Our Great Adventure : Crazy Cruisers in Panama

Portobello Anchorage

After two years of cruising, the state of the boat’s cockpit enclosure had degraded from “embarrassing” to “nonexistent”. On a centre-cockpit boat such as ours, the cockpit is in the centre, as opposed to in the stern, to allow for a massive master bedroom and ensuite bathroom. But because the cockpit is closer to the front we are much more exposed to spray and waves when we are bashing upwind, which we usually are. The Endeavour 42 is supposed to have a full wrap-around plastic enclosure with panels that can be unzipped and removed as necessary. When we bought the boat, two panels were missing, and the remaining panels were well-worn and cracked.

Old enclosure

Approaching Mainland Panama

We had planned to have the enclosure replaced once we were in one place for long enough but found the wait times too long in Florida, it too be too expensive in Grenada and couldn't find anyone in Colombia. By the time we reached Panama, the clear tape holding the front panel together had started to disintegrate in the sun and we knew the situation was getting desperate. We still had about a month before the end of hurricane season and happened upon a marine canvas shop in Portobelo that could fit us in for a reasonable price. As we waited for our new enclosure we set about exploring Panama.

Playa Blanca - Not sure about the namesake beach but the crystal clear water was lovely!

As it turned out, that did not take very long.

James asked me to make a face summing up how I felt about our time in Panama thus far...

Bird raft

There are two main anchorages in eastern Panama: Puerto Lindo and Portobelo. Puerto Lindo has a marina and it rains a lot and is uncomfortably rolly in October. Portobelo has a town with a few shops, it rains even more, and is even more rolly. We split our time between the two and filled our days visiting with our friends on Lalamanzi and trying to improve our drinking water catching system. Most cruising boats that don’t have a reverse osmosis water maker have some way to catch rainwater. The coolest cruisers have a hardtop fibreglass roof over their cockpit with a drain that connects directly to their water tank. We, however, are not that cool and just have a tarp with a hole in it that drains into a bucket. Nevertheless with rain falling almost every day or night we were able to easily keep up with our water demands. Not to mention that rainwater tastes better than both marina water and bottled water!

Spanish Fort at Portobelo

The other pastime we developed was observing the local cruising community. You see, Panama is pretty much the end of the line for folks cruising the Caribbean. Because of the prevailing winds and currents, when you get to Panama your options are (a) go through the canal and continue west around the world (b) sail north (c) stay in Panama forever. We are aiming for Option B. Most cruisers go with Option A, but a surprising amount default to the last option. Both Puerto Lindo and Portobelo have a decent number of these “lifers”, including “The Boat With the Chicken Living on It”, “The Guy That Wears Just a homemade Loincloth”, and “The Lady That Spends Half the Year on Her Boat and The Other Half in a Panamanian Prison”. These are all 100% real and are just the tip of the iceberg. Very entertaining. Side note: if you want a great deal on a boat, Panama is the place to start your search.

Waiting for Bananas to Ripen

We spent some time visiting the howler monkeys in Puerto Lindo (which as an aside is not very "lindo" - Spanish for beautiful). I mastered making different kinds of curds - lime and passionfruit were by far the best. Banana curd should never, ever be made. I also started making homemade courtesy flags to fly in the countries we plan on visiting this season. This gave me great hope that we would indeed leave Panama one day. We celebrated James Birthday here and since there isn't a whole lot to do for a birthday celebration I decided to make him a sponge cake filled with homemade passionfruit curd. Panamanian flour and I just do not get along - the cake was as thin as a cracker.

Passionfruit curd

We also made a couple of day trips to Panama City. The travel time from Portobelo is about three hours each way, leaving you a solid four hours for exploring Panama City. We had a hot tip on an Indian restaurant whose owner had immigrated to Panama from Pickering. The food was incredible and was as close to a taste of home as a curry made by an Indian-Canadian in Latin America could possibly be. The best thing about Panama City has to be its modern new metro system which can take you from one bland paved concrete neighbourhood of the city to another for a mere 35 cents! We skipped the famous Canal Museum in favour of a waterfront view of all the ships waiting for transit in the calm blue Pacific.

Panama City

Ships Waiting on the Pacific Side

Of course we realized that unless we had a drastic change of heart we realized that at 37 miles this might be the closest our little sailboat would get to this vast expanse of water. We had very mixed feelings about that and it was hard to see all the boats transiting the canal knowing that we weren't going to cross through the canal.