We set a second anchor in about 10m and the following day discovered the outboard had water in the carburettor again.  It had started giving problems in Panama so whilst I was stripping it down, Jane and Willem took the kayak ashore to the beach and set off for a nature walk.  I suppose I should have alerted them to the state of the tide (which was coming in).  It left me with a race against time to fix the outboard or don mask and fins for a long swim so I could reach the kayak before the tide!

The following day we crossed to Coiba escorted by dolphins once more.  We anchored off a glorious bay which Willem and Jane explored in the dinghy (now working) and reported finding a marked trail into the forest.

Now you would have thought I had got into the swing again of making routine tidal calculations, but when we set off for our walk we tied the dinghy to a stake and waded ashore to find when we returned that it was aground about a mile away from the water’s edge!  But our walk into the forest was spectacular and once again we were privileged to enjoy Willem and Jane’s encyclopaedic knowledge of wildlife and vegetation.

Isla Coiba is a national park and in the evening some park rangers came to see us.  We told them of our intention to make our way up to the Ranger Station the following day, but we stopped along the way at Granata d’Oro to swim and snorkel in some lovely clear waters.  The rangers visited us again in the evening to check up on us but more probably in the hope of another beer, and we duly turned up at the Ranger Station the following morning.  Sarah, Willem and Jane went in to pay the park fees and found to our delight that it included a guide for a walk across the island through the rain forest.

I had followed them ashore in the kayak, but not without incident as I managed to turn turtle on boarding it.  As a resu
lt I lost my shorts, T-shirt, belt and leatherman in about 7m.  The water was crystal clear so I marked the spot and planned to search for them later on.  So for now – no leatherman!

We had not gone ashore prepared for a walk so I returned to the boat to retrieve some more appropriate kit.  Once we had changed we set off with our (garrulous) English speaking guide, who himself took along a local Indian guide.  This was just as well because he clearly didn’t know the way through the forest!  Coiba had until recently been a penal colony and so once we were off the track we were in a spectacular virgin rain forest, where we spent the next few hours crossing the island.  The wildlife and vegetation were absolutely amazing.  We finally walked through some mangroves out to a bay fed by a small river.  You should know that the park rangers had previously advised us of the flourishing crocodile population on the island, and we knew that a couple had spent the night in the mangroves here having got lost a few days before.  In addition, our guide’s radio with which they were trying to raise their colleagues to arrange for a boat ride home was receiving only static.

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Onwards to the Galapagos Islands

Much of our thinking to date had centred on the passage through the canal, but now it was time to plan the next part of our voyage in detail.  A planning meeting was convened and a decision was made to route via the Las Perlas islands having firstly explored one of the Rias to the east near the Columbian border.  We allowed ourselves a few days to discover Panama City and took a forest tour early one morning that routed alongside the canal.  Provisioning went on apace as we tried to forecast our needs given that we would be a crew of four until our departure for the Marquesas after Willem and Jane left us in the Galapagos, and we would need to plan for at least three weeks for that passage.

Willem and Jane went to the fresh fruit market and returned with a barrow full of fruit and vegetables which were so fresh that we were still eating some of them when we arrived in the Marquesas.  We filled the freezers based more or less on what we had learned on our Atlantic crossing and obtained as much beer at $12 a case and wine as our forecast consumption calculated.  However, it was during one of these forays th
at a casual conversation with some yachties caused us to scrap our planned routing and re-think it.  They had not been as impressed with the Las Perlas as the sailing guides indicated they should.  The water was cloudy and there were prettier places to go to.  They suggested that we routed to the west to Isla Coiba which was anyway en-route to the Galapagos Islands.

I popped into the (Admiralty) chart agents near the quay and purchased a paper chart covering that area along with some tidal atlases and the nautical almanac for 2008.  I had, of course largely ignored tides for the best part of a year.  Our plotter chart already covered that area and also included the Galapagos.  I had already brought out most of the charts we needed to get us as far as New Zealand in January, but did not realise that the Galapagos was known as the Archipelago of Colon, so we had been missing coverage of the entire area of the Galapagos!  However, Willem and Jane had brought it out with them and so we were now ready to go.

We had a wonderful meal in the city and several good lunches around the marina complex and so once we had topped off our fuel, we finally set off to cross the Pacific on Tuesday 19th February.

The winds were very light as reported that they often are at this time of the year and we consequently had to motor most of the way.  This voyage was the first for Willem and Jane to be out of sight of land, so we decided to split the night watches, me with Jane and Sarah with Willem, to settle them in.  During daylight hours we were offered a taste of what was to come.  Firstly we spotted a whale prior to a send-off fly past of pelicans.  Willem caught a fine mackerel tuna and this was all on the first day!

As we were approaching Isla Jacobon just south of Coiba where we planned to spend our first night, we were welcomed by a school of dolphins corralling their supper with a magnificent display leaping out of the water and hitting the surface with their tails.  We had seen manta rays jumping out of the water – they seem to either jump in pairs one after the other, or make two separate jumps so if you miss the first one you catch it on the second.  The water was alive with sea snakes and turtles – what a treat.

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