Balboa - The Pacific end of the Panama Canal 08 56.21N 079 33.37W
1 June 2004

Hello all,

Harmonica has been trapped in Balboa now for a month waiting for engine and autopilot parts. We last wrote on passage from Bonaire to the San Blas Islands with Doug & Fran on board. The fresh breeze and choppy seas which like to sit off the Colombian coast dropped to light as we approached Panama and so, yet again, Harmonica entered her anchorage by night.

The San Blas islands are an self-governing region of Panama where the kuna Indians use their own customs and language. Ownership of land is not entrenched, but crops raised, including coconuts, are private property. The area is poorly charted and there are many reefs but we sailed into West Hollandes, which we knew to be a wide entrance. Each village is allowed to take a payment for anchoring, and Julio, the chief of the 6 huts exchanged a stamped receipt for $5. He speaks Kuna and some Spanish, & he remembered us from our visit 3 years ago. He showed us the dug-out canoe which had been patched with the half tube of Sikaflex we had gave him then. The canoe is still split & leaking but we were glad to be remembered & welcomed. This time we talked more to Roberto whose second language is English. We were able to help Roberto with 2 litres of petrol and 40 metres from a spool of line which we have carried half way round the world and back. Roberto rewarded us well with live conch, fresh coconut, and a beautiful king helmet conch shell. Dave & Doug met the village children playing & catching small fish towards the outer reef, while Jan and Fran bought molars (the colourful embroidery which the Kuna women have become famous for). The scenery is stunning in the outer San Blas islands with coconut palms covering sandy islands which reach a few feet out of the sea, and turquoise water over the sand. Snorkeling showed corals and reef fish just beneath the surface. Pelican & mackerel were feeding around us. Twice we saw rays jumping, and a couple of small sharks.

We stopped in Porto Belo from where we took the bus (90 minutes of chest-vibrating music) to Colon to check in with Panama immigration ensuring that Doug & Fran could disappear safely into a taxi with the correct papers to reenter the other world.

2 or 3 days later, we moved from the rolly anchorage off the docks at Colon Flats into the Rio Chagres. The river entrance involves going round behind a sand bar with breaking waves, then tracking across these waves between the bar and the beach before entering the river. The depth is reported variously as 2.5 to 4 metres. There are unresolved problems with our new instruments, so Jan was swinging the old depth sounder into the waves over the side while Dave tried to look calm at the wheel. Inside, the river is truly wonderful. Serenely still with dense jungle on either side. There was bird song, swallows, kites fishing, eagles and vultures overhead, and parrots flapping from fruit tree to fruit tree. However the loudest noises come from monkeys. We walked up the hill on an overgrown path beside the boat and the howler monkeys told us exactly where they wanted us to stop by barking at us from way up in the trees above our heads.

6 miles upstream is the dam & spillway holding back the Gatun Lake and the main waters of the Panama Canal. We took the dinghy up and walked back to the viewing area at the Gatun Locks. It was well worth the trip. However, the Canal security guards talked to us, and obviously had mixed feelings about cruising boats close to the Spillway or in the Rio Chagres at all. That evening, Dave took the dinghy, GPS, and a lead line to sound the river mouth. It was shallow, & We decided to leave early in the morning before the waves built up.

To transit the Panama Canal with a small boat, one must have a skipper, and four line handlers, plus be sufficiently well organised to provide lunch for all including the advisor after a start which is often before 4.00am. On Wednesday, Dave & Jan helped to handle lines for an English couple. It was an excellent day starting at 3.30 and finishing with a taxi ride arriving back at Colon about 9.00pm. Our dinghy was still on Harmonica in the anchorage so we hitched a ride from shore with a Belgian and 2 Israelis who were heading back to their boats with more than a little booze inside them and one engine between their 2 dinghies. This one engine failed half way out so we rowed the last half mile in the dark past the docks!

Our guest line handlers, Phil & Ralph, were arriving from Calgary next day, and we had offered their services to help with another sailing boat on Saturday. That way they got 2 chances at the transit! "Lambs to the slaughter" they could have been but their skipper sounds to have powered his boat through with very little sleep, but a strong mixture of adrenaline, and camaraderie, and a good time was had by all.

Harmonica's turn was 2 days later. On the day at 3.15am it was teaming with rain and, while Dave took the dinghy over to a German boat to pick up our 4th line handler, Jan, Phil, & Ralph prepared to pull up our anchor. It was fouled on some old line and everything was slipping in the mud & rain, but we got the anchor up in time to receive our advisor from the pilot launch. We were glad to have already had a good look at the Gatun Locks since the rain was so hard that we could barely see the entrance from 100yds away. However, the weather cleared and a good day was ended by cracking a bottle of cheap bubbly under the Bridge Of The Americas.

Otto, the autopilot, must have been bored motoring through the Canal and in the Gaillard Cut he decided to turn Harmonica to take a close look at the bow of a passing freighter. He was promptly turned off and not allowed to take the wheel again, but this was to herald further breakages. A few days later, on our way out to the Pearl Islands in the Gulf of Panama, the raw water pump on the engine lost its seal and bearing, spraying salt water around the engine room. We had been told that Panama was a good place to buy spares, but Dave spent a frustrating 10 days walking and taking taxis all over trying to find new pumps. After 4 weeks, we have found somebody who can get them from the USA. Otto is in the hands of a German electronics specialist. Darth Vador, our new used outboard, is with the Mercury dealer, UPS has just announced that some new instruments are waiting at the airport, and Harmonica might be ready to sail again soon.

We took a week off in the mountains near the border with Costa Rica to break the frustrations of shopping for parts. Boquete was a 7 hour bus ride from Panama City, and a very pretty mountain town. They call it perpetual spring, and both the flowers and showers attested to this. In fact we happened on a week when a large low pressure left Colombia, crossed the Isthmus, and proceeded to become the first tropical storm of the year out in the Pacific. It pored with rain for our first 3 days. We toured a coffee plantation and got tutored in the many steps from bush to ground coffee. This was "gourmet coffee" requiring sampling, blending, and competitions reminiscent of wine tasting. The plantation owner had built housing for Indian workers which brought back memories of the homes which were rebuilt by cruisers in El Salvador after the 2001 earthquake. In El Salvador the houses had no chimneys and were black inside from cooking fires. We commented on the chimneys here and were told that the occupants had blocked them up because they liked the smoke for keeping the insects away. Later in the week, the mornings were clear and we walked around the sides of Volcan Baru. It is beautiful country and we can understand why many Europeans and North Americans have settled there.

Back in Balboa, we felt happy to have been away in ignorance: The rain had brought severe gale force winds through the anchorage causing some boats to drag, and one Polish catamaran to drag onto the rocks and flip upside down. Harmonica, thankfully, was completely unscathed on her Yacht Club mooring as if nothing had happened.

There are still election flags and banners flying from anywhere it is possible to hang anything. The next president, Martin Torrijos, will take power in September. He is the son of a "Strongman" who was one of the leaders of a coup against the present president's husband in 1968. The present female president did not stand in this election, she had an interior design degree from a community college, and is said by her opponents to have no economic plan. The 4 loosing candidates were businessmen &/or politicians.....Latin American politics!

Soon we shall head south for Ecuador. We shall not head west into the Pacific until 2005, but hope to be able to do some exploring in South America first.

Best wishes from Jan, Dave, & Harmonica