The Adventures of the Vessel Condesa

Clark February 1st, 2008

The anchorage at Boca Chica, Panama:

After all that easy downwind sailing up the South American coast, I forgot how truly miserable an offshore passage can be. By 2AM on the second night I’d made a pact with myself to sell the boat and become a bean farmer. Such sentiments always drift away after a cold beer and a good night’s sleep.

I left Colombia, as planned, at 5AM. I intended this to be after a good night’s sleep, but I had a coffee late in the day–the only way to fire up any motivation in that sticky heat–and ended up cleaning the boat at 1AM and only getting a few hours sleep. There was not a breath of wind and I was actually feeling guilty about burning so much fuel. Ha ha. No wind didn’t mean calm though: It was horribly rough and lumpy. It was rough and lumpy with no wind eight years ago too, so I can only conclude with my sample size of two days that the Gulf of Panama is always like that. Anyway, they were the kind of conditions that make people seasick who don’t get seasick–violent rail-to-rail rolls all day long.

Then the wind came up and started to howl. It turns out that strong offshore winds are the norm for Panama in January and February, but I didn’t know this before I set out. They were exactly like our Southern Californian Santa Ana winds: hot, dry, strong, and gusty. Of course they were right on the nose with the continued violent seas. I suffered through the first night of this, not getting a wink of sleep. If I could have thrown in the towel and reached off to somehwere-anywhere-I would have, but my options were the Galapagos or Isla de Coco, both many hundreds of miles away. So I had to keep closehauled and pounding into it.

I slogged upwind with the sails reefed down to nothing, the first time I’d reefed since the Roaring Forties. I’ll spare you all the horrible things that happened to me, but some highlights are: A) scalding very sesitive parts of my body (solo in the tropics–why wear clothes?) when the coffee pot jumped off the stove. B) Having the fish cleaning board fall on my foot…still bruised. and C) Well into my second sleepless night, and after not getting but a couple hours the night before I left, the sleep situation was getting desperate. I finally found that the only place on the entire boat that held any hope of sleep was on the floor in the aft cabin. I put a camping pad, a sheet, and my pillow there, along with the requisite Casio alarm clock, set to go off at 15 minute intervals. By the way, I don’t need to hear the sound of that Casio alarm clock again for the rest of my life. The next alarm clock I get is going to have a selection of different alarm noises, one of them perhaps being a sexy woman’s voice saying, ‘Clark, please wake up.’ Anyway, at this point I was pretty close to Panama and was just motoring straight into it for the last 30 miles. I’d opened one porthole to get some ventilation when the boat rolled hard to port, scooped about a thousand gallons of seawater into the scuppers, then deposited much of it on my sheet, my pad, my pillow, and the one place on the entire boat that held any hope of getting any sleep. I took it with maturity and grace: ‘Evil God! Why hath thou forsaken me!’ By then I was getting into the shipping lanes from the Panama Canal and decided I shouldn’t be sleeping anyway.

I finally made my landfall in the wee hours at Punta Guanaco, a horrible, rough anchorage, but I didn’t care. I slept for five hours somehow, woke up to a violently rolling boat, and couldn’t go back to sleep. I sailed her another ten miles to the east to Banao, where there was a very protected anchorage and a great surf break. I slept, I ate, I surfed great waves and talked surf talk with the locals.

When I was walking back up the beach after surfing I looked out at Condesa and she looked unmistakably small. I stopped in my tracks, looked at her, and thought geeze, I just sailed across 200 miles of storm-wracked ocean in that little thing? And then I imagined what I must have looked like, a hundred miles from land in the middle of the night, up on deck bathed in the spreader lights–the only light for a long way around–struggling to reef the main, getting slammed by waves and spray. Amazing little machines, these cruising sailboats.

The next few days were halcyon cruising, although those offshore winds turned into some violent williwaws close to shore and some of the big gusts were about as much wind as Condesa has ever seen. I took three days to western Panama, stopping at a perfect anchorage every night. This is definitely the season for Panama with these dry conditions. It isn’t the wet and rainy Central America I remember, but a dry, clear place with visibility over 50 miles. And a strong contrast to Colombia, which was dank.

As I neared my final destination a huge helicopter came out of nowhere with a giant TV camera hanging out the side, flew a couple circles around me, waved, and flew off. Am I going to be on the Panamanian evening news?

I was into my old stomping grounds from eight years ago and pulled into Boca Chica, where eight years ago it would have been a surprise to see another boat. Now there are twelve! And two resorts. And Frank’s place, which used to be a very basic backpacker’s affair, is now a triple-level place with flashing lights everywhere. Frank hasn’t changed a bit, still a rude, mean krout, only grumpier from another eight years of dealing with customers, whom he obviously hates.

Now I’ve had two good nights at a mill pond anchorage and socialized a bit with the cruising set, which is strange since I’ve grown accustomed to having a whole country to myself. But today I was getting ready for my foray into to town when I went into the aft cabin to get some clothes. Normally I never go back there unless I’ve got guests. There was still the remnants of my wet hamster nest from the passage, a quick flashback to the misery I have now so willingly forgotten.

My computer woes are still dire, but I can publish some of the photos that are still on the cameras:

We were warned about the evil pirates and terrorists on the Colombian coast. Here’s proof:

Here’s the broken main boom off Cabo Corrientes, Colombia:

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