Newsletter Aug/Sep 2003

"We’re finally on the way to the “Big Ditch”! "


Well, we are back, and just in time! The crew of Pipe Dream has been remiss in keeping up with the mandatory newsletter. We’re just too busy playing to spread the news.
About August 1st, I loaded my last newsletter on a floppy disk and headed to the City of David and the internet café. I am such a computer guru, when I loaded the disk on the computer, it was blank. I guess the newsletter fell out on the bus. It took three or four days to get it reloaded and resent. Don’t laugh, I bet Bill Gates had his problems too!
In my last newsletter, Jutta and I were going back and forth to David to get the inverter fixed. After the funeral and last rites for our old inverter, we bought another one in David. With our navigation computer back in action, we decided to take Pipe Dream inland twenty five miles to Puerto Pedregal. We had never dared this trip before because one of the first obstacles to overcome, was an approximately (or supposedly) 55 foot high power cable across the estuary we had to travel. At the lowest tide, we slowly approached the wire with Jutta standing on the bow looking up and me behind the wheel trying to calculate the cost of the damage if we happened to hit the power cable. Well, since you are receiving this typed newsletter, you probably realize, we made it under the wire without any mishap.
For two days we traveled through incredibly scenic mangrove channels with Barú, Panama’s only volcano, looming in the background, stopping for one night to catch up with the required high tide. The fauna and flora were magnificent. For those bachelor friends of mine in San Diego, fauna and flora are not the twins we met in a bar on Shelter Island. I won’t go into any detail, you know who they are!
After arriving in Pedregal, we dropped anchor in chocolate brown river water -remember, this is the rainy season - in front of the worst looking marina you ever saw. However, we enjoyed watching white faced monkeys playing in the trees and the occasional crocodile floating by on the lookout for a stray swimmer! We stayed for about two weeks, and our time there was well spent. We had some much needed stainless steel welding done to Pipe Dream and did a general clean up. Being inland, we took a few days off from boating chores, hopped on a bus, and headed over the mountains to Bocas Del Toro on the Caribbean side of Panama. After three days in Bocas, we were excited about crossing the ditch (Panama Canal) and taking Pipe Dream to the Archipelago of Bocas Del Toro. For those of you in Yuma, Arizona, this ditch is wider than most canals you’ve ever seen.
It was then time to provision, cut the dock lines, dig out the “How to Sail Manual”, retrace our steps through the estuary, and head back out to the Pacific Ocean. The zany crew of Pipe Dream needed to get their feet wet again and go island hopping. Our final destination would be Panama City to await the arrival of Bob and Tish Saemisch. To reach Panama City, we had 350 miles to go, and at the rate we travel, it only left us a month to get there.
Our first stop was at the Contreras Island group. In the large, deep bay on Brincano Island we dropped the hook and explored the island for three days. There were artesian springs all over the island with waterfalls cascading into the sea. After several days of napping, reading, swimming, gourmet meals and cocktails at sunset, we were exhausted. It was time to move on.
Our adventures at Bahia Honda will be with us for as long as we live. Bahia Honda’s entrance is about 150 yards wide, opening up to a bay 1 mile wide and about 2 miles long, completely surrounded by jungle. All traffic to this bay is by boat or mule train, there are no roads connecting to any highway on the mainland. A local character, Domingo, who has lived in Bahia Honda for 50 years and considers himself the official greeter of any foreign yacht sailing into the bay, arrived promptly at “Pipe Dream” by panga to take our order of fresh fruit and veggies from his finca (ranch). On a daily basis, Domingo would come to our boat or we would go to his house. He had no money, so everything was done through bartering. Domingo appointed himself as our guide, and led us through the mangroves for miles to the pueblo of Salmonete. These village people had no electricity or phones, they had mud floors and some lived in straw huts. We felt like we had gone back 100 years in time. Yet, the people were extremely friendly, they all came out to greet us. There was a school in Salmonete with four teachers. After our visit, we gave them everything we could spare on Pipe Dream: Paper, pens, pencils, etc. We put out a call on the radio for other cruisers coming this way to buy supplies to help the school. Because we are traveling in the tropics, we always carry lots of Neosporin ointment on the boat. Many of the children had infectious sores, so we gave them all our Neosporin. As we were leaving, a mother ran out of her hut and gave us three eggs to say thanks for the ointment. We never realize how good we have it in the good old USA, until witnessing the plight of others.
After a week in Bahia Honda, it was time to leave. Having witnessed Domingo’s sparse furnishings, we told him we had a special farewell gift for him, and presented him with our only surviving folding dock chair. We unfolded the chair and invited Domingo to sit in it. He gingerly climbed into the chair not quite trusting this modern contraption. Then his face lit up and he started to grin from one ear to the other. We think our old deck chair will be put to very good use!!!
We said our goodbyes to Domingo and his family, loaded up on fruits and veggies and the crew of Pipe Dream sailed into the sunset, and on to our next kewl adventure. We made numerous overnight stops on Cebaco Island, kayaked to the island’s beautiful beaches, walked for hours along the jungle clad hills, and enjoyed the sun sets and rain showers. Onward we moved to Bahia Naranja where the ocean swell was so bad that Pipe Dream (with us inside) was doing somersaults all night long. In this bay, we spent two days preparing Pipe Dream for the passage around the dreaded Punta Mala, renamed Punta Malacaca by some of our cruising friends who got beat up on that leg due to the high winds and the giant waves creating by the strong Humbolt current which flows around the point. Once again, the crew of Pipe Dream cheated death. We literally motored around Punta Mala in almost flat seas and 5 knots of wind. If it hadn’t been for a rain squall right at the point, we could have played cards in the cockpit along the way.
We have now entered the Gulf of Panama, and we are on the home stretch to Panama City. We have been away from civilization for 3 ½ weeks. Its time to play in the big city, make some repairs to Pipe Dream, and wait for the Seamisch’s to arrive.
We have been asked about the weather in Panama. This time of year, the rainy season, June through October is known as winter. When we wake up, usually around 7:00 am, our thermometer reads 78 to 82 degrees and 70% humidity. At noon it’s 80 to 85 degrees and 70 to 75% humidity. It usually clouds up toward the afternoon and we get a medium to heavy rain in the evening, sometimes raining all night (which is great because it fills our water tanks). The rain is warm and you can live in a bathing suit 24 hours a day. Bugs or insects are not a problem if we anchor at a safe distance from shore. All in all, we consider this paradise.
In closing, I must tell you how disappointed I am in my good friends. After sending my newsletter out to all of my friends for three consecutive years, I finally received my first dollar for the “Help Ferdy Cruising Fund”. It was e-mailed to us from Jutta’s cousin Bibi in Mexico City, not from any of MY GOOD FRIENDS!!! That dollar filled the entire screen. We’ve been trying to figure out how to cut it out of the screen so we can spend it!!

From the decks of Pipe Dream,
Ferdy and Jutta