The Pacific Blues
Finishing our sail on the Pacific Ocean
What a difference a day makes! After an interlude of beautiful weather, we left Isla Seca at exactly the right time, as the weather did make a turn for the worse. We woke up early to leave for Bahia Honda, and it was very dark and grey with low, dark rain clouds off in the distance. Eventually the front came by to give us a soaking. As these storms were coming from the east, we felt a bit exposed on the east side of the islands. The wind itself, even at gale force, isn’t particularly dangerous for us, but higher winds kick up higher seas, which are uncomfortable at best, as the boat rolls from side to side. As a result, we felt we were pushing our luck by staying too long in the Islas Secas. Bahia Honda would be very protected from these waves, and we were looking forward to hanging out there in relative tranquility until the stormy weather passed.
As soon as we pulled into Bahia Honda, a couple of men came to our boat to see if we would like to buy some of their vegetables and coconut water. We’re almost always interested in fresh fruit and vegetables, since these are the hardest for us to store for very long, so we were happy to stock up. We also pulled together a bag of clothes and shoes for them to share within their community.
Bahia Honda is extremely remote, mainly because it is nestled at the end of a large peninsula, with the nearest highway about fifteen miles away across jungle covered mountains. The only road on the peninsula is a dirt track which winds through the jungle on the other side of the mountains, and all supplies are delivered by boat from the small town at the end of the road, some miles up the coast.
There are a few families who have lived in this bay for a very long time. We met the eldest of one family as we were anchored in his anchorage properly named after him. His name is Domingo and he came over with his son-in-law who invited us for a hike and then over for dinner that night. Peter went on the hike while I baked a cake and we brought over some of our best Italian wine.
Domingo’s daughter and her husband are talking with Peter about the differences in making arroz con leche and arroz con coco in the below video. Both are traditional deserts.
Domingo’s natural son is named Kennedy. He and his wife invited Kyle and Leah to their house for dinner that same evening we were invited by Domingo. Kyle and Leah discovered that Kennedy was estranged from his family but he didn’t say why. As a result he was very poor and was having a hard time managing to live on so little. Unfortunately, we had already given our extra clothes to Kennedy’s sister to distribute to whomever she thought needed them. We felt sad that we didn’t know about Kennedy’s situation until afterwards.
We did what we could for Kennedy. His generator needed a new battery, and we told our friends Michelle and Joe who were up the coast in Boca Chica to see if they could bring a new one down for him. This community does rely on the income produced by selling fruits, vegetables, and handicrafts to the steady stream of cruisers passing through. They said fewer sailboats were stopping in because many weren’t going to Coiba National Park any longer due to a recent increase in park fees. Since we’re members of an online group of Panama-bound cruisers, we sent a list of items like notebooks, pens, clothes, shoes, and household items the families needed, especially Kennedy and his wife.
As soon as the weather improved we left for Coiba National Park. The islands were surrounded by beautiful clear blue water. We dropped anchor on our way to the main island and decided to talk a walk.
We could hear people’s voices from the direction of the jungle on the island. A man came out from the jungle to the beach. Peter approached him and the man explained in Spanish that he worked for the research station on the other side of the island, run by the Smithsonian Institute. He also warned us not to come onto the island or into the water at night due to crocodiles. We made sure to listen to him!
The next day we stopped at the ranger station on the main island of Coiba to pay the park entry fee. We had heard stories of a fourteen foot crocodile named Tito who lived close to the ranger station. Tito was popular amongst the tourists, who would take selfies with him to post on Instagram. We had heard he was always there, and asked about him, only to find out that just about a week before we arrived, Tito decided to bite one of the park rangers who had gone for a swim, who then bled out and died. It was a shock to everyone as I think they had all gotten very comfortable with the crocodile but it just goes to show that crocodiles are not pets. Tito hadn’t been seen since.
We had been enjoying a break in the lightning storms and rain, but it was time to move along. The intensity of frequency of the lightning, coupled with the extreme proximity of some of the strikes to the boat were making us nervous, especially in light of how extremely remote our location was. With hundreds of nautical miles to the nearest haul out facility, we didn’t relish the possibility of sailing without any electronic aids to navigation in case of a damaging strike. So we set off early the next morning. The following pictures are of various islands along our way.
But first, we had to stop at the hot springs on Coiba. Accessible from an anchorage several miles south of the ranger station, the path to the spring was a short walk from shore. Unfortunately the tide had gone out which meant we had to leave the dinghies anchored quite a ways out, and wade the rest of the way in mud.
A short video below of the end of a whale sighting on our way back to our boats!
Finally, we had an advantageous weather window to round the famously treacherous Punta Mala on our way to Panama City. Punta Mala, or Point Evil, is a major cape separating the Gulf of Panama from the rest of the Pacific coast of Panama, and an acceleration zone for winds and currents. Our passage however happened during a season of more favorable currents and winds, and we chose our window wisely.
Before leaving for Panama City though, we had one last anchorage, the last before rounding the point, to rest up in before the longer voyage.
In the afternoon after arriving, we saw hundreds of butterflies flying past our boat. They were so beautiful and they were clearly on a mission to go somewhere. Below is a video Kyle took from his boat. You can see a few butterflies traveling past in the video, but there were hundreds to thousands of them! We are not sure what their mission was but they were all flying in the same direction. Maybe they were pointing the way for us, and encouraging us to fly along as well.
It was our last time at anchor in the Pacific ocean. It was sad to leave this beautiful blue pacific water, especially in such a remote and pristine part of the natural world. It was another ending which we were learning to accept as continuous part of the cruising experience. With each ending comes a new beginning and we were also excited to explore Panama city which was going to be very different from where we had been spending our time lately! When we left Costa Rica we thought we were leaving the most beautiful country of our tour so far but the Pacific side of Panama really left an impression on us.
We set sail early the next morning. Below are a bunch of pictures and video from our passage. We ran across some whales which luckily wasn’t in the middle of the night. We also sailed with our Spinnaker up for a while as we got closer to the point which was ironic given how famous the point was for having such challenging conditions.
The whale sighting directly on our path around the point. There were a few of them diving and fishing for their dinner?
We made it into port and inside the marina safely well within daylight hours. We were happy to have Punta Mala behind us and without any challenges or major thunderstorms. We got lucky with the weather as we had heard stories of sailors with a completely opposite experience. Now there was time to rest, clean up the boat and shower before our celebration dinner at one of the marina restaurants. Below is a video of the servers presenting the drinks we ordered which felt like a warm welcome!
Stay tuned as we continue to explore Panama City while also preparing to transit the Panama Canal. Our friends, Sam and Keegan, came all the way from San Francisco to help us on this next adventure.
Nice pictures and stories
Nice painting, Donna!