy and then the road turns into normal tarmac again but then the Darien Province starts. The Darien Province separates Colombia from Panama and there has never been build a road through this area of the world even though the Pan American Highway runs straight through Central America and goes on in South America with the same name. Anyway, we were in this area and I can fully understand why. It is very hilly and dens forest everywhere, it would cost a fortune and at the same time cut down virgin rainforest to build a road here. In January I had done the journey with my girlfriend so I knew the drill. The Italian woman had never done it before. With eyes wide open she was holding on to her husband and the seat in front of her with white knuckles while the driver raced up steep hills and 'round one thousand bends. If you are not feeling motion-sick, it is a beautiful drive through very green jungle.
Finally, after 3 hours we arrived at Carti, the main gateway to the Western San Blas Islands. A year ago you were able to take an airplane to El Povenir - a very small island - from Panama City. The airplane was able to take 12 persons onboard but at this very moment they were making the airport - or maybe that word is waaaay too big so lets just call it a concrete, fairly straight runway with a few restaurants around it - bigger so larger airplanes will be able to land. This will generate more tourists in the future, giving more money to the Kuna Indians, who are the only ones living in The San Blas Islands, and slowly get the indians hooked on capitalism, money and western living. Don't know if this is good or bad for these indians but it is inevitable and it has happened many places in the world with positive and negative outcome.
It took around an hour of waiting to get a speedboat that could transport us and the Italian couple the final leg to the Lemmon Cays. We came along side on Solitude at her anchor, loaded all the food and things on and smiled. Finally we could begin our long journey towards Europe.
Eighty meter of anchor chain and two anchors had helped Solitude to be in the same position as I left her which is a positive issue. However, the negative issue is that after several months under water, the anchor chain had formed it's own coral reef but it only took around three hours in the baking sun to wash, scrape and knock off the underwater environment from the chain while we borrowed a mooring from Yogi, the German guy who's wife had been taking care of my boat.
And the same deal was on the bottom of Solitude, a pristine beautiful coral reef with little sponges, soft corals and other stuff I had not seen before was taking up a lot of space. With dive equipment, gloves, cold blood and a scraper I hacked and scraped this environment away from my floating home. Good thing Greenpeace didn't see this as they would have made it into a national park and end my journey towards Europe.
Two days of fixing up stuff and we were ready to sail towards Colon to stock up provisions. We stopped in El Porvenir, the island with the airport and only 3 nautical miles from Lemmon Cays, to check out of Panama. We were still going to be in Panama but it was easier to bend to rules a bit and check out here, especially when my $200 cruising permit had run out two weeks ago.
Anchor down on the bottom, Kenneth and in the dinghy into the island. Across the runway, barefooted, and into the yellow building. The day before we had dinghyed over to El Porvenir from Lemmon Cays but too late, the immigration officer was not there. Therefore we had to come back. The habour master and immigration officers were really friendly even though it took a while to write the forms on the typewriter and another form in handwriting, computers had not yet arrived to the San Blas Islands.
About 9 am we had the dinghy on deck, the outboard engine aft and raised the sail, just as heavy clouds rolled in. 20 minutes after we had left El Porvenir about 10 dolphins came playing around the boat for 10 minutes, for some a sign of good luck, for me just a beautiful sight. The wind was from the north as we headed west and the clouds got thicker and thicker, threatening to open up for the water. All of a sudden the wind got way stronger healing Solitude over to port and then the water came from the clouds, it was not a threat is was a promise. The visibility got less than fifty meters and the drops of water were painful in my face. After an hour it stopped raining and the wind dropped so we had to motor sail... engine running and main sail up, that is.
Not much happened but we made it to Isla Linton before the dark came over us. As we put down the anchor and arranged things onboard from sailing-vessel to live-aboard-vessel, a local kip came along side Solitude in his little dinghy with a 9,9 horsepower outboard on. Many manufactures of outboard engines have made the 9,9 horsepower engine because America put in a new rule a few years back. If you were sailing a 10 horsepower or more engine around you had to have a license for it. The sales dropped on the 10 horsepower engines around America until a bright dumb-ass had the idea. We just going to make a 9,9 horsepower engine, no license needed and sales back to normal....
The kid only spoke Spanish but I understood so much that he invited us to a party tonight. We said no thanks and told him we had to sleep because we were leaving tomorrow morning. He was a bit disappointed as he fired the outboard and went into the shore. Kenneth and I ate diner and passed out.
Early in the morning we raised the anchor and sails and went on with the journey towards Shelter Bay Marina in Colon. We passed Portobello where Captain Henry Morgan, mostly famed for the spiced rum, had made one of his biggest raids on the Spanish gold and where I had been a few times before to pick up friends or set off others. Right after the bay 10-15 dolphins came playing around the boat for about 20 minutes. Sailing in the tropics, good wind and dolphins on the bow, my average birthday, as it was this day, does not get any better than this.
On the horizon big container ships appeared. They were at their anchor waiting for transferring the Panama Canal and slowly we came closer to Colon Habour and the entrance to The Panama Canal. I had the idea that we would encounter a lot of traffic around this area but we sailed straight for the entrance, pass the anchored ships and into the huge harbour without having to stop for anybody. On the VHF radio I tried to call Shelter Bay Marina to hear where we could get a slip for the boat but no one answered until we were in the mouth of the narrow gap into the marina. A bit confusion and we found the slip, put the lines on the dock and quickly put stuff away on the boat. It was only another hour for kick off quarterfinal in The Champions League, so we didn't have much time for chitchat.
As I was rolling up lines a guy came to the boat and asked, "Are you Jesper?", with a thick American accent.
I answered, "Who's asking?"
With a smile he replied, that a Danish guy called Thomas was waiting for us. A bell in my memory started to ring. Thomas, who wanted to come on the entire journey to Spain and who I had been corresponding with for a while, was in the marina waiting for us to come in.
The first leg in the "Panama to Spain Journey" was done, we could now start the preparations for blue water, long distance, ocean cruising sailing.
