In three days we are already a month here in Portobelo. “Que Horror” Vivian
is saying after realizing that we are here that long.
What has happened in this month that we are here?
First we relaxed a few days, getting used to being at anchor on a spot we
were five years before.
After that we went by bus (cost $1 a persons single trip) to Sabanitas.
That is the place to do your provisioning of almost everything. From
dollars out the ATM-machine to food and drinks you need aboard.
The dollars out the ATM machine are all brand new and only 20$ bills. That
is good. You can use them everywhere. Used bills that have something
written on, with holes in them or just simply used are sometimes not
accepted by banks. This is specially the case in Guatemala and Honduras.
You end up with a stack of dollars that you cannot change in foreign
countries, except in the USA and Panama. They always accept new dollar
bills. Strange, most falsifications are new, not used.
Checking-in in Panama
After a week we went to Colon to check in. Not by boat but by bus. I
really like Portobelo as a place to stay in comparison to Colon. It was
hard to check in, and we couldn’t have done it in one day without the help
of a taxi-driver in the Panama Yacht Club. The officials are not
cooperative in helping you out. There are steep penalties when you don’t
have all the papers to check out of the country. You better have a guide to
help you. We were done in half a day, so on the way back to Portobelo we
stopped in Sabanitas to provision a bit more. It rained and there were
thunderstorms during our check-in day. We were happy to find Watergeus on
the same spot as we left her.
Old Friends
Susan and German
We were here 5 years ago, and it was to expect that we would encounter some
old friends. Susan and Herman of ‘La Sirena’ were the first ones we bumped
into in Portobelo. We met them 5 years ago, first in Cartagena and after
that in Kuna Yala. Susan is working with Molas. She select them, buys them
and makes bags, tablecloths, shirts, cushions and more from them. She then
sells them to the boaters that pass by. Most of the time in the San Blas.
She still works on those projects.
To our surprise they have now two boats. They bought ‘Footloose’ an
enormous Ketch of 55 feet. German asked me what I thought of ‘Footloose’
after he showed us around.
“A gigantic and challenging project”, I managed to say.
bq.
In my opinion is a 42 ft boat for two persons more or less the ideal size.
Bigger will be more expensive. Much more expensive. Everything has to be
bigger, there is more maintenance, more diesel, and marina fees are getting
really expensive the bigger your boat is. Smaller than 42 ft. is doable,
but if your live 12 months a year on the
boat it will be tight, as we experience ourselves right now on our 32 ft
‘Watergeus’. Of course there are exceptions. For example if you want to
cruise around with guests. We talk about a complete different boat with a
different set
of constraints. Think only of the privacy and the amount of freedom the
guests would like to have. Not to speak of the enormous consumption of
water landlubbers are used to…
PeeGee on Tarona
We met PeeGee a long time ago on the Rio Dulce in Guatemala. At that time
he was specializing in the niche-market of refrigeration. He had always
work. One of the reasons not to depend on a freezer on a small boat, imho.
They always seem to be in need of care. One night he came with his small
sailing-boat (28 ft) Tarona into the bay of Portobelo, without mast! Of
course he was rather depressed when we saw him in Portobelo. The mast
neatly folded on his deck. The story was that he got surprised by a squall
in the San Blas in the early morning. The winds increased so rapidly that
he didn’t have time to lower his sails. The result was a broken mast, just
where the spreaders
were. It happened just outside of Cayos Hollandeses and he had three paying
guests (backpackers) aboard.
We were sitting in a local bar in Portobelo—where the beer is cold and $
0.50 and fish and chips is $2.00—when he was telling his dismasting
story. Suddenly he jumped up.
“Bill, look there, that’s him, no?”, as he pointed very excited to a bus
that slowly parked.
“Yes, that is possible PeeGee”, Bill said.
PeeGee didn’t need anything more.
“We were this afternoon in a bus coming back from Sabanitas to here. The
driver was drunk and driving very dangerously. At a certain moment I got so
stressed that I started to shout and wizzle to the driver to force him to
slow down. He didn’t listen! He just laughed and waved and drove on like a
madman. This cannot go on like this. I’m going to tell him that”. And very
decisive PeeGee walked to the bus and started to talk to the driver.
When he came back he said “I told him I would go to the owner of the bus”.
The driver smiled and said “I’m the owner”. I told him if he would do that
again when I’m on his bus, that I would go to the police.
It took PeeGee some minutes to continue his story about the dismasting.
Next day he left by boat for Colon to repair his mast.
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