Sailing to Panama

6-7 Feb, Cartagena to San Blas, Panama: After some horrifically violent yacht robberies on the Atlantic side of Panama in 2019/20 (one where a husband died and wife and children injured), we said we would only ever sail direct to the Panama Canal entrance, with no cruising time on the Atlantic side. But as so many people on various FB groups seem to be going to San Blas islands, we decide we’ll go see it for just a few days, given we would anyway sail right passed on our way to the canal entrance at Colon.

Monday morning (6-Feb) bright and early we readied ourselves for our passage directly west from Cartagena to the western San Blas islands. It would only be 200nm, say 24-30 hours, but we knew upfront it would be a rough one. The trade winds never blow less than 20-25kts here, but the big concern is the waves. 3-5m waves with only 6 seconds between them. Meaning short, steep, and occasionally breaking. Just the kind that could swamp the dinghy on the davits. And 1 ton of water would surely break the davits. Hence a major task for the morning is lifting the dinghy onto the foredeck, flipping it over and securely tying it down, like we usually do for longer passages.

We depart the Club De Pesca Marina at 10am and motor out the harbour, and again take the shortcut through the Boca Grande entrance out to sea. Inshore the winds are light and the seas slight and we soon deploy full mainsail and genoa. But what’s happening? Our speed is a disaster, barely managing to make 4 kts! We knew hull bottom would be dirty after weeks in the marina, but not this dirty. As a 40ft Bavaria with low performance sails easily passes us, I’m devastated. Nobody overtakes Cloudy Bay! We must fix this!
3 miles out there is a shallow bank marked on the chart, and Oana smartly suggests we briefly anchor there while I go look at the hull. Once anchored it was a tad bouncy, but I went in anyway, though I could really have done with a hard hat the way the hull is pitching up and down. What I found I almost couldn’t believe. If we ever get even a few barnacles on the hull I declare all-out war. But what we have here is nothing short of a prolific barnacle farm! From about 1ft below the waterline, right down to the keel, the covering is so dense that there can hardly be a centimeter between the little bastards! And individually they are not small, ranging from 1-2cm diameter. It’s pointless trying to clean them off here. I’d just get cut to shreds – and I’m now clearly imagining what the old sailing tradition of keel-hauling must have been like (keel-hauling was punishing a sailor by dragging him from one side of the sailing ship to the other, under the keel). But I do dive down and at least clear a small area in front of the speed impeller, to give us closer to reality speed reading. Even doing that I lacerate my hand on the little buggers.
I return to the deck totally disheartened. My lovely antifoul job I put on just 2 months ago, and was supposed to last till New Zealand, is now surely ruined. Come to think of it, WTF! That was $1200 worth of paint I applied that was supposed to PREVENT growth, not encourage it. I might have just as well applied living-room wall paint! The irony is, that I had seen local divers cleaning the hulls of our neighboring boats in the marina, and I’d thought to myself: “We’ll never have that done. For certain they will damage the antifoul paint with their scrapers and technique” Pffff. Lesson learned.

So off we set again, and by now a full 5 miles behind our Bavaria rival (named Tui) who also seemed to be heading in the exact same direction as us. Hour after hour the wind and waves steadily increased as we got further offshore. And very quickly Oana started to get sea sick. I had hoped beyond hope that this time she wouldn’t be so badly affected, but alas, not to be. And before long she was curled up on the saloon floor within easy reach of the bow bathroom. Very likely this passage will be her last 😢, and who can blame her?
By sunset the winds were up to 25kts on our starboard quarter. I had the main heavily reefed but still with full genoa. With wind angle hovering around 120 degrees the genoa was occasionally fowl of dirty wind from the main, and repeatedly collapsing and then violently refilling with a “bang”. The genoa works OK up to 120 degrees but if more offwind than that I will pole it out to windward. But with the ever-increasing waves now regularly knocking us off course, the apparent wind angle was anything from 110 to 170 …. Like all over the bloody place. And of course, our speed was at least 2 kts less than it should be, with our hull full of those cling-on beasties.
Before we departed, I had set the pole to starboard with pole-lift and fire and aft guys, in anticipation of needing it. So after sunset I moved the genoa from port side to out on the pole on the starboard side, and set the autohelm on-wind mode at 135degrees-starboard. And everything suddenly became stable. Less rolling and much faster now that the genoa was fully powered up again. In fact, occasionally we even surfed a wave at 12kts! And for a moment I had nice thoughts that all the barnacles must have fallen off!
This new speed also meant we were actually catching our rival, Tui. With each hour we got a mile closer to him. Until finally at daybreak we passed him. Yes!! Nothing like a little race 😃

Considering the hull, our speeds were now amazing, but the waves were still increasing as forecast and every now and then we’d get a huge “slap!” on the hull and spray would enter the cockpit.
During the night, we’d been treated to a full moon. But by daybreak there was a heavy covering of dark clouds and we got the occasional rain shower. Negating our motorcycle tour, this is the first rain clouds we’ve seen in months. The Colombian coastline is very dry in this season, whereas Panama is more like the usual Caribbean. Both sunshine and showers guaranteed every day.

By midday we have land in sight … Land Ahoy! And by 1pm we can start to see the palm covered islands at the eastern end of the Holandais Cays, with huge breaking seas all around them. We take the Caobo channel to the east of the islands where I plan to swing into the shelter behind them. But just when we think we are almost there a very frightening situation presents itself. The deep sea, with its huge waves, quickly shoals from 200m to 20m and suddenly we see areas around us where the waves are doubling in height. One peaked up about 1/4 mile in front of us (to at least 6m high) and I could see light green water through its top, indication that its crest was heavily breaking. Then same again, just to our left, then to our right. I poured over the sonar chart but could not see any particular banks/shoals that were causing this. It seemed to be just random. Rather frightening, as if we got caught in such a steep breaking wave, it’s the kind of wave that could easily turn the boat 90degrees then roll us over.

Finally, with my legs shaking and heart in my throat, we get through the worse of it and into the sheltered waters behind the Holandais island chain. From there we carefully navigate to an anchorage just downwind of a sand-fringed palm covered island, called Banedup, and drop the anchor in 8m of clear turquoise water. We have arrived at San Blas! Time for a swim. First of the season.