Pitufa.at

We finished all our electronics projects in time before my father arrived last Tuesday. Since then we’ve been doing touristy things (sightseeing in the casco viejo, strolling through town)–nice after two weeks of constant work. Unfortunately the sea is very murky at the moment, lots of tiny creatures are around, sometimes bright red clouds drift through, at night they fluoresce spectacularly like bright turquoise fireworks in the wake of the dinghy (a phenomenon called “red tide” that occurs from time to time here), so swimming’s not really possible. We took the boat over to the island of Tobago hoping for clear water there, but it was just the same. We only used a patch of clear water on the way back to Panama city to have a quick swim, quite funny with all the big ships anchored around, waiting for the Panama Canal.

Unfortunately our time in the Perlas is coming to an end, we really liked this archipelago. We’ve returned to the northern island of Contadora to clean the barnacles off the hull and to wait for favourable winds to sail back to Panama City.

We enjoyed the last few days in the calm anchorage behind the little island Espiritu Santo. We circumnavigated the island by dinghy, beached it on a powdersugar-white beach on the eastside and walked out to a little islet that is connected with the island during low tide. Due to the enormous tidal range (at spring tide like now it’s more than 4 metres) the landscapes change completely every few hours: reefs turn into islands, caves are revealed and in the tidal puddles all kinds of sea creatures can be found.
The day after we took the dinghy at high tide up a river on Isla del Rey, a fascinating experience to paddle out with the current again silently through the jungle, watching lots of different birds, listening to the squeaking, humming, chirping jungle sounds.

Christian used the calm anchorage to change the diesel filters, started dismounting dodgy electronic gear from the radar arch to make space for the new ones that are already waiting for us in Panama City. I couldn’t do much, as I’ve overstrained my right wrist during the past few weeks (carrying the heavy dinghy up beaches, hauling up the outboard, etc.) and tried to keep it as calm as possible to get rid of the chronic pain (try not to use your right hand for a while, it’s impossible, even more so on a boat…). The positive result of this was that Christian finally came up with a simple solution for a crane for the outboard–something we’ve been talking about for ages and which will make life a lot easier (and safer).

Today we took the dinghy to explore the huge bay and the channel between Isla Canas and Isla del Rey and then beached in front of the small nearby village, La Ensenada, which turned out to be much nicer than the last one. We bought a few things from the tiny shop, found people willing to sell some veggies from their gardens and purchased a freshly caught fish from a lancha that came in a short time after us.

The day before yesterday we sailed Pitufa back south. Again we got the timing wrong and had a strong current against us, the combination with about 15 to 20 knots of wind with us the resulted in steep, short waves that made the ride quite uncomfortable. Nevertheless it was an exciting trip: we saw a small whale (we think a pilot whale), a school of stingrays surfing down the waves right under the surface and caught the largest fish so far: about 1 m long (we’re not sure what it was, maybe some kind of mackerel). As the fish was far too big for the three of us we shared it in a beach bbq on Casaya with our friends from sy Spruce and sy Iolea.

Yesterday we returned to our favourite spot: Isletas de Platanal. It’s a magical place with an abundance of wildlife. Fish are jumping everywhere, a colony of a few hundred pelicans live on the island and we saw an incredible number of cormorants flying by (more than 10 000 for sure…). From the boat we heard loud grunting sounds, but when we took the dinghy ashore, there was no sign of the seals we had hoped for (we’ll check again today). High up on the beach we found large dugout holes that baffled us, until we discovered a baby turtle in one of them: it’s turtle hatching time and the babies must have dug themselves out of the sand the night before leaving those large holes behind. The poor little guy (about 8 cm long from tail to head) we found was stuck under a root and when we took him to the water he was too weak to swim. We didn’t want to leave him as food for the pelicans, so we took him back to the boat, planning to release him in the cover of the night, but unfortu nately he died in the evening.

The tides are so high at the moment (about 5 m difference, because of the spring tide) that the rocks that bridge the 3 little islands of the Isletas the Platanal stick out high at low tide, but disappear completely at high tide. You want to be extra careful when anchoring in conditions like these–it would be a nasty surprise to sit on the bottom at low tide

In the bay south of Contadora where we’re anchored now we get daily entertainment: in the mornings and in the afternoons big schools of stingrays (medium sized devil rays) round up shoals of small fish and then a special spectacle starts: first the tips of their wings are visible on the surface, then the water seems to boil when the small fish are herded to the surface and finally the rays start jumping out of the water in a feeding frenzy. The jump up to 2 metres high, flap their wings frantically (imitating the pelicans??) and then splash back either in a bellyflop or after doing a somersault. Sometimes 5 or 6 jump at the same time–like a dolphin show, only with stingrays

I spent the morning on deck trying to get some of the stunts on photos and managed to take some pics of them (they will follow soon in a photo gallery). The rest of the day we spent patching up dingsi our faithful dinghy and mounting the last solar panel in its new place (after buying two bigger ones for the radar arch we had to rearrange all the other ones…) and changing the oil on the outboard.

Yesterday Roswitha left us again, she took the ferry from Contadora back to Panama City (quite an adventerous device, ferry guests have to wade into the sea, climb on a boat which then takes them out to the ferry ) and is now sitting on the plane to New York, then on to Frankfurt and then follows yet another flight to Salzburg… We had a great week with her in the Perlas: swimming, snorkeling, exploring beaches–having a guest onboard made us realise again how nice life on a boat can be
Roswitha, thanks again for all the spare parts, presents and for being such a flexible, helpful and cheerful (despite uncomfortable rolly nights) crew member!