Another chapter begins
leaving the dock and resuming our adventures
I didn't name this blog "The Slow Movers" expecting to spend the better part of a year stationary! We're finally off a dock and back out cruising.
The problem with not having updated this blog in so long isn't so much that a lot has happened, but rather that our lives have been a loose fabric of a hundred tiny stories. When I reflect on our years cruising aboard our sailboat Miette, it isn’t the sea miles we’ve put behind us, but the people we’ve met and the character of the places we’ve been.
A year ago, we were working on big boat projects before going through the Panama canal, then waiting out the rainy season after the canal transit this past April at the remote Turtle Cay Marina. Panama is far south enough to avoid the summer hurricane season, but it's also a lightning magnet. We've met some sailors who avoid Panama for that reason.
We've now been in Panama 17 months, half on the Pacific side, half on the Caribbean. Every day, the temperature stays within a few degrees of 80°F, with nights only a few degrees cooler. Often, we have a fan or two running around the clock to keep the air flowing. It's not always comfortable, but some discomfort comes with living in the tropics.
Since we've crossed into the Caribbean, we swim almost daily, and that goes a long way to recharging us.
On some days, torrential rains kept us cooped up below deck, and every now and then, lightning struck so close we flinched involuntarily. Up close, lightning sounds like a short sizzle and then a bomb.
When there's lightning, it's hard to not think about the tall metal mast of our sailboat rising into the electric sky, since we know of several sailboats in the area that have been struck by lightning this year, leaving their electrical systems fried.
When the rain subsides, we prairie-dog and look around at the sky, and then cautiously re-open hatches.
Although being stationary so long was unusual for us, it came with some great upsides.
The time we spend at marinas gives us opportunities to enjoy land. It was great to take walks through lush jungles full of wildlife, among monkeys, parakeets, parrots, toucans, cuckoos, and a thousand colorful birds I’ve yet to recognize.
We also upgraded our solar panels. Shawn has done dozens of small projects around that boat, keeping Miette in good shape, and keeps us in clean clothes and well-fed while I tackle remote work that puts money into both the sailing kitty and into our retirement accounts.
Often, we are asleep by 9pm, exhausted after we've both worked long days at our respective tasks. My remote job is not without stress, so I remind myself to consider where I am, and compare that to a past life of commuting to work through traffic, spending my days in an office, month after month, year after year.
Our hearts got recharged when we saw family and friends in the US this summer, especially our two young nephews in Portland.
Shawn stayed stateside for two months, but I only stayed two weeks. She surprised her parents and three siblings at a family reunion in Indiana, and then stayed with her dad as he convalesced from a health crisis before continuing on to Oregon. During my short visit to Portland, I only had time for a few friends but made sure to spend as much time as I could with my adult children, since I miss them more than I’d expected. We visit my parents, too, making small talk on the sidelines of their TV.
That was also the longest time Shawn and I had been apart since meeting. When you live on a small sailboat with someone, some occasional distance is welcome. I kept myself busy with remote work, simple meals, and socializing with other sailors, some of whom also had spouses away. I've also spent countless hours indulging in music-making as my primary creative outlet.
The best upside to our pause in sailing, though, had been finding community here at an isolated little marina in the middle of nowhere. Many of the people I wrote about in the last post, and more have come and gone.
Of course, our neighbors weren't ordinary people. It's a special breed of people who embark on sailing adventures to remote corners of the world like this. It might be impossible to meet a long-distance sailor who doesn’t have a boatload of colorful stories.
We also got to know the locals who work around the marina, its restaurant and little hotel. Librado the dock master and his wife Hermalinda, Santiago the electrician, Ludi the waitress, Edilsa the manager (and Macolla, her pet baby sloth), Narciso the groundskeeper, Dido the cook. And the local dogs were such a joy, Juan Fernando and Maria Clara, and occasional visits by one I called Piglet.
It was hard to say our goodbyes when it was time to untie the dock lines, but that comes with the nomadic life. We leave friends with hopes to see some of them again, knowing others are headed to the Pacific.
We had been hoping to buddy-boat with a retired Canadian couple from a remote part of British Columbia that also have an Island Packet yacht (far newer and bigger than ours), and have become good friends, but traveling with them is now off the table.
One night in October, they went to bed while charging a large battery pack for a portable air conditioner when the dock power was up to nearly 140 volts for a few hours, when it should be between 110 and 120.
They woke up to an explosion and hellish flames shooting up from the pack into the ceiling. Toxic black smoke immediately filled the cabin and they had to get off the boat. With the help of some neighbors, they were able to put the fire out, but not before it ruined the interior of their boat. This is, or was, a boat worth a half-million dollars and diligently kept in great condition.
The shaken couple escaped with some burns and with heavy, broken hearts, and now await the decisions of their insurance company. Mechanically, the boat is sound, but living aboard is not possible until the charred interior is gutted and rebuilt.
Like us, their boat is also their home, so they've got a difficult journey before they’re back to cruising. In the weeks after the fire, they stayed aboard a catamaran with friends that took them in. After insurance inspectors surveyed the damage, they decided to move the boat to Shelter Bay where there is a proper boat yard and workers for hire, and a vacant boat that was being loaned to them for a place to live.
They asked us to escort them for the 40 mile journey, just in case they ran into a problem at sea. With the boat still smelling toxic, we took the wife aboard with us since she's already dealing with health issues. She spent the entire 9 hour trip entertaining us with stories, and we were happy for the company, despite the weather being miserable and the rough seas making progress slow.
We left on a Saturday morning, with Miette following their boat and staying in radio contact, and got to Shelter Bay at dusk after fighting against wind, current, and rain storms. Near the port city of Colón, a man-made breakwater several miles long encloses a big bay and has an opening just wide enough to let ships through, slowing down as they approach the Panama canal, or rocketing to full speed as they depart. For the half-hour we neared that entrance, the rain was so heavy I could not see anything past 100 yards, so I reluctantly slowed. These ships can run us over and not even notice. The rain passed and we made it through the entrance safely clear of any ships, then anchored near the marina where the boat we’d escorted had docked.
That evening we all had dinner together then said our goodbyes.
Sunday morning, Shawn and I sailed back to Turtle Cay in far less time, the wind in our sails and current behind us. We attended several gatherings with the other cruisers there, seeing many new faces along with people that now felt like old friends.
At 3am on the morning of our departure, I was woken by the sound of the bilge pump alarm. Our fresh water pump had malfunctioned and had been slowly filling the bilge with water. It took over an hour to empty flooded compartments, drain the water, dry everything and install a replacement pump but we went back to sleep at 5am for a few hours before our departure time.
That pump had served without problem for years, and though it could have happened anywhere, it's failure the night before leaving just felt like one last hurdle to breaking free of life at a dock.
We're now back at the San Blas islands, at our 4th anchorage in 2 weeks. The shades of blue in the waters here are incredible, though sometimes it feels like I need sunglasses when I'm already wearing them.
The native Guna people stop by in the hand carved canoes to try selling us lobster or fabric artwork called "molas", or sometimes just to ask for something cold to drink or a bite to eat. They speak a pre-Hispanic language but also speak rudimentary Spanish with a strange accent.
They drift off with makeshift sails held aloft by sticks and row with wooden paddles. Some sails appear to have been donated by cruisers, while others appear to be old bed sheets sewn together.
This area has a strange geography. Although there are certainly hundreds of tiny islands with white sand beaches and coconut trees, there are many more reefs that are just below the surface.
A couple miles north and the sea is over 1,000 ft deep, but these islands and reefs sit on a shelf that is only about 50-100 ft deep from which rise these many coral cays (pronounced and also spelled “keys”).
Although we're 10 miles off the mainland, we wind our way through these mostly submerged reefs to anchorages that look like we're in there middle of the ocean, but the water is calm. We can even see and hear waves breaking but we float peacefully with a pleasant sea breeze blowing in through our hatches and portlights.
Our plans? We’re taking it one week at a time for now, waiting for mid-December when the tradewinds should return and stabilize the weather.