Navigating the San Blas

PS pix added on May 3

A boat called Fantasy in the West Holandes Cays

We've given ourselves 10 days to "fatten up" in the San Blas islands. In years past, half that time in the tropics would have done us nicely. We're not so far gone that we don't remember how tightly time is accounted for when you've got a job to go back to (and that's not a "boat job"). But ahead of us, all going according to plan, is the Panama canal transit, and then the Very Long Passage to the Marqesas. Four lean weeks, maybe more, at sea. So we'll take the full 10 days.

A cool wind comes through the cut

In the high season, up to 40 boats have been counted in this anchorage

Derelict huts - or are they? Gone fishing? 

It's hot out here in the eastern Holandes cays. Oh my lord is it hot. And damp. The sun has gone, and the rain has arrived, along with the bugs. I'm covered in tiny bites. Am I putting you off?

Lemon lime and bitters made in Trinidad - with ice

Enki's big shade saves the day - again

The season is changing. A few days ago the wind was blowing from the north-east, as it does consistently from November to April. The sky was clear, and even from a dinghy or a kayak, you could see the magnificent coral banks and indigo fish as clearly as if you were in an aquarium. Then yesterday the wind dropped off and swung indolently around the clock, big banks of heavy grey cloud lowered themselves onto the horizon, the sea turned pearly-grey and as night fell the thunder and lightning show began.

NZ-made and registered - Exit Strategy in the East Holandes cays

In the mangroves, the bugs read the shift in the weather. They didn't announce their intentions but the old hands knew. Yesterday morning, there was an exodus of boats from the shallow, gin-clear anchorage known as the Swimming Pool out into deeper waters. Bug alert. By then, I was a goner, bitten all over. Excited by the lack of wind, I'd taken the kayak out very early in the morning for a couple of hours. The paddling was easy, and I nosed my way through the island channels, close to the mangroves - what a fine meal I made for those no-see-ums.

The vege men

We're eating well too though. The vege boat, an outboard-powered dugout loaded with fruit, vegetables, eggs, even cask wine, trawls regularly through the most popular anchorages. It's manned by three Kuna Indian adults, typically short and well-muscled men. Their tools of trade are simple - a set of manual scales, a notebook and a pencil, a pouch of small change, and a sweet-faced child. There's usually a child, or several, on any dugout which approaches our boat. The produce - pineapples and mangoes, tomatoes and potatoes, passionfruit and peppers - comes from the mainland, mostly Colombia, we're told. Nothing grows on the islands except coconuts, but we're not eating those since they're not for sale. Nor are we eating fish or lobster which strictly speaking are off limits, this being the breeding season. But the Kuna know a diminishing market when they see one, so they're still fishing while there are boats around which will buy.

The vege men came with family and friends one day

Much is made of the Kuna having resisted the modern world, and living in the traditional way and no doubt there are many people who are happy to do so, either in their crowded villages or in solitary, on a water-less palm island of their own. Their customary sources of income have been trading coconuts and selling molas (the gorgeous hand-sewn applique squares which, as Panamanian souvenirs, are almost as famous as woven hats). But the modern world is breathing down the Kunas' necks and there's a suspicion of seduction in the air. The Kuna girls who checked us into Porvenir were giggling over their smartphones. There's internet in the islands now (we didn't know till tonight). Minutes have to be paid for, as does petrol for outboards. There's flexibility in the traditional ways, for sure.

The morning after we dropped anchor here, a small bony man called Victor paddled cross from his island to let us know that we owed him $10 (we don't share a language, but some things are always clear). He gave us a receipt which was good for a month. A day later, another boat called on us to ask for anchorage money. They looked at Victor's receipt, and went away. Who were they? Things are a bit murky in the San Blas out of the water.

Molas are an important part of the Kuna economy - Venancia is a shrewd dealer

Venancio reels me in - I didn't offer much resistance

The trip out has been more than worth their while 

The charge for anchoring amongst these idyllic coral atolls and sandbars, small though it is, comes on top of the fee you pay the Kuna Yala (nation) when you arrive in the San Blas islands, which is on top of the hefty non-negotiable annual cruising permit you pay the Panamanian government. It's the cost of doing business, Alex always says, and he's right, but we've found along the way that there's a certain give and take between yachts and those who provide services to them (sorry to smash the romance of cruising, but that's the reality in every place we've been to thus far on Enki - we'd love to be surprised by another kind of human interaction). Get the balance wrong, and the yachts go somewhere else. We've seen that happen in the Med.

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Tropical cruising lesson #1

NO PIX, SORRY - NORMAL PHOTO-FILLED TRANSMISSION WILL RESUME IN MAY WHEN WE REACH PANAMA PROPER

pix added on May 3

"You're dragging."

A woman's voice sliced through our sleep. We'd gone to bed, hoping to stay asleep for 8 full hours after five quick-stepping nights at sea. The air had been so still and full of water you could have drunk it. But now, at 5 am, a 20 knot north-easterly was blowing through the anchorage in behind the reef at Porvenir Island.

Alex bolted into the cockpit. It was dark. No moon, no lights ashore (Porvenir has a small airstrip, but no streets). He felt rather than saw the boat pass by our starboard side, "almost close enough to take out the solar panels", he said later. Then it was gone into the blackness. He heard the woman say, again, "YOU ARE DRAGGING". But if we were dragging, we were dragging upwind?

He started the engine (how simple does that sound now?), turned on the chart plotter and the windlass. Which direction were we facing? I was up by now, and went forward. I took off the snubber (a safety line for the anchor) and began to winch up the chain. It felt firm and wasn't rumbling. I hesitated, and even though time is always of the essence when you are dragging, I went back aft again, and compared the note I'd made of our position when we anchored, against the position which by then had popped up on the chart plotter. The same. We haven't moved, I told Alex. But the woman had said... Who was she? and where had she gone?

Our torch beam found our nearest neighbour, the Norwegian boat, just where it should be. Behind us though, where there'd been no boat in the evening, it found a yacht. We recognized the shape of the hull - the Turkish yacht. We'd met Tarsin onshore while we were waiting to clear in. One thing led to another and we discovered we had a mutual friend in Turkey - Banu, an exceptional Turkish woman and solo sailor. Tarsin was over the moon. He'd been running charters with his wife Rengen between Panama and Colombia, including the San Blas islands, for six years. He hadn't seen Banu for a long time, but they went way back to university days in Istanbul, and sailing out of Bodrum.

He pointed out his yacht to us. It was anchored close in. We were at the back of the small anchorage, where waves broke on a shallow coral tongue about 75 m from our stern. And that's where Tarsin's boat was now. It didn't seem a good place to be.

We determined that we weren't dragging, and kept watch - again. At 6 am the sun rose. We kept looking behind us for clues as to what was happening. No-body responded on VHF 16. The Turkish boat was floating. It wasn't on an angle. Its anchor chain was down but the boat wasn't swinging with the wind. It looked to be stuck. Several workboats driven by Kuna Indians running beween Porvenir and the village on Wichubhuala island stopped and words were exchanged. They left. Tarsin and his wife seemed to wave them away.

They must be ok, we said to ourselves. Alex saw Tarsin light up a cigarette (of what significance? a man always has time for a cigarette, I've found). Then they were both at the bow, then both in the cockpit. About an hour passed, during which more local help with serious grunt was turned down. Then a couple in a rubber ducky came alongside, friends obviously. I figured they were from the big charter yacht which had come into the anchorage at sunset. Commercial friends. They tied on, and tried to push Tarsin's boat off the coral.

Then they went away. What was going on?

We got into our dinghy and went to to see. Did they need help? Yes. They did. They were on the reef. Tarsin explained why he'd waved on the local help. The Kuna Indians would claim the boat for salvage if he let them tow it off - they were just waiting for it to be REALLY stuck and then they'd be there, stripping it bare. He knew what he was talking about.

Just behind us was the upturned hull of a wrecked yacht - stripped bare. Later, when were looking at our charts and guide books, the wrecks leapt off the page/screen. Our Canadian friends Jane and Russell on TaB, who were in San Blas a couple of months ago, reported that already six yachts had gone up on reefs this year.

So, within 24 hours of arriving in the San Blas islands we were helping to get a yacht off a reef. And that yacht didn't belong to some dumb newcomer like ourselves. Tarsin had anchored in Porvenir more times than he could remember. "We're more or less locals," he said. Moreover, they'd had been anchored in that same spot for a week, which ordinarily would lead you to believe you were "well dug in", as the saying goes. The kicker though was that when they found they were dragging, they couldn't start their engine. Their batteries were flat. They couldn't start their engine or work their anchor windlass. So they had no way to manoeuvre the yacht in a tight anchorage.

Their friends came back in their large charter yacht with a long tow rope and with the help Enki's dinghy (with its 15 hp outboard) and two Kuna Indian volunteers at the bow, hauling on the anchor chain with Tarsin, the boat came off the coral. An hour later, with the anchor set and holding, Tarsin and Rengen were waiting for sufficient charge from their solar panels to allow them to start their engine.

Why did they drag? Rengen thought that someone had knocked into their boat a couple of nights ago while they were ashore. She'd noticed a bent staunchion when they came back. "Perhaps they moved us a bit, and our anchor had been dislodged and was just sitting on the sand, and we couldn't have noticed these past couple of days because there was no wind."

After breakfast, we weighed anchor (by choice) and moved four miles to one of the exquisite island groups for which San Blas is so famous. We're on our own here, though around the corner about 20 yachts are crammed into the (obviously) favoured spot in the Chichime group. I don't think we've ever been anywhere which matches the brochures so closely - the tropics as they are in your dreams. We're anchored behind a barrier reef, off an island with waving coconut palms. It's uninhabited apparently, though there are two thatched huts set back from the white sand beach. As far as the eye can see are more tiny sandy islands top-heavy with coconut palms.

The water is lukewarm and standard issue tropical turquoise. Clear too - this afternoon I swam enchanted through a coral garden which, like an artfully-landscaped English garden, left me wishing I could commit to memory its contrasting textures and undulating contours, its repeating patterns and sculpted features. Failing that, I'll turn up again tomorrow (with my boatman Alex), at the same place (a dot of sand in the middle of nowhere, with no palms, about half a mile southeast of our boat), and the pleasure will be all mine again.

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