Bear with me. I’ll post a few links to videos and related commentary, then bring you up to speed on the past few months.
Where we left off: we’d just arrived in Panama City after a challenging passage through the Gulf of Panama.
We caught up with our friends John and Meredith of S.V. Jackdaw in Panama City. We joined up with them on a few occasions, and took buses, taxis, and walked for miles through the city, getting provisions, exploring the city, and checking out every marine-specialty store. They’d arrived earlier and showed us around, and much of this video was filmed in their company.
It was time for us to get Miette stored in a different part of Panama, so we could fly to Portland for a while. We sailed southwest through the sprawling shipping anchorage, south of the city, to Isla Taboga, a small tourist island 10 miles away.
There’s a small community on Isla Taboga that is lively, but only between the hours a ferry brings people from Panama City in the morning and when it leaves with them in the afternoon.
We went to shore after the ferry left. Everything was closed, and the entire community seemed to be on siesta, save for the kids still in class.
From Isla Taboga, we stopped overnight at Isla Otoque. I don’t believe any there’s any tourism there - it may be too long of a boat ride from anywhere. There’s a couple small communities on the east and west sides of the island. We passed close by the eastern community, before anchoring in the south, which afforded the most protection from wind and swell.
In this video, you’ll hear
the rosary being prayed through loudspeakers from the church at Isla Taboga, where a group of people sitting near the altar drone on hypnotically, “Santa Maria, Madre de Dios…”
Some off-time mallet instrument being practiced in the school
Kids splashing around in the water after school
birds wondering where their friends are
You’ll see
Panamanians playing on a beach overlooking an anchorage with around 80 ships waiting to transit the canal
Spooky statues hiding in a yard.
Party boats, anchored not more than 300 ft from Miette
a close pass of Otoque Oriente (the community on the Eastern side of Isla Otoque)
No matter where we fly, I’m at the window seat, camera at the ready, face mashed to the plexiglass. Here’s a very compressed version of our journey from Panama City to Miami to Houston to Portland - music, as always, by me.
Being back in Portland was intense.
Initially, I fought off inexplicable anxiety in the first couple weeks. I chalked it up to having spent so much time in remote, unpopulated places, or immersed in a vastly different culture. It simply felt like my skin was thin, that I saw, felt, and heard everything a little too much.
That familiar world is so far removed from the intense experiences of our time sailing that each one makes the other seem unreal. Stepping from one world into the other is jarring.
It had been nearly a year since we’d been in Portland. In 2023, we’d sailed the lengths of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and most of Panama. We’d enjoyed the challenge of constantly fitting in and finding our way around in strange places. In our second year of sailboat cruising, we were already adept at the lifestyle, feeling comfortable in the constant change and, in contrast, the loneliness of remote places.
Very few of our friends and family have much interest in what we’re doing, though. Some barely have an idea, and some harbor negative opinions or criticisms, and are polite enough not to raise the subject. I imagine other cruisers might feel this, too. I had returned to Portland brimming with travel experiences, and found mostly disinterest or just a couple polite questions here and there. Instead, I tried my best to fit in with everyone, no matter how alien I felt, and asked questions about their lives with genuine interest.
It seemed like my family and friends were almost frozen in time, essentially the same circumstances since I’d last seen them in, just a little older. For them, it was kids growing older, jobs changed or promotions, art projects, house projects, books read, streaming series binged, games played. I’ve been there, in that life, doing all those things, but that time now feels completely foreign.
A small handful of them do enjoy what we share online, though, and that always feels good. A few friends even treat us like rockstars, ready with eager questions about what they’ve seen in our videos.
Regardless of interest in our story, we repeatedly found ourselves overwhelmed with gratefulness for the hospitality of our friends and family, the big hugs, the dinners, the hang-outs, the places to sleep.
We spent a lot of time with young nephews who are just getting into an enjoyable age, babysitting them when we could. We did a lot of dog watching, cat watching, and house-sitting, and we moved from house to house to tiny-house to house. Through all this, we squeezed in time to see friends.
Throughout the two months, I also took on full-time work to pay for a lithium battery upgrade for the boat. I was contracted for a project that would demand every bit of my energy and brain power. I left Portland mentally exhausted. Our living quarters changed, sometimes on a weekly basis, sometimes less, and that wore us out in a different way. There are still a dozen people in Portland that I missed seeing, and some visits with friends were far too short.
Two months flew by and we returned to the boat in Panama, at a marina near the little town of San Carlos, roughly 1.5 hours southwest from Panama City by highway.
I switched gears from contract work to the lithium battery project. With the remote help and guidance of a sailing couple we met in Costa Rica, who are both electricians sailing elsewhere in Panama, I ordered every part I’d need for the project. I then started getting ready for construction, going through the blueprints, reading how-to articles and watching YouTube tutorials.
The packages I ordered would be shipped to a courier service in Miami who then charges a hefty fee to deliver them to Panama.
A few days later, it all went sideways.
Protests over a government mining contract brought Panama to a halt. Protesters blocked highways across the country and staged demonstrations in the capital for several weeks. Our packages began to get delayed, lost, found again, lost again, then finally delivered, weeks late.
By the time we received the items we needed to start the lithium project, four weeks had elapsed. The Supreme Court of Panama had finally ruled the mining contract unconstitutional, and highways re-opened. The packages trickled in.
It hasn’t gone well. I’m not an electrician, and I failed to send as many photos and questions as I should have to our electrician friends. I wanted to be as self-reliant as possible, but sometimes, when you’re new at a skill, you need someone experienced to look over your shoulder. Ask for help.
As a result, I have destroyed around $300 in equipment (two rectifiers and a battery isolator, if you must know). If I’d taken pictures of what I wasn’t sure about, the electricians would have quickly spotted the problem before it occurred (incorrectly mounting fuses). They did, when I took troubleshooting photos after the fact. I’m grateful, at least, not to have started any fires or sunk my boat. For the record, we keep a fire extinguisher ready while doing electrical work.
New parts are on order, deep breaths being taken.
Shawn has been trying not to go stir crazy. There is very little to do here, and it’s not scenic enough to bother with a paddleboard. At this moment, Shawn is walking through the nearby golf course, trying to find a coconut to augment our breakfasts.
There is a small village of San Carlos nearby that is walking distance, but it’s a long, sweaty, weather-dependent walk. Some of that walk is across a sunny, sandy beach, and sometimes, it’s just too damned hot for that. The town doesn’t have much going for it. There’s a health clinic, and four nearly identical mini-markets, each selling the same inventory, each owned by Chinese immigrants.
I’m usually told that my Spanish has a strange accent. In Nicaragua, I was told that I have “the international accent” that’s heard on TV. I think the person saying that, a driver, was being overly nice. I’d accidentally embarrassed him in front of a group of Nicaraguan officials.
The driver had brought the panel of officials from the city of Corinto, an hour away, to the marina where we arrived in Aserradores, Nicaragua. While the officials were getting paperwork ready, the driver was trying to chat with them, asking them what we were all about, side-eyeing us. He had no clue that I spoke and understood Spanish, and talked as if we weren’t there. You mean to tell me these people have a sailboat, and they came from the United States, to Nicaragua? Man, they’re crazy, right? Why do they come here, I wonder.
An official asked me a question in Spanish and I easily replied.
The driver broke into a laugh, saying to the official next to him, “oh fuck! they speak Spanish! haha! He understood me the whole time!” and giggled. I smiled and all the officials got a good chuckle, too.
I turned to him and answered him directly: We did not plan to stop in Nicaragua. There are very strong winds that blow over the flat land of your country from the Caribbean sea to the Pacific ocean, making the seas here very ugly and dangerous. We’d intended to go directly from El Salvador to Costa Rica, but were driven back by the sea. We came here to wait for better weather before we continue onward to Costa Rica.
International accent, my ass. I have the Spanish of a well-spoken third grader, who happens to know a handful of big words.
Lately, my ear’s been attuned to the Chinese accent in Spanish, which is new to me, and it tickles me to no end. Panama is home to generations of Chinese immigrants.
In the lobby of a mechanical shop, I’d almost tuned out a Chinese man who was also waiting, talking loudly on his phone. Only after a minute or two did I realize he was speaking Spanish, not Chinese! Through his thick accent, I understood that he was managing a subordinate over the phone, telling them what needed to get done before the day was over, which involved moving a refrigerator.
The marina we’re at is not very busy, and we’ve seen folks come and go - mostly crews that have just transited the Panama Canal. One boat that arrived yesterday set sail from Scotland 8 years ago. We’ve met Swiss people, Germans, Americans and Canadians. We’ve befriended an old French man who’s sailed across oceans many times, and sailed solo here from France (see more on his site) in the Argo, a small boat roughly Miette’s size.
The town of Coronado is a $7 taxi ride away, and we have done that trip weekly to buy groceries and the odd screw or nut, but the daily life right now is a slow wait. I don’t think there’s much worth filming in Coronado, but the longer we stay, the harder I’ll look. Coronado is a few strip malls stretched along the Pan-American Highway. It’s not charming at all. It serves the surrounding area, home to large expat communities.
Adios for now, amigos - enjoy this short video showing a walk into San Carlos with a sweet ending.
No one really asked me much about my travels last year, even though I was gone for almost half of it. I think it’s not out of disinterest but rather the concept itself is so foreign they don’t even know where to begin. I also think some are afraid to admit in their secret heart of hearts that they wish they could do the same. It has nothing to do with you (or me), my friend. People can only cope with what is in front of them just like your jarring reaction to Portland after being away for so long.
I’m glad you didn’t burn down the boat and I love both of you very much!