Rio Dulce

At daybreak we hauled anchor and made our way towards the mouth of the Rio Dulce. There is a notorious mud bank at the entrance of the river that is only 7 ft deep at high tide. We’d waited for high tide of course, but as our draft is 6 ½ feet, it was questionable whether we would make it without a tow.

I had envisioned that the mud bank was rather narrow, and that we would definitely know when we had passed it. In fact it was actually quite wide so our keel skidded along the bottom for at least half an hour before we finally got stuck. We pulled the jib out to see if we couldn’t lean over a bit to lessen our draft, but it wasn’t working. After fifteen minutes with no forward progress, a panga (they call them lanchas here) came out to ask if we needed a tow. Yes, yes we did. $30? Fine.

Just as we were about to throw them our halyard, we noticed El Tiburon had moved forward an inch. We waited, and sure enough she moved forward another inch. Soon we had broken free of the mud. Hooray!

Then we motored forward about twenty yards and anchored, where the water was still 7ft deep. We hoisted our yellow quarantine flag and waited for the authorities at Livingston to board our boat and check us into Guatemala.

We had an hour to kill while they completed the paperwork, so we took a panga to shore and had some breakfast. Livingston was a charming little Caribbean town with cobblestone streets and good food. The people were remarkably warm and friendly and every person we encountered was eager to be of assistance.

Lanchas in Livingston

Laundromat in Livingston

Around 10:00AM we began our inland voyage at a steady pace of six knots. The first part of the river snakes through an incredible narrow gorge with thick rainforest blanketing the steep walls on both sides. Birds and butterflies abound, and in the eddies children fish in dugout canoes. “Rio Dulce” means “Sweet River,” which may be due to the fact that it has a distinctively sweet smell, at times almost floral.

Aside from the occasional riverfront property, the river feels positively prehistoric. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness came to mind, as well as its progeny Apocalypse Now.

Most of the river is about 20ft deep although I saw the depth meter range from 80ft all the way down to just 4. Navigation of the waterway requires keeping one eye on where you are going, one eye on the depth meter, and one eye on the natural beauty surrounding you.

Four hours later we arrived in the town of Rio Dulce/Fronteras. After scouting out our marina options we chose Hacienda Tijax. Both a marina and “jungle lodge,” Tijax sits on the water across from town and features wooden plank walkways throughout the entire complex. It is a beautiful place run by lovely people. Neither the setting nor the staff can be beat.

El Tiburon needs her floors varnished and her teak decks replaced, both of which she will have done while waiting out the hurricane season in Rio Dulce.

Rounding the Honduran Hump

The leg from Providencia to Guatemala had some of the best sailing of the entire trip. We’d had time to acclimate to the washing machine turbulence of the Caribbean Sea, so all of us were up and about to enjoy the fantastic wind. Even though Perky was in top shape from her recent overhaul, we barely had any occasion to run her. For three days the wind averaged 15 to 20 knots and was mostly right behind us. We flew both the symmetric and asymmetric spinnakers, and poled out the jib for some wing-on-wing action.

Boats must be careful when rounding the Honduran hump because a shallow bank of coral heads and tiny islands extends about 50nm off the northern coast of Nicaragua. It is generally safer to stay well offshore when making this passage.

Our dock neighbor from Shelter Bay had given us the waypoints for taking a shortcut through the Moskito Bank via the Edinburgh Channel, which saved us about a day and a half of travel time. We expected to see some very small – and therefore very scary – numbers on our depth sounder, but the shallowest it got was about 70ft.

The shallow waters seemed to cut the swell down dramatically, which made sailing through the Edinburgh channel utterly delightful. With calm waters and a steady 20kt wind from behind, our speed meter got all the way up to 9kts.

One afternoon we got a visit from this little bird. We were at least 10 miles offshore and he must have been very tired of flapping his wings. He sat on our lifeline and let us feed him and even rub his belly before he finally flew away.

Sadly the calm seas were not to last and as we rounded Cabo Gracias a Dios the waves picked up and the boat started rolling once more. We were lucky our autopilot had performed reliably so far, despite some serious waves when we left Panama, and it seemed to be handling this new swell with equal capability. So it was quite a surprise to discover one morning that the most important part of it (the paddle) had completely fallen off. With no paddle there was no way to repair it.

This was an unwelcome discovery. Without an autopilot we were once again subjected to the tyranny of the helm. We had two more days of sailing left before arrival in Livingston, Guatemala, every minute of which would require somebody to be at the helm maintaining our compass heading. Steering a sailboat with a 20kt wind is nothing like steering a car. It necessitates actual physical effort to fight the wind and the waves and keep the boat aimed in a specific direction. But you don't have to stay between the lines and you can also steer with your feet.

By the afternoon John had come up with the clever idea of pulling out our emergency rudder and rigging it to function as an autopilot. After a few hours of tinkering, we had a new autopilot that worked just as well (if not better) than the original.

We flew the spinnaker all the way to Bahia Amatique without having to adjust it once, which meant the remainder of the journey was quite enjoyable. As it was dark when we arrived at the mouth of the Rio Dulce, we anchored and waited for daylight to commence the 25 mile trek up river.

Providencia, Columbia

We said goodbye to our friends at Shelter Bay and shoved off. The waves were nothing like they’d been a week earlier, but they were still pretty serious compared to what we’d experienced in the Pacific. (They don’t call it “the Pacific” for nothing.) Andrew and I felt fine (thanks to some Dramamine for me) but John and Kitty were down for the count – which is unusual for both of them.

Despite the rolling seas we had some awesome wind. We flew all three sails on a beam reach to the island of Providencia and made about 7 knots. We can only make about 5 to 6 knots motoring with our current prop. To harness a consistent wind and move faster than you can with an engine is pure pleasure. When the engine isn't running all you hear is the sibilance of the wind, the splatter of the waves on the bow, the slush of the water moving past the hull, and the occasional ruffling of the sails. If only sailing were always like this!

It took two full days to get to Providencia. We anchored early in the morning and then immediately crashed for a three-hour nap. Sailing is much more fun than motoring, but it is also much more work. Managing the sail trim all night is exhausting.

Land Ho!

Having recharged our batteries, we hopped into the new hard-bottomed dinghy with 15hp outboard motor we picked up while we were in Shelter Bay. It is a big step up from our little inflatable and 8hp outboard and has totally transformed the dinghy experience.

Check out our wake!

We went to town to find an internet café, but the connection was so slow that it was in effect unusable. Wandering through the dusty little town we found it to be surprisingly bustling for such a remote Caribbean island. Navigational hazards included mopeds zipping about the narrow streets with notable speed, stray dogs lurking around with unknown levels of aggression, and the occasional rogue horse gone walkabout.

Having failed in our search for an internet connection that moved at anything more than a glacial pace, we gave up looking for a link to the outside world and went snorkeling instead.

Early the next morning we weighed anchor and set off for a four day crossing to the Rio Dulce in Guatemala.

Panama, Take Two

After a few days of exploring our options, we decided to stay in Shelter Bay and rebuild our engine. You've already seen from John's slideshow what a job it was. The guys took it apart as much as they could while it was still in the bilge, then we used a block and tackle to haul it up out of the bilge and onto the floor. The men dismantled the engine piece by piece while I labeled little plastic baggies for the bots, nuts, washers, and miscellaneous small pieces: “Bell Housing Bolts,” “Transmission Bolts,” “Manual Oil Pump,” etc… Everything was covered in a layer of shiny black grease that made for a dirty job. Oh, and did I mention that this all took place in the middle of our kitchen?

That's the oven in the background.

Once it was sufficiently disassembled, we enlisted the help of three dock neighbors (one of whom was a linebacker for Joe Montana’s 49ers) to get the thing up and out of the boat. Dang that engine was heavy! Even with all that help, we still had to use a system of 2x4s and pulleys and remove our lifelines in order to get the engine block onto the dock.

We took the engine to Taller Alfreddo in Panama City to have them clean it up and repair the bearings, while we painted the bilge, cleaned the bolts and treated them for rust, fixed the wiring and the radar, etc, etc, etc...

All in all, Shelter Bay wasn’t such a bad place to be stuck. It’s on the other side of the Panama Canal from Colon – a bustling city known for drug violence – so a walk into town wasn’t really an option. We rented a car and drove into Panama City a few times, which is on the Pacific coast, and the drive usually only took about an hour and a half. The shopping in Panama City is great, especially compared to the rest of Central America. One can find pretty much anything there.

The marina is a half hour drive through jungle from Colon on an old US Army base called Fort Sherman. We went exploring in the jungle behind the marina and found all kinds of old bunkers and concrete structures slowly being consumed by foliage.

On our trips into the jungle we saw both capuchin and howler monkeys, toucans, a sloth, agoutis, tree-cutter ants and even a giant hermit crab scuttling around on the jungle floor. There are butterflies flitting around everywhere you look, including the famous big blue morpho butterflies. The best time to see wildlife is early in the morning or in the evening, when the temperature isn’t too hot and the animals are active. We have been told by many locals not to go walking around alone or at night because there have been many jaguar sightings. Apparently the Baird’s Tapir is also common in this area, although we didn't get the opportunity to spot one.

Not far from Shelter Bay marina is Fort San Lorenzo, a centuries-old structure that the pirate Henry Morgan famously captured and from where he staged his invasion of Panama City. We took a break from engine work to visit it one morning and had the whole place to ourselves:

Near the fort there were these interesting birds that made hanging nests in the trees and they had a very peculiar call:

When the engine block came back from Taller Alfreddo the guys rebuilt it in just three days. By this time we’d been in Shelter Bay for a month and were itching to get on our way, but the sea was not cooperative. We took El Tiburon out in the bay for a sea trial and watched huge bursts of white spray crash over the breakwater. We were relatively protected from the swell in the harbor, but as we approached the entrance, the magnitude of the waves became all too apparent. Even just the few waves that snuck through the opening in the breakwater were so big and steep that El Tiburon’s prop came out of the water. We promptly turned around and went back to the marina.

Passageweather.com indicated we’d have to wait another five days for a decent sea-state, so we rented a car and drove to the Pacific side to go surfing. After six hours in the car, we came to the tiny town of Santa Catalina. We stayed at a little hotel called Surfer’s Paradise that was own by a Brazilian guy named Italo and his son, Diego Salgado, who is Panama’s national surf champ. The break was right outside our door:

There we met Ellis and Taylor, a fun couple from Virginia who’d been traveling around Peru for a few months. Ellis was like a Crocodile Hunter with a southern accent. Following him around at night we found land crabs and a coral snake, and went spider hunting.

There was a steep grassy hill near the restaurant that had hundreds of little holes burrowed into the side of it. We had assumed there were little crabs living in the holes but Ellis showed us how wrong we were.

Here are his instructions:

1) Stand on the top of the hill at night with a flashlight. Hold the flashlight close to your face, so the beam is as close to your line of sight as possible.

2) Slowly skim the top of the grassy hill with your light.

3) Look for little tiny beads of light on the grass. Those are spider eyes.

4) Keeping your light on the spider eyes, approach the spider slowly, being careful not to make the ground vibrate too much.

5) If you are lucky you’ll get close enough to see the entire huge hairy spider hanging out in the grass before it runs back into its hole.

6) If the spider runs back into its hole, shine your light in after it and sometimes you can still see one or two thick, jointed, hairy legs.

John and I found one spider in such a condition, just two fat legs hanging out at the bottom of the hole. I found a piece of dried vegetation – a long stem with a dried bulbous flower on the end – and moved the flower around gently by his hole to see what he would do. No reaction from Spidey prompted me to stick the flower into the hole and wiggle it around some more. Within seconds the piece of grass was jerked from my fingers with remarkable force as the spider had determined he’d had enough of my teasing. I leapt backwards and shook off my heebie-jeebies, then decided I was done spider hunting for the evening.

When we got back to Shelter Bay three days later, the weather was perfect for our long-awaited venture into the Caribbean Sea.