Thursday 8th December – Checking into Panama

We had breakfast and set off to Porvenir, 14 miles away, to check in and get all our paperwork done. We pootled along with just Sporty up, and enjoyed passing gorgeous tropical islands.

Sailing west to Porvenir

There was one monohull anchored at Portvenir, we tried anchoring nearby but could not get a good bite. A friendly chap in a dugout canoe, whose name we couldn’t establish, so became known as ‘My Friend’, told us to go the other side of the airstrip into calmer easier waters, he was quite right and we were soon securely anchored. He came on board and told us all we needed for immigration. He said we needed photocopies of our passports and boat papers, luckily our trusty little printer worked like a charm.

We dinghied to the dock, My Friend escorted us to the smart Customs house and got our paperwork stamped. It is unfortunate that the Guna flag has a swastika on it, the guide books assure us that it has no Nazi connotation! We then had to go next door to immigration and get our passports stamped, this had a completely different feel with a basic building full of young Panamanian young lads, not the friendliest. We saw them get off their boat with big guns and strange looking buoyancy things on the barrels, a little odd as they didn’t look like the floats were big enough to do any good. Curious!

Smart Customs house with unfortunate flag

Little airstrip next to the Customs House

At the dock we met the English couple from the monohull, Jerry and Sophie, and coincidence of all coincidence they had just got in from Santa Marta marina, they had been visiting our boat but had never found us in. Turns out they are great friends of David and Anne-Laure McLeman, the new owners of the next Catana cat, hull 12. David and Anne-Laure sailed with us from the Catana workshop in Canet-en-Roussillon to Gibraltar. Poor things their boat has been delayed nearly a year now, they still don’t have it. Makes us realise how lucky we were, and Rowan’s insistence on a penalty clause for overrunning the schedule, worked a treat.

My Friend crouching, and Jerry and Sophie

My Friend was extremely cheerful and friendly, he volunteered to take us across to his town, Wichubhuala (we love the names!) to buy a sim card. We towed his canoe across, we were happy to have him on board navigating us through the reef in the late afternoon sun. We had read that some of the islands have some of the densest habitation on earth, this tiny island looked pretty populated, slightly disconcerting arriving alongside a jetty with a line of loos on it! Sadly there is so much rubbish lying around, I suspect a lot gets blown by the trade winds from Africa and all lands up here.

My Friend sent us to look around the village while he went to buy the sim for US$17. The buildings were pretty ramshackle, a few traditional buildings with loads of elegant women with beads up their arms and legs, and the molas (red scraves) on their heads. My Friend was back, quick as a flash with the sim and we took it into a little store run by very attractive women, to get activated. All worked like a dream. We felt the ladies selling goodies on the way out deserved our money, so we bought a few more embroidery items (never a big hardship for me!).

The square in Wichubhuala

Ladies coyly selling their embroidery

We had bought a sim for Jerry and Sophie and dropped it off with them and had a quick drink, they were doing remarkably well after their passage down, with slightly more tricky wind conditions than us. Coming through the hurly burly of the Magdelena river outflow is obviously a lot more uncomfortable in a monohull. I was gobsmacked to find out later from Rowan they are not a couple! Obviously both very keen sailors, he is divorced and she has left her husband behind as he is not so keen on sailing and still working.

Rowan had cleverly downloaded The Crown, which was a lovely surprise and treat for me. Gorgeous sitting watching it in the dark of the cockpit with the fullish moon outside. All the gloom of the English politics, strikes and cold weather seem a million miles away.