Saranac Lake, New York

Happy holidays, all! John here. When last you heard from us we were in David, Panama, about to take a quick trip inland to Boquete. Boquete is a beautiful, lushly forested, mountain village dominated by Volcan Baru, a large volcano straddling the border between Panama and Costa Rica. Coffee is the main industry, as it grows extremely well in the rich volcanic soil. We stayed three days at some cabanas run by expat Canadians and would be happy to go back some day.

Very soon after leaving Boquete, we made our way uneventfully to Golfito, Costa Rica, where we had arranged to leave the boat at a dock for our trip back to the U.S. It’s currently typhoon season in the Pacific, so we have until March before we can venture west to the Galapagos and French Polynesia.

In Golfito, we spent a couple of weeks “putting the boat to bed” and getting our things ready for the flight out of San Jose. Saros now sits at a dock owned by two North American expats from Santa Barbara. They will do things like run the engine occasionally to keep it lubed, open the hatches to air out the cabins, and keep a close watch on security.

The exodus to the U.S. was quite an operation as we had vast amounts of stuff to bring back, not the least of which was 30 lbs of Erika’s medical textbooks. The final tally was two backpacks, three duffles, and eight cardboard boxes. This made each step of the 3-day voyage from Golfito to San Jose to New York a bit of a logistical trick, since one doesn’t ever want to leave any portion of the stuff unattended in a taxi, by the bus, or on the street.

Once we had arrrived at Erika’s parents’ place on Long Island, we only had a few days before Erika started work upstate. So we quickly went about finding a car, eventually settling on an ’86 Toyota 4Runner. We needed 4-wheel drive as we are spending the winter in Saranac Lake, New York. The town is a few miles from Lake Placid (remember the winter Olympics) and nestled in the High Peaks region of the Adirondack Park.. We are renting a one-room apartment over a garage. Though small, it is nicely appointed, comfortable, and very isolated in the woods down a quarter-mile gravel road. We look out over a lake and have a view of the sunset over the mountains.

Erika is busily working at the local medical center, and (after a three-week job search) I am now back working with computers at a local non-profit training association. They are an international company that does business training seminars, but the work environment isn’t nearly so button-down as I would have expected. We’re quite pleased that the transfer from cruising back to working went fairly well. I think we’re getting the hang of the nomadic lifestyle. We’re thinking that continuing to mix cruising with working each year may be the way to do it. Erika was certainly eager to work again, and even I, as morally opposed to work as I am, was a little restless to get my hands on the latest computer software and earn a little money. In the future we won't go so long between jobs, having tried it once, and will be trying to get work along the way as we cruise.

So here we are until March, cozily living in our cabin in the woods, driving our 4-wheeler pickup, anticipating the turn of the millenium, taking stock of our first 13 months of cruising and eagerly looking forward to setting off across the Pacific. Here’s wishing you all the happiest of holidays and good luck for the new year!

Georgetown, Cayman Islands

Hi folks. John here. Well, it's been four months since we last updated our position, at least as far as this website is concerned. Sorry about the silence, but we couldn't bear to post another update from the U.S. As you can see from the title, we have now made it out of the country, so we can finally show our faces.

St. Augustine Refit, cont'd

When last we posted, the boat was on the hard at Oasis Boatyard in St. Augustine Florida, undergoing a refit. The details of that undertaking will be omitted here, on account of their generally soporific nature. Still, we can't resist mentioning our highly successful draft-reduction project. The numbers that came back from the naval architect indicated that we could proceed with our plan to remove the bottom third of our keel, as long as we put back a good portion of the weight we removed--in the form of lead bulbs on either side of the shortened keel. The same naval architect has a small workshop where he builds small racing sailboats and he offered to cast the necessary lead bulbs, using some lead from our keel (although the keel was once cast iron alone, a 6-inch lead extension had been added at some point). Anyway, after much turmoil, effort, laughter, misery, and education about the metallurgy of cast iron,  Saros now draws 5'7" instead of 7'4" (her former draft when fully loaded) and seems to sail precisely the same as before. For the full technical story see The Saga of the Keel.

We re-launched Saros and left Oasis boatyard in mid-April, moving about a half mile upriver to the dock of a local carpenter. We intended to have two carpentry projects done there. In our tiny aft cabin, we had a little vanity sink with a mirror. In two years we'd never used the sink. We did, however, need a lot more storage space for food, so we pulled out the vanity and wanted to build pantry shelves. We also hated and hoped to replace the headliner in the main cabin. (You might think we would call this the ceiling, but on a boat, the "ceiling" is what lines the walls and the thing overhead is called a "headliner." Don't spend too much time on this one.) It was covered with a soft grey felt material that 1) mildews, 2) is easily damaged, 3) attracts and holds dirt, and 4) is almost impossible to clean. The carpenter informed us that professionals call the stuff "monkey fur." There are a lot of clever little touches on our French-built boat, but we really wondered what they were thinking when they chose this material.

Anyway, in St. Augustine, the carpenter only had time to do the new headliner (a nice white, easily cleaned formica, with new teak trim strips) and a couple of other minor jobs. So our pantry remained unfinished. We planned to look for another carpenter along the way to Key West.

 St. Augustine to Key West

We left St. Augustine at the end of April and continued south along the ICW, passing Cape Canaveral and stopping briefly in Stuart, Florida. From there we rented a car and buzzed down to Ft. Lauderdale to check on getting our life raft serviced. We also determined that we had a very good chance of being able to navigate the Okeechobee Waterway, which runs from Stuart to Ft. Myers via Lake Okeechobee. With our newly truncated keel, draft was no longer a concern, but there was a bridge on the Waterway that was officially 49' off the water. Our mast, as best we can measure, extends 50' 6" or so off the water. Some 10" of that is a navigation light on the top, which is more or less removable. We checked with the Corps of Engineers and determined the water level in the Waterway was such that the bridge height gave us an even 50'. And with that, we elected to proceed.

When the moment of truth arrived, we stopped the boat and I went to the top of the mast and unbolted the light. I then motored the boat forward at dead slow while Erika went out in the dink to watch and take photos. The theory was that if I was about to hit, she could warn me off (or at least get some great shots). As it turned out the mast cleared the bridge, but by so little that we were both utterly convinced it was going to hit. For a long time afterwards we continued to stare behind us at the bridge in disbelief.

In due course, we arrived in Ft. Myers. The main reason for taking this route was that my maternal grandparents, and my grandmother's parents, live in Ft. Myers, and we wanted to see them before leaving the country. This route also allowed us to avoid a long sail potentially to windward along the Florida Keys. In nearby Punta Gorda, we located a carpenter willing to do the work we needed done, at a marina which offered free dockage for the duration of the job. While visiting my relatives, we pulled out my grandmother's sewing machine and I learned to sew! I made a piece of canvas we'll use to catch rain, and a big mosquito net to throw over the cockpit. Unfortunately, the machine stopped functioning while I was using it, so I wasn't able to finish the weather cloths for the cockpit. I swear it was nothing I did. In fact, I was even getting pretty good at using it when it croaked.

In mid-May, we said our goodbyes and left for a pleasant overnight passage to Key West. Along the way, we determined that the new inner forestay I'd rigged needed additional support; I'd suspected it might. As it turned out, both the deck fitting and the mast needed backup. What this meant was some custom welding for the deck support; we would also need to install running backstays. As soon as we pulled into Key  West, we set to work tracking down and ordering what we needed.

Key West & Dry Tortugas

Key West was fun, despite the ongoing refit & mechanical issues. We continued our survey of public libraries of the East Coast. Key West's is quite large, has free internet, and crisp air conditioning. Key West also had a couple of places where we could get cheap, tasty lunches.

We became friends with an adventurous couple we had first encountered back in Atlantic City, NJ. Jerry & Trina sailed south from New York in winter on a 16-foot trimaran kayak with sails. They hadn't actually sailed the whole way to Key West--a portion of the distance they had the trimaran shipped--but their adventure, which included a month of camping in the Everglades, made ours look like we'd taken the QEII from Boston to Key West. Maybe not; the QEII would probably have arrived on time.

On what we figured would be our next to last day, we took a slip in the marina in order to do some work that required AC power (for tools). In the process of motoring back to the anchorage the next day, we realized we had a serious problem with the throttle. It could barely be moved. [For an account of our seemingly endless engine problems see The Saros Mechanical Nuisances Page.] We had a mechanic take a look at it and learned that nothing was broken, but that there was an impressive degree of corrosion where the throttle lever entered the engine block. The cause of the corrosion was actually sort of interesting. Our engine is located immediately below the galley sink. We had packed the storage space around the base of the sink with spare bottles of dish soap. Over time, several of these flimsy plastic containers had apparently developed cracks and let liquid soap escape. The soap had flowed down along the metal sink fixtures, under the sink, and on down along the sink drain hose which enters the engine compartment on its way out of the boat. Once inside the engine compartment, the soap was absorbed with great efficiency by the open-cell foam insulation lining the top and sides of the compartment. After that, all it took was a little water dribbling down the outside of the sink and the soap would come to life again, dripping willy-nilly all over the engine! The soap removed much of the anti-corrosive paint from the engine--almost as though it were designed for the purpose--and the rest is history. Fortunately, we were able to get the throttle unstuck in a couple of days with a penetrating oil spray (Blaster ®, a mechanic in a can) and we have modified our soap-storage arrangement. Not so fortunately, the soap reservoir in the engine insulation is there to stay, but at least it will remain dry as we have sealed all the leaks above it.

After two weeks in Key West, and our very first experience "clearing out" (at U.S. Customs) we sailed to the Dry Tortugas. Yes, the Dry Tortugas are U.S. territory, but you can't clear out from them. In fact, these tiny islands are worth a visit precisely because they don't offer much of anything except natural beauty. The main exception is Fort Jefferson, an enormous, round, brick fortress complete with moat, designed to be a Union fort in the Civil War. The fort was never used as such, and became a federal prison before being abandoned; in the 1960's it was designated a national park. Part of the reason it was never used is that the engineering was faulty: the freshwater cisterns cracked and allowed salt water to enter, and the cannon ports were reinforced with iron, which promptly rusted and disintegrated, and led to unsightly bulges in the surrounding brick. In spite of its decrepitude, the building, which encloses almost an entire island and has a large, grassy central courtyard, has a serene beauty and is haunting to wander through. The snorkeling at the Tortugas was also very good.

Naturally, any visit must be accompanied by an engine problem. After arriving at the Tortugas, we found two leaks in the raw water system: one from the pump itself, the other from a copper conduit running to the heat exchanger. Fast becoming something of an amateur mechanic, I took the pump apart and found the failed seal. I then flew back to Key West on one of the seaplanes that visits the Tortugas, ordered the parts, waited the couple days for them to arrive, and booked passage back to the Tortugas on one of the catamarans that ferry visitors to the island. While in  Key West, I got to hang out with Jerry & Trina a lot more (which was fun) and sleep on a shell of a steel boat that belonged to a friend of theirs (which wasn't fun). I was grateful to have someplace to crash, though. The alternatives were either a little risky (the youth hostel, at $18/night) or expensive (hotel, at $60/night and up). I also took advantage of the opportunity to round out my tool collection, as it was beginning to look like the potential engine problems were infinite and we would have to be able to handle them ourselves.

Dry Tortugas to Cayman Islands

In due course, we managed to depart the Dry Tortugas for the Cayman Islands. Because it was (and is) so late in the season, we had to deal with the fact that every 5-8 days, a "tropical wave" rolls across the Caribbean Sea from east to west. These waves are low-pressure troughs, from which tropical storms and hurricanes can develop. Fortunately, most of them don't develop further, but even simple tropical waves pack major thunderstorms. We watched the weatherfax to see when a wave had passed our longitude and then left immediately following one. The idea was to get to the Caymans before the next wave, also visible on weatherfax.

The early, downwind part of the passage was pleasant enough, but the wind was light and we motored often, which of course used a portion of our limited fuel. Then, in the Yucatan Straits, we began to feel the big, choppy swells from the southeast. These continued to build as we began to make our easting along the south coast of Cuba. With 17 to 25 knots from 120º (east-southeast), along with steep, 10' swell, our progress toward the Caymans (at 150º) was slow. We ended up making long tacks, sometimes motorsailing, to the south and east-northeast.

After a few days of this we were pretty tired and our fuel supply was running low. It was also clear that we weren't going to make the Caymans before the next tropical wave rolled across. Our first encounter with tropical thunderstorms was scary but manageable--furl the headsail, hand steer, and shoot along under triple-reefed main, as close to our course as possible. It was even a little fun, since we could really scoot for an hour or so in 30-40-knot winds. Eventually we begin to approach the Caymans: 80, 70, 60 nautical miles to go. We hoped to arrive before sunset, but we were starting to worry about the motor. At some point it had started to vary in rpm's, and to lose power. We suspected we were running out of fuel and that the problem was either air in the line or low pressure. We put our last reserve jerry can of diesel into the tank.

Just as the sun got low, a really big set of thunderstorms rolled in. One minute we were going along in 20 knots of wind, the next we were laid over 60º, the wind howling, the triple-reefed main luffing wildly as we abruptly released the sheet. Nothing like the gusts we'd felt in earlier squalls, this wind was unrelenting. The genoa track remained submerged on the leeward side and the boat refused to head up. With the boat at such a steep angle, our top hatchboard, which a moment earlier had been resting under the dodger, suddenly slid off the boat and we watched helplessly as it floated away. Erika brought up my harness and I crawled forward through the dodger to drag the mainsail down. The wind continued. Back in New England the previous June, Erika and I had been caught in a surprise gale that we learned the following day was 45 knots with 15-foot seas. This was worse--at least 50 knots, we guessed, though the waves were still the 10-13 foot swells we'd had all day. (The wind would have to go on for some timebefore the waves would significantly increase.) We thought about getting the storm trysail flying, but I wondered if the present wind was too much even for that. I also remembered that I had stupidly not rigged sheets for the damn thing, and this made getting it flying a major difficulty.

With the main down and the wheel locked the boat began to drift downwind. The engine no longer functioned. We both went below to figure out what to do next. At that point, Grand Cayman was still over 20 miles away--to windward--and not getting any closer. We would soon be out of VHF range. We could choose to drift until the weather calmed, by which time we would be out of radio range. We would then have a long upwind sail to reach Georgetown, and, without the use of the engine, would not necessarily make it. Furthermore, we hadn't seen a weatherfax in a couple of days and had no way of knowing if the weather we were experiencing was isolated or not, or if the tropical wave we had been attempting to beat had developed into something worse (tropical depression, tropical storm, hurricane). If the weather worsened, our safety would be seriously compromised by the loss of the hatchboard. In any case, we were quite taken aback by the fury of the storm as it was.

We did consider abandoning the idea of getting to Georgetown and instead heading directly to Providencia, a small, Colombian island off the coast of Nicaragua, and a good resting point en route to Panama. But this would mean another five days at sea without a working engine, and still didn't address the current weather situation. We also (again, stupidly) didn't have a harbor chart for the Caymans, so we didn't know if the harbor entrance could be easily negotiated under sail alone or would require a working engine for maneuvering. This meant that even if we got to Georgetown, we would probably have to call for a tow anyway.

We decided to hail Georgetown on the VHF and at least let somebody know we were out there, and in some distress, though not in a life-threatening situation. We also wanted to see what the options for a tow were. We talked with Port Security, then Customs/Police. We learned that there were no options for a commercial tow and that Customs/Police handled anything like this. After some discussion, it was decided that although we didn't consider ourselves in imminent danger, they would prefer to tow us in.

By the time they arrived, the weather had eased considerably and I had rigged a towing bridle. As they approached, they asked us to check the decks to see if any lines were in the water. Surprise, surprise, the starboard jibsheet was indeed over the side and firmly wrapped in the prop! Looks like we'd found part of our engine problem, anyway. The tow into Georgetown was long but uneventful and the very professional and friendly Cayman police put us safely on a mooring by 5 a.m.. Exhausted, we fell into bed, only to be woken up several hours later by two formally-attired immigration officials who had made their way into our cockpit and were eager to get down to business.

Serene Georgetown Harbor

After clearing in, and receiving the doubly interesting news that the cost of a tow in the Caymans is normally $500/hour but that we would be charged nothing because of the life-threatening (their word, not ours) nature of the circumstances, I dealt with the engine. First I dove the prop to clear the line. The hull showed some small cracks around the base of the propellor strut, but the strut itself was intact and stable. Then I tried to start the motor--very bad sound. I looked at the motor. Mmm, something looked odd. Hey, the whole motor was too far back. YIKES, it wasn't connected to anything! It seems we'd sheared all our engine mounts, the little blocks of rubber that support the motor. The entire motor had slid back five inches and the coupling was up against the shaft seal. The problem was thus rather simple, though potentially disastrous. We had only to lift the 400lb motor out of the way, replace the mounts (if we could find any), put the motor back and align it with the shaft. Oh, and hope that the shaft wasn't bent.

So here we sit in the Cayman Islands. What can we say about the Caymans? They are a British Crown Colony, which means driving is done on the left and the governor is appointed by the Queen of England. The island economy appears to be built on two things: diving and financial services. There are something like 800 banks on the island, along with lots of other financially-oriented legal institutions, e.g., "captive insurance companies," whatever they are. The island has virtually no taxes, as part of its overall strategy of providing highly confidential financial services to the very rich.The diving economy relies on the amazing reefs which surround the island, and the exquisite clarity and warmth of the water. There seems to be a diving charter boat business on every corner, along with hundreds of incredibly expensive dive resort hotels. Much of the rest of the island consists of similarly expensive condos and estates for the mega-rich, presumably bankers and tycoons looking for someplace safe to hide themselves and their money from their countries' governments.

If you haven't gotten the point yet, this situation has resulted in the Caymans being the most exhorbitantly expensive place we, at least, have ever seen. (Airport cafe prices now seem quite reasonable by comparison.) We wondered at first how the working class on the island survives at all. It turns out that to some extent even the Cayman islanders (who voted to become a Crown Colony in 1962) are part of the fun. For example, foreigners who wish to run local businesses must cede a portion of the business to a Caymanian silent partner. The practical minimum wage is around $6.00 CI ($7.20 US) which is, remember, tax-free, which means the de facto minimum wage here is about $14 US/hour. Also, health insurance is by law included with employment, and the island has essentially full employment. We bumped into the driver of the minibus we usually take ($1.50 CI per person) at the fuel dock where he was fueling up his modest 36-foot sportfisherman. No wonder he was always smiling as he drove the bus. All this ignores the situation of the not insignificant numbers of Jamaicans (documented and undocumented) who do most of the scut work here.

So this place seems to be a poster child for unrestrained capitalism, which make us uneasy. We can't shake the feeling that the Caymanians have made a deal with the devil, by which they've given themselves the highest income in the Caribbean, but lost their souls. Small signs point to a disturbing lack of any concept of collective good. The public library is excrutiatingly small and lacks even a restroom, let alone internet access. Sidewalks exist here and there, but they are not continuous anywhere, which rather limits their usefulness. (We've been informed, however, that any new building projects are now required by law to include a strip of sidewalk at the edge of the property.) Everything costs money, even things that are typically gratis. Restaraunts and shops have signs indicating that the restrooms are for customers, but others can use them for $1.00CI ($1.20US). Don't even think of asking for free refills. A business next to a CI Marine Park, according to its sign, is attempting to charge for snorkeling from the nearby shoreline. It remains to be seen if, as development continues and land becomes even more scarce, housing prices everywhere will become prohibitive even for locals.

OK, progressive politics aside, the Caymanians themselves are cheery and engaging characters. All the officials, and the crew of the boat that towed us, were warm and friendly, while maintaining a reassuring professionalism. Our thanks go out especially to the captain and crew of the Cayman Protector (the boat that towed us). We've also met a couple of pairs of veteran cruisers: a Kiwi sailmaker and his Dominican (Republic of) wife & their two daughters, and a young couple from South Africa on a trimaran.
The Future
We've decided that it's just too late to expect to venture out into the Pacific this year. We'll head south to Panama as soon as we can, transit the Canal, and head up to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. With all the repairs, and the slow progress, we're going to need a cash infusion, so we'll either work in Costa Rica or back in the U.S. for a few months, and plan to head out across the Pacific in the spring of 2000.

Bye for now!

David, Republic of Panama

When last you heard from us, we were languishing in the Cayman Islands, waiting for the "last" of our engine repairs to be made. And so they were--our little engine has been running great since we left there. Our mechanic, a local man named Schister (pronounced "shy-ster" but he wasn't one), diagnosed and fixed a shaft alignment problem that may have been the cause of several other problems we've had. We also stopped the last of our oil leaks (though since then we've developed a teeny new one, but it's very minor).

Isla de Providencia, Columbia

We departed the Caymans and had a rather uneventful 6-day passage to Isla de Providencia, a Colombian possession in the western Caribbean. The passage involved some dicey navigation through various shoals and banks off Nicaragua, but we're getting pretty good at that kind of thing. We're also getting a lot better at managing the squalls, i.e., we take the sails down before they hit. Much less exciting that way, though.

Providencia was cool. It was a British island for a long time and a good percentage of the local-born inhabitants still speak an English creole and are proud of their English heritage. British warships were still providing emergency aid during crises as recently as 20 years ago (the island has been Colombian for about 100 years, though largely ignored).

The island is very mountainous and most of its 3900 people live around the perimeter in about ten little hamlets; the coast road is eight miles around. We spent a little over a week there, catching up on sleep, reading, searching for internet access (no luck), eating at various little restaurants, circumambulating the island, meeting some local folk (our sincere thanks to Beverly for her help) and tooling around the island's one road over and over on a rented scooter. Erika, though very skeptical at first, grew to like the scooter, a lot. I think she now understands why I rode a motorcycle for three years.

Colon, Panama

We left Providencia and had a 3-day (mostly motoring) passage to Colon, Panama, which marks the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal. Our autopilot died on this leg, and there's no repair in sight. Now whenever we motor, we have to hand steer (yuck). Colon has a reputation--which appears to be well-deserved--for being a dangerous city, but we managed to walk around a bit anyway, going to the internet cafe and the Chinese market for veggies.

There happened to be a garbage-collector strike in progress, so huge piles of garbage were everywhere, making a city that already wouldn't be profiled in Conde Nast even worse. To top it off, animals and people tore into the garbage bags to rummage through the contents. Did I mention that it was hot? When the wind was right we could smell the city in the anchorage, over a mile away. The collectors were striking to get their $300/month wages raised to $500/month. I'm glad to note that by the time we left, the garbage was getting removed and the strikers had gotten their raise.

Our cab-driver/immigration-consultant/canal-bureaucracy-assistant was a colorful character named Ellington who'd spent years in the States in the army.

The Panama Canal

To go through the Panama Canal, you must 1) have your boat measured, 2) pay for your transit, 3) schedule your transit, and 4) procure the services of line-handlers (you need four total, plus the helmsman). So we needed three extra people. We called for measurement and got an appointment for the next day. Four days later the measurer actually came. Though late, he was extremely professional, and explained the cause of the delay: with the transfer of the canal from the US to Panama at the end of this year, the Panamanians have instituted a hiring freeze to minimize their budget, so they are short-staffed. This doesn't bode well for the efficient administration of the canal in the future.

We ultimately hooked up with three young itinerants (staying at a youth hostel in Panama City) who agreed to be our line-handlers in exchange for the fun of transiting the canal for free. Apparently, tour operators charge $135 a head for a ride through the canal on their boats. Andrea was a photography student from Germany; Kirsten, also from Germany, a computer guy; and Daniel, from Melbourne, Australia, had been working at a golf course but was now seeing the world. All were doing several months in Latin America on the cheap. Andrea had even spent two months in Tierra del Fuego.

Our canal transit started off with a bang. First set of ascending locks, first lock, we were in the lock behind a 700-foot-long, 110-foot-high car-carrier. Water came into the lock and up we went. There was some turbulence, but nothing scary. The front doors of the lock opened. Now the ship put its propeller in gear to give it a thrust forward into the next lock, an impressive sight indeed from our vantage point about 50 feet behind their 20-foot-wide prop.

In a matter of seconds a huge surge of water came tumbling back at us and Saros obligingly lurched backwards. All of a sudden--Crack!--our forward starboard line had snapped like an old guitar string and our bow was swinging rapidly toward the cement wall on our port. After an instant of stunned surprise, Daniel quickly pulled the slack line aboard to keep it out of our prop so I could engage the engine. I motored forward and to starboard to try to keep the boat in position, but the water was surging past us far faster than our motor could push us forward and the turbulence made steering almost completely ineffectual. Our canal pilot ordered me again to go full ahead and hard to starboard. I regretfully informed him that we were ALREADY full ahead and hard to starboard. He looked at me skeptically then offered a fatalistic shrug. The combination of the remaining three lines and our engine full astern managed to hold us about ten feet off the wall. We had a nail-biting, pants-wetting (this is meant figuratively, of course --Erika) three minutes or so until the car-carrier moved ahead and the turbulence died down. It turned out a canal-worker had tied an improper knot (i.e. not a proper bowline) at the end of that line and the knot had slipped and released.

After our first lock, the rest were relatively easy. We pre-knotted all our lines and I got much better at using the engine and the rudder to minimize shock on the lines. It ended up feeling something like surfing in a dinghy; indeed, the turbulence has been likened to a 20-knot whitewater river.

The rest of the day consisted of motoring across Lake Gatun and descending the locks on the Pacific side. Descending is easy, no turbulence at all. We ended the day taking a mooring at the Balboa Yacht Club. Well, it's not exactly a yacht club anymore. It recently burned down, and in somewhat suspicious circumstances, we hear. Now it is simply a fuel dock and 80 or so moorings, for which they charge incredibly high rates. We and our guests had dinner and fell exhausted into our respective bunks. The following morning our crew split up, but we got together one more time for a celebratory dinner in Panama City.

Panama City to Bahia Montijo 

We spent a couple of days in Panama City doing various errands and a bit of sight-seeing. We walked the length of the city one day, and followed the Via Espana to Panama Vieja, site of the ruins of the original 16th century city of Panama. Then we moved on, threading our way past 30 or so anchored ships, then heading for Otoque, an island in Panama Bay. Otoque was a small island with no roads or cars, just two villages along the shore with a trail between them. We walked the hour from one village to the other, mainly to see if we could buy soda--Coke, if you must know--since there were no stores at all in Village #1. No Coke to be had, but we settled for Fresca.

Next, we had several daysails between miserably rolly anchorages. Along this coast, very large swells from the south were continually rolling in, and even in normally sheltered bays there was a surge that made the boat seem like it was at sea. It is no fun when you get queasy at anchor! Another annoying factor was the immensely high tides: as much as 21 feet from low to high at Panama City. This meant that you could anchor in 25 feet of water and find yourself aground at low tide--see below.

From Otoque we sailed to Isla Iguana. Isla Iguana is supposed to be quite neat eco/biologically (coral, fish, reptiles, turtles, etc.) but the anchorage was so tenuous that we set an anchor watch to make sure we didn't drag, i.e., one or the other of us was up all night. And we weren't willing to leave the boat to go ashore. We did see several humpback whales travelling along about half a mile offshore, though. Very cool.

From Otoque we went to Puerto Aguadulce, a couple of miles up a river. Here we hoped to leave our boat overnight for the first time in months, to visit an inland town called El Valle. And here we had our first real adventure with the local authorities. We arrived at a small port facility near sunset. A large freighter, which I could hardly believe had made it up the tiny river, was moored at a 30-foot-high dock. A little further down, a Servicio Maritimo (Coast Guard) patrol boat was tied to a fishing vessel at another tall dock. Our Panama cruising guidebook said to anchor upstream, so we motored by, waved to the folks on the docks, and went upstream to anchor. Soon after getting the hook down, we were closely approached by the Servicio Maritimo boat with several men aboard, a couple with machine guns. They seemed friendly enough, but wouldn't slow down their Spanish enough for us to really follow. We showed them our passports and cruising permit, which they seemed satisfied with, once we'd agreed to visit the Port Captain and Immigration offices ashore the following morning. But they remained very concerned about where we were anchored. They repeatedly warned us about the current and tides (hardly novel concepts to us, I might add) and also about the mala gente ("bad people") apparently waiting to victimize us in some way. After a while they motored off.

Not ten minutes later they returned, more or less insisting (armed gesticulations have a certain insistence, don't you think?) this time that we come back down the river and tie up to their boat at the dock. So we weighed anchor and came on down, and they helped us tie up to their giant, floating-roach-motel of a boat. Since we were now right in their backyard, they suggested we go ahead and see the port captain and immigration officer. The port captain was satisfied with our cruising permit but the woman at Immigration was concerned that we didn't have "shore passes." What we eventually pieced together was that the only boats ever that ever found themselves up that little river were cargo boats, picking up sugar from the sugar plantation in town.Cargo ship crew, it seems, carry shore passes, not visas. As cruisers on a small, private boat, we didn't fit into any normal paradigm. In the end, we persuaded the official that since we had actual visas (visas being even better than shore passes, depending on how you look at things) we didn't need shore passes. Once this was sorted out, she was extremely friendly, and even helped us get a taxi into town a couple of miles from the port (sure she did--her husband was the cab driver --Erika).

The following day we untied, nervously anchored upstream again (though closer to the port, this time, so as not to alarm anyone), and came ashore for our inland trip. The tidal range made tying up the dinghy too complicated an endeavor, so we ended up dragging it completely out of the water. Some fishermen warned us again about mala gente and insisted on helping us move the boat to the yard of a nearby house, whose owner would watch it while we were gone (for a fee). We were not ungrateful for all the assistance, but we were very eager to be on our way before anyone else tried to help us!

At this point we were a little spooked after so many warnings, about tides and bad people and doubtless a number of other horrors lost in translation. We wondered if Saros would wind up sitting on dry mud at low tide, get washed away by flash floods, or be stripped clean by the baddies, and we dared not hope our dinghy would be waiting for us on our return. But we decided that if the likelihood of the boat being robbed or destroyed was so great that we could never let it out of our sight, then we needed to rethink the entire trip, since there'd hardly be any sense in visiting a country if we couldn't see it!

So we went inland and stayed in El Valle de Anton, a picturesque, chilly mountain town nestled in the caldera of an extinct volcano. The entire town was extremely well manicured and nearly everything had grass and moss growing on it, giving the town a fairyland feeling. Even the drains along the edges of the roads had crystal clear mountain water running through them. We figured that in the last year we had spent all of two nights in a hotel, so we splurged and stayed in the best place in town. It still cost less than the crappy Day's Inn we stayed at on our last trip to Florida! We walked all around town, went to the weekly craft fair, visited a local waterfall, and basically mellowed out. Apparently a lot of affluent folk from Panama City have country houses in El Valle, and the yards are indeed nicely laid out and the houses somewhat larger, but not contructed any differently than more modest houses around the country.

We returned somewhat apprehensively three days later to find our boat...exactly as we'd left it. No flash floods, no vandalism, no theft. Imagine that.

The next several days were spent rounding the Azuero peninsula to Bahia Montijo. This coast is high and rocky, and quite dramatic, with frequent waterfalls flowing into the Pacific. It reminded me a lot of the coast we had seen in Northern California along the Pacific coast highway.

In Bahia Montijo we made our way to Puerto Mutis, a small fishing village up another river, where we hoped we might leave the boat to travel to Costa Rica. We needed to spend 72 hours in Costa Rica in order to get another 30-day Panamanian visa. The first night in Puerto Mutis, we anchored upstream of the town in what the cruising guide said was five feet of water at extreme low tide (these only happen a few days per year). When we returned to the boat at what was a normal, not extreme, low tide, we found her at a 30-degree angle of heel with the keel in the mud and seven inches of bottom showing. Fortunately, a couple of hours later she re-floated herself, no harm done, and we went back downstream a little to deeper water. So much for the cruising guide. (I'm kidding. The Zydlers' guide to Panama has been excellent. We literally couldn't have done this part of the trip without it.)

Puerto Mutis is pretty rough around the edges, but it turned out they had an unused town mooring off the fuel dock, and with plenty of water under it! This was a perfect place to leave the boat for the five days we'd be gone. An employee at the fuel dock agreed to keep an eye on the boat for us for $5/day, and even arranged for the night shift to do the same. They did a great job, and when we returned we found that they had even bailed the rainwater out of our dinghy.

In Costa Rica, we went to another small mountain town, continuing a trend of visiting places high enough to be cool enough for long sleeves. (Because of the humidity along the coast, we're always ready to go up!). This town, San Vito, was founded in the '50s by Italian immigrants, so it has something of a Tuscan feel to it. There wasn't much to do there, which suited us fine after several more rolly anchorages and snotty weather coming around the Azuero peninsula. Mainly we studied our Spanish. On our last day there, we went to the Wilson Botanical Gardens, a world-class conservation and botanical research facility created in the '60s by a couple from Coral Gables, FL. It is now associated with a Caribbean-wide scientific research organization. Very nifty place.

Bahia Montijo to Boca Chica

Upon our return, with new 30-day visas, we greatly eased up the pace and spent a couple days at various anchorages in the Bahia Montijo (Isla Leones and Isla Gobernadora), and continued on to Bahia Honda. Bahia Honda is an immense, completely encircled bay which is almost entirely cut off from the rest of Panama. All serious transportation is by boat; by land, only 20-mile horse trails lead back to roads. This place was so pleasant we stayed three days, and visited a local finca (farm) owned by a man named Domingo. He took us hiking on his property to see a pre-Columbian archaeological site.

From Bahia Honda we went to Islas Secas, a group of uninhabited islands. These were an even more idyllic setting (our first with reasonably clear water) and we stayed two days, snorkelling, kayaking, and walking the pebble beaches. From Islas Secas we went to a small fishing village called Boca Chica at the mouth of another large bay, Bahia de Muertos, originally intending to go to Pedregal 25 miles further up the bay. Here we hoped to leave the boat again for a final trip inland to yet another mountain town, Boquete.

At Boca Chica, there was a funky little restaurant/cabin resort run by a German named Frank. We learned from him and from other cruisers that Pedregal was no longer safe for overnight stays due to theft, but that Boca Chica was very safe. So, just this morning we left the boat on a double-anchor rig, locked it up tight, and departed for Boquete. Frank, the resort owner, gave us a harrowing ride on his pickup into David. The ride reminded us that Germany has no speed limits. The fact that we weren't pulled over reminded us that Panama doesn't either.

Now we are en route to Boquete, and have scored a secure place in Costa Rica to leave the boat for the winter while we are working in New York.

Some Observations

We've been in Latin America for going on seven or eight weeks now, and these updates, mine at least, have been more about what we did than what it has actually been like. So here are some random things that struck me as interesting.

 People

First and foremost, the most impressive thing is that we've '''really''' liked virtually all the Providencians, Panamanians, and Costa Ricans we've met--most of them in purely incidental circumstances. In fact, in a lot of cases, folks were actively helping us out of kindness. Beverly from Isla Providencia, various kids from Ensenada Naranjo & Isla Leones, Senor Mohica from Montijo, Jorge from San Vito, and Gilbert, also from San Vito, are just a few notable people who have taken a friendly interest in us. This was not what I expected, especially given the disgusting history of U.S. involvement in Central America. Common sense would suggest that in any population, you'd expect a range of attitudes from geniune friendliness, to neutrality, to some outright hostility. The most negative feelings I've gotten from anyone, whether talking directly or just passing by, could at worst be described as a sullen lack of interest. Even with some of these, a wave brings back a nod and a bemused smirk. OK, there was one somewhat weird encounter at Islas Secas, where a lobster boat with four young men came alongside and tied on (without explicit invitation) and stuck around for 45 minutes or so. The small talk remained small and only one of them seemed to be acting normally. The rest all seemed vaguely threatening. They asked questions about various items we had on deck (outboard, anchors, bike bags), but didn't seem to be interested in us at all. It could have been pure paranoia on our part, but we had by that time had several boat-alongside encounters that didn't set off any alarms at all. We cautiously (and slightly guiltily) locked our boat from inside that night, though nothing came of it at all. We still can't figure out if they were just socially awkward, or if they were casing the boat and decided against making a theft attempt.

We've found that having local kids out to visit the boat is a good way to break the ice when the adults are somewhat standoffish. Besides, it seems to be easier to get through the language barrier with kids.

Of course, the other population we've interacted with are the expats of various stripes. Most of them have been cruisers, given our mode of transportation, but we've struck up conversations with numerous others: Scott & Sonya off Calypso; Tom & Tyra (who run charters to Isla Coiba, a combination penal colony/national park!) in Puerto Mutis; Dennis & Sonya at Gobernadora; a German family on an 18-foot sailboat and Bogie & Carol on another boat at Bahia Honda; Bob & Barb at Boca Chica. This has been another surprising and interesting phenomenon while traveling: getting to know people, often from other generations or social strata, that we wouldn't end up meeting back home. Sure, it's a little strange that all we have in common, at first, is that we speak English and we're from the States (or England, Australia, or New Zealand, since they amount to the same thing: English-speaking developed world), but it has often been eye-opening and very pleasant. Sometimes you have to travel far from home to find out where you live.

Transportation

One word: driving. Simply put, the most dangerous aspect of travelling here is the almost suicidal norms of driving. Bus drivers, taxis, Frank the German, and private cars where we've caught a ride: no one appears to drive in anything resembling a sane fashion. Why? I don't really know for certain, but several theories have presented themselves. Perhaps Latin Americans are keenly aware that they are "behind" the developed world in "getting ahead" (whatever exactly that is) and they're trying to make up lost time? Perhaps the poor quality of the roads just makes everyone feel they must go faster to make up for the inherent delays in road travel? Perhaps driving suicidally proves how macho you are? This last, at least, seemed to be behind a game of chicken I witnessed one bus driver engage in with another bus driver from a competing company. Perhaps only insurance and litigation induce bus companies to control their drivers? Perhaps the apparently complete absence of any traffic police contributes to a free-for-all approach to transportation? Perhaps people just haven't accepted or understood that fatal accidents can really happen to them; after all, they haven't been killed yet. At least in the case of bus & taxi drivers, maybe they are trying to get more runs per day completed, so they can make more money? Maybe, just maybe, there isn't a higher traffic fatality rate here, and U.S. norms are needlessly cautious. Whatever the case may be, it seems to me that this represents a major problem, and a lot of people are probably losing their lives because of it (or at least being scared witless).

The buses here work well in concept, though, and the public transportation system is very well developed. You can pretty easily get anywhere you want for very little money (assuming you arrive alive, that is). Each bus has a driver and what I call a "maitre d'". The bus driver doesn't talk, or lift bags, or collect money, or find seats for anybody when the bus is almost full. All he does is drive (which is probably necessary, given my observations above). The maitre d' does all of these things, with a savvy, hungry look in his eyes. He even tries to stir up impulse customers, although it seems unlikely to me that anyone hearing one of these guys say "Hey, you wanna go to Chitre?!", is going to say to themselves, "You know, I came to the bus terminal to go to Penonome, but I guess I do want to go to Chitre, after all."

Environment

Panama has an immense amount of its land designated as national parks, but apparently this is in name only. People still live in the parks and practice slash & burn agriculture. Logging companies still actively log without control. I would have said "under the eyes of the government," but the government doesn't have any eyes. For example, Darien National Park, about the size of Rhode Island, has three forest rangers. These rangers have no vehicles, no guns, and no budget. They apparently spend much of their time foraging for their next meal. It will be interesting to see what the new presidency does.

First hand, I have seen that a very large percentage of the lowland countryside is almost completely deforested. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't also obvious that the heavy rains here are producing massive erosion. Much of Ohio has the same type of hilly farmland, and it hasn't all washed away in the last 200 years, but the order-of-magnitude difference in rainfall here will be fatal. Some "reforestation" projects are going on, but it isn't clear if they are actually just tree farms, destined to be cut again, or not. Certainly the projects we've seen were straight monocultures (one species of tree, row after row).

Culture 

Littering is endemic. Nobody thinks anything of throwing any trash whatsover, anywhere. Well, almost anywhere. We saw a mother scolding a child for throwing his cup in the street--he should have thrown it in the ditch instead. Neither of them went back to pick up the cup, though.

Newspapers and TV news here show absolutely graphic photos & video of fresh corpses. I think it is actually pretty healthy. It means you can't ignore that people are really being shot, or knifed, or dying of heart attacks. In the U.S. we're permitted to dreamily ignore such realities in the name of decorum.

Three more words: Pink Fuzzy Coffins. Same material as fuzzy dice hanging from the rearviw mirror. I kid you not, in the window of a small-town funeral parlor.